Page:Books and men.djvu/88

eight years old when she died,—the favorite companion of Sir Walter Scott, and his comfort in many a moment of fatigue and depression? We can follow her path easily enough, thanks to those delicious, misspelt scrawls in which she has recorded her childish verdicts. "Thomson is a beautiful author," she writes at six, "and Pope, but nothing to Shakespear, of which I have a little knolege. Macbeth is a pretty composition, but awful one. … The Newgate Calender is very instructive." And again, "Tom Jones and Grey's Elegy in a country churchyard," surely never classed together before, "are both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by the men. … Doctor Swift's works are very funny; I got some of them by heart. … Miss Egward's [Edgeworth's] tails are very good, particularly some that are much adapted for youth, as Laz Lawrance and Tarleton." Then with a sudden jump, "I am reading the Mysteries of Udolpho. I am much interested in the fate of poor poor Emily. … Morehead's sermons are, I hear, much praised, but I never read sermons of any kind; but I read novelettes and my Bible, and I never forget it or my prayers."