elf,
though Shakspeare says otherwise. At least, I am so much more accustomed
to meet with ingratitude than the north wind, that I thought the latter
the sharper of the two. I had met with both in the course of the
twenty-four hours, so could judge.

"Thought of a plan of education for my daughter Allegra, who ought to
begin soon with her studies. Wrote a letter--afterwards a postscript.
Rather in low spirits--certainly hippish--liver touched--will take a
dose of salts.

"I have been reading the Life, by himself and daughter, of Mr. R.L.
Edgeworth, the father of _the_ Miss Edgeworth. It is altogether a great
name. In 1813, I recollect to have met them in the fashionable world of
London (of which I then formed an item, a fraction, the segment of a
circle, the unit of a million, the nothing of something) in the
assemblies of the hour, and at a breakfast of Sir Humphry and Lady
Davy's, to which I was invited for the nonce. I had been the lion of
1812; Miss Edgeworth and Madame de Stael, with 'the Cossack,' towards
the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the succeeding year.

"I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a clarety, elderly, red
complexion, but active, brisk, and endless. He was seventy, but did not
look fifty--no, nor forty-eight even. I had seen poor Fitzpatrick not
very long before--a man of pleasure, wit, eloquence, all things. He
tottered--but still talked like a gentleman, though feebly. Edgeworth
bounced about, and talked loud and long; but he seemed neither weakly
nor decrepit, and hardly old.

"He began by telling 'that he had given Dr. Parr a dressing, who had
taken him for an Irish bog-trotter,' &c. &c. Now I, who know Dr. Parr,
and who know (_not_ by experience--for I never should have presumed so
far as to contend with him--but by hearing him _with_ others, and _of_
others) that it is not so easy a matter to 'dress him,' thought Mr.
Edgeworth an assertor of what was not true. He could not have stood
before Parr an instant. For the rest, he seemed intelligent, vehement,
vivacious, and full of life. He bids fair for a hundred years.

"He was not much admired in London, and I remember a 'ryghte merrie' and
conceited jest which was rife among the gallants of the day,--viz. a
paper had been presented for the _recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage_,
(she having lately taken leave, to the loss of ages,--for nothing ever
was, or can be, like her,) to which all men had been called to
subscribe. Whereup