Two years afterwards, I saw a young Greek of the same name at another party, with whom I overheard Lord Byron talking with great fluency, in what I was told was modern Greek. The tones of Lord B.’s voice were always so fascinating, that I could not help attending to them; and when I turned round to see with whom he was conversing, I thought I saw the same face and person in an English garb, whom I had seen in 1810, set off by a beautiful turban and a crimson robe; but I was told this was a brother of that youth, and I never afterwards had an opportunity of ascertaining, with accuracy, whether it was the same person or not; yet I wished to do so, in order to establish the truth or falsehood of the charge of quackery which I had heard. If these youths were brothers, it was very unlikely that either of them was a quack; and surely the harmless vanity of wishing to appear in his own native costume, was not sufficient to authorize so severe an appellation.
Be that as it may, of all the merry combatants in the strife of tongues at the party to which I allude, Sydney Smith is the sole survivor! he is merry still, and the provoker of mirth in others; but perhaps, like me, when he feels his memory crowded with the names of departed friends and associates, an involuntary sadness comes over his mind, as it does over mine, and I weep as I remember the exquisite and incomparable lines of Moore—
“When I remember all
Once linked in love together,” &c.
Lady Roslyn expressed a wish that when I visited Edinburgh I would go to Roslyn, and that she might have the opportunity of shewing me its beauties. Alas! when I went there in 1816, she was in her grave, and I stood within the chapel on the stone which covered her remains!
The autumn of this year found Mrs. Opie once more at her favourite Cromer; and her stay appears to have been prolonged to an unusual extent; so that one of her friends, writing to her in the month of December, speaks of sending a second Ulysses in search of the truant. There is an allusion in this letter which seems to intimate that it was not faute de solicitations that she remained a widow; and it is evident that at subsequent periods she received similar addresses. Turning, however, a deaf ear to such proposals, she continued diligently to use her pen; and in the spring of 1812 published “Temper,” a tale, in which she diverged from the pathetic style of writing she had hitherto most affected, and evidently aimed more, in the character of a moralist, at practical usefulness; and happily with pleasing evidence of success. In the third volume of this work, Mrs. Opie carries her heroine to Paris, and introduces the very scenes which she records in her journal of her own Parisian trip—the visit to the Louvre—her own words on being told the First Consul was expected to pass—the scene that followed, &c.
The following extract from a letter she received after the publication of this work, affords a pleasing evidence of its beneficial influence.
November 14th, 1812.
You have, my dear Mrs. Opie, shown such clear discernment of what is good and virtuous, and exhibited reason and conscience, as triumphant over the passions, with so masterly a pen, in your late publication, that it has carried with it the suffrage of many a young and amiable mind.
My daughter may perhaps have told you what effect your book had, upon a young married lady whom she chanced to meet. “I have read,” said she, “Mrs. Opie’s ‘Temper,’ I hope to my lasting improvement; certain I am that it has shewn me many of my faults, and, I trust, has taught me to overcome them.” By the pleasure this gave me, I can judge, in some degree, my dear Madam, of the pleasure it must afford you; for I think there cannot be a greater, than to fortify the young in habits of virtue; and when you consider these volumes, you may exclaim, with more propriety than Sheridan did, “that on the review of his publications, nothing gave him such great, such inexpressible pleasure, as the thought that he had never written one word derogatory to the cause of virtue.” * * *