s for one little moment, so
that at last the reader's attention is in danger of being surfeited by a
feast of good things. The fable is the direct opposite to that of the
old story of Griselda. In the words of Milton we are shown how it
befalls the man

Who to worth in woman over-trusting,
Lets her will rule: restraint she will not brook;
And left to herself, if evil thence ensue,
She first his weak indulgence will accuse.

This the modern Griselda does to her husband's cost and her own. The
story is a remarkable evidence of Miss Edgeworth's independence of
genius. She showed no weak sympathy with the failings of her sex just
because it was her sex, but, like a true friend, held them up to view
and pointed them out for correction. Her objectiveness did not insure
her, however, from misconstruction. Mrs. Barbauld wrote to her:--

I became very impatient for your _Griselda_ before Johnson thought
proper to produce it; need I add we have read it with great
pleasure? It is charming, like everything you write, but I can tell
you the gentlemen like it better than the ladies, and if you were
to be tried by a jury of your own sex I do not know what punishment
you might be sentenced to for having betrayed their cause. "The
author is one of your own sex; we men have nothing to do but to
stand by and laugh," was the remark of a gentleman, no less candid
a man than Dr. Aiken: and then the moral (a general moral if I
understand it right) that a man must not indulge his wife too much!
If I were a new-married woman I do not know whether I would forgive
you till you had made the _amende honorable_ by writing something
to expose the men. All, however, are unanimous in admiring the
sprightliness of the dialogue and the ingenious and varied
perverseness of the heroine.

To this letter Miss Edgeworth replied:--

Let me assure you that the little tale was written in playfulness,
not bitterness of heart. Not one of the female committee who sat
upon it every day whilst it was writing and reading ever imagined
that it should be thought a severe libel upon the sex, perhaps
because their attention was fixed upon Mrs. Granby, who at least is
as much a panegyric as Mrs. Bolingbroke is a satire upon the sex.

_Popular Tales_ were issued, and also in great part written, before the
two series of _Fashionable Tales_, an