"
Note:
[24] The "Preface to Parents"--Miss Emily Lawless suggests to me--was
probably by Mr. Edgeworth.
Although, by their sub-title, these stories are avowedly composed for
children, they are almost as attractive to grown-up readers. This is
partly owing to their narrative skill, partly also to the clear
characterisation, which already betrays the coming author of _Castle
Rackrent_ and _Belinda_ and _Patronage_--the last, under its first name
of _The Freeman Family_, being already partly written, although many
years were still to pass before it saw the light in 1814. Readers, wise
after the event, might fairly claim to have foreseen from some of the
personages in the _Parent's Assistant_ that the author, however sedulous
to describe "such situations only ... as children can easily imagine,"
was not able entirely to resist tempting specimens of human nature like
the bibulous Mr. Corkscrew, the burglar butler in "The False Key," or
Mrs. Pomfret, the housekeeper of the same story, whose prejudices
against the _Villaintropic_ Society, and its unholy dealing with the
"_drugs and refuges_" of humanity, are quite in the style of the Mrs.
Slipslop of a great artist whose works one would scarcely have expected
to encounter among the paper-backed and grey-boarded volumes which lined
the shelves at Edgeworthstown.
Pages:
53
54
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61
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