[27] [Sir Samuel Romilly, born 1757, lost his wife on the 29th of October, and committed suicide on the 2nd of November, 1818.--"But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to see it. I have at least seen Romilly shivered, who was one of the assassins. When that felon or lunatic ... was doing his worst to uproot my whole family, tree, branch, and blossoms--when, after taking my retainer, he went over to them [see _Letters_, 1899, iii. 324]--when he was bringing desolation ... on my household gods--did he think that, in less than three years, a natural event--a severe, domestic, but an unexpected and common calamity--would lay his carcase in a cross-road, or stamp his name in a verdict of Lunacy! Did he (who in his drivelling sexagenary dotage had not the courage to survive his Nurse--for what else was a wife to him at his time of life?)--reflect or consider what _my_ feelings must have been, when wife, and child, and sister, and name, and fame, and country, were to be my sacrifice on his legal altar,--and this at a moment when my health was declining, my fortune embarrassed, and my mind had been shaken by many kinds of disappointment--while I was yet young, and might have reformed what might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved what was perplexing in my affairs! But the wretch is in his grave," etc.-Letter to Murray, June 7, 1819, _Letters_, 1900, iv. 316.] [28] [Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) published _Castle Rackrent_, etc., etc., etc., in 1800. "In 1813," says Byron, "I recollect to have met them [the Edgeworths] in the fashionable world of London.... She was a nice little unassuming 'Jeannie Deans-looking body,' as we Scotch say; and if not handsome, certainly not ill-looking" (_Diary_, January 19, 1821, _Letters_, 1901, v. 177-179).] [29] [Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) published, in 1782, _Easy Introduction to the Study of Nature_; _History of the Robins_ (dedicated to the Princess Sophia) in 1786, etc.] [30] [Hannah More (1745-1833) published _Coelebs in Search of a Wife_ in 1809.] [31] [Pope, _Rape of the Lock_, Canto II, line 17.] {19}[32] [John Harrison (1693-1776), known as "Longitude" Harrison, was the inventor of watch compensation. He received, in slowly and reluctantly paid instalments, a sum of £20,000 from the Government, for producing a chronometer which should determine the longitude within half a degree. A watch which contained his latest improvements was worn by Captain Cook during his three years' circumnavigation of the globe.] [33] "Description des _vertus incomparables_ de l'Huile de Macassar." See the Advertisement. [_An Historical, Philosophical and Practical Essay on the Human Hair_, was published by Alexander Rowland, jun., in 1816. It was inscribed, "To her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte of Wales and Cobourg."] [b] _Where all was innocence and quiet bliss_.--[MS.] [c] _And so she seemed, in all outside formalities_.--[MS.]