(Mlle. Panache) and the satire on romantic young-ladyism (Angelina) are excellent examples of this.  As for the pure child’s stories, generation after generation of competent criticism, childish and adult, has voted them by acclamation into almost the highest place possible:  and the gain-sayers have for the most part been idle paradoxers, ill-conditioned snarlers at things clean and sweet, or fools pure and simple.

[16] The peculiar pedantic ignorance which critics sometimes show has objected to this rendering of Marmontel’s Contes Moraux, urging that it should read “tales of manners.”  It might be enough to remark that the Edgeworths, father and daughter, were probably a good deal better acquainted both with French and English than these cavillers.  But there is a rebutting argument which is less ad hominem.  “Tales of Manners” leaves out at least as much on one side as “Moral Tales” does on the other:  and the actual meaning is quite clear to those who know that of the Latin mores and the French moeurs.  It is scarcely worth while to attempt to help those who do not know by means of paraphrases.

The “Irish brigade” of the work—­Castle Rackrent (1800), Ormond, and The Absentee, with the non-narrative but closely-connected Essay on Irish Bulls—­have perhaps commanded the most unchequered applause.  They are not quite free from the sentimentality and the didacticism which were both rampant in the novel of Miss Edgeworth’s earlier time:  but these are atoned for by a quite new use of the “national” element.  Even Smollett and, following Smollett, Moore had chiefly availed themselves of this for its farcical or semi-farcical opportunities.  Miss Edgeworth did not neglect these, but she did not confine herself to them:  and such characters as Corny the “King of the Black Isles” in Ormond actually add a new province and a new pleasure to fiction.

Her importance is thus very great:  and it only wanted the proverbial or anecdotic “That!” to make it much greater.  “That!” as it generally is, was in her case the last fusing touch of genius to accomplish the grand oeuvre—­the perfect projection.  She had humour, pathos, knowledge of the world, power of drawing it, acquaintance with literature, shrewd common sense, an excellent style when she was allowed to write in her own way, the feelings of a lady who was also a good woman.  King Charles is made to say in Woodstock that “half the things in the world remind him of the Tales of Mother Goose.”  It is astonishing, in the real complimentary sense, how many things remind one of situations, passages, phrases, in Miss Edgeworth’s works of all the kinds from Castle Rackrent to Frank.  She also had a great and an acknowledged influence on Scott, a considerable and a certainly not disavowed influence on Miss Austen.  She is good reading always, however much we may sometimes