To MRS. RUXTON.
October 16.
I send you a letter of Joanna Baillie's; her simple style is so
different from the fine or the gossip style.
Did you ever hear this epigram, a translation from Martial?
Their utmost power the gods have shown, In turning Niobe to stone: But man's superior power you see, Who turns a stone to Niobe.
Here is an epigram quite to my taste, elegant and witty, without
ill-nature or satire.
Barry Fox has come home with his regiment, and is very
gentlemanlike.
January 10, 1816.
The authoress of Pride and Prejudice has been so good as to send to me
a new novel just published, Emma. We are reading France in 1814 and
1815, by young Alison and Mr. Tytler: the first volume good. We are
also reading a book which delights us all, though it is on a subject
which you will think little likely to be interesting to us, and on which
we had little or no previous knowledge. I bought it on Mr. Brinkley's
recommendation, and have not repented—Cuvier's Theory of the Earth. It is admirably written, with such perfect clearness as to be intelligible to the meanest, and satisfactory to the highest capacity.
I have enlarged my plan of plays, which are not now to be for young
people merely, but rather Popular Plays, for the same class as
Popular Tales. Excuse huddling things together. Mrs. O'Beirne, of
Newry, who has been here, told us a curious story. A man near Granard
robbed a farmer of thirty guineas, and hid them in a hole in the church
wall. He was hurried out of the country by some accident before he could
take off his treasure, and wrote to the man he had robbed and told him
where he had hid the money: "Since it can be of no use to me you may as
well have it." The owner of the money set to work grouting under the
church wall, and many of the good people of Granard were seized with Mr. Hill's fear there was a plot to undermine the church, and a great piece of work about it.
March 21.
I send a letter of Mrs. O'Beirne's, telling of Archdeacon de Lacy's
marrying Madame de Staël's daughter to the Duc de Broglie! My father is pretty well to-day, and has been looking at a fine bed of crocuses in full blow in my garden, and is now gone out in the carriage, and I must have a scene ready for him on his return.
I have been ever since you were here mending up the little plays; cobbling work, which takes a great deal of time, and makes no show.
It was in January 1816 that Maria Edgeworth received a letter from Miss
Rachael Mordecai, of Richmond, Virginia, gently reproaching her with
having so often made Jews ridiculous in her writings, and asking her to
give a story with a good Jew. This was the origin of Harrington, and
the commencement of a correspondence with Miss Mordecai, and of a
friendship with her family.