heerful temper, and very
fond of society, mixing in the best that London afforded, and frequently
receiving with cordial hospitality some of its most distinguished
members in his small, modest residence. He was a devoted friend of my
family, had an ardent admiration for my aunt Siddons, and honored me
with a kind and constant regard.

Miss Joanna Baillie was a great friend of Mrs. Siddons's, and wrote
expressly for her the part of Jane de Montfort, in her play of "De
Montfort." My father and mother had the honor of her acquaintance, and I
went more than once to pay my respects to her at the cottage in
Hampstead where she passed the last years of her life.

The peculiar plan upon which she wrote her fine plays, making each of
them illustrate a single passion, was in great measure the cause of
their unfitness for the stage. "De Montfort," which has always been
considered the most dramatic of them, had only a very partial success,
in spite of its very great poetical merit and considerable power of
passion, and the favorable circumstance that the two principal
characters in it were represented by the eminent actors for whom the
authoress originally designed them. In fact, though Joanna Baillie
selected and preferred the dramatic form for her poetical compositions,
they are wanting in the real dramatic element, resemblance to life and
human nature, and are infinitely finer as poems than plays.

But the desire and ambition of her life had been to write for the stage,
and the reputation she achieved as a poet did not reconcile her to her
failure as a dramatist. I remember old Mr. Sotheby, the poet (I add this
title to his name, though his title to it was by some esteemed but
slender), telling me of a visit he had once paid her, when, calling him
into her little kitchen (she was not rich, kept few servants, and did
not disdain sometimes to make her own pies and puddings), she bade him,
as she was up to the elbows in flour and paste, draw from her pocket a
paper; it was a play-bill, sent to her by some friend in the country,
setting forth that some obscure provincial company was about to perform
Miss Joanna Baillie's celebrated tragedy of "De Montfort." "There,"
exclaimed the culinary Melpomene, "there, Sotheby, I am so happy! You
see my plays can be acted somewhere!" Well, too, do I remember the tone
of half-regretful congratulation in which she said to me, "Oh, you lucky
girl--you lucky girl; you are going to have your play