the female writers of her country; in short, forgetting everything but that you were in the society of a most charming private gentlewoman. She might (would that all female writers could!) take for her device a flower that closes itself against the noontide sun, and unfolds in the evening shadows."[1]
We lunched with Miss Baillie. Mr. Tytler the historian and his sister were present Lord Woodhouselie, the intimate friend of Scott, was their father. Joanna Baillie appears to us, from Scott's letters to her, to have been his favourite friend; and the conversation among so many personally familiar with him naturally turned upon him, and many a pleasant anecdote was told, many a thrilling word quoted.
It was pleasant to hear these friends of Scott and Mackenzie talk of them as familiarity as we speak of W., B., and other household friends. They all agreed in describing Mackenzie as a jovial, hearty sort of person, without any indication in his manners and conversation of the exquisite sentiment he infused into his writings. One of the party remembered his coming home one day in great glee from a cockfight, and his wife saying to him, "Oh, Harry, Harry, you put all your feelings on paper!"
- ↑ In the United States Mrs. Barbauld would perhaps divide the suffrages with Miss Baillie; but in England, as far as my limited observation extended, she is not rated so high or so generally read as here.She has experienced the great disadvantage of being considered the organ of a sect. Does not the "Address to the Deity" and the "Evening's Meditation" rank with the best English poetry? and are not her essays, that on "Prejudice" and that on the "Inconsistency of Human Expectations." unsurpassed?
