CHAPTER XII.
THE MEMOIRS PUBLISHED. 1821 TO 1825.
The Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth had been published during Miss Edgeworth's stay on the Continent. After all the anxiety she had felt while preparing the work for the press, she was now able to write to her friends at home : —
You would scarcely believe, my dear friends, the calm of mind and the suit of satisfied resignation I feel as to my father's life. I suppose tin- two years of doubt and extreme anxiety that I felt, exhausted all my power of doubting. I know that I have done my very best, I know that I have done my duty, and 1 firmly believe that if my dear father could see the whole, he would be satisfied with what I have done.
Still she was sensitive to what those said who had known and loved him ; and though Mrs. Ruxton had gone through the manuscript, it was a satisfaction to her to hear that on seeing the work in print she had not altered her views on it. She wrote : —
"The irremediable words once past the press, 1 knew that the happiness of my life was at stake. Even if all the rest of the world had praised it and you had 1 n dissatisfied, how miserable I should ha e been."
The world was not so lenient in its criticism. It failed to see what right the work had to exist; it
