Fanny Burney, afterwards Madame D'Arblay, was at an early age
petted by Dr. Johnson, and introduced to the wits and scholars of the day
at the tables of Mrs. Thrale and Sir Joshua Reynolds. Anna Seward, in
her self-constituted shrine at Lichfield, would have been miserable, had
she not trusted that the eyes of all lovers of poetry were devoutly fixed
on her. Joanna Baillie and Maria Edgeworth were indeed far from courting
publicity; they loved the privacy of their own families, one with her
brother and sister in their Hampstead villa, the other in her more
distant retreat in Ireland; but fame pursued them, and they were the
favourite correspondents of Sir Walter Scott. Crabbe, who was usually
buried in a country parish, yet sometimes visited London, and dined at
Holland House, and was received as a fellow-poet by Campbell, Moore, and
Rogers; and on one memorable occasion he was Scott's guest at Edinburgh,
and gazed with wondering eyes on the incongruous pageantry with which
George IV. was entertained in that city. Even those great writers who
hid themselves amongst lakes and mountains associated with each other;
and though little seen by the world were so much in its thoughts that a
new term, 'Lakers,' was coined to designate them.
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