It is certain that Margaret occasionally let slip, with all the innocence imaginable, some phrase betraying the presence of a rather mountainous ME, in a way to surprise those who knew her good sense. She could say, as if she were stating a scientific fact, in enumerating the merits of somebody, ‘He appreciates me.’ There was something of hereditary organization in this, and something of unfavorable circumstance in the fact, that she had in early life no companion, and few afterwards, in her finer studies; but there was also an ebullient sense of power, which she felt to be in her, which as yet had found no right channels. I remember she once said to me, what I heard as a mere statement of fact, and nowise as unbecoming, that ‘no man gave such invitation to her mind as to tempt her to a full expression; that she felt a power to enrich her thought with such wealth and variety of embellishment as would, no doubt, be tedious to such as she conversed with.’
Her impatience she expressed as she could. ‘I feel within myself,’ she said, ‘an immense force, but I cannot bring it out. It may sound like a joke, but I do feel something corresponding to that tale of the Destinies falling in love with Hermes.’
In her journal, in the summer of 1844, she writes: — ‘Mrs. Ware talked with me about education, — wilful education, — in which she is trying to get interested. I talk with a Goethean moderation on this subject, which rather surprises her and ——, who are nearer the entrance of the studio. I am really old on this subject. In near eight years’ experience, I have learned as much as others would in eighty, from my great talent at explanation, tact in the use of means, and immediate
