"[24] The plausibility
of invention, the amount of ingenious contrivance and of clever
expedient in these professedly nursery stories, is indeed extraordinary;
and nothing can exceed the dexterity with which--to use Dr. Johnson's
words concerning _She Stoops to Conquer_--"the incidents are so prepared
as not to seem improbable." There is no better example of this than the
admirable tale of "The Mimic," in which the most unlooked-for
occurrences succeed each other in the most natural way, while the
disappearance at the end of the little sweep, who has levanted up the
chimney in Frederick's new blue coat and buff waistcoat, is a
master-stroke. Everybody has forgotten everything about him until the
precise moment when he is needed to supply the fitting surprise of the
finish,--a surprise which is only to be compared to that other
revelation in _The Rose and the Ring_ of Thackeray, where the long-lost
and obnoxious porter at Valoroso's palace, having been turned by the
Fairy Blackstick into a door knocker for his insolence, is restored to
the sorrowing Servants' Hall exactly when his services are again
required in the capacity of Mrs. Gruffanuffs husband. But in Miss
Edgeworth's little fable there is no fairy agency. "Fairies were not
much in her line," says Lady Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, "but
philanthropic manufacturers, liberal noblemen, and benevolent ladies in
travelling carriages, do as well and appear in the nick of time to
distribute rewards or to point a moral.
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