"
We have dwelt upon this little episode, not because it has any essential
importance in itself, but because it has been the subject of a most
unseemly interpolation in the British reprint of the biography. Mr.
Bentley, "Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty," was, it appears, the
purchaser, at a small sum, of the advance-sheets of the book; but, in
order to secure English copyright, he conceived the idea of introducing
extraneous matter of British origin. In prosecution of this design, he
found as _collaborateurs_ the two Misses Foster above alluded to, who
are now wives of clergymen of the Church of England. Mrs. Fuller, the
elder of the sisters, and the special favorite of the author, gives upon
the whole a modest and pleasant account of their association with Mr.
Irving, and closes with a few lines which, she says, he wrote in her
scrap-book in 1832. "He declared it was impossible for him to be less in
a writing-mood." And thereupon follow the well-known lines entitled
"Echo and Silence." They certainly do not prove very much for the
writing-mood of Mr. Irving,--whatever they may prove for Sir Egerton
Brydges. The contribution of the younger sister, Mrs. Flora Dawson, is
in a somewhat exaggerated and melodramatic vein, in the course of which
she takes occasion to expend a great deal of pity upon "poor Irving,"
who is made to appear in the character of a rejected suitor for the hand
of her sister.
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