page became a mass of confusion before her eyes, and her voice lost all power. MRS. EDGEWORTH: ‘Memoir,’ quoted in ‘A Study of Maria Edgeworth.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Mr. Edgeworth’s want of tact.] The Edgeworths ... are staying in London, and the daughter gains the good-will of every one; not so the father. They dined at Sotheby’s. After dinner Mr. Edgeworth was sitting next Mrs. Siddons, Sam Rogers being on the other side of her. “Madam,” said he, “I think I saw you perform ‘Millamont’ thirty-five years ago.”--“Pardon me, sir.”--“Oh! then it was forty years ago: I distinctly recollect it.”--“You will excuse me, sir, I never played ‘Millamont.’”--“Oh, yes! madam, I recollect.”--“I think,” she said, turning to Mr. Rogers, “it is time for me to change my place;” and she rose with her own peculiar dignity. HENRY CRABB ROBINSON: ‘Diary and Correspondence,’ edited by T. Sadler. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1871. * * * * * In 1813 I recollect to have met them in the fashionable world of London.... I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a clarety, elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk, and endless. He was seventy, but did not look fifty,--no, nor forty-eight even.... Edgeworth bounced about and talked loud and long; ... he seemed neither weakly nor decrepit, and hardly old. [Sidenote: Mr. Edgeworth.] He began by telling “that he had given Dr. Parr a dressing, who had taken him for an Irish bog-trotter,” etc. Now I, who know Dr. Parr, and who know ... that it is not so easy a matter to dress him, thought Mr. Edgeworth an asserter of what was not true. He could not have stood before Parr an instant. For the rest, he seemed intelligent, vehement, vivacious and full of life. He bids fair for a hundred years. [Sidenote: “A merry jest.”] He was not much admired in London; and I remember a “ryght merrie” and conceited jest which was rife among the gallants of the day; viz., a paper had been presented for _the recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage_. Whereupon Thomas Moore, of profane and poetical memory, did propose ... a similar paper ... for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland. [Moore, in a foot-note, disclaims the authorship of the jest.] * * * * * [Sidenote: Maria described.] The fact was, everybody cared more about _her_. She was a nice, little, unassuming “Jeanie Deans looking body,” as we Scotch say, and if not handsome, certainly not ill-looking. Her conversation was as quiet as herself. One would never have guessed that she could write _her name_; whereas her father talked, _not_ as if he could write nothing else, but as if nothing else was worth writing. As for Mrs. Edgeworth, I forget, except that I think she was the youngest of the party. Altogether, they were an excellent cage of the kind, and succeeded for two months, till the landing of Mme. de Staël.