The notes on the Dublin shoeblacks' metaphorical language are chiefly his. I have heard him tell that story with all the natural, indescribable Irish tones and gestures of which written language can give but a faint idea. He excelled in imitating the Irish, because he never overstepped the modesty or the assurance of nature. He marked exquisitely the happy confidence, the shrewd wit of the people, without condescending to produce effect by caricature. He knew not only their comic talents, but their powers of pathos; and often when he had just heard from me some pathetic complaint, he has repeated it to me while the impression was fresh. In his chapter on Wit and Eloquence in Irish Bulls, there is a speech of a poor free-holder to a candidate who asked for his vote: this speech was made to my father when he was canvassing the county of Longford. It was repeated to me a few hours afterwards, and I wrote it down instantly without, I believe, the variation of a word.
To MISS RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Aug. 1, 1802.
You are a goose or a gosling, whichever you like best, for I perceive you are in great anxiety lest my poor little imagination should not have been completely set to rights. Now set your heart at ease, for I, putting my left hand upon my heart, because I could not conveniently put my right, which holds the pen, though I acknowledge that would be much more graceful, do hereby declare that I perfectly understood and understand the explanation contained in your last, and am fully satisfied, righted, and delighted therewith.
I have been much interested by the Letters from Lausanne; I think them in some parts highly pathetic and eloquent, but as to the moral tendency of the book I cannot find it out, turn it which way I will. I think the author wrote merely with the intention of showing how well he could paint passion, and he has succeeded. The Savage of Aveyron [Footnote: A little history of a boy found in France, "a wild man of the woods." He was brought to Paris, and the philosophers disputed much on his mental powers; but he died before they came to any conclusion.] is a thousand times more interesting to me than Caliste. I have not read anything for years that interested me so much. Mr. Chenevix will be here in a few days, when we will cross-question him about this savage, upon whom the eyes of civilised Europe have been fixed. Mr. Chenevix and his sister, Mrs. Tuite, and with them Mrs. Jephson, spent a day here last week: she is clever and agreeable. What did you think of M. Pictet's account of Edgeworthstown?
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Professor Marc-Auguste Pictet, of Geneva, visited the Edgeworths this summer, coming over from Mr. Tuite's, of Sonna, where he was staying with Mr. Chenevix. He afterwards published an interesting account of his visit to Edgeworthstown in the Bibliothèque Britannique, as well as in his Voyage de trois mots en Angleterre, which was published at Geneva in 1802. Of Maria Edgeworth he says:
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I had persuaded myself that the author of the work on Education, and of other productions, useful as well as ornamental, would betray herself by a remarkable exterior. I was mistaken. A small figure, eyes nearly always lowered, a profoundly modest and reserved air, with expression in the features when not speaking: such was the result of my first survey. But when she spoke, which was too rarely for my taste, nothing could have been better thought, and nothing better said, though always timidly expressed, than that which fell from her mouth.
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