Here is her weakness and her strength again:--"In the love-novels all the heroines are very desperate. Isabella will not allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and 'tis too refined for my taste." "Miss Egward's [Edgeworth's] tails are very good, particularly some that are very much adapted for youth (!) as Laz Laurance and Tarelton, False Keys, etc., etc."
"Tom Jones and Gray's Elegey in a country churchyard are both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men." Are our Marjories now-a-days better or worse, because they cannot read 'Tom Jones' unharmed? More better than worse; but who among them can repeat Gray's 'Lines on a Distant Prospect of Eton College' as could our Maidie?
Here is some more of her prattle:--"I went into Isabella's bed to make her smile like the Genius Demedicus [the Venus de' Medicis] or the statute in an ancient Greece, but she fell asleep in my very face, at which my anger broke forth, so that I awoke her from a comfortable nap. All was now hushed up again, but again my anger burst forth at her biding me get up."
She begins thus loftily,--
"Death the righteous love to see,
But from it doth the wicked flee."
Then suddenly breaks off [as if with laughter],--
"I am sure they fly as fast as their legs can carry them!"
"There is a thing I love to see,
That is our monkey catch a flee."
"I love in Isa's bed to lie,
Oh, such a joy and luxury!
The bottom of the bed I sleep,
And with great care within I creep;
Oft I embrace her feet of lillys,
But she has goton all the pillys.
Her neck I never can embrace,
But I do hug her feet in place."
How childish and yet how strong and free is her use of words!--"I lay at the foot of the bed because Isabella said I disturbed her by continial fighting and kicking, but I was very dull, and continially at work reading the Arabian Nights, which I could not have done if I had slept at the top. I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested in the fate of poor, poor Emily."
Here is one of her swains:--