canoness. There was Mrs. Somerville in an astronomical cap. I
dashed in in my blue satin and point lace, and showed them how an
authoress should dress."

Her conceit was fairly colossal. The reforms in legislation for Ireland
were, in her estimation, owing to her novel of _Florence Macarthy_. She
professed to have taught Taglioni the Irish jig: of her toilette, made
largely by her own hands, she was comically vain. In _The Fraserians_, a
charming off-hand description of the contributors to that magazine, Lady
Morgan is depicted trying on a big, showy bonnet before a mirror with a
funny mixture of satisfaction and anxiety as to the effect.

Chorley, the feared and fearless critic of the _Athenaeum_, speaks of Lady
Morgan as one of the most peculiar and original literary characters he
ever met. After a long and searching analysis he adds: "However free in
speech, she never shocked decorum--never had to be appealed or apologized
for as a forlorn woman of genius under difficulties."

An American paper, the _Boston Literary Gazette_, gave a personal
description which was not sufficiently flattering, and roused the lady's
indignant comments. It dared to state that she was "short, with a broad
face, blue, inexpressive eyes, and seemed, if such a thing may be named,
about forty years of age." Imagine the sensations this paragraph produced!
She at once retorted, exclaiming in mock earnest, "I appeal! I appeal to
the Titian of his age and country--I appeal to you, Sir Thomas Lawrence.
Would you have painted a short, squat, broad-faced, inexpressive,
affected, Frenchified, Greenland-seal-like lady of any age? Would any
money have tempted you to profane your immortal pencil, consecrated by
Nature to the Graces, by devoting its magic to such a model as this
described by the Yankee artist of the _Boston Literary_? And yet you did
paint the picture of this Lapland Venus--this impersonation of a Dublin
Bay codfish!... Alas! no one could have said that I was forty then; and
this is the cruelest cut of all! Had it been thirty-nine or fifty!
Thirty-nine is still under the mark, and fifty so far beyond it, so
hopeless; but forty--the critical age, the Rubicon--I cannot, will not,
dwell on it. But, O America! land of my devotion and my idolatry! is it
from _you_ the blow has come? Let _Quarterlys_ and _Blackwoods_ libel, but
the _Boston Literary_! Et tu Brute!"

In 1837 she received a pension of three hundred pounds a year in
recognition