not strip: we are not going to fight.' This humour remained in him so
strongly to the last that he might almost have supplied Pope with another
instance of 'the ruling passion strong in death,' for only three days
before he expired, being told that an old acquaintance was lately
married, having recovered from a long illness by eating eggs, and that
the wits said that he had been egged on to matrimony, he immediately
trumped the joke, saying, 'Then may the yoke sit easy on him.' I do not
know from what common ancestor the Master of Balliol and his great-niece
Jane Austen, with some others of the family, may have derived the keen
sense of humour which they certainly possessed.

Mr. and Mrs. George Austen resided first at Deane, but removed in 1771 to
Steventon, which was their residence for about thirty years. They
commenced their married life with the charge of a little child, a son of
the celebrated Warren Hastings, who had been committed to the care of Mr.
Austen before his marriage, probably through the influence of his sister,
Mrs. Hancock, whose husband at that time held some office under Hastings
in India. Mr. Gleig, in his 'Life of Hastings,' says that his son
George, the offspring of his first marriage, was sent to England in 1761
for his education, but that he had never been able to ascertain to whom
this precious charge was entrusted, nor what became of him. I am able to
state, from family tradition, that he died young, of what was then called
putrid sore throat; and that Mrs. Austen had become so much attached to
him that she always declared that his death had been as great a grief to
her as if he had been a child of her own.

About this time, the grandfather of Mary Russell Mitford, Dr. Russell,
was Rector of the adjoining parish of Ashe; so that the parents of two
popular female writers must have been intimately acquainted with each
other.