Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 71

by Maria Edgeworth

To CAPTAIN BASIL HALL.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 12, 1829.

... If I could, as you say, flatter myself that Sir Walter Scott was in any degree influenced to write and publish his novels from seeing my sketches of Irish character, I should indeed triumph in the "thought of having been the proximate cause of such happiness to millions."

In what admirable taste Sir Walter Scott's introduction^[1] is written! No man ever contrived to speak so delightfully of himself, so as to gratify public curiosity, and yet to avoid all appearance of egotism,—to let the public into his mind, into all that is most interesting and most useful to posterity to know of his history, and yet to avoid all improper, all impertinent, all superfluous disclosures.

Children's questions are often simply sublime: the question your three-years-old asked was of these—"Who sanded the seashore?"

Footnotes

1. To the new edition of Waverley.