would really be
worth the hearing. Yet her life is not devoid of interest. A brief
sketch of it may be welcome to her readers.

Elizabeth Inchbald was born on the 15th of October, 1753, at
Standingfield, near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk;[1] one of the numerous
offspring of John and Mary Simpson. The Simpsons, who were Roman
Catholics, held a moderate farm in Standingfield, and ranked among the
gentry of the neighbourhood. In Elizabeth's eighth year, her father
died; but the family continued at the farm, the elder daughters marrying
and settling in London, while Elizabeth grew up into a beautiful and
charming girl. One misfortune, however, interfered with her happiness--a
defect of utterance which during her early years rendered her speech so
indistinct as to be unintelligible to strangers. She devoted herself to
reading and to dreams of the great world. At thirteen, she declared she
would rather die than live longer without seeing the world; she longed
to go to London; she longed to go upon the stage. When, in 1770, one of
her brothers became an actor at Norwich, she wrote secretly to his
manager, Mr. Griffith, begging for an engagement. Mr. Griffith was
encouraging, and, though no definite steps were taken, she was
sufficiently charmed with him to write out his name at length in her
diary, with the inscription "Each dear letter of thy name is harmony."
Was Mr. Griffith the hero of the company as well as its manager? That,
at any rate, was clearly Miss Simpson's opinion; but she soon had other
distractions. In the following year she paid a visit to her married
sisters in London, where she met another actor, Mr. Inchbald, who seems
immediately to have fallen in love with her, and to have proposed. She
remained cool. "In spite of your eloquent pen," she wrote to him, with a
touch of that sharp and almost bitter sense that was always hers,
"matrimony still appears to me with less charms than terrors: the bliss
arising from it, I doubt not, is superior to any other--but best not to
be ventured for (in my opinion), till some little time have proved the
emptiness of all other; which it seldom fails to do." Nevertheless, the
correspondence continued, and, early in 1772, some entries in her diary
give a glimpse of her state of mind:--

_Jan. 22._ Saw Mr. Griffith's picture.

_Jan. 28._ Stole it.

_Jan. 29._ Rather disappointed at not receiving a letter from Mr.
Inchbald.

A few months later she did the