[{102}] This mahogany desk, which has done good service to the public, is now in the possession of my sister, Miss Austen.
[{107}] At this time, February 1813, ‘Mansfield Park’ was nearly finished.
[{110}] The present Lady Pollen, of Redenham, near Andover, then at a school in London.
[{117}] See Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Miss Brontë,’ vol. ii. p. 215.
[{122}] It was her pleasure to boast of greater ignorance than she had any just claim to. She knew more than her mother tongue, for she knew a good deal of French and a little of Italian.
[{126}] Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Miss Brontë,’ vol. ii. p. 53.
[{130}] This must have been ‘Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk.’
[{136a}] A greater genius than my aunt shared with her the imputation of being commonplace. Lockhart, speaking of the low estimation in which Scott’s conversational powers were held in the literary and scientific society of Edinburgh, says: ‘I think the epithet most in vogue concerning it was “commonplace.”’ He adds, however, that one of the most eminent of that society was of a different opinion, who, when some glib youth chanced to echo in his hearing the consolatory tenet of local mediocrity, answered quietly, “I have the misfortune to think differently from you—in my humble opinion Walter Scott’s sense is a still more wonderful thing than his genius.”—Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vol. iv. chap. v.
[{136b}] The late Mr. R. H. Cheney.
[{140}] Lockhart had supposed that this article had been written by Scott, because it exactly accorded with the opinions which Scott had often been heard to express, but he learned afterwards that it had been written by Whately; and Lockhart, who became the Editor of the Quarterly, must have had the means of knowing the truth. (See Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. v. p. 158.) I remember that, at the time when the review came out, it was reported in Oxford that Whately had written the article at the request of the lady whom he afterwards married.