mouth of old Thady, a lifelong servant of the family. Thady's son, Jason Quirk, attorney and agent to the estate, has dispossessed the Rackrents; but Thady is still "poor Thady," and regards the change with horror. Before recounting the history of his own especial master and patron, Sir Condy Rackrent, last of the line, Thady gives his ingenuous account of the three who previously bore the name; Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, and Sir Kit. Sir Patrick, the inventor of raspberry whiskey, died at table: "Just as the company rose to drink his health with three cheers, he fell down in a sort of fit, and was carried off; they sat it out, and were surprised in the morning to find that it was all over with poor Sir Patrick." That no gentleman likes to be disturbed after dinner, was the best recognised rule of life in Ireland; if your host happened to have a fit, you knew he would wish you to sit it out. Gerald Griffin in The Collegians makes the same point with his usual vigour. A shot is heard in the dining-room by the maids downstairs. They are for rushing in, but the manservant knows better: "Sure, don't you know, if there was anyone shot the master would ring the bell." After Sir Patrick, who thus lived and died, to quote his epitaph, "a monument of old Irish hospitality," came Sir Murtagh, "who was a very learned man in the law, and had the character of it"; another passion that seems to go with the land-hunger in Ireland. Sir Murtagh married one of the family of the Skinflints: "She was a strict observer for self and servants of Lent and all fast days, but not holidays." However, says Thady (is there not a strong trace of Swift in all this?).

I have abridged my lady's methods, and I omit Sir Murtagh's, who taught his tenants, as he said, to know the law of landlord and tenant. But, "though a learned man in the law, he was a little too incredulous in other matters." He neglected his health, broke a blood-vessel in a rage with my lady, and so made way for Sir Kit the prodigal. Sir Kit was shot in a duel, and Sir Condy came into an estate which, between Sir Murtagh's law-suits and Sir Kit's gaming, was considerably embarrassed; indeed, the story proper is simply a history of makeshifts to keep rain and bailiffs out of the family mansion. Poor Sir Condy; he was the very moral of the man who is no man's enemy but his own, and was left at the last with no friend but old Thady. Even Judy Quirk turned against him, forgetting his goodness in tossing up between her and Miss Isabella Moneygawl, the romantic lady who eloped with him after the toss. She deserted before Judy; here is a bit of the final scene. Thady was going upstairs with a slate to make up a window-pane.

However, the quarrel comes on in a delightful scene, where Sir Condy shows himself at all events an amiable gentleman; and so my lady goes home to her own people. There you have Miss Edgeworth at her very best; and, indeed, Castle Rackrent received such a tribute as no other novel ever had paid to it. Many people have heard how when Waverley came to the Edgeworth household, Mr. Edgeworth, after his custom, read it aloud almost, as it would appear, at one sitting. When the end came for that fascinated circle, amid the chorus of exclamations, Mr. Edgeworth said: "What is this? Postscript which ought to have been a preface." Then there was a chorus of protests that he should not break the spell with prose. "Anyhow," he said, "let us hear what the man has to say," and so read on to the passage where Scott explained that he desired to do for Scotland what had been done for Ireland: "to emulate the admirable fidelity of Miss Edgeworth's portraits." What Maria Edgeworth felt we know from the letter she posted off "to the Author of 'Waverley,' Aut Scotus aut Diabolus."

It would be unkind to compare Scott with his model. For the poetry and the tragic power of his novels one would never think of looking in Miss Edgeworth. Her work is compact of observation; yet the gifts she has are not to be under-valued. She is mistress of a kindly yet searching satire, real wit, a fine vein of comedy; and she can rise to such true pathos as dignifies the fantastic figure of King Corny in Ormond, perhaps the best thing she ever did. But she had in her father a literary adviser, not of the negative but of the positive order, and there never was a more fully developed prig than Richard Edgeworth. His view of literature was purely utilitarian; to convey practical lessons was the business of all superior persons, more particularly of an Edgeworth. In Castle Rackrent his suggestions and comments are happily relegated to the position of notes; in the other books they form part and parcel of the novel. The Absentee, for instance, contains admirable dialogue and many life-like figures; but the scheme of the story conveys a sense of unreality. Every fault or vice has its counterbalancing virtue represented. Lady Clonbroney, vulgarly ashamed of her country, is set off by the patriotic Lady Oranmore; the virtuous Mr. Burke forms too obvious a pendant to the rascally agents old Nick and St. Dennis. It is needless to say that the exclusively virtuous people are deadly dull. It is the novel with a purpose written by a novelist whose strength lies in the delineation of character. Miss Edgeworth can never carry you away with her story, as Charles Reade sometimes can, and make you forget and forgive the virtuous intention.

What was unreal in Miss Edgeworth became mere insincerity in her contemporary, Lady Morgan. Few people could tell you now where Thackeray got Miss Glorvina O'Dowd's baptismal name; yet The Wild Irish Girl had a great triumph in