'
Doubtless Edgeworth felt, as Charles Lamb expresses it: 'Deaths
overset one, and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or
three have died within the last two twelvemonths, and so many parts
of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an anecdote,
starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person in
preference to every other; the person is gone whom it would have
peculiarly suited. It won't do for another. Every departure destroys
a class of sympathies. There's Captain Burney gone! What fun has
whist now? What matters it what you lead if you can no longer fancy
him looking over you? One never hears anything but the image of the
particular person occurs with whom alone almost you would care to
share the intelligence. Thus one distributes oneself about, and now
for so many parts of me I have lost the market.'
The departure of Edgeworth and his family from Clifton in the autumn
of 1793 was hastened by the news that disturbances were breaking out
in Ireland. Dr. Beddoes of Clifton, who was courting Edgeworth's
daughter Anna, had to console himself with the permission to follow
her to Ireland in the spring, where they were married at Edgeworth
Town in April 1794.
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