writer who can learn from criticism and experience, who can adopt a new method of writing when past the age of sixty, is a remarkable writer indeed.
The fears that Miss Edgeworth had felt concerning Helen were truly uncalled for, but the eagerness with which she listened to criticisms upon it showed how little confident she felt of it herself. To her friend Dr. Holland she wrote after its appearance:—
Dear Sir,
I am very glad that you have been pleased with Helen—far
above my expectations ! And I thank you for that warmth of kindness with which you enter into all the details of the characters and plan of the story. Nothing but regard for the author could have
made you give so much importance to my tale. It has always been
my fault to let the moral end I had in view appear too soon and too
clearly, and I am not surprised that my old fault, notwithstanding
some pains which I certainly thought I took to correct it, should still
abide by me. As to Lady Davenant's loving Helen better than she
did her daughter—I can't help it—nor could she. It is her fault, not
mine, and I can only say it was very natural that, after having begun
by mistake and neglect in her early education, she should feel afterwards disinclined to one who was a constant object of self-reproach to her. Lady Davenant is not represented as a perfect character.
All, then, that I have to answer for is, whether her faults are natural
to the character I drew, and tend in their representation to the moral
I would enforce or insinuate.
Oh, thank you for telling me of my blunder in making the Dean die of apoplexy with his eyes fixed on Helen. Absurd! How shall I kill him in the next edition, if ever I am allowed an opportunity? Would palsy do? May there not be a partial power of will surviving a stroke of palsy, which would permit the poor old man to die with his eyes directed to his niece? Please to answer this question; and if palsy will not do my business, please to suggest something that will, and with as little alteration of the text as may be. Not because I am unwilling to take the trouble of correcting, but that I don't think it worth while to make alterations, even emendations, of great length. Better make a new one, according to Pope's hackney coachman's principle. (The punctuation shall be mended.)
