Mackintosh has written one of his delightful criticisms
upon the book:--

The cultivation of every science and the practice of every art are
in fact a species of action, and require ardent zeal and unshaken
courage.... Originality can hardly exist without vigour of
character.... The discoverer or inventor may indeed be most
eminently wanting in decision in the general concerns of life, but
he must possess it in those pursuits in which he is successful.
Opie is a remarkable instance of the natural union of these
superior qualities, both of which he possesses in a high
degree.... He is inferior in elegance to Sir Joshua, but he is
superior in strength; he strikes more, though he charms less....
Opie is by turns an advocate, a controvertist, a panegyrist, a
critic; Sir Joshua more uniformly fixes his mind on general and
permanent principles, and certainly approaches more nearly to the
elevation and tranquillity which seem to characterise the
philosophic teacher of an elegant art.

IX.

Mrs. Opie went back, soon after her husband's death, to Norwich, to her
early home, her father's house; nor was she a widow indeed while she
still had this tender love and protection.

That which strikes one most as one reads the accounts of Mrs. Opie
is the artlessness and perfect simplicity of her nature. The deepest
feeling of her life was her tender love for her father, and if she
remained younger than most women do, it may have been partly from the
great blessing which was hers so long, that of a father's home. Time
passed, and by degrees she resumed her old life, and came out and about
among her friends. Sorrow does not change a nature, it expresses certain
qualities which have been there all along.

So Mrs. Opie came up to London once more, and welcomed and was made
welcome by many interesting people. Lord Erskine is her friend always;
she visits Madame de Stael; she is constantly in company with Sydney
Smith, the ever-welcome as she calls him. Lord Byron, Sheridan, Lord
Dudley, all appear upon her scene. There is a pretty story of her
singing her best to Lady Sarah Napier, old, blind, and saddened, but
still happy in that she had her sons to guide and to protect her steps.
Among her many entertainments, Mrs. Opie amusingly describes a dinner at
Sir James Mackintosh's, to which most of the guests had been asked at
different hours, varying from six to half-past seven,