Maria Riddeli., the Priend of Burns. 47 



realities of life ' — all the intrigues and fadeurs of modern 

 society, and soar at once into the regions of sentiment and 

 romance with , of fiction and fancy with Lewis^^^ 



and Anna Radcliffe.^^ I delight excessively in a Knight 

 Errant, with an enchanted wood, a haunted castle, a suit 

 of blood-stained armour, arid an apparition I am still 

 child enough to be completely transported ! when I declaim 

 against novels I except those of Le Sage.' "^^ 



[February, 1798 J . . . ." ' minds have a certain in- 

 trinsic dignity that fires at being trifled with, or lower'd 

 or even too nearly approached. ' — I am particularly 

 delighted with this observation on the teazing oflficiousness 

 of always arguing with those we love about their faults; 

 it struck me the more perhaps from my having a few 

 mornings ago very foolishly irritated one of the persons on 

 earth that I most love and admire by telling him of a few 

 censuring observations, perhaps merited, perhaps other- 

 wise, but certainly unnecessarily, that I had happened to 

 hear made on him, and whch. in the natural impetuous 

 effervescence of his temper he repelled so warmly that we 

 narrowly escaped a brouillerie, luckily I soothed, caressed, 

 and flattered ; he was pacified, but I have laid Burns' 

 maxim to my bosom, and vowed solemnly never to tell a 

 friend that he has a fault again." 



[May, 1798]. " I dislike the spectacle of suffering 

 and misery whch. I cannot relieve, that of death is not half 

 so disgusting or painful to me. To a mind harassed by a 

 discontinuous chain of perverse circumstances, and agi- 

 tated with strong and disappointed passions, perhaps a 

 state of complete tranquility and calm (be it what it will) 

 is less calculated to shock than to be envied. As to Anna,** 



87 See footnote 80. 



88 Radcliffe : Ann ; b. 1764 ; the founder of a school of romance 

 in which terror and curiosity are aroused by events apparently super- 

 natural, but afterwards naturally explained; d. 1823. 



89 Ive Sage : Alain Rene ; b. 1668 ; French novelist ; d. 1747. 



90 Maria's only surviving child and heiress, Anna Maria Riddeli 

 (b. August 31st, 1791), married on October 5th, 1811, Captain 



