701 



EDGEWORTH, RICHARD LOVELL. 



EDQEWORTH, MARIA. 



702, 



a part of England). On this occasion Edgar was reconciled to the 

 Euglish king, and he again took up his abode at the court of William. 

 In January 1092 however Duke Robert aad ho suddenly withdrew 

 together to Normandy ; and not long after Malcolm and William were 

 again at war. The Scottish king fell in a conflict with an English 

 force commanded by Robert de Moubray near Alnwick on the 13th 

 of November 1093; his eldest aon Edward was slain with him ; and 

 his queen, the sister of Edgar Atheling, died three days after, having 

 only survived to leam the loss of her husband and her son. Imme- 

 diately after this we read of Edgar securing the children of his 

 deceased brother-in-law and sister from the attempts of their uncle, 

 Donald Bane, who had usurped the Scottish throne, and conveying 

 them to a place of safety in Eugland, a circumstance that would 

 apparently imply that he had himself returned to that country from 

 Normandy, and once more secured the protection of the English king. 

 Here he seems to have continued during the remainder of the reign of 

 Rufus. In 1097 he is recorded to have raised, with the approbation 

 and aid of that king, a body of troops, and marched with them into 

 Scotland, where he drove Donald Bane from the throne, and placed on 

 it his nephew Edgar, the son of Malcolm. One account makes him 

 to have immediately after this joined his old friend Robert duke of 

 Normandy in the Holy Land, with a force of 20,000 men, collected 

 from all parts of England and Scotland ; but this part of his story ia 

 neither well supported nor very probable in itself. It is certain how- 

 ever that on the breaking out of the war between Henry I. and his 

 brother Robert, a few years after the accession of the former to the 

 English throne, Edgar was found on the side of Robert, although the 

 recent marriage of his sister to Henry might be supposed to have 

 attached him to the interests of that prince. He was one of the 

 prisoners taken by Henry at the decisive battle of Tinchebrai on the 

 27th of September 1106, in which Robert finally lost his dukedom and 

 his liberty. The victor however treated the Saxon prince with more 

 lenity or contempt than he showed in his treatment of his own 

 brother. Soon after being brought to England, Edgar was restored to 

 liberty ; and gome accounts state that he subsequently visited 

 Palestine. But the remainder of his history is very obscure. Malms- 

 bury only informs us, without specifying any date of his decease, that 

 he died in England after having lived to a good old age, without ever 

 having been married or having had any issue, leaving behind him the 

 character of a weak but inoffensive and well-intentioned man. He 

 has certainly the distinction of being about the most insipid hero of 

 anything like romance on record, and the narrative of his life may be 

 quoted as a curious instance of the interest that will be sometimes 

 awakened by the position and fortunes of an individual however 

 personally insignificant. 



EDGEWORTH, RICHARD LOVELL, an ingenious mechanical 

 philosopher, but better known as the father and literary associate of 

 Maria Edgeworth, was born at Bath, in 1744. He was descended 

 from an English family, which had settled in Ireland in the reign of 

 Queen Elizabeth, and resided in Edgeworthtown, in the county of 

 Longford, where his boyhood was chiefly spent. A hasty marriage, 

 contracted at the age of nineteen, while he was an under-graduate of 

 Corpus College, Oxford, cut short his studies at that university, and 

 led him to return home; but hi 1765, intending to be called to the 

 bar, he came to England, and took a house at Hare Hatch, between 

 Maidenhead and Reading. During his visits to London to keep his 

 terms, he became acquainted with Sir Francis Delaval and other gay 

 and sporting men of the day, concerning whom a number of anecdotes 

 are preserved in Mr. Edgeworth's autobiography. In that society he 

 was distinguished by a high flow of spirits, and an uncommon share 

 of that activity and ingenuity which adapts itself to the lighter 

 pursuits of social amusement as readily as to higher and more 

 serious purposes. At home he was chiefly occupied in prosecuting a 

 variety of ingenious mechanical contrivances, among which we may 

 mention the first erection of a telegraph in England, originating in a 

 bet relative to the speedy transmission of racing news from New- 

 market to London. During this residence in Berkshire he became 

 acquainted with the eccentric philanthropist Thomas Day, with whom 

 he lived in the closest friendship. His mechanical pursuits introduced 

 him to Dr. Darwin, and subsequently to Watt and Bolton, Wedgwood, 

 and other eminent scientific men. In 17(39, by his father's death, he 

 came into possession of a handsome fortune, and gave up the intention 

 of following the law as a profession. 



Mr. Edgeworth returned to Ireland in 1782, "with the firm deter- 

 mination, 1 ' he says, "to dedicate the remainder of his life to the 

 improvement of his estate and the education of his children, and with 

 the sincere hope of contributing to the amelioration of the inhabitants 

 of the country from which he drew his subsistence." To this resolu- 

 tion, during the remaining thirty-five years of his life he steadfastly 

 adhered ; devoting his best powers to the useful performance of his 

 duties as a magistrate, a landlord, and a father. He was an active 

 and influential member of the Irish Volunteers, and continued, after 

 their t'issolution, and through life, a steady advocate of reform in 

 parliament, he was a member of the last Irish house of commons, and 

 poke and voted in opposition to the Uuion. Retaining the ardent 

 spirit of his youth, he engaged in a variety of projects for reclaiming 

 bogs, establishing a system of telegraphic communication, experiments 

 on the construction of carriages, moveablo railroads, &c. In, the 



cultivation of his estate and in the management of his tenantry he 

 was skilful, prudent, and humane. His judicious and discriminating 

 kindness and his acknowledged impartiality as a magistrate (a rare 

 quality then in Ireland) gained their sincere affection, insomuch that 

 in the insurrection of 1798, though he was absent arid assisting with 

 his corps of yeomanry in the defence of Longford, his house at 

 Edgeworthtown was visited by the rebels, and yet was preserved 

 uninjured and untouched. He died June 13, 1817, after an old age 

 of unusual activity and power of enjoyment. 



Mr. Edgeworth married four wives, by all of whom he had children. 

 The number of his children, and their unusual difference in age, a 

 difference amounting, between the eldest and youngest, to more than 

 forty years, gave him peculiar opportunities of trying experiments in 

 education, and watching their results. His family were brought up 

 almost entirely at home, and with an unusual degree of parental care. 

 The results of his experiments were made public in 1798, in a work 

 which at the time attracted much attention ' Practical Education,' 

 a treatise written principally by Miss Edgeworth, but partly by 

 himself; and based on his theory of education, his observation, and 

 the experience of his own house. 



Mr. Edgeworth was not' a ready writer ; and it may have beeii 

 partly owing to this that he preferred engaging in a sort of literary 

 partnership with his daughter to embarking alone in any work of 

 length. ' Practical Education ' and ' Irish Bulls ' were avowedly 

 written by them in common ; and Miss E. in her father's ' Memoirs ' 

 (vol. ii., chap, xvi.) has recorded in warm terms of filial affection her 

 obligations to him in her other works. It was his habit to revise and 

 correct all her productions carefully, and to sanction tlieir issue to 

 the world by his paternal imprimatur; a form which the world 

 thought might as well be omitted. 



The following works are published in his name : ' Rational 

 Primer:' 'Poetry Explained;' 'Readings in Poetry;' 'Professional 

 Education ; ' ' Letter to Lord Charlemont on the Telegraph ; ' 

 ' Speeches in Parliament ; ' ' Essay on the Construction of Roads and 

 Carriages.' He also published papers in the Philosophical Transac- 

 tions, Nicholson's Journal, and the transactions of the Royal Irish 

 Academy on various subjects, as the Telegraph, Resistance of the 

 Air, Aerostation, Railroads, the Construction of Carriages, and the 

 description of a handsome spire which ho had caused to be erected 

 inside the steeple of the parish church, and then lifted into its place. 



(Memoirt of R. L. Edgeworth, 1820.) 



EDGEWOKTH, MARIA, the daughter of the preceding, by his 

 first wife, was born on January 1, 1767, at Hare Hatch, near Reading, 

 in Berkshire. In the year 1782 her father went with his family to 

 reside on his paternal estate at Edgeworthtown, until when, except 

 for a few months in her childhood, his daughter had never beeu in 

 Ireland. From that time however Edgeworthtown became her abode 

 for the remainder of her long life, with the exception of occasional 

 visits of a few weeks only to England, Scotland, and France, and for 

 about two years at Clifton in attendance on her sick step-mother. 

 The neighbourhood of Edgeworthtowu did not afford much congenial 

 society, the family of the Earl of Longford at Pakenham Hall, that of 

 the Earl of Granard at Castle Forbes, and that of a Mr. Brookes, 

 being the only ones whom they visited ; and Pakenham Hall, she says, 

 was twelve miles distant, with "a vast Serboniau bog between us, 

 with a bad road, an awkward ferry, and a country so frightful, and so 

 overrun with yellow weeds, that it was aptly called by Mrs. Greville, 

 ' the yellow dwarfs country.' " 



Miss Edgeworth was principally educated by her father, as all his 

 other children were. They all lived on the most confidential terms 

 with him, and she was very early selected as his business assistant, 

 copying letters, receiving rents, and welcoming his tenants, while hia 

 office of magistrate gave her still further opportunities of observing 

 the manners and habits of the peasantry around her. These occupa- 

 tions soon led to her becoming a co-operator with her father in lite- 

 rary productions. The first was a series of 'Essays on Practical 

 Education,' published in 1798; and 'Early Lessons,' which had been 

 commenced by Mr. Edgeworth and his second wife, was continued by 

 him and hia daughter ; the ' Parent's Assistant ' was alao a joint 

 production, as was the 'Essay on Irish Bulls/ published in 1803. 

 But Miss Edgeworth's fame rests upon her novels, which were pro- 

 duced without assistance, though they always had the benefit of her 

 father's revision, while he waa living. The series commenced with 

 ' Castle Rackrent,' published in 1801, and closed in 1834 with ' Helen.' 

 In the interval there appeared ' Moral Tales,' ' Belinda,' ' Leonora,' 

 'The Modern Griselda,' 'Popular Tales,' 'Tales of Fashiouablo Life,' 

 ' Patronage,' ' Frank," ' Harrington,' and ' Ormond,' with some minor 

 tales. Her last production was ' Orlandino,' a children's tale, published 

 by the Messrs. Chambers in 1847. 



The novels of Miss Edgeworth were published some years ago in 

 a collected series. The manners which they describe, especially those 

 of fashionable life, belong in some degree to a past generation. But 

 her delineations of character, more particularly of Irish character, 

 are so true to nature, and there is such a vein of quiet humour and 

 practical good sense running through them all, that amidst the more 

 exciting plots and strong situations of the novels of our own time, 

 the more important may be referred to as worthy of a lasting place 

 in our literature. 



