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:—­

     “Very soft and white his cheeks,
     His hair is red, and gray his breeks;
     His tooth is like the daisy fair,
     His only fault is in his hair.”

This is a higher flight:—­

     DEDICATED TO MRS. H. CRAWFORD BY THE AUTHOR, M. F.

     “Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
     And now this world forever leaved;
     Their father, and their mother too,
     They sigh and weep as well as you;
     Indeed, the rats their bones have crunched,
     Into eternity theire laanched. 
     A direful death indeed they had,
     As wad put any parent mad;
     But she was more than usual calm: 
     She did not give a single dam.”