E'en in our early sports, like two young whelps
Of hostile breed, instinctively reverse,
Each 'gainst the other pitched his ready pledge,
And frowned defiance. As we onward passed
From youth to man's estate, his narrow art
And envious gibing malice, poorly veiled
In the affected carelessness of mirth,
Still more detestable and odious grew.
There is no living being on this earth
Who can conceive the malice of his soul,
With all his gay and damned merriment,
To those by fortune or by merit placed
Above his paltry self. When, low in fortune,
He looked upon the state of prosperous men,
As nightly birds, roused from their murky holes,
Do scowl and chatter at the light of day,
I could endure it; even as we bear

Th' impotent bite of some half-trodden worm,
I could endure it. But when honours came,
And wealth and new-got titles fed his pride;
Whilst flattering knaves did trumpet forth his praise,
And grovelling idiots grinned applauses on him;
Oh, then I could no longer suffer it!

It drove me frantic. -What, what would I give!
What would I give to crush the bloated toad,
So rankly do I loathe him!

Jane. And would thy hatred crush the very man
Who gave to thee that life he might have taken?
That life which thou so rashly didst expose

To aim at his? Oh, this is horrible!

De Mon. Ha! thou hast heard it, then? From all the world,

But most of all from thee, I thought it hid.

Jane. I heard a secret whisper, and resolved Upon the instant to return to thee.

Didst thou receive my letter?

De Mon. I did! I did! 'Twas that which drove me hither.

I could not bear to meet thine eye again.

Jane. Alas! that, tempted by a sister's tears,
I ever left thy house! These few past months,
These absent months, have brought us all this woe.
Had I remained with thee, it had not been.
And yet, methinks, it should not move you thus.
You dared him to the field; both bravely fought ;
He, more adroit, disarmed you; courteously
Returned the forfeit sword, which, so returned,
You did refuse to use against him more;
And then, as says report, you parted friends.

De Mon. When he disarmed this cursed, this worthless hand

Of its most worthless weapon, he but spared
From devilish pride, which now derives a bliss
In seeing me thus fettered, shamed, subjected
With the vile favour of his poor forbearance;
While he securely sits with gibing brow,

Torments more fell than I have felt already

It cannot send. To be annihilated,

What all men shrink from; to be dust, be nothing,

Were bliss to me, compared to what I am!

Jane. Oh! wouldst thou kill me with these dreadful

words?

De Mon. Let me but once upon his ruin look, Then close mine eyes for ever!

Ha! how is this? Thou 'rt ill; thou 'rt very pale.
What have I done to thee? Alas, alas !

I meant not to distress thee.-O my sister!
Jane. I cannot speak to thee.

I have killed thee.

De Mon.
Turn, turn thee not away! Look on me still!
Oh! droop not thus, my life, my pride, my sister;
Look on me yet again.

Jane. Thou too, De Montfort,

In better days wert wont to be my pride.

De Mon. I am a wretch, most wretched in myself,
And still more wretched in the pain I give.

Oh, curse that villain, that detested villain !
He has spread misery o'er my fated life;
He will undo us all.

Jane. I've held my warfare through a troubled worid,
And borne with steady mind my share of ill;
For thou wert then the helpmate of my toil.
But now the wane of life comes darkly on,
And hideous passion tears me from thy heart,
Blasting thy worth.-I cannot strive with this.
De Mon. What shall I do?

A Country Life.

E'en now, methinks,

Each little cottage of my native vale
Swells out its earthen sides, upheaves its roof,
Like to a hillock moved by labouring mole,
And with green trail-weeds clambering up its walls,
Roses and every gay and fragrant plant
Before my fancy stands, a fairy bower:
Ay, and within it too do fairies dwell.
Peep through its wreathed window, if indeed
The flowers grow not too close; and there within
Thou 'lt see some half-a-dozen rosy brats
Eating from wooden bowls their dainty milk-
Those are my mountain elves. Seest thou not
Their very forms distinctly? .

I'll gather round my board
All that Heaven sends to me of way-worn folks,
And noble travellers, and neighbouring friends,
Both young and old. Within my ample hall,
The worn-out man of arms shall o' tiptoe tread,
Tossing his gray locks from his wrinkled brow
With cheerful freedom, as he boasts his feats
Of days gone by.-Music we 'll have; and oft
The bickering dance upon our oaken floors
Shall, thundering loud, strike on the distant ear

Shall have its suited pastime even winter
In its deep noon, when mountains piled with snow,
And choked-up valleys from our mansion bar
All entrance, and nor guest nor traveller
Sounds at our gate; the empty hall forsaken,
In some warm chamber, by the crackling fire
We'll hold our little, snug, domestic court,
Plying our work with song and tale between.
(From Orra.)

Prince Edward in his Dungeon.
Doth the bright sun from the high arch of heaven,
In all his beauteous robes of fleckered clouds,
And ruddy vapours, and deep-glowing flames,
And softly varied shades, look gloriously?

Do the green woods dance to the wind? the lakes
Cast up their sparkling waters to the light?
Do the sweet hamlets in their bushy dells
Send winding up to heaven their curling smoke
On the soft morning air?

Do the flocks bleat, and the wild creatures bound
In antic happiness? and mazy birds
Wing the mid air in lightly skimming bands?
Ay, all this is; all this men do behold;
The poorest man. Even in this lonely vault,
My dark and narrow world, oft do I hear
The crowing of the cock so near my walls,
And sadly think how small a space divides me
From all this fair creation.

Freberg [Starting up]. It is an apparition he has seen, Or it is Jane de Montfort. (From De Montfort.)

The characterisation in the last extract was regarded as a picture of Mrs Siddons. Of the Plays on the Passions, four are comedies and one is a tragedy in prose. Of fourteen miscellaneous pays, one is on Constantine Palæologus and one (in prose) on Witchcraft; the Metrical Legends include poems on William Wallace, Columbas, and Grizell Baillie. And in the collected one-volume edition of her Dramatic and Poetical Works (1851), her other works are distri buted into Fugitive Verses, Miscellaneous Poetry, and Verses on Sacred Subjects. For a word-picture of her, see Miss Thackeray's [Mrs Richmond Ritchie's] Book of Sibyls (1883).

Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817) was born at Bath, and came of a family that for a hundred and sixty years had been settled in Ireland, latterly at Edgeworthstown in County Longford. After nine years' schooling at Warwick, Drogheda, and Longford, and five months of dissipation at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1761 he was removed to Oxford, where, as a gentlemancommoner of Corpus, he passed two delightful, profitable' years. At Blackbourton, fourteen miles off, lived a friend of his father's, Paul Elers, a squire whose quiver was fuller than his purse: with one of his daughters Edgeworth eloped to Scotland (1763). The young couple spent a twelvemonth at Edgeworthstown, and finally settled at Hare Hatch near Reading, Edgeworth meanwhile keeping terms in the Temple, till his father's death (1769) allowed him to give up all thought of the Bar. As a boy of seven he had become 'irrecoverably a mechanic' through the sight of an electrical machine; and his whole life long he was always inventing something-a semaphore, a velocipede, a pedometer. One of his inventions brought him across Dr Darwin; and at Lichfield, during the Christmas of 1770, he conceived a passion for lovely Honora Sneyd. His wife was away in Berkshire (she was not of a cheerful temper'); but Thomas Day was with him, and urged him to flight. So with Day and his eldest boy, whom he was educating on Rousseau's system, he did fly to France, and at Lyons diverted himself and the course of the Rhone. Then his wife died, and four months afterwards he wedded Honora (1773) to lose her in 1780, and the same year marry her sister Elizabeth. She too died of consumption (1797); but the next wife, Miss Beaufort (1798), survived him by many years. In all he had nineteen children. I am not,' he observed, ‘a man of prejudices. I have had four wives. The second and third were sisters, and I was in love with the second in the lifetime of the first.' He advo cated parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation; his house was spared by the rebels (1798); and in the last Irish Parliament (1798-99) he spoke for the Union, but voted against it, as a measure 'forced down the throats of the Irish, though fivesixths of the nation were against it.' Masterful. versatile, brilliant, enlightened, he stands as a type of the Superior Being; 'cocksureness' his principal foible. He was the idol of his own womankind, the friend of Watt and Wedgwood and many more better and greater than himself. The Memoirs of

Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1820; 3rd ed. 1844) are autobiographical up to 1782; the completion, less interesting, is by his daughter Maria.

A Penitent.

The family at Black-Bourton at this time consisted of Mrs Elers, her mother Mrs Hungerford, and four grownup young ladies, besides several children. The eldest son, an officer, was absent. The young ladies, though far from being beauties, were handsome; and though destitute of accomplishments, they were notwithstanding agreeable, from an air of youth and simplicity, and from unaffected good nature and gaiety. The person who struck me most at my introduction to this family group was Mrs Hungerford. She was near eighty, tall and majestic, with eyes that still retained uncommon lustre. She was not able to rise from her chair without the assistance of one of her granddaughters; but when she had risen, and stood leaning on her tortoise-shell cane, she received my father, as the friend of the family, with so much politeness and with so much grace as to eclipse all the young people by whom she was surrounded. Mrs Hungerford was a Blake, connected with the Norfolk family. She had formerly been the wife of Sir Alexander Kennedy, whom Mr Hungerford killed in a duel in Blenheim Park. Why she dropped her title in marrying Mr Hungerford I know not, nor can I tell how he persuaded the beautiful widow to marry him after he had killed her husband. Mr Hungerford brought her into the retirement of Black-Bourton, the ancient seat of his family, an excellent but antiquated house, with casement windows, divided by stone framework, the principal rooms wainscoted with oak, of which the antiquity might be guessed from the varnish it had acquired from time. In the large hall were hung spears, and hunting tackle, and armour, and trophies of war and of the chase, and a portrait, not of exquisite painting, of the gallant Sir Edward Hungerford. This portrait had been removed hither from Farley Castle, the principal seat of the family. In the history of Mrs Hungerford there was something mysterious, which was not, as I perceived, known to the younger part of the family. I made no enquiries from Mrs Elers, but I observed that she was for a certain time in the day invisible. She had an apartment to herself above stairs, containing three or four rooms; when she was below stairs, we used to make a short way from one side of the house to the other, through her rooms, which occupied nearly one side of a quadrangle, of which the house consisted. One day, forgetting that she was in her room, and her door by accident not having been locked, I suddenly entered: I saw her kneeling before a crucifix, which was placed upon her toilette; her beautiful eyes streaming with tears, and cast up to Heaven with the most fervent devotion; her silver locks flowing down her shoulders; the remains of exquisite beauty, grace, and dignity in her whole figure. I had not, till I saw her at these her private devotions, known that she was a Catholic; nor had I, till I saw her tears of contrition, any reason to suppose that she thought herself a penitent. The scene struck me, young as I was, and more gay than young-her tears seemed to comfort, not to depress her-and for the first time since my childhood I was convinced that the consolations of religion are fully equal to its terrors. She was so much in earnest that she did not perceive me; and I fortunately had time to withdraw without having disturbed her devotions.

Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849), daughter of the eccentric Richard Lovell Edgeworth, was born at Blackbourton on New-year's Day 1767, and in 1775 was sent to a school at Derby, in 1780 to a fashionable establishment in London. When still a child she was famed for her story-telling powers, and at thirteen she wrote a tale on Generosity. She accompanied her father to Ireland in 1782, and thenceforth till his death the two were never separate. For his sake mainly she sacrificed her one romance, refusing the hand of the Swedish Count Edelcrantz in 1802 at Paris, where, as again in 1820, and during frequent visits to London, she was greatly lionised. She was at Bowood (Lord Lansdowne's) in 1818, and at Abbotsford in 1823, Scott two years later returning the visit at Edge

worthstown. For the rest, her home life was busy and beneficent, if uneventful. Her eyesight often troubled her; but, active to the last, at seventy she began to learn Spanish, and at eighty-two could thoroughly enjoy Macaulay's History. She died in her stepmother's arms.

To the literary partnership between father and daughter we are directly indebted for Practical Education (2 vols. 1798) and the Essay on Irish Bulls (1802). But most of her other works, though they do not bear the joint names, were inspired by her father, and gained or (it may be) lost by his revision. Published between

1795 and 1847, they filled upwards of twenty volumes (1893 reprint in 10 vols.). Besides the Moral Tales, the Popular Tales, and Tales from Fashionable Life (Ennui, The Dun, &c.), and Harrington (an apology for the Jews), there are her three Irish masterpieces, Castle Rackrent (1800), The Absentee (1812), and Ormond

(1817). These, Scott says, 'have gone so far to make the English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-hearted neighbours of Ireland, that she may be truly said to have done more towards completing the Union than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up. Without being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable taste which pervade the works of my accomplished friend, I felt that something might be attempted for my own country of the same kind with that which she has so fortunately achieved for Ireland.' The praise from Scott is extravagant; but Turgenief has put it on record that he 'was an unconscious disciple of Miss Edgeworth in setting out on his literary career. . . It is possible, nay probable, that if Maria Edgeworth had not written about the poor Irish of County Longford and the squires and squireens, it would not have occurred to me to give a literary form to my impressions about the classes parallel to them in Russia.' Her novels are doubtless too didactic; the plots may be poor, the dramatis persone sometimes wooden; but for wit and pathos, for lively dialogue and simple directness, for bright vivacity and healthy realism, and for their vivid presentation of their times and of that most distressful country' in which their best scenes are laid, they well deserve still to be read. And her children's stories -' Lazy Laurence,' and 'Simple Susan,' and the other delightful old friends-are worth all the unchildish books about children which mawkish sentimentality has brought into recent vogue.

Irish Landlord and Scotch Agent.

'I was quite angry,' says Lord Glenthorn, with Mr M'Leod, my agent, and considered him as a selfish, hardhearted miser, because he did not seem to sympathise with me, or to applaud my generosity. I was so much irritated by his cold silence that I could not forbear pressing him to say something. "I doubt, then," said he, "since you desire me to speak my mind, my lord -I doubt whether the best way of encouraging the industrious is to give premiums to the idle." But, idle or not, these poor wretches are so miserable that I cannot refuse to give them something; and surely, when one can do it so easily, it is right to relieve misery, is it not? "Undoubtedly, my lord; but the difficulty is to relieve present misery without creating more in future. Pity for one class of beings sometimes makes us cruel to others. I am told that there are some Indian Brahmins so very compassionate that they hire beggars to let fleas feed upon them; I doubt whether it might not be better to let the fleas starve."

'I did not in the least understand what Mr M'Leod meant; but I was soon made to comprehend it by crowds of eloquent beggars who soon surrounded me; many who had been resolutely struggling with their difficulties slackened their exertions, and left their labour for the easier trade of imposing upon my credulity. The money I had bestowed was wasted at the dramshop, or it became the subject of family quarrels ; and those whom I had relieved returned to my honour with

fresh and insatiable expectations. All this time my industrious tenants grumbled because no encouragement was given to them; and looking upon me as a weak, good-natured fool, they combined in a resolution to ask me for long leases or a reduction of rent.

'The rhetoric of my tenants succeeded in some instances; and again, I was mortified by Mr M'Leod's silence. I was too proud to ask his opinion. I ordered, and was obeyed. A few leases for long terms were signed and sealed; and when I had thus my own way completely, I could not refrain from recurring to Mr M'Leod's opinion. "I doubt, my lord," said he, "whether this measure may be as advantageous as you hope. These fellows, these middle-men, will underset the land, and live in idleness, whilst they rack a parcel of wretched under-tenants.' But they said they would keep the land in their own hands and improve it; and that the reason why they could not afford to improve before was, that they had not long leases. "It may be doubted whether long leases alone will make improving tenants; for in the next county to us there are many farms of the Dowager-lady Ormsby's land, let at ten shillings an acre, and her tenantry are beggars; and the land now at the end of the leases is worn out, and worse than at their commencement."

'I was weary of listening to this cold reasoning, and resolved to apply no more for explanations to Mr M'Leod; yet I did not long keep this resolution: infirm of purpose, I wanted the support of his approbation, at the very time I was jealous of his interference.

'At one time I had a mind to raise the wages of labour; but Mr M'Leod said: "It might be doubted whether the people would not work less, when they could with less work have money enough to support them."

'I was puzzled, and then I had a mind to lower the wages of labour, to force them to work or starve. Still provoking, Mr M'Leod said: "It might be doubted whether it would not be better to leave them alone."

'I gave marriage-portions to the daughters of my tenants, and rewards to those who had children; for I had always heard that legislators should encourage population. Still Mr M'Leod hesitated to approve: he observed "that my estate was so populous that the complaint in each family was that they had not land for It might be doubted whether, if a farm could support but ten people, it were wise to encourage the birth of twenty. It might be doubted whether it were not better for ten to live and be well fed, than for twenty to be born and to be half-starved."

the sons.

'To encourage manufactures in my town of Glenthorn, I proposed putting a clause in my leases compelling my tenants to buy stuffs and linens manufactured at Glenthorn, and nowhere else. Stubborn M'Leod, as usual, began with: "I doubt whether that will not encourage the manufacturers at Glenthorn to make bad stuffs and bad linen, since they are sure of a sale, and without danger of competition."

'At all events I thought my tenants would grow rich and independent if they made everything at home that they wanted; yet Mr M'Leod perplexed me by his "doubt whether it would not be better for a man to buy shoes, if he could buy them cheaper than he could make them." He added something about the division of labour and Smith's Wealth of Nations. To which I could only answer, "Smith's a Scotchman." I cannot

express how much I dreaded Mr M'Leod's I doubt and it may be doubted. (From Ennui.)

An Irish Postillion. From the inn-yard came a hackney chaise, in a most deplorably crazy state; the body mounted up to a prodigious height, on unbending springs, nodding forward, one door swinging open, three blinds up, because they could not be let down, the perch tied in two places, the iron of the wheels half off, half loose, wooden pegs for linch-pins, and ropes for harness. The horses were worthy of the harness; wretched little dog-tired creatures, that looked as if they had been driven to the last gasp, and as if they had never been rubbed down in their lives; their bones starting through their skin; one lame, the other blind; one with a raw back, the other with a galled breast; one with his neck poking down over his collar, and the other with his head dragged forward by a bit of a broken bridle, held at arm's-length by a man dressed like a mad beggar, in half a hat and half a wig, both awry in opposite directions; a long tattered coat, tied round his waist by a hay-rope; the jagged rents in the skirts of this coat shewing his bare legs, marbled of many colours; while something like stockings hung loose about his ankles. The noises he made, by way of threatening or encouraging his steeds, I pretend not to describe. In an indignant voice I called to the landlord: 'I hope these are not the horses-I hope this is not the chaise intended for my servants.' The innkeeper, and the pauper who was preparing to officiate as postillion, both in the same instant exclaimed: Sorrow better chaise in the county!' 'Sorrow!' said I-'what do you mean by sorrow?' 'That there's no better, plase your honour, can be seen. We have two more, to be sure; but one has no top, and the other no bottom. Any way, there's no better can be seen than this same.' 'And these horses!' cried I: 'why, this horse is so lame he can hardly stand.' 'Oh, plase your honour, though he can't stand, he'll go fast enough. He has a great deal of the rogue in him, plase your honour. He's always that way at first setting out.' 'And that wretched animal with the galled breast!' 'He's all the better for it when once he warms; it's he that will go with the speed of light, plase your honour. Sure, is not he Knockecroghery? and didn't I give fifteen guineas for him, barring the luckpenny, at the fair of Knockecroghery, and he rising four year old at the same time?' Then seizing his whip and reins in one hand, he clawed up his stockings with the other; so with one easy step he got into his place, and seated himself, coachman-like, upon a well-worn bar of wood, that served as a coach-box. 'Throw me the loan of a trusty, Bartly, for a cushion,' said he. A frieze-coat was thrown up over the horses' heads. Paddy caught it. 'Where are you, Hosey?' cried he to a lad in charge of the leaders. 'Sure I'm only rowling a wisp of straw on my leg,' replied Hosey. Throw me up,' added this paragon of postillions, turning to one of the crowd of idle by-standers. Arrah, push me up, can't ye?' A man took hold of his knee, and threw him upon the horse. He was in his seat in a trice. Then clinging by the mane of his horse, he scrambled for the bridle, which was under the other horse's feet, reached it, and, well satisfied with himself, looked round at Paddy, who looked back to the chaise-door at my angry servants, 'secure in the last event of things.' In vain the

Englishman, in monotonous anger, and the Frenchman in every note of the gamut, abused Paddy. Necessity and wit were on Paddy's side. He parried all that was said against his chaise, his horses, himself, and his country with invincible comic dexterity; till at last both his adversaries, dumfounded, clambered into the vehicle, where they were instantly shut up in straw and darkness. Paddy, in a triumphant tone, called to my postillions, bidding them 'get on, and not be stopping the way any longer.' [One of the horses becomes restive.] 'Never fear,' reiterated Paddy. 'I'll engage I'll be up wid him. Now for it, Knockecroghery! O the rogue, he thinks he has me at a nonplush; but I'll shew him the differ.'

After this brag of war, Paddy whipped, Knockecroghery kicked, and Paddy, seemingly unconscious of danger, sat within reach of the kicking horse, twitching up first one of his legs, then the other, and shifting as the animal aimed his hoofs, escaping every time as it were by miracle. With a mixture of temerity and presence of mind, which made us alternately look upon him as a madman and a hero, he gloried in the danger, secure of success, and of the sympathy of the spectators. "Ah! didn't I compass him cleverly then? O the villain, to be browbating me! I'm too 'cute for him yet. See there, now; he's come to; and I'll be his bail he'll go asy enough wid me. Ogh! he has a fine spirit of his own; but it's I that can match him. 'Twould be a poor case if a man like me couldn't match a horse any way, let alone a mare, which this is, or it never would be so vicious.' (From Ennui.)

English Shyness, or 'Mauvaise Honte.' Lord William had excellent abilities, knowledge, and superior qualities of every sort, all depressed by excessive timidity, to such a degree as to be almost useless to himself and to others. Whenever he was, either for the business or pleasure of life, to meet or mix with numbers, the whole man was, as it were, snatched from himself. He was subject to that nightmare of the soul who seats himself upon the human breast, oppresses the heart, palsies the will, and raises spectres of dismay which the sufferer combats in vain-that cruel enchantress who hurls her spell even upon childhood, and when she makes youth her victim, pronounces: Henceforward you shall never appear in your natural character. Innocent, you shall look guilty; wise, you shall look silly; never shall you have the use of your natural faculties. That which you wish to say, you shall not say; that which you wish to do, you shall not do. You shall appear reserved when you are enthusiastic-insensible, when your heart sinks into melting tenderness. In the presence of those whom you most wish to please, you shall be most awkward; and when approached by her you love, you shall become lifeless as a statue, and under the irresistible spell of 'mauvaise honte.' Strange that France should give name to that malady of mind which she never knew, or of which she knows less than any other nation upon the surface of the civilised globe!

There is a Memoir of Miss Edgeworth (privately printed, 3 vols. 1867; edited by Aug. J. C. Hare, 2 vols. 1894), on which are founded the Life by Helen Zimmern (Eminent Women' series, 1883) and the exquisite sketch by Miss Thackeray [Mrs Richmond Ritchie] in her Book of Sibyls (1883). See, too, the introductions by the latter to the excellent reprints of Castle Rackrent, The Absentee, and Ormond, issued in 1895, and the autobiographical Memoir of Miss Edgeworth's father, completed by herself.