persist in contesting the two subsequent prizes of the year with those dunces?-But so far was his successful competitor, a Mr. Dawson, it seems, from being a stupid young man, that he obtained the first prize and the two subsequent certificates of the ensuing year, surpassing even Foster, whose merits Mr. Edgeworth acknowledges: and though Mr. Edgeworth speaks so slightingly of his class fellows, and particularly of the fellow-commoners of that period, we find amongst them, (besides the names of Foster and Dawson, his immediate conquerors,) those of Mr. Speaker Foster, Lord Chief Baron Burgh, Lord Chancellor Fitz Gibbon, Edmond Malone, Bishop Kearney, Doctors Usher and Richardson, and a crowd of other men who have all become eminent in the senate, the church or the law. We are afraid that these observations are conclusive, to shew that Mr. Edgeworth's boast is wholly unfounded, and that his vanity is worse than puerile-that it is slanderous; and if it be said that these are mistakes about trifles, we must reply, that inaccuracy in trifles creates a strong presumption of inaccuracy in more important matters, and that, in fact, these things are not more trifling than the generality of anecdotes which this book contains.

After two idle, dissipated, and unprofitable years spent at Dublin, his father prudently, he says, removed him to Oxford. Of the prudence the fruits were not very apparent; for we know not what right he had to expect, from the laxity of Oxford discipline at that time, an improvement in learning which the strictness of the Dublin examinations had not produced; and as to moral prudence, we find that he married, while at Oxford, a young lady of the neighbourhood, and had a son before he was twenty.

This match also was made under awkward circumstances.-The lady, a daughter of Mr. Elers, of Black-Bourton, near Oxford, an old friend of Mr. Edgeworth's father, attracted his attention; I had paid my court to her, (he says,) and I felt myself insensibly entangled so completely, that I could not find any honourable means of extrication.' But having, in one of the vacations, made a trip to Bath, he had, it seems, changed his mind.

'I have not to reproach myself with any deceit, or suppression of the truth. On my return to Black-Bourton, I did not conceal the altered state of my mind; but having engaged the affections of the young lady, I married while I was yet a youth at college. I resolved to meet the disagreeable consequences of such a step with fortitude, and without being dispirited by the loss of the society to which I had been ac customed. I determined to submit to the displeasure of my father with respectful firmness. By my mother's tears and supplications she obtained his forgiveness. As I was under age I had married in Scotland ; but a few months afterwards, my father had me remarried by license with his consent.'-vol. i. pp. 102, 103.

So

So that Mr. Edgeworth's first marriage his father was obliged to set aside by a solemnity, and his second, he was obliged by a solemnity to confirm.

As Mr. Edgeworth treats his first marriage with ridicule, so he appears to have looked upon this his second with permanent disgust. We find in his poetical opuscula an epigram written in 1811 on some recent Scotch marriages and divorces.

To ready Scotland boys and girls are carried

Before their time impatient to be married.

Soon wiser grown, the self same road they run,
With equal haste, to get the knot undone.

Th' indulgent Scot, when English law too nice is,

Sanctions our follies first, and then our vices.'-p. 490.

That Mr. Edgeworth, the hero of five marriages, two of them clandestine, another of them irregular, and the last three indecently hasty, should have presumed to erect himself into a censor on such a subject, and that his daughter should have published this sneer at the union which gave her birth, appears to us, to be an ef frontery in him and an indiscretion in her which we could not have believed, if it were not before our eyes.

After this marriage, Mr. Edgeworth thought of being called to the bar, but his mode of study was not very likely to lead to successful results. He took a house at Hare Hatch, between Maidenhead and Reading, and his legal pursuits seem to have been confined to going up to town four times a year, for two or three days, to keep, as it is called, his terms at the Temple. This is not much to be regretted; Mr. Edgeworth could hardly have made a good lawyer, and in his retirement at Hare Hatch, he indulged his mechanical turn, and laid the foundation of that useful knowledge which enabled him, in after life, to educate a large family with considerable success, to amuse if not benefit the public by some ingenious experiments, and to contribute no unimportant share to those entertaining works since published in conjunction with his eldest daughter.

During his occasional visits to town he had become acquainted, by his proficiency in the art of conjuring,- omne, vafer tangit'— with the celebrated Sir Francis Delaval.

A famous match was at that time pending at Newmarket between two horses, that were in every respect as nearly equal as possible. Lord March, (late Duke of Queensbury,) one evening at Ranelagh, expressed his regret to Sir Francis Delaval, that he was not able to attend Newmarket at the next meeting. "I am obliged," said he, "to stay in London; I shall, however, be at the Turf Coffee House; I shall station fleet horses on the road, to bring me the earliest intelligence of the event of the race, and I shall manage my bets accordingly.

"I asked

I asked at what time in the evening he expected to know who was winner. He said about mine in the evening. I asserted, that I should be able to name the winning horse at four o'clock in the afternoon. Lord March heard my assertion with so much incredulity as to urge me to defend myself; and at length I offered to lay five hundred pounds, that I would in London name the winning horse at Newmarket, at five o'clock in the evening of the day when the great match in question was to be run. Sir Francis, having looked at me for encouragement, offered to lay five hundred pounds on my side; Lord Eglintoun did the same; Shaftoe and somebody else took up their bets; and the next day we were to meet at the Turf Coffee-House, to put our bets in writing. After we went home, I explained to Sir Francis Delaval the means that I proposed to use. I had early been acquainted with Wilkins's "Secret and swift Messenger;" I had also read in Hooke's works of a scheme of this sort, and I had determined to employ a telegraph nearly resembling that which I have since published. The machinery I knew could be prepared in a few days.

Sir Francis immediately perceived the feasibility of my scheme, and indeed its certainty of success. It was summer time, and by employing a sufficient number of persons, we could place our machines so near as to be almost out of the power of the weather. When we all met at the Turf Coffee-House, I offered to double my bet, so did Sir Francis. The gentlemen on the opposite side were willing to accept my offer; but before I would conclude my wager, I thought it fair to state to Lord March, that I did not depend upon the fleetness or strength of horses to carry the desired intelligence, but upon other means, which I had, of being informed in London which horse had actually won at Newmarket, between the time when the race should be concluded and five o'clock in the evening. My opponents thanked me for my candour, reconsidered the matter, and declined the bet. My friends blamed me extremely for giving up such an advantageous speculation. None of them, except Sir Francis, knew the means which I had intended to employ, and he kept them a profound secret, with a view to use them afterwards for his own purposes. With that energy, which characterised every thing in which he engaged, he immediately erected, under my directions, an apparatus between his house and part of Piccadilly; an apparatus, which was never suspected to be telegraphic. I also set up a night telegraph between a house which Sir F. Delaval occupied at Hampstead, and one to which I had access in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. This nocturnal telegraph answered well, but was too expensive for common use.

Upon my return home to Hare Hatch, I tried many experiments on different modes of telegraphic communication. My object was to combine secrecy with expedition. For this purpose I intended to employ windmills, which might be erected for common economical uses, and which might at the same time afford easy means of communication from place to place upon extraordinary occasions. There is a windmill at Nettlebed, which can be distinctly seen with a good glass from Assy Hill, between Maidenhead and Henly, the highest ground in Eng

land,

land, south of the Trent. With the assistance of Mr. Perrot, of Hare Hatch, I ascertained the practicability of my scheme between these places, which are nearly sixteen miles asunder.

'I have had occasion to shew my claim to the revival of this inven tion in modern times, and in particular to prove, that I had practised telegraphic communication in the year 1767, long before it was ever attempted in France. To establish these truths, I obtained from Mr. Perrot, a Berkshire gentleman, who resided in the neighbourhood of Hare Hatch, and who was witness to my experiments, his testimony to the facts which I have just related. I have his letter; and, before its contents were published in the Memoirs of the Irish Academy for the year 1796, I shewed it to Lord Charlemont, President of the Royal Irish Academy.'-vol. i. pp. 145-149.

The solemn and querulous tone in which Miss Edgeworth, throughout a whole chapter (vii. vol. 2.), talks of her father's telegraph' and of his invention,' induces us to make a few observations upon this passage.

In the first place we must notice that Mr. Edgeworth does not himself directly claim the invention, but only its revival in modern times, and although he, and more frequently his daughter, are fond of confounding the invention of the principle with the invention of a particular mode of applying it, it is quite clear that the foregoing account contains all that Mr. Edgeworth has to say about the telegraph previously to its employment by the French. After that, he amused himself, like so many thousand others, in devising new modes of application, but that seems to be all.

Mr. Edgeworth admits that he took the idea from Wilkins and Hooke-that is conclusive as to the invention. Now as to the practice-it would not be unreasonable, after what we have seen of Mr. Edgeworth's modes of relating, to doubt that he had ever entertained the notion at all. None of his friends, except Sir Francis, knew the means he intended to employ,'' Sir Francis kept them a profound secret.' He erected an apparatus which was never suspected to be telegraphic. This studied secrecy is endeavoured to be accounted for by Sir Francis wishing to keep the invention for his own purposes; to have allowed him to do so is not very consistent with the candour with which Mr. Edgeworth states that he had warned his antagonists in the case of the wager:-again, all this was in 1767; but Sir Francis Delaval died within a year or two, and we find Mr. Edgeworth in 1768 and 1769 receiving the gold and silver medals of the Society of Arts for models, machines, and inventions, for waggons, turnip-cutters, wooden horses, phaetons, umbrellas, perambulators, &c. &c. Why from 1767 to 1794 do we not hear a word of the telegraph? This silence in a man who was so generously communicative of all his other inventions seems unaccountable.

Let

Let it be also observed, that Mr. Edgeworth's first offer to Lord March was to have the intelligence five hours sooner than his Lordship's fleet horses,' stationed along the road, could bring it. Now it is known, that Lord March used to receive intelligence from New Market by this mode in about three hours and a half. So that Mr. Edgeworth's plan would have brought the news before the event could have happened.

Mr. Edgeworth seems to have anticipated some suspicion of his veracity, for he calls in corroborative evidence-with the assistance of Mr. Perrot, (he says) of Hare Hatch, I ascertained the practicability of my scheme between these two places, which are sixteen miles asunder; and to establish these truths I obtained from Mr. Perrot, who was witness to my experiments, his testimony as to the facts I have just related. I have his letter.' This, one would think, quite enough, but Miss Edgeworth, 'to make assurance double sure,' is so kind as to insert Mr. Perrot's certificate.

"DEAR SIR,

"I perfectly recollect having several conversations with you in 1767 on the subject of a speedy and secret conveyance of intelligence. I recollect your going up the hills to see how far, and how distinctly, the arms (and the position of them) of Nettlebed windmill sails were to be discovered with ease."-vol. ii. p. 169.

6

Here it turns out that Mr. Perrot does not speak as to 'facts," but as to conversations,' and that the assistance' which he afforded to Mr. Edgeworth was confined to seeing him go up the hills to look at the arms of Nettlebed windmill! Can it be denied that Mr. Edgeworth's expressions imply that he performed actual experiments, and that Mr. Perrot practically assisted in them? and can it be denied that Mr. Perrot's certificate negatives those assertions, and only testifies as to conversations and seeing (not even accompanying) Mr. Edgeworth going up the hills? The proof, therefore, which he and Miss Edgeworth justly thought so necessary, fails them, and there is not the slightest evidence that he had gone a jot beyond the notion which he derived from Wilkins and Hooke. Nay he does not seem to have extended his idea much beyond that of old Egæus, who devised the unlucky black sail of Theseus, or of Hero who held out a lamp as a signal across the Hellespont,--or of the connected watch fires and beacons which, in remote and even in comparatively modern times, all nations have employed. In short, Mr. Edgeworth, by his own shewing, has no more claim to the merit of inventing telegraphs than half mankind, and, by the evidence he produces, appears to have less.

The death of Sir Francis Delaval, fortunately perhaps for Mr. Edgeworth, put an end to the connexion with the motley society of gamblers, players, and philosophers, with whom he lived; and he formed