justices. We once heard her say that she had Chief Justice Bushe uppermost in her thoughts during the delineation, which has been questioned on the ground that he did not become Chief Justice till after the publication of the book. The difficulty is cleared away by a letter dated January 14, 1822, in which she says:‘I am rejoiced at Mr. Bushe's promotion. Mrs. Bushe sent to me, through Anne Nangle, a most kind message, alluding to our "Patronage" Chief Justice by Second Sight.'

Lord Dudley also hints a doubt whether her English sketches do not suggest that she had taken only an occasional and cursory view of English society. This is not our impression, although she treads more firmly and freely on Irish ground, and the stories of which the scenes are laid in Ireland are most redolent of humour and pathos, more deeply and broadly marked with the stamp of her peculiar genius, than the rest. Lord Jeffrey has reprinted in the corrected edition of his works the opinion which he delivered forty-five years since, that if she had never written anything but the epistle of Larry Brady, the post-boy, to his brother, which forms the conclusion of the Absentee,' 'this one letter must have placed her at the very top of our scale, as an observer of character, and a mistress in the simple pathetic.' Without disputing this opinion, we would undertake to produce half-a-dozen passages of equal merit from the same novel, from Ormond,' or from Ennui.' Lord Jeffrey had already said that she need not be afraid of being excelled by any of her contemporaries in that faithful but flattering representation of the spoken

language of persons of wit and politeness-in that light and graceful tone of raillery and argument—and in that gift of sportive but cutting médisance, which is sure of success in those circles where success is supposed to be most difficult and desirable.' He appeals to the conversation of Lady Delacour, Lady Dashfort, and Lady Geraldine. If required to specify a complete sketch of an English gentlewoman, he might confidently have pointed to Lady Jane Granville, Mrs. Hungerford, or Mrs. Mortimer.

Speaking of Lord Wellesley in 1825, Moore notes down in his Diary :- Gave me some very pretty verses of his own to Miss Edgeworth. Showed me some verses of hers to him, strongly laudatory but very bad.' Moore would have thought any verses bad that had not his own exquisite finish; but verse-making was not her vocation, and poetry was not her forte.

Sheridan, struck by the spirit and point of the dialogue in Belinda,' recommended her to try her hand at dramatic composition; and two comic dramas,' three acts each- Love and Law,' and 'The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock'-are printed in the collected edition of her works. The unity of action wanting in her novels is equally neglected in these dramas: the dramatis persona are mostly Irish of the lower class, and much of the dialogue is pure brogue. The utmost that can be said for these productions is that, if compressed into one-act farces with Irish Johnson and Power to take parts, they might have had a run; and her name must be added to the long list of novelists, headed by Fielding and Le Sage, who have failed, or

fallen lamentably short of the expected degree of excellence, in the kindred walk of fiction. The dramatic fame of the author of Tom Jones' rests on the mock tragedy of Tom Thumb;' and so long as the author of 'Gil Blas' was only known as a playwright, no one saw any incongruity in the joke placed by Piron in the mouth of Punchinello :- Pourquoi le fol de temps en temps ne diroit-il pas de bonnes choses, puisque le sage (Le Sage) de temps en temps dit de si mauvaises ?'

It is from the apex of the pyramid that men calculate its height, and the altitude of genius must be taken where it has attained its culminating point. Let those who wish to appreciate Miss Edgeworth, to derive the greatest amount of refining and elevating enjoyment from her works, skip the prefaces, short as they arenever think of the moral, excellent as it may be-be not over-critical touching the management of the story, but give themselves up to the charm of the dialogue, the scene-painting, the delineation and development of character, the happy blending of pathos and humour with the sobriety of truth. Let them do this, and they will cease to wonder at the proud position awarded to her by the dispassionate judgment of her most eminent contemporaries.

287

THE COUNTESS HAHN-HAHN.

[FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, JAN. 1844.]

1. Aus der Gesellschaft, Novelle. Von (From 'Society,' a Novel, by) IDA, Gräfin (Countess) HAHN-HAHN. 8vo. Berlin 1838.

2. Der Rechte (The Right One). Von IDA, Gräfin HAHNHAHN. 8vo. Berlin: 1839.

3. Gräfin Faustine. Von IDA, Gräfin HAHN-HAHN. 8vo. Berlin 1840.

4. Ulrich. Von IDA, Gräfin HAHN-HAHN. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin 1841.

5. Sigismund Forster. Von IDA, Gräfin HAHN-HAHN. 8vo. Berlin 1843.

6. Cecil. Von IDA, Gräfin HAHN-HAHN. 2 vols. 8vo. Berlin 1843.

IT is a remarkable fact, that, out of the fourteen or fifteen thousand living authors of Germany, not one (if we except Tieck, who belongs to the last generation) has obtained anything approaching to an European reputation, or given decided proofs of originality, as a novelist. Rich in historians, fertile in critics, abounding in metaphysicians, and overflowing with thinkers, or gentlemen who think that they are thinking, the whole Confederation has proved, during the last quarter

of a century, utterly unable to produce a prose writer of fiction, who does not turn out, on nice inspection, to be an imitator; -to have belonged, from his or her first conception, to some one of the established schools, historical, metaphysical, or romantic; and kept constantly though unconsciously in mind, some one of the great masters or masterpieces-in nine cases out of ten Scott or Goethe-Wilhelm Meister' or 'Waverley.' At last, however, we have found one who draws exclusively on her own resources, rises proudly superior to authority, holds on her course in entire disregard or forgetfulness as well of the examples set by her predecessors as of the rules laid down by her contemporaries; and, as may be guessed, is utterly unlike all or any of her countrymen or countrywomen, who, to our knowledge, have hitherto risked themselves in print.

Ida, Countess Hahn-Hahn, is, both by birth and marriage, a member of the Mecklenburg family of Hahn, which begins with a distinguished founder in the dark ages and boasts nine or ten centuries of unsullied nobility. When very young, she married her cousin, but was divorced soon afterwards, on her own application, on the ground of alleged infidelity on the part of the husband. She has lived a good deal in most of the German capitals-mixing chiefly with the class to which she naturally belongs; and she has visited most of the principal countries of Europe, in company with the attached friend to whom Faustine' is dedicated. She has one child, a girl of fifteen or sixteen. She herself is about five-and-thirty, or a little more. Two or three years ago she had the misfortune to lose an eye,