And he never wavered in his admiration. In his last
years, not many months before his death, when he had almost forgotten
her name, he was still talking kindly of her work. Speaking to Mrs. John
Davy of Miss Austen and Miss Ferrier, he said: "And there's that Irish
lady, too--but I forget everybody's name now" ... "she's _very_ clever,
and best in the little touches too. I'm sure in that children's story,
where the little girl parts with her lamb, and the little boy brings it
back to her again, there's nothing for it but just to put down the book
and cry."[25] The reference is to "Simple Susan," the longest and
prettiest tale in the _Parent's Assistant_.
Note:
[25] Lockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, ch. lxxxi. _ad finem_.
Another anecdote pleasantly connects the same book with a popular work
of a later writer. Readers of _Cranford_ will recall the feud between
the Johnson-loving Miss Jenkyns of that story and its _Pickwick_-loving
Captain Brown. The Captain--as is well-known--met his death by a railway
accident, just after he had been studying the last monthly "green
covers" of Dickens. Years later, the assumed narrator of _Cranford_
visits Miss Jenkyns, then faliing into senility. She still vaunts _The
Rambler_; still maunders vaguely of the "strange old book, with the
queer name, poor Captain Brown was killed for reading-that book by Mr.
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