, was forbidden to her; she therefore learned to
knit in order to employ herself. With patience, fortitude and cheerful
disregard of self she bore the mental and physical sufferings that
marked the year 1817 a black one in her life.

CHAPTER X.

LATER NOVELS.--GENERAL ESTIMATE.

Few of Miss Edgeworth's stories were written quickly. In her case,
however, the Horatian maxim was scarcely justified, for her best tales
are almost without exception those written with a running pen.
_Patronage_ was one that was longest in hand, having originated in 1787
from a story told by Mr. Edgeworth to amuse his wife when recovering
from her confinement. From her frequent mention of it, quite contrary to
her usual custom, one may conclude she did not find it an easy task. In
1811 she writes: "I am working away at _Patronage_, but cannot at all
come up to my idea of what it should be." We do not know whether it ever
did, but whatever her verdict may finally have been, it is certain that
_Patronage_, though one of the longest and most ambitious of her
stories, is as a story one of the least successful. It is labored; art
and design are too apparent; the purpose has too fatally hampered the
invention. There is no denying that, while containing many excellent
scenes, much shrewd observation of character, _Patronage_ drags, and the
reader is weary ere he has done. It is both artificial and common-place,
and what is more unfortunate still, the whole fabric is built upon a
confusion of premises. Its purpose is to demonstrate the evils that
result from patronage, and to show how much more successful are those
who rely only upon their own exertions. Both premises involve a _petitio
principii_. A capable person helped at the outset may have cause
eternally to bless the patron who enabled him to start at once in his
proper groove, instead of wasting strength and time after the
endeavor--often vain--to find it unassisted. Had she attempted to prove
that it was better for each person to fight his way alone, because this
was better for the moral development of his character, it would have
been another matter. But this is not the line she pursues. There are no
such subtle psychic problems worked out. The whole question is treated
from the surface only, and the two families chosen to "point the moral"
are not fairly contrasted. The Percys, the good people who shrink from
help so nervously that they would rather do themselves harm than accept
a