Edgeworth, hopelessly offended her the first time he met her:—
"Madam," he said, "I think I saw you perform Millamant five-and-thirty years ago."
"Pardon me, Sir."
"Oh, then it was forty years ago. I recollect it."
"You will excuse me, Sir, I never played Millamant."
"Oh, but I recollect it."'
"I think," she said, stiffly turning to Rogers, "it is time for me to change my place," and rising with much haughtiness she moved away.
Many amusing stories were current of the dramatic manner which she imported into daily life. Her question, in the tragic tones of Lady Macbeth, to the over-*awed draper as she bought a piece of coloured print, "Will it wash?" The solemn reply to the Scotch provost, "Beef cannot be too salt for me, my Lord"; and "I asked for water, Boy; you've brought me beer." Lord Beaconsfield told a story of his father, Isaac Disraeli, returning home after a visit to London, and declaring that the event that had made most impression on him was hearing Mrs. Siddons say, "The Ripstone Pippin is the finest apple in the world." Moore says he remembered how proud he was of going to Lady Mount Edgcumbe's suppers after the opera. It was at one of these, sitting between Mrs. Siddons and Lady Castlereagh, he heard for the first time the voice of the former (never having met her before) transferred to the ordinary things of the world, and the solemn words in her most tragic tone, "I do love ale dearly." Sidney Smith also describes her as "stabbing the potatoes"; and it is said that on hearing of the sudden death of an acquaintance, who had been "found
