The Sun.
London, England, 1833-10-22 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

MISS EDGEWORTH'S TALES—Oxmo.vD.
VOL. XVIII. LONDON, 1833.
These admirable fictions are now brought to
a close, the present volume, which contains the
well-known tale of " Ormond," being the last
of the series. Few writers bear republication
so well as Miss Edgeworth—none better.
There is an inexhaustible fund of sound com-
mon sense in every tale she pens, not put for-
ward in a formal or assuming manner, but with
the strictest modest propriety. She is no dog-
matist, no petticoat pedant—whatever Lord
Byron may say to the contrary—but the gen-
tlest, consequently the most persuasive, of fe-
male philosophers. Her natural sensibilities are
strong and ardent, but they are ever at her
command. Indeed, if she have a defect,
it is that she holds too strict a watch
and ward over them. She too often strait-
waistcoats her impulses ; claps them too
often under hatches. Had she allowed them
freer play, and a wider range ; with her keen
sense of the odd and ridiculous, her exuberant
buoyancy of spirits, happy cordiality of tempe-
rament, and, above all, with her power of
drawing forth, unconsciously, as it were, the
slyest and most close-hidden traits of Irish cha-
racter, she would have made a deeper impression
on the public mind than she has yet done. In
all, even the best, of Miss Edgeworth's tales,
we fancy we trace a salient, quick-witted intellect,
afraid to trust itself to the free play of its own
fine impulses, just as if, by so doing, it would
be overstepping the proprieties. This want of
mental courage is oftener the ruin of excellence
than the world supposes. Had Scott laboured
under it, he would scarcely have won a Euro-
pean reputation. But he knew his powers ;
whereas Miss Edgeworth seems never, at any
time, to have been more than half conscious of
the extent of hers. The cold, freezing, practical
quality of her father's mind, to whom she sub-
mitted all her productions, and from whose
decision there was no appeal, though it may have
strengthened her judgment, has had, we suspect,
a depressing effect on the fire and elasticity of
her genius. Such, at least, is the impression made
on our minds by a reperusal of " Ormond."
The character of King Corny—one of the
boldest and most original ever projected by wo-
man—bears all the appearance of having been
tamed down in accordance with the conven-
tional notions of a common-place critic. It
sets out in fine style, is full of whim, spirit, and
ingenuity, but instead of deepening in interest,
flags as it proceeds, till finally it becomes a bore—
just as if Mr. Edgeworth's sense of the orthodox
and the judicious had had the effect of frighten-
ing his daughter from the wild by-paths of
originality, into the broad, beaten, level track of
common-place. Miss Edgeworth has some-
where observed, that Ormond as originally
written, was twice the length it now is. This
may have been an improvement, as respects the
minor characters of the tale, but we have little
doubt " King Corny" has suffered by the
curtailment, and that what was left out was far
more quaint, clever, and spirited than that which
has been left in. The young Irishman Ormond,
like the character to which we have been just
alluding, is more boldly conceived than executed.
We are perpetually told of his rash, fiery, enthu-
siastic temperament ; that he is the creature of
impulse, the slave of passion, Ste. ; but really we
see little or nothing of the sort in his conduct :
he keeps ever within the proprieties ; is fond of
the society of grave, learned clergymen, shocked
at the slightest overstepping of conventional
decorum in woman, alarmed for his morals at
Paris, and his purse in London, and is, in fact,
so far, at least, as we can see to the contrary,
a perleot, pattern of good sense and sobriety.
This softening down, and frittering away a bold
conception, is another proof of Miss Edgeworth's
undue diffidence. Though she had got hold of
a spirited idea, she was afraid to work it out.
Conventional taste was too much for her. She
thought of what her orthodox readers would
say, when she should have been thinking only
of how she could best do justice to her own
free, cordial impulses. Another peculiarity in
Miss Edgeworth's tales, is the utter absence of
the picturesque. A bit of wild, or rural land-
scape, is a perfect God-send in her pages. We
know she has a horror of fine writing ;" but
so had Scott, yet who has given us such mag-
nificent, yet chaste, descriptions ? What a fine
thing the " Black Isles," with King Corny's
nondescript palace, and his equally non-descript
subjects, would have been in his hands ? He
would have painted them to the life, in impe-
rishable colours, such as those in which he has
pourtrayed the Baron of Bradwardine's " here-
ditary tenement" of Tully Veolan. As at pre-
sent drawn, they are merely faint, meagre, out-
lines in water-colours.
With the exception of these drawbacks,
" Ormond," like all Miss Edgeworth's tales,
abounds in beauties. The wild Irish coquette,
Dora, sliding afterwards, by a very natural
metamorphosis, into the accomplished Parisian
intriguante, is drawn with amazing skill and
power, impressive as a whole, highly finished
in all its details. Not less so is the po-
lished, but heartless, public jobber, Sir Ulick
O'Shane, a character now, we believe, be-
becoming fast extinct in Ireland. As a speci-
men of Miss Edgeworth's singular power of
drawing forth the subtlest and minutest traits of
such characters as happen to jump with her
humour, we subjoin an extract, descriptive of a
quarrel between Ormond and his coquettish
playmate, Dora,
loves,,wfihguoresin the de
yet disdainsserpi ttoi showdescription,
i
s
it. Shelah,
an old Irish nurse, who is equally attached to
both, and has shrewdly penetrated the secret
of their hearts. The touch at the close, where, in
replytoOrmond
and fo
's stern threat
ever,reat t
she,quitoi her
ii father'ssiterpe
house immediately of
herself, betrays her love, by insisting that the old
crippled nurse shouldt eway in which she en
stick of him, hiding her affection under pretence
r laetasn her on
tl o him
,—the
an interest in the old woman ; lest without
make—t
hae walkingpe h