Tales and Novels, vol 4

Tales and Novels, vol 4

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Title: Tales and Novels, Vol. IV
Author: Maria Edgeworth
Release Date: December, 2005 [EBook #9439] [Yes, we are more than
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TALES AND NOVELS, VOL. IV
CONTAINING
CASTLE RACKRENT; AN ESSAY ON IRISH BULLS; AN ESSAY
ON THE NOBLE SCIENCE OF SELF-JUSTIFICATION; ENNUI;
AND THE DUN.
BY
MARIA EDGEWORTH
IN TEN VOLUMES. WITH ENGRAVINGS ON STEEL.
1857.

"A prudence undeceiving, undeceived, That nor too little nor too much
believed; That scorn'd unjust suspicion's coward fear, And without
weakness knew to be sincere." _Lord Lyttelton's Monody on his Wife_.

PREFACE
The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and
ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but
if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable
proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the
present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history,
how few derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of history
are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian; they talk
in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such diabolical
motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or heroism, to
sympathize in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty even in the
best authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that love of truth,
which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily leads to a
love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes. We cannot judge either

of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy, from
their actions or their appearance in public; it is from their careless
conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the
greatest probability of success to discover their real characters. The life
of a great or of a little man written by himself, the familiar letters, the
diary of any individual published by his friends or by his enemies, after
his decease, are esteemed important literary curiosities. We are surely
justified, in this eager desire, to collect the most minute facts relative to
the domestic lives, not only of the great and good, but even of the
worthless and insignificant, since it is only by a comparison of their
actual happiness or misery in the privacy of domestic life that we can
form a just estimate of the real reward of virtue, or the real punishment
of vice. That the great are not as happy as they seem, that the external
circumstances of fortune and rank do not constitute felicity, is asserted
by every moralist: the historian can seldom, consistently with his
dignity, pause to illustrate this truth: it is therefore to the biographer we
must have recourse. After we have beheld splendid characters playing
their parts on the great theatre of the world, with all the advantages of
stage effect and decoration, we anxiously beg to be admitted behind the
scenes, that we may take a nearer view of the actors and actresses.
Some may perhaps imagine, that the value of biography depends upon
the judgment and taste of the biographer: but on the contrary it may be
maintained, that the merits of a biographer are inversely as the extent of
his intellectual powers and of his literary talents. A plain unvarnished
tale is preferable to the most highly ornamented narrative. Where we
see that a man has the power, we may naturally suspect that he has the
will to deceive us; and those who are used to literary manufacture know
how much is often sacrificed to the rounding of a