pages were
written; then they were read to him, and if he thought them going
on tolerably well, the pleasure in his eyes, the approving sound of
his voice, even without the praise he so warmly bestowed, were
sufficient and delightful incitements to "go on and finish." When
he thought that there was spirit in what was written, but that it
required, as it often did, great correction, he would say: "Leave
that to me; it is my business to cut and correct, yours to write
on." His skill in cutting, his decision in criticism, was
peculiarly useful to me. His ready invention and infinite resource,
when I had run myself into difficulties, never failed to extricate
me at my utmost need. It was the happy experience of this, and my
consequent reliance on his ability, decision and perfect honesty,
that relieved me from the vacillation and anxiety to which I was so
much subject, that I am sure I should not have written or finished
anything without his support. He inspired in my mind a degree of
hope and confidence, essential in the first instance to the full
exertion of the mental powers, and necessary to insure perseverance
in any occupation. Such, happily for me, was his power over my
mind, that no one thing I ever began to write was ever left
unfinished.

That such a process was calculated to check inspiration is obvious. To
suffer one hand to chisel and clip the productions of another, to insert
into a finished frame-work incongruous episodes intended to work out a
pet idea, was as inartistic as it was pernicious. The method could not
fail to induce a certain self-consciousness on the part of the writer
fatal to spontaneity, a certain complacent, careful laying out of plans,
apt to disturb if not to distract the reader by drawing his attention
from the fabric to the machinery. It was this that laid Miss Edgeworth
open to the charge, so often made, of a mechanical spirit in her
writings. For our own part, after reading her letters, with which her
father certainly did not meddle, we are inclined to lay most of her
faults to the charge of the monitor and guide whose assistance she so
much over-rated. He, on the other hand, saw other dangers in their
system. Writing to Mrs. Inchbald, he says:--

Maria has one great disadvantage in this house--she has eight or
nine auditors who are no contemptible judges of literature, to wh