He was generous, brave, good-natured, and what is commonly called goodtempered; but he was scarcely to be controlled.

It was difficult to urge him to anything that did not suit his fancy, and more difficult to restrain him from what he wished to follow.

In short, he was self-willed, from a spirit of independence, which had been inculcated by his early education, and which he cherished the more from the inexperience of his own powers.
'I must here acknowledge, with deep regret, not only the error of a theory, which I had adopted at a very early age, when older and wiser persons than myself had been dazzled by the eloquence of Rousseau; but I must also reproach myself with not having, after my arrival in France, paid as much attention to my boy as I had done in England, or as much as was necessary to prevent the formation of those habits, which could never afterwards be eradicated.' Edgeworth, finding that the tutor he had brought from England was not able to control his son, resolved to send young Richard to school at Lyons.

The Jesuits had lately been dismissed, but the Peres de L'Oratoire had taken charge of their Seminary, and to them Edgeworth resolved to intrust his son, having been first assured by the Superior that he would not attempt to convert the boy, and would forbid the under-masters to do so.

A certain Pere Jerome, however, desired to make the boy a good Catholic; and the Superior frankly told Edgeworth the circumstance, saying,'One day he took your boy between his knees, and began from the beginning of things to teach him what he ought to believe.