ENGLISH POETESSES. 
 
English Poetesses: 
 
 A SERIES OF CRITICAL BIOGRAPHIES, 
 
 WITH 
 
 ILLUSTRATIVE EXTRACTS. 
 
 BY 
 
 ERIC S. ROBERTSON. M.A. 
 
 CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: 
 
 LONDON, PARIS &- NEW YORK, 
 
 1883. 
 [all rights reserved.] 
 
%i 
 
 i'B. 
 
 fo. 
 
 cr> 
 
NOTE. 
 
 To Messrs. Blackwood & Son, to Messrs. George Bell «Jv: 
 Son, and particularly to Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 
 I am obliged for courtesies extended with reference to copy- 
 right verses quoted in this book. 
 
 The only instance in which I have not received free 
 permission to quote has occurred in the case of Mrs. 
 Browning's Poems. Nevertheless, it will be found that I 
 have been able to supply my chapter on Mrs. Browning 
 with ample illustrative extracts. 
 
 It may be well for me to confess that I am aware of 
 the objections to which the title of this book lies open. 
 Ladies who write verse now-a-days do not care to be called 
 "Poetesses"; yet, as they have not had the wit to find a 
 better designation for themselves, the name must serve 
 while I attempt a measured compliance with the invitation 
 held out by Landor's Cleone : " You may compose a pane- 
 gyric on all of our sex who have excelled in poetry." 
 
 E. S. R. 
 
 Redhill, 
 
 Chislehurst. 
 
 Sept., 1883. 
 
 136526 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Kaiiikrim: Philips — Aphra Behn--The Duchess of New- 
 castle — Early Minor Writers. i 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 Lady Mary Montagu— Mrs. Piozzi— Hannah Cowley- 
 Charlotte Smith ^"j 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 Mrs. Barbauld 74 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Anna Seward— Mrs. Opie — Mary Lamh . . 98 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SroiiTsii Poetesses: Lady Grisell BaiLlie — Mrs. Cock- 
 burn— Jane Elliot — Lady Anne Barnard — The 
 Baroness Nairne— Joanna Baillie . . . .139 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 Mrs. Hemans 182 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 " L. E. L."— Adelaide Procter— Caroline Norton— Lady 
 DuFFEkiN — Mrs. Southey — Mary Mitford — Sarah 
 Flower Adams— Sara Colerii)(;e .... 212 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Mr«. Elizabeth Barrett Browning . . . • / • ^55 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Emily Bronte— George Eliot— Menella Bute Smedley . 321 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Christina Rossetti — Emily Pfeiffer — Augusta Webster 
 — Alice Meynell — ^Jean Ingelow — Harriet Hamil- 
 ton King — Mathilde Blind — Mary Robinson — 
 Other Writers 338 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 TO measure a cloud, to gauge the skies, to mathematically 
 compute the length and breadth of space itself, may be 
 possible ; for we have analysed sunbeams, an<;i from the basis 
 of a window-sill can calculate the diameter of a star. There 
 is a question, however, that appears more hopelessly beyond 
 answer than any problem of science, though it deals, not 
 with unresponsive nature, but with the mind of man the 
 questioner alone. It may be said to be as old as the first 
 human emotion, this problem — What is Poetry ? Psycholo- 
 gists and logicians can give us no account of it; and poets 
 themselves are in ignorance of what it is. The author of one 
 of the recent big books on Kant remarks that the mission 
 of philosophy is not so much to solve the problem of life 
 as to widen and deepen it. Perhaps the mission of the 
 poet is to extend the realms of thought, not to trace their 
 boundaries. He is the true explorer ; science comes after 
 him and draws its charts. 
 
 Such partial definitions of poetry as have come from our 
 great writers only seem to show how limitless and many- 
 sided the subject is. One of the oldest of them is Aris- 
 totle's definition, which simply calls it **one of the mimetic 
 arts." This is probably the feeblest analytical effort ever for- 
 mulated by that great man of science. Plato ventures on 
 no more exact a statement regarding the matter than that 
 " poets are the pioneers of wisdom;" and Cicero calls poetry 
 
X Introduction. 
 
 the " praeclara emendatrix vitae." Shakespeare is all for 
 absolute invention as the characteristic of poetry — 
 
 *' As imagination bodies forth 
 The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen 
 Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing 
 A local habitation and a name." 
 
 Johnson gets but a little way into the question : " Poetry 
 is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagina- 
 tion to the help of reason." On such a theory Newton's 
 notion of gravitation would have been poetry while it re- 
 mained an unproved hypothesis. And there are some who 
 hold that in their origin science and poetry are equally 
 imaginative ; but this notion is radically opposed to Cole- 
 ridge's dictum. '' Good sense is the body of poetic genius, 
 fancy its drapery, motive its life, and imagination the soul 
 that is everywhere and in each, and forms all into one grace- 
 ful and intelligent whole. A poem is a species of com- 
 position opposed to science, as having intellectual pleasure 
 for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language 
 natural to us in the state of excitement, but distinguished 
 from other species of composition (not excluded by the 
 former criterion) by permitting a pleasure from the whole, 
 consistent with a consciousness of pleasure from the com- 
 ponent parts — the perfection of which is to communicate 
 from each part the greatest pleasure compatible with the 
 largest sum on the whole." This rigmarole — which embodies 
 in a tolerably comprehensive manner several shorter de- 
 finitions from the same pen — is useful so far as it breaks 
 down the arbitrary distinction between prose and poetry. 
 Many a one, according to Coleridge's doctrine, would find 
 more poetry in a novel of Miss Braddon's than in any essay 
 by Elia or any sermon by Jeremy Taylor. Yet it is possible 
 that Coleridge's hint about the use of *' language natural to 
 us in a state of excitement " may have helped Wordsworth 
 
Introduction. xi 
 
 to his definition of poetry — "emotion recollected in tran- 
 quillity " ; an analysis very characteristic of the author's 
 mind. Shelley declares that it is the " recollection of the 
 best and happiest moments of the best and happiest 
 minds " ; the definition being far less satisfactory than the 
 well-known lines of his own with which it conflicts, — 
 
 " Most wretched men 
 Are cradled into poetry by wrong ; 
 They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 
 
 These lines, by the way, recall the secret of Schubert's 
 music — " my music is the product of my genius and my 
 misery ; and that which I have written in my greatest dis- 
 tress, is that which the world seems to like best." Such 
 was Keats's experience: "Some divine Being has enabled 
 me to put into poetry the pain which I feel." 
 
 " The poet should seize the Particular," says Goethe, 
 '• and should, if there be anything sound in it, thus repre- 
 sent the Universal." This dictum is in some degree akin 
 to Jeffrey's idea of poetry — "the real essence of poetry, 
 apart from the pathos, the wit, or the brilliant description 
 which may be embodied in it but may exist equally in prose, 
 consists in the fine perception, the vivid expression of that 
 subtle and mysterious analogy which exists between the 
 physical and the moral world, which makes outward things 
 and qualities the natural types and emblems of inward gifts 
 and emotions, and leads us to ascribe life and sentiment to 
 everything that interests us in the aspects of external nature." 
 There is no doubt that this account of poetry coincides 
 pretty closely with popular ideas of what constitues the most 
 pleasure-giving elements in verse. Yet how if, in unme- 
 trical language, expression be given to this sense of analogy 
 between the external universe and human nature ? Is such 
 expression not still poetical? And while the sense of 
 analogy may be poetical, is the direct ascription of life and 
 
xii Introduction. 
 
 sentiment to material nature to be reckoned healthy poetry ? 
 Ruskin, as all readers of '* Modern Painters" will remember, 
 says such ascription is a sign of debased poetical taste. 
 
 The definitions of poetry culled in the foregoing para- 
 graphs are simply enough to show how undefinable the sub- 
 ject is. But yet they help us to realise what poets have 
 done for us in the past. The best definition of art, as a 
 whole, has come from an actor — Talma; "feeling passed 
 through thought and fixed in form." The definition 
 applies to any kind of art, but most completely to poetry. 
 All sorts of human knowledge — as Goethe more than any 
 other writer has proved — may be rendered into poetry. The 
 poet gives us experience sublimed. Throughout all the ages. 
 the poet has vicariously suffered and enjoyed for us. As 
 the high-priest went in once a year to the Holy of Holies, 
 charged with the sorrows of the whole people, and there 
 abode till these turned in his mind to prayer, so once in every 
 age has one poet, at least, taken upon him the wide experience 
 of his brethren around him, and allowed it all to distil itself 
 into poetry through the filter of his own soul. And as the 
 high-priest, embodying all the life of his people, met with a 
 spirit which taught him things that sealed his mission be- 
 tween God and man, so the poet, passing through our com- 
 mon cares and joys, has learnt to study them together with 
 the spiritual experiences of his consecrated loneliness. 
 
 But not less needful than experience, to the poet, is a 
 noble sense of ignorance. He is the child of the universe. 
 For him there is a feeling of everlasting mystery. He is 
 always looking beyond. This hungry contemplation of in- 
 completeness in all things makes the poet a speculative 
 critic of all so-called certainties. For him, no less than for 
 the philosopher, the Cartesian criterion of doubt is the 
 imperative method of attaining any truth. 
 
 And here, we might be pardoned for thinking, is one great 
 reason why the man has excelled the woman as an artist. 
 
Introduction. xiii 
 
 While we find nothing in any common definitions of poetry 
 that suggests distinction between the poetical capabilities of 
 the sexes, and while we see that all kinds of experience — 
 and therefore woman's as well as man's — can be touched 
 by imagination into poetry, a further psychological analysis 
 seems to be needed. This analysis appears to reveal a 
 sexual distinction lying in the very soul. Faith is woman- 
 like, doubt is man-like. The man digs, but the woman 
 gleans ; he finds, and she keeps. Man is the father, 
 but the child is the woman's. It has been thus from 
 the first ; his is the uncreated, hers the created. The 
 known, to man, has been a stepping-stone ; to the woman 
 it has been a resting-place. Earthlier happy she.* What 
 would the world be without her way of looking at life ? It 
 is she who gives the newest generation its spiritual food, at 
 her knees, as it is she w^ho gives it its earliest and purest 
 material food. AVe may find in most paintings of the " Flight 
 into Egypt " a picture of human nature. Mary has sat down 
 by the roadside to suckle her infant ; Joseph is leading his 
 patient beas t a little further along the road. 
 
 The trustfulness that is so characteristic of woman's 
 views of existence may be one great cause of her compara- 
 tive lack of imagination ; but there is yet a greater cause 
 than this. Say what we will, the springs of maternal feel 
 ing within her bosom are the secret of her life. Some divine 
 tenderness so guides the current of her emotions that they 
 make the thought of motherhood the sweetest fact in life ta 
 her. . All that the greatest poet has felt over his most perfect 
 thought, the mother feels through her first-born. Speech- 
 less the feeling may be, but not the less effective in sweeten- 
 ing the world. What discount upon woman's expressed 
 
 * '* I have smiled to think how foolish men can be 
 For want of our poor woman's sense of ' Now. ' " 
 
 Augusta Webster : In a Day. 
 
xiv Introduction. 
 
 poetry would be too great to allow (may the phrase be 
 pardoned ?) when her unexpressed but unsuppressible poetry 
 of motherhood is so full and wondrous ? What woman 
 would not have been Niobe rather than the artist who 
 carved the Niobe ? More than poetry, and more than 
 man, woman Joves the children who fall from the heavens, 
 like the pure snow, to hide earth's blackness. And as 
 every birth is a try-back after innocence, it is truly of the 
 ) last importance to the world that even a budding Shake- 
 speare should grow under the tenderest care of mother's 
 love. " Nature," says the wise man who drew the cha- 
 racter of Nathalie, "sent v/omen into the world with this 
 bridal dower of love, not, as men often think, that they 
 may altogether love them from the crown of their head 
 to the soles of their feet, but for this reason, that they 
 might be, what their vocation is to be^mothers, and that 
 they might bestow their love on children." 
 
 It is a very old-fashioned doctrine this, that children are 
 the best poems Providence meant women to produce, but it is 
 not therefore any the worse. Besides, it goes further than 
 may be seen at first sight. It will be found that most of the 
 world's greatest men have been peculiar worshippers of 
 their mothers. They have felt that they owed most to their 
 mothers. Coleridge has remarked upon the physiological 
 side of this truth, by pointing out that every foce of genius 
 has something of the woman in it. All this may seem 
 antiquated and erroneous sentiment in these days. Wo- 
 man's mission is very different, according to the latter-day 
 female prophets. But it may at least be argued that the 
 women who have been veritable poetesses have never 
 thought so. Take away lover, and husband, and cliild, 
 from the poetry written by women, and what have you 
 left? 
 
 ^ The usual old argument about the domestic mission of 
 women is not brought forth here as a proof of woman's 
 
Introduction. xv 
 
 inferiority ; far from it. But it is adduced as explanation of 
 the fact that no woman has equalled man as a poet. There 
 is more in life to satisfy a woman : that is the contention ; 
 therefore woman has not been impelled to such soul-search- 
 ings as man. And be it said, further, a woman is not so 
 selfish as a man, and therefore not so likely to absorb her- 
 self in lonely thought. She spreads her being through 
 others, where the man pushes on for the solitary pleasure of 
 being ahead of all. 
 
 But is the question being begged ? Have women been 
 clearly excelled by men in poetry ? Surely. For many 
 a day a fair field has been left to them. At the present 
 time the amount of verse-writing by women is astonish- 
 ing. There are not less than sixty women in our own 
 day who have written verse which would have attracted 
 great attention a century ago. Richter remarks that the 
 world is punished for the increase of truths by the de- 
 crease of truthfulness. One cannot help feeling that we 
 are being punished for the increase of poems by the 
 decrease of poetry. The more w^omen write poetry, the 
 more carefully are we able to compare their poetical 
 powers with men's powers, and the more completely is the 
 case made out against them. Did Katherine Philips rival 
 Otway ? Did Mrs. Hemans rival Wordsworth, or Landor, 
 or Keats, or Shelley ? Did Mrs. Browning rival any of these 
 last-named poets, or has she rivalled Tennyson ? Does Miss 
 Rossetti rival her dead brother? Or does Mrs. Webster, 
 or Mrs. Pfeiffer, or Miss Ingelow, rival Robert Browning? 
 The answer must be one devoid of chivalry. Women have 
 always been inferior to men as writers of poetry ; and they 
 always will be, if the explanation here attempted is the 
 correct one. It is true that conceivably a woman may yet 
 surpass Mrs. Browning, and equal Shakespeare even ; but 
 it is also conceivable - and fully as probable — that some 
 man will arise to surpass Shakespeare. 
 
xvi Introduction. 
 
 Disparagement of women's verse, however, must not go 
 too far. Women, especially English women, have produced 
 a great quantity of beautiful poetry that is worthy of a place 
 in any rank but the very first. It is the business of sub- 
 Sequent pages to show how beautiful this poetry is. But 
 there is another beauty which it may be hoped that these 
 pages will also reveal — the beauty of noble lives led by pure 
 and able wonien. For with but one or two exceptions, the^j 
 great Englishwomen of letters have left splendid examples ' 
 of intellectual vigour in association with the most lovely 
 qualities of personal character. Physical beauty has not 
 unfrequently been theirs ; but they have bequeathed to us 
 more enduring charms. 
 
 I must here express the reluctance with which I have 
 had to abandon my original intention of allowing the later 
 pages of this book to take some detailed notice of every 
 considerable English poetess now alive. Pressure of space 
 has forced me to adopt a plan that is much less comprehen- 
 sive. The chapter on contemporary writers will be found 
 to deal chiefly with six or eight poetesses, whose works are 
 deserving of more attention than, even by this selective 
 process, I have been able to afford. As these writers are 
 still producing poetry, I have deemed it undesirable to 
 attempt any exact classification of them in order of merit. 
 
English Poetesses. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 KATHERINE PHILIPS — APHRA HEHN — THE DUCHESS OF 
 NEWCASTLE — EARLY MINOR WRITERS. 
 
 I REMEMBER to have conceived a humble affection 
 for the " Matchless Orinda," England's first professed 
 poetess, at a very early age. In the dusty recesses of 
 an Edinburgh book-shop I had been burrowing through a 
 rarely-visited accumulation of old folios, and came upon 
 three treasures side by side : a perfect copy of the first 
 complete " Faery Queen," the original " Arcadia," and 
 " Poems by Mrs. Katherine Philips, the Match- 
 less Orinda, to which is added Monsieur Cor- ^. ,,f ® 
 
 . Pnilips. 
 
 neille's Pompey and Horace, Tragedies, with 
 
 several other Translations out of the French. London : 
 
 1667." 
 
 Such was the title of a goodly volume in excellent preser- 
 vation, adorned by a portrait of the author, and inscribed 
 with many notes in various characters of handwriting. These 
 notes gave the volume a dignity that Riviere's stateliest 
 binding could not have bestowed upon it. I recollect that 
 the first entry eulogised the poetess in ludicrously unstinted 
 terms, and ended with the trite quotation beginning " Nee 
 Jovis ira, nee ignis, nee ferrum poterit." But other inscrip- 
 tions proved that the work had been handed down from 
 
 B 
 
2 English Poetesses, 
 
 one possessor to another as a thing to be cherished and 
 reverenced, and the repeated occurrence of one name — 
 Bonner — marked it as an heirloom of some bookish family. 
 This pedigree made me covet the volume ; and no doubt it 
 would now be on one of my shelves but for the still greater 
 attractions displayed by the folio Spenser at the same time. 
 Even the Spenser alone was more than my fortunes at the 
 moment could command, for its price was two guineas, 
 certainly little enough for such a volume. There was talk 
 with the bookseller about a premium of five shillings to be 
 paid if the book were reserved till I returned to claim it in 
 a few days ; and in a few days, accordingly, my two guineas 
 made me possessor of the " Faery Queen," the worthy 
 vendor, in the end, declining all advance on the original 
 price. It was then that I indulged myself with another 
 peep at the " matchless Orinda," still longing to possess and 
 love what so many reverent hands had fondled. At this 
 time, indeed, Katherine Philips was but a name to me, yet 
 the living pen-scratches of these dead admirers seemed to 
 give her a worth in my eyes beyond the public fame she had 
 won as the friend of Jeremy Taylor and Cowley. P'rom the 
 testimony of these unpretending and obscure followers, I 
 then and there grew to a conviction that there must be 
 something very lovable in her, much as one makes sure of 
 a woman's goodness of heart when her servants are over- 
 heard to praise her. A short time afterwards I took 
 occasion to inquire if the book was still unbought, but my 
 hopes of ultimately being able to cherish its declining years 
 were dispelled. It had been advertised by catalogue, and 
 written for by a London gentleman. This is the only first 
 folio of " Orinda " I have ever seen. Copies of the edition 
 are scarce now. 
 
 Whatever the judgment of to-day may be upon the 
 writings of Katherine Philips, nobody can doubt that in her 
 age she deserved her wonderful reputation. Her wit and her 
 
Katukrini: Pill LI rs. 3 
 
 ])eauty were sought in the Court of Charles the Second, but 
 she contented herself with a quiet country life in Wales. 
 She was intimate with the most brilliant spirits of the times, 
 and commanded their admiration, without once lowering 
 the dignity of her womanhood by participation in the loose- 
 ness of morals prevalent among them. She was well read 
 in general literature, — quite beyond the average of women 
 of her time, her acquaintance with the Bible being not the 
 least noticeable feature of her condition. She exhibited a 
 remarkable interest in politics, and was not afraid to make 
 her political opinions know^n. She was the first English- 
 woman who ever wrote much verse that people talked about, 
 yet so modest was she that she would not consent that any 
 of it should be published during her lifetime. Before she 
 was thirty she w^as a great power in the literature of the day. 
 Cowley, Dryden, Sir John Denham, and others felt, regard- 
 ing her, as, later. Sir Richard Steele felt regarding another, 
 that to love her had been a liberal education. At the age of 
 thirty-three, when she died, she was giving every promise of 
 developing into such a factor in English society as Madame 
 Rambouillet had been in France. One of her poems, in- 
 deed, indicates that she had actually inaugurated an associa- 
 tion which we may presume to have borne resemblance to 
 the cote7'ie of the Precieuses. Not a breath of scandal had 
 ever touched her. Not a line had ever left her pen that she 
 need have blushed for. Her end fulfilled the wish expressed 
 in her own lines : 
 
 " So that, in various accidents, 
 
 I conscience may, and honour, keep, 
 I with that ease and innocence 
 Shall die, as infants go to sleep." 
 
 In short, she shines to us as she shone for those who sur- 
 rounded her, a sweet woman in a corrupt society. 
 
 All this can be said of Katherine Philips, while yet we 
 B 2 
 
4 English Poetesses. 
 
 may confess that her poetry is not very interesting to the 
 modern reader. It is affected. There is Httle heart-beating 
 to be felt in it. Even to the extent of sickly prudery, she 
 eschews the romance of love as a theme, and versifies pla- 
 tonically on the delights of friendship, generally friendship 
 between one woman and another. Some of her strongest 
 thinking is expended on political poems which have lost 
 all savour now ; and stilted use of stale classical metaphor 
 is abundant. If her acquaintance, Mrs. Owen, goes to sea, 
 verses are written encharging her to the care of a suf- 
 ficiently respectable Triton. His Majesty crossing from 
 France must be addressed in an epistle comparing him to 
 Arion on a dolphin. And so on. These faults are easily 
 pointed to : but there yet remains a great deal of worth in 
 Katherine Philips's verse. 
 
 Two things have to be borne in mind when we judge 
 her. In the first place, we have to recollect the recognition 
 she deserves as being the first Englishwoman with sufficient 
 imagination (and confidence in it) to adopt pliant verse as 
 the habitual vehicle for her thinking, in defiance of the almost 
 vested right in it which male writers had till then preserved. 
 Her courage may be compared to that of a woman who 
 should make herself as skilful with the rapier as a man. 
 Over form of verse Orinda exhibits as much command as 
 any author of her time. And, as our first poetess, she at 
 any rate should obtain rank relatively as high as that which 
 we accord to Caedmon, our first poet. 
 
 In the second place, we have to give attention to the 
 fact that for her, as for all other writers of the period, French 
 influence was supreme. It was largely woman's influence, 
 too, that the French thus gave us at this time. The affected 
 delicacy of the Precieiises was teaching us how to be very 
 proper in our ways of speech. They did not exactly recom- 
 mend us the proverbial " prunes and prisms," but they 
 certainly preached prudery and precision beyond all things. 
 
Katherine Philips, 5 
 
 it is scarcely to be wondered at that, amid the general loose- 
 ness both of morality and of literary form that had been 
 bred by the Restoration, a pure-minded woman of talent 
 like Orinda should have clung to the new French doctrines 
 as a means of elevating the literary taste of her country. 
 I'hus we find that her whole influence is cast into the scale 
 of the French system of classical formality, as against the 
 very rough and ready style of the Restoration. The classi- 
 cality of her imagery and her themes is thus accounted for. 
 She completely adopts the Rambouillet system of nomen- 
 clature. Her husband and her friends Sir Edward Deering 
 and Mrs. Owen and Mrs. Montague are not to be thought 
 of by names with such commonplace associations. They are 
 always addressed, accordingly, as Palaemon and Silvander, 
 and Lucasia, and Rosania. So with all others with whom 
 the poetess had occasion to come in contact. She herself is 
 Orinda, — Katherine Philips no more. This was strictly in 
 accord with the dictation of the French lady-precisians. 
 They fenced their personalities round with these fantastic 
 names, pretty much as they were fencing their bodies round 
 with those swelling hoops that robbed them of any sem- 
 blance to the commonplace appearance of Eve. 
 
 There is no doubt that what we borrowed of all this 
 from the French did us much more good than harm. It 
 sobered and clarified the blood of our literature, which 
 had been exhibiting what we might call a gouty tendency. 
 In so far, then, as Katherine Philips propagated the French 
 purism, she may be thanked for her influence on our 
 hnguage, through the many authors who read her, and 
 through the extraordinary influence that she undoubtedly 
 exercised in private. Thus the coldness and rigidity which 
 repel us as readers of her work are themselves seen to 
 be, in some degree, tokens of a boon conferred by her 
 upon English letters, when considered duly. 
 
 The precise facts that have been ascertained regarding 
 
6 English Poetesses. 
 
 the private life of Orinda are almost as meagre as an entry 
 in a parish register. She was the daughter of a London 
 merchant named Fowler, and was born in London in 
 January, 1631. Educated at a school near Hackney, 
 she became the second wife of James Philips, of the 
 Priory, Cardigan, by him having at least one son and a 
 daughter, the latter only surviving her. Confluent small- 
 pox attacked her in her thirty-third year, and of this disease 
 she died on the 22nd of June, 1664. The biographical 
 preface to her poems speaks of her as dying at the age of 
 thirty-one, and thus the date of her birth would be 1634. 
 A reference to her lines headed *' On the First of January, 
 1657," proves that the year 1631 must be that of the 
 poetess's birth, since she talks of her bygone 
 
 " Moments numbered on the precious sand, 
 
 Till they are swell'd to six-and-twenty years." 
 
 A writer in " Notes and Queries," who discusses the 
 genealogy of her family, mentions his impression that 1631 
 is the right date of her birth, as against that given by her 
 biographer, but assigns no reason for his opinion. Possibly 
 he may have had the lines just referred to in his mind. At 
 any rate, Mrs. Philips knew^ best about her own age. 
 
 Perhaps the most natural of all Orinda's poems is that 
 on the death of her first-born, a son who died in his 
 thirteenth year : 
 
 IN MEMORY OF F P . 
 
 If I could ever write a lasting verse, 
 It should be laid, dear JSaint, upon thy hearse. 
 But Sorrow is no Muse, and does confess 
 That it least can what it would most express. 
 Yet that I may some bounds to grief allow, 
 I'll try if I can weep in numbers now. 
 Ah, beauteous Blossom too untimely dead ! 
 Whither? ah, whither is thy sweetness fled ? 
 
Katjiekine rniLirs. 7 
 
 Where are the charms that always did arise 
 From the prevailing language of thy eyes? 
 Where is thy beauteous and lovely mien, 
 And all the wonders that in thee were seen ? 
 Alas ! in vain, in vain on thee I rave ; 
 There is no pity in the stupid grave. 
 But so the bankrupt, sitting on the brim 
 Of those fierce billows which had ruined him, 
 Begs for his lost estate, and does complain 
 To the inexorable floods in vain. 
 As well we may enquire, when roses die, 
 To what retirement their sweet odours fly ; 
 Whither their virtues and their blushes haste, 
 When the short triumph of their life is past ; 
 Or call their perishing beauties back with tears, 
 As add one moment to thy finished years. 
 No, thou art gone, and thy presaging mind 
 So thriftily thy early hours designed, 
 That hasty death was baffled in his pride. 
 Since nothing of thee but thy body died. 
 Thy soul was up betimes, and so concerned 
 To grasp all excellence that could be learned, 
 That, finding nothing fill her thirsting here. 
 To the spring-head she went to quench it there. 
 
 Plainly, there is no striving after any effect here. The 
 lines are the simple expression of a tender and pure mother's 
 heart. A more ambitious piece, entitled " A Reverie," 
 begins in the following mellifluous fashion : — 
 
 " A chosen privacy, a cheap content. 
 And all the peace a friendship ever lent, 
 A rock which civil nature made a seat, 
 A willow that repulses all the heat. 
 The beauteous quiet of a summer's-day, 
 A brook which sobbed aloud and ran away. 
 Invited my repose, and then conspired 
 To entertain my fancy thus retired. 
 As Lucian's ferry-man aloft did view 
 The angry world, and then laughed at it too : 
 So all its sullen follies seem to me 
 But as a too- well acted tragedy." 
 
8 English Poetesses. 
 
 There is as much feeling for nature here as Orinda 
 is capable of; and, indeed, the lines show as much ap- 
 preciation of outward influences as can be detected in any 
 verse of the period. There is not much writing of the same 
 character in the poems we are now dealing with. Politics 
 and friendship, as have been before hinted, form her 
 favourite themes; and the following verses may serve to 
 illustrate the style adopted in their treatment : — 
 
 • FRIENDSHIP'S MYSTERY. 
 
 Come, my Lucasia, since we see 
 
 That miracles men's faith do move, 
 By wonder and by prodig}', 
 
 To the dull, angry w^orld let's prove 
 
 There's a religion in our love. 
 
 For though we were designed to agree 
 
 That fate no liberty destroys, 
 But our election is as free 
 
 As angels, who, with greedy choice, 
 
 Are yet determined to their joys. 
 
 Our hearts are doubled by the loss. 
 
 Here mixture is addition grown ; 
 We both diffuse, and both ingross ; 
 
 And we whose minds are so much one. 
 
 Never, yet ever, are alone. 
 
 \Ve court our own captivity 
 
 Than thrones more great and innocent : 
 
 'Twere Banishment to be set free 
 Since we wear fetters whose intent 
 Not bondage is, but ornament. 
 
 Divided joys are tedious found, 
 And griefs united easier grow ; 
 
 \Vc are ourselves but by rebound, 
 And all our titles shuffled so, 
 Both princes, and both subjects too. 
 
Aphra Behn. 9 
 
 Our hearts are mutual victims laid, 
 
 While they (such power in friendship lies) 
 
 Are altars, priests, and offerings made ; 
 And each heart which thus kindly dies 
 Grows deathless by the sacrifice. 
 
 Such was the style of the beautiful " matchless Orinda," 
 whose pure name heads the list of English poetesses. 
 Dryden and Roscommon wrote in adulation of her ; Jeremy 
 Taylor dedicated his " Discourse on Friendship " to her ; 
 and Cowley, in the course of a long rigmarole addressed to 
 her memory, declared that 
 
 *' If Apollo should design 
 A woman Laureate to make, 
 Without dispute he would Orinda take. 
 Though Sappho and the famous nine 
 Stood by, and did repine." 
 
 It is a pity, almost, that the next name must have a 
 
 place accorded to it ; certainly a pity that beside any 
 
 records of what the more exalted spirit of woman has 
 
 achieved, mention should be made of so unsexed a writer 
 
 as Mrs. Ai^hra Behn. Yet she w^as a woman, 
 
 ^ , , 11,. Aphra Behn. 
 
 writmg much that was vigorous and a little that 
 
 was poetical, and so must needs be catalogued among the 
 
 verse writers with whom it is the business of these pages to 
 
 deal. 
 
 This author came of a good Kentish family named 
 
 Johnson, and was born at Canterbury in the year 1642. 
 
 Her father was related to Lord Willoughby, through whom 
 
 he procured an appointment as Governor of Surinam and 
 
 the thirty-six West Indian Islands. He died on the passage 
 
 thither, however, and his daughter Aphra, with her mother 
 
 and the rest of the family, made the best of life that was 
 
 possible, and settled in Surinam. It was there that she 
 
lo English Poetesses, 
 
 became acquainted with a slave prince named Oroonoko, 
 whose sufferings and adventures she afterwards framed into 
 a moving narrative which is the one redeeming piece of 
 healthy writing among her many productions. It is indeed 
 a noble piece of pleading for an oppressed race, and further 
 abounds in excellent descriptions of natural beauty such as 
 is to be found in the luxuriance of the West Indies. 
 
 This novel of Oroonoko was written and published at 
 the request of Charles 11. , to whom Aphra had related her 
 experiences on her return to England ; and the monarch 
 w^as so charmed with her looks and her wit that he conceived 
 the notion of employing her extensively as a political spy. 
 Shortly after her landing in England she became the wife, 
 and in a few months the widow, of a Dutch merchant in 
 London named Behn ; but neither marriage nor widowed 
 grief prevented her from courting the smiles of the king, 
 who by and by sent her to Antwerp to intrigue for him 
 during the Dutch War in 1666. There she acquired a fatal 
 ascendency over an important person, one Van der Albert. 
 It seems her charms had first ensnared him in England, 
 whither he had gone to visit her Dutch husband. Among 
 the secrets which she wormed out of him, unfortunately the 
 most important was communicated only to be neglected. 
 Mrs. Behn sent word to London that De Ruyter was under- 
 stood to be sailing for the Thames with the purpose of de- 
 stroying its shipping. The warning was pooh-poohed at 
 Court, we know now with how little reason ; whereupon 
 Mrs. Behn threw up her mission in disgust, and made for 
 London again, which, however, she did not reach except 
 through shij)wreck. By this time, alas I veritable shipwreck 
 had been made of her womanly reputation. Out, of favour^ 
 at Court, and, indeed, in favour nowhere else except in that 
 doubtful society where anything is licensed that is savoured 
 with wit, poor Mrs. Behn threw modesty to the winds, 
 and devoted herself to making a living as a writer of 
 
Aphra Be JIN. II 
 
 fashionable plays. Licentiousness was what principally 
 made a play fashionable then, and she strove to be very 
 fashionable so far as this went. It is rather a fearful task 
 for a modern critic's eyes to read through the corrupt plays 
 which this woman put on the stage. They are not at all 
 wanting in ingenious construction, their dialogue is usually 
 pert and amusing, and that is all that need be said of them, 
 except that it is almost a pity that even such plots and such 
 dialogue should suffice lo preserve on any shelves the writings 
 of so impure a pen. 
 
 It would be uncharitable not to make some excuse 
 for this writer. She had to work for bread, and it was 
 so much easier for a writer to make money then, if he or 
 she gave in to the taste of the hour for coarseness. Wit ran 
 riot in these free days, and it had come to be doubtful, 
 among actors and playgoers, whether there could be laughter- 
 moving humour which was not highly spiced. And a wit 
 (Mrs. Behn was really something of a genuine wit) will 
 sacrifice so much, rather than lose the public's appreciative 
 chuckle I Accordingly, she wrote as recklessly as any of her 
 male competitors for the hour's fame, and doubtless said to 
 herself that she was at least no worse than some of the most 
 successful. She had many friends, and some loved her for 
 certain kindlinesses of heart of which we are glad to hear. 
 Admirers bestowed on her the appellation of divine Astraea, 
 which has been preserved, with a qualification, in Pope's 
 line : — 
 
 " The stage how loosely doth Astraea tread." 
 
 The beauty and the spark of genius with which nature had 
 endowed her brought her neither fortune nor peace. It was 
 a sad career, only a little redeemed by industry, misdirected 
 though that was. On the i6th of April, 1689, she died 
 through the carelessness of a i)liysician, and the cloisters of 
 Westminster Abbey afforded her a resting-place more 
 
i 2 Englis/i Poetesses. 
 
 honoured than she deserved. The following specimens 
 of her poetical talent are nearly all that is quotable from 
 her works : — 
 
 A SONG. 
 
 Love in fantastic triumph sate, 
 
 Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed. 
 For whom fresh pains he did create, 
 
 And strange tyrannic power he showed ; 
 From thy bright eyes he took his fires, 
 
 Which round about in space he hurled ; 
 But 'twas from mine he took desires 
 
 Enough to undo the amorous world. 
 
 From me he took his sighs and tears, 
 
 From thee his pride and cruelty, 
 From me his languishment and fears. 
 
 And every killing dart from thee : 
 Thus thou and I the god have armed. 
 
 And set him up a deity. 
 But my poor heart alone is harmed, 
 
 While thine the victor is, and free. 
 
 ON THE DEATH OF W^\LLER. 
 
 How to thy sacred memory shall I bring, 
 W^orthy thy fame, a grateful oftering ? 
 I who, by toils of sickness, am become 
 Almost as near as thou art to a tomb, 
 W^hile every soft and every tender strain 
 Is ruffled and ill-natured grown with pain I 
 But at thy name my languished muse revives. 
 And a new spark in the dull ashes strives; 
 I hear thy tuneful verse, thy song divine, 
 And am inspired by every charming line. 
 But oh ! 
 
 What inspiration at the second hand. 
 Can an immortal elegy command ? 
 Unless, like pious offerings, mine should be 
 Made sacred, being consecrate to thee. 
 
AruRA Br.nx. 13 
 
 Eternal as thy own almigluy verse, 
 
 Should be the trophies that adorn thy hearse, 
 
 The thought illustrious, and the fancy young, 
 
 The wit sublime, the judgment fine and strong, 
 
 Soft as thy notes to vSacharissa sung : 
 
 Whilst mine, like transitory flowers, decay, 
 
 That come to deck thy tomb a short-lived day, 
 
 Such tributes are, like tenures, only fit 
 
 To show from whom we hold our right to wit. 
 
 Long did the untuned world in ignorance stray, 
 Producing nothing that was great and gay. 
 Till taught by thee the true poetic way ; 
 Rough were the tracks before, dull and obscure. 
 Nor pleasure nor instruction could procure ; 
 Their thoughtless labours could no passion move, — 
 Sure, in that age, the poets knew not love. 
 That charming god, like apparitions, then. 
 Was only talked on, but ne'er seen, by men. 
 Darkness was o'er the Muse's land displayed, 
 And even the chosen tribe, unguided, strayed, 
 Till, by thee rescued from the Egyptian night, 
 They now look up and view the god of light 
 That taught them how to love, and how to write. 
 
 Altogether, besides Oroonoko (1698), and two or three 
 other tales, Mrs. Behn wrote some eighteen plays, the best 
 of which is The Rover ; or the Banished Cavalieis (1677 ; a 
 second part in 1681). She also wrote and edited several 
 volumes of old poems, translated Rochefoucauld's " Maxims," 
 and Fontenelle's " Plurality of Worlds," and published some 
 fanciful love-letters. A short life of her will be found in 
 Pearson's reprint of her works, in six volumes, 187 1. 
 
 There was one sort of scorn Mrs. Behn was not sub- 
 jected to, the sneer of the dissolute at pretensions to 
 
14 English Poetesses. 
 
 innocence ; but another writer of her sex and time was 
 
 treated to plenty of it The Duchess of New- 
 The Duchess , . ^ , ,.. . . j- i 
 
 of Newcastle ^"^^^^ ^^ <^"^ ^^ whose quahties it is exceedingly 
 
 difficult to form an exact estimate ; and the 
 frankness of her disclosures with respect to herself is not 
 the least embarrassing evidence regarding her. She had 
 a conceit that rose to an amazing and amusing serenity ; 
 yet the artless candour of its utterances disarms criticism 
 of contempt, and positively creates out of her self-esteem 
 a pleasantry of character that half resembles a virtue. 
 She possesses abundance of sense, but very little of it 
 common sense. Humour and wit are native in her ; even 
 genius can be claimed for portions of her best work ; but so 
 woefully did she lack consistency of taste and that species 
 of literary judgment w^hich has been termed the power 
 of selecting the significant, that her works are the oddest 
 medleys ever hurried through a printing press. Each of her 
 volumes reminds one of a lady's overturned work-basket, 
 into w^hich had crept all kinds of consequent and incon- 
 sequent things, with even a jewel or two among the mass. 
 She possessed a perfect frenzy for writing. At tw^elve she 
 was fond of scribbling on philosophical subjects ; and 
 in the deepest distress of her chequered life, as in its 
 brightest moments, the sight of mere wet ink on the 
 page seems to have solaced her beyond anything else. 
 She never revised what she had thus once committed 
 to paper, being of the opinion that the work of revision 
 would have hindered her productive powers, as, indeed, it 
 often would, had she duly considered the quality of the 
 matter thrown off so hastily. There is no method either in 
 her arrangement of subjects or in her style. One of the 
 sentences in her autobiography is twelve pages long. Yet 
 the hizarrerie of her modes of working frequently produces 
 powerful effects, and at times you will come on smooth 
 passages of her works in which the diction is almost as 
 
TiiK Due 1 1 ESS OF Xrutastle. 
 
 ^5 
 
 perfect as that which the most fastidious artifice could have 
 devised. She was but a meddler in all matters of learning, 
 but the fact only gave her the courage that is often the chief 
 characteristic of smatterers ; and there was surely excuse for 
 her confidence when even a body like Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, could heap hyperbolic fibs upon the poor lady's 
 head by calling her 
 
 " Princess of philosophers, who hath dispelled errors, 
 And restored peace to learning's commonwealth." 
 
 The Duchess of Newcastle, throughout her life, felt that 
 impulse towards literary creation which the spontaneity of 
 genius always feels. But she had received no education 
 whatever for literature, and was never called upon to put 
 any curb on her fantasy, or subject her methods of inquiry 
 to any laws. We have therefore to consider her, in our 
 literature, as a kind of over-grown, spoilt girl, with a 
 great deal of sweetness and purity and talent, and folly 
 not seldom. Perhaps her writings could not have survived 
 to this century but for the interest lent to them by the 
 adventurous private history of her husband and herself. 
 Certainly the few who read her now are mostly sent to her 
 pages by the encomiums bestowed on them by Charles Lamb. 
 He speaks of '* that princely woman, the thrice noble 
 Margaret Newcastle ; " and in another familiar passage 
 of his works the essayist thus expresses himself : — " When 
 a book is at once both good and rare ; when the individual 
 is almost the species, and, when that perishes, 
 
 * We know not where is that Promethean torch 
 That can its lights rehimine ; ' 
 
 such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of 
 Newcastle, by the Duchess ; no casket is rich enough, no 
 casing sufficiently durable, to honour and keep safe such 
 a jewel." 
 
1 6 Engl IS}! Poetesses. 
 
 No later critic lias su[jjjortcd in writing; the emphatic 
 praise of Elia, though a recent editor of Her Grace's 
 works, Mr. Edward Jenkins, exhibits much sympathetic 
 insight into his author's character. In order, however, to 
 exhibit some grounds for Lamb's admiration of this 
 "princely woman," and also, I confess, with the object 
 of surj)rising many readers with a style not far removed 
 from that of Lamb himself, I cannot refrain from at 
 once quoting a specimen of the Duchess's prose. It is 
 right to add that in this example, as in several subsequent 
 cases, the passages selected from her writings have been 
 slightly modernised by Mr. Jenkins's judicious editorship. 
 
 OF GENTLEWOMEN THAT ARE SENT TO BOARDING 
 SCHOOLS. 
 
 It is dangerous to put young women to boarding-schools, unless 
 •their parents live so disorderly that their children may grow wicked 
 or base by their examples. For most commonly in these schools they 
 learn more vices than manners. It is a good task for one body to 
 bring up one child well, and, as they ought to be bred, at most two or 
 three ; but it is too much for one to breed up many — as for one woman 
 to breed up twenty young maids. It is true they may educate their 
 persons, but it is a doubt whether they do or can educate their minds. 
 They may teach them to sing well, but it is a question whether they 
 teach them to think well. They may teach them measures with the 
 feet, and yet to mistake the measures of a good life. They may teach 
 them to write by rule, but forget the rules of modesty. 
 
 For the danger is, in those schools where there are a great many 
 gentlewomen of several families and births, degrees of ages, various 
 humours, different dispositions, natures, and qualities, that they do like 
 several sorts of fruits, which, when they are gathered and heaped 
 together, soon pulrify and corrupt, and some become rotten at the core. 
 Whereas, if every pear, apple, and plum were laid by themselves apart 
 in a dry and clean place, they would be found wholesome, and last as 
 long as it was their nature to last. So if young women were bred 
 singly, carefully, and industriously, one by one, there would be no 
 danger of their learning from each other craft, dissembling, fraud, spite, 
 slander, and the like. Besides, where there are many together of 
 
The Duchess of Newcastle, 17 
 
 several dispositions, they are not only apt to catch the infection of ill 
 qualities from each other, but often breed vices, which ruin them- 
 selves, their fortunes and families, and, like maggots, consume their 
 estates, or eat a hole in their reputation. 
 
 Besides, all board scholars of the effeminate sex are like sale-meat 
 dressed at a cook's shop, which always tastes of the dripping-pan or 
 smoke. So most commonly those that are bred at schools have a 
 smack of the school, at least in their behaviour — that is, constraint. 
 And their exercises, though they are commendable in women of quality, 
 yet it is not these exercises or virtues (as they call them in Italy) which 
 give them good breeding, but to instruct their youth in useful knowledge, 
 to correct their ignorance with right understanding, to settle their minds 
 to virtue, to govern their passions by reason, to rule their insatiable or 
 distempered appetites with temperance ; to teach them noble principles, 
 honourable actions, modest behaviours, civil demeanours — to be cleanly, 
 patient and pious ; things which none can teach either by example or 
 instruction, or both, but those that have been nobly bred themselves. 
 
 Though not faultless, that is very fine prose for these 
 times, or, indeed, for any time at all. The piece has 
 been chosen because of its brevity. There are brighter, 
 but more prolix passages in both the autobiography and the 
 life of her husband, in which the Duchess's strength and 
 subtlety of pen are even more impressive. A touch of her 
 quality having been given, let us see what her life was. 
 
 Some of the finest pages in Clarendon's history relate to 
 passages in the life of the first Duke of Newcastle. The 
 son of Sir Charles Cavendish, he was born in 1592, and in- 
 herited the family baronetcy at the age of fifteen. So early 
 had his talents asserted themselves, that he had been from 
 his boyhood designed for public life, and in literature and 
 science was provided with the best instruction that could 
 be procured, 'i'he promise of his youth appears to have 
 been rapidly fulfilled, for King James made him a Knight 
 of the Bath in 1610 ; and ten years later he became Baron 
 Ogle and Viscount Mansfield. In Charles's subsequent 
 reign he strode still farther up the steeps of preferment, and 
 was created successively Dord Cavendisli of Bolsover, and 
 c 
 
i8 English Poetesses. 
 
 Earl of Newcastle. In 1638 he became governor to the 
 Prince of Wales ; and the following year, in which Scottish 
 troubles broke out, saw him at the head of what was de- 
 nominated the Prince's Volunteer Troop of Horse. The 
 next pliasc of his career constituted him commander-in-chief 
 of all the forces north of the Trent, and in this position he 
 succeeded in defeating Fairfax, a service for which he re- 
 ceived the dignity of Marquis of Newcastle. The reverses 
 of 1644, however, were such as put an end to his hopes and 
 his cause. At Marston Moor the King's affairs received 
 the final blow from which they could not recover, and as 
 for Newcastle, he, with his sons and a few friends, made sail 
 for Hamburg, and took refuge in continental exile. 
 
 Queen Henrietta, meanwhile, had fled to France with 
 her retinue, amid which was a strange-minded young maid- 
 of-honour named Margaret Lucas, daughter of Sir Charles 
 Lucas. She belonged to a family of which all the sons were 
 valiant, and all the daughters virtuous. Fond of the com- 
 pany of her own speculations, and little in love with Court 
 routine and Court fops and belles, she was so diffident and 
 reticent in her manners that by many she was regarded as 
 little better than a simpleton. vSo we learn from her own 
 statements. Her brother. Lord Lucas, had been solicitous 
 regarding her unfriended position at the temporary Court in 
 PYance, and seems to have asked his acquaintance, the 
 Marquis of Newcastle, to pay the young girl some attention. 
 This the Marquis^ now a widower, took care to do on his 
 arrival at Paris, and with such goodwill and effect that the 
 little bashful maid-of-honour consented to become his 
 second spouse. One of the most natural passages the 
 Duchess ever wrote refers to this courtship and the life-long 
 attachment that followed it, sweetening their whole lives, 
 and endowing them with a healthy indifference to worldly 
 fortune. 
 
 The beautiful union liad, in truth, hardshii)s in ])lenty in 
 
The Duchess of Newcastle, 19 
 
 store for them. The Marquis's estate had been all con- 
 fiscated, and he was living abroad entirely upon the meagre 
 expectations of returning fortune. 
 
 '' After my Lord was married, having no estate or means left him 
 to maintain himself and his family, he was necessitated to seek for credit 
 and live upon the courtesy of those that were pleased to trust him : 
 which, although they did for some while and shewed themselves very 
 civil to my Lord, yet they grew weary at length, insomuch that his 
 steward was forced one time to tell him that he was not able to pro- 
 vide a dinner for him, for his creditors were resolved to trust him no 
 longer. My Lord being always a great master of his passions, was — at 
 least showed himself— not in any manner troubled at it, but in a pleasant 
 humour told me that I must of necessity pawn my clothes to make so 
 much money as would procure a dinner." 
 
 The resources of credit, however, were again accorded 
 to them at Antwerp, and it seems that when Prince Charles 
 dined with them there, he laughingly remarked that their 
 credit got them better meat than his own could procure. 
 Yet at last the tradesmen grew clamorous here also, and 
 the straits of the noble pair forced the penniless Marchioness 
 to England in search of relief. The wives of those whose 
 estates had been confiscated were receiving from the Govern- 
 ment certain allowances, and the Marchioness had bethought 
 her to apply for this gratuity in her own case. But it turned 
 out that, having married her husband after his fall, she had 
 no claim such as the other ladies in misfortune were per- 
 mitted to bring forward ; and after a vain year and a half of 
 importunity in London, fruitful cf nothing more than the 
 writing of her "Philosophical Fancies," and part of "The 
 World's Olio," the Marchioness at last gave up hope of 
 any restitution, and, with sadness and eagerness together, 
 made her way back to her husband, with whom, as she wTites, 
 she would rather be as a poor beggar, than be mistress of 
 the world absented from him. 
 
 There are few more striking pictures of the distress so 
 c 2 
 
20 English Poetesses, 
 
 loyally and uncomplainingly borne by brave and good men 
 for the sake of the Stuart family than the story of this 
 Cavalier Marquis. Reft of every honour he had earned, he 
 is reported to have passed his exiled days in a content that 
 astonished those who beheld it. His estates were not 
 merely confiscated for the time to the Roundheads, but wan- 
 tonly and irretrievably damaged to the almost incredible 
 value of ^941,303. Even his own party had not treated 
 him well, and Rupert's haughtiness had gone the length of 
 insult more than once, before Marston Moor brought disaster 
 upon both alike. He was still entirely faithful to the King, 
 however. He had been his tutor, and he loved him. His 
 wife was as arrant a Royalist as the Marquis himself, and 
 writes of the King as if he were a St. Charles Borromeo, 
 instead of an idle man of pleasure who wished to be a king 
 again because he would have more money and better mis- 
 tresses. These pitiful Stuarts ! As some one has remarked, — 
 the devotion of England's noblest and bravest blood for 
 generations would have made great kings of any other race, 
 surely ! 
 
 The Marquis was one of the first to congratulate the 
 monarch at the Hague on the recovery of his kingdom. 
 On the accomplishment of the Restoration he was created 
 Duke of Newcastle, and received again the estates which 
 had suffered so much during his absence. He never re- 
 turned to public or Court life. He and his Duchess lived on 
 in their northern retirement, happy in themselves, and in the 
 peace of mind their previous troubles had so endeared to 
 them. The Duke wrote a little, amused himself with 
 horses, and fleeted the time carelessly, like the gentle Duke 
 in Arden, feeling 
 
 > " These woods 
 More free from peril than the envious court." 
 
 As for the Duchess, she, too, enjoyed her Arden, somewhat 
 
The Duchess of Newcastle, 21 
 
 as an overgrown and happily married Rosalind might have 
 done. In this fashion are the pair described : — 
 
 My Lord is a person whose humour is neither extravagantly 
 merry nor unnecessarily sad ; his mind is above his fortune, as his 
 generosity is above his purse, his courage above danger, his justice above 
 bribes, his friendship above self-interest, his truth too firm for falsehood, 
 his temperance beyond temptation. His conversation is pleasing and 
 affable, his wit is quick and his judgment strong, distinguishing clearly 
 without clouds of mistakes, dissecting truths so as they justly admit not 
 of disputes : his discourse is always new upon the occasion without 
 troubling the hearers with old historical relations, nor stuffed with use- 
 less sentences. His behaviour is manly without formality and free with- 
 out constraint : and his mind hath the same freedom. His nature is 
 noble, and his disposition sweet. His loyalty is proved by his public 
 service for his King and Country, by his often hazarding of his life, by 
 the loss of his estate and the banishment of his person, by his necessitated 
 condition and his constant and patient suffering. 
 
 # # # # # 
 
 He recreates himself with his pen, wTiting what his wit dictates 
 to him. But I pass my time rather with scribbling than writing, with 
 words than wit. 
 
 # * # # # 
 
 As for my study of books it was little, yet I chose rather to read 
 than to employ my time in any other work or practice. But my 
 serious study could not be much by reason I took great delight in at- 
 tiring, fine dressing and fashions, especially such fashions as I did invent 
 myself, not taking that pleasure in such fashions as were invented by 
 others. I did dislike that any should follow my fashions, for I always 
 took delight in a singularity, even in accoutrements of habits. But 
 whatsoever I was addicted to either in fashions of clothes, contempla- 
 tion of thought, actions of life — they were lawful, honest, honourable 
 and modest, which I can avouch to the world with a great confidence 
 because it is a pure truth. As for my disposition, it is more inclining to 
 melancholy than merry, but not crabbed or peevish melancholy, but 
 soft, melting, solitary and contemplative melancholy. And I am apt to 
 weep rather than laugh, not that I often do either of them. Also I am 
 tender-natured, for it troubles my conscience to kill a fly, and the groans 
 of a dying beast strike my soul. Also where I place a particular affec- 
 tion, I love extraordinarily and constantly^ yet not fondly but soberly 
 and observingly : not to hang about them [I love] as a trouble, but to 
 
22 English Poetesses, 
 
 wait upon them as a servant. This affection will take no root but where 
 I think or find merit, and have leave both from Divine and moral laws. 
 Yet I find this passion so troublesome, that it is the only torment of my 
 life ; for fear any evil misfortune, or accident, or sickness or death should 
 come unto them— insomuch that I am never freely at rest. Likewise I 
 am grateful : for I never receive a courtesy but I am impatient and 
 troubled until I can return it. Also I am chaste both by nature and 
 education, insomuch as I do abhor an unchaste thought. Likewise I am 
 seldom angry, as my servants may witness for me, for I rather choose to 
 suffer some inconveniences than disturb my thoughts, which makes me 
 many times wink at their faults ; but when I am angry I am very angry 
 — but yet it is soon over and I am easily pacified, if it be not such an 
 injury as to create a hate. Neither am I apt to be exceptious or jealous, 
 but if I have the least symptom of that passion, I declare it to those it 
 concerns, for I never let it lie smouldering in my breast to breed a 
 malignant disease in the mind, which might break out in extravagant 
 passions, or railing speeches, or indiscreet actions. But I examine 
 moderately, reason soberly, and plead gently in my own behalf ; through 
 a desire to keep those affections I had, or at least thought to have. And 
 truly I am so vain, as to be so self-conceited or so naturally partial as to 
 think my friends have as much reason to love me as another, since none can 
 love more sincerely than I ; and it were an injustice to prefer a fainter affec- 
 tion or to esteem the body more than the mind. Likewise I am neither 
 spiteful, envious, nor malicious. I repine not at the gifts that nature or 
 fortune bestows upon others: yet I am a great emulator: for, though I wish 
 none worse than they are, nor fear any should be better than they are, 
 yet it is lawful for me to wish myself the best, and to do my honest 
 endeavours thereunto. I think it no crime to wish myself the exactest 
 of Nature's works, my thread of life the longest, my chain of destiny 
 the strongest, my mind the peaceablest, my life the pleasantest, my 
 death the easiest, and myself the greatest Saint in heaven : also to do 
 my endeavour, so far as honour and honesty doth allow of, to be the 
 highest on Fortune's wheel, and to hold the wheel from turning, if I 
 can. And if it be commendable to wish another's good, it were a sin 
 not to wish my own. For as envy is a vice, so emulation is a virtue : 
 but emulation is in the way to ambition — nay, it is a noble ambition. I 
 fear my ambition inclines to vainglory ; for I am very ambitious. Vet 
 'tis neither for beauty, wit, titles, wealth, or power, except as they are 
 steps to raise me to Fame's Tower, which is to live by remembrance 
 in after ages. Likewise I am what the vulgar calls proud. Not out of 
 .self-conceit or to slight or condemn any, but scorning to do a base or 
 mean act, and disdaining rude or unworthy persons, insomuch that if I 
 
The Duchess of Newcastle, 2^ 
 
 should find any that were rude or too bold, I should be apt to be so passion- 
 ate as to affront them, if I could, unless discretion should get betwixt my 
 passion and their boldness, which sometimes perchance it might, if dis- 
 cretion should crowd hard for place. For though I am naturally bashful, 
 yet, in such a case, my spirits would be all on fire. Otherwise I am so 
 well-bred as to be civil to all persons of all degrees or qualities. Like- 
 wise I am so proud of or rather just to my Lord, as to abate nothing of 
 the quality of his wife ; for if honour be the mark of merit, and the 
 royal favour of his master, who will favour none but those who have a 
 merit to deserve, it were a baseness for me to neglect the ceremony 
 thereof. In some cases I am naturally a coward, in other cases very 
 valiant. As for example, if any of my nearest friends were in danger, I 
 should never consider my life in striving to help them, though I were 
 sure to do them no good : and I would willingly, nay, cheerfully, resign 
 my life for their sakes. Likewise I should not spare my life if honour 
 
 bid me die Also, as I am not covetous, so I am not 
 
 prodigal ; but of the two I am inclining to be prodigal — I cannot say to 
 a vain prodigality, because I imagine it is to a profitable end : for per- 
 ceiving the world is given or apt to honour the outside more than the 
 inside, worshipping show more than substance, I am so vain (if it be a 
 vanity) as to endeavour to be worshipped rather than not to be regarded. 
 Yet I shall never be so prodigal as to impoverish my friends, or go be- 
 yond the limits or facility of our estate. Though I desire to appear at 
 the best advantage whilst I live in the view of the public world, yet I 
 would most willingly exclude myself, so as never to see the face of any 
 creature but my Lord as long as I lived ; inclosing myself like an anchoret, 
 wearing a frieze gown, tied with a cord about my waist. 
 
 But I hope my readers will not think me vain for writing my life, 
 since there have been many more that have done the like, as Caesar and 
 Ovid, and many more, both men and women ; and I know no reason I 
 may not do it as well as they. But I verily believe some censuring 
 readers will scornfully say, ' Why hath this Lady writ her own life ? 
 since none cares to know whose daughter she was, or whose wife she is, 
 or how she was bred, or what fortunes she had, or what humour or dis- 
 position she was of?' I answer that it is true that 'tis of no purpose 
 to the Reader, but it is to the Authoress. I write it for my own sake, 
 not theirs. Neither did I intend this piece for to delight, but to divulge, 
 not to please the fancy, but to tell the truth, lest after ages should 
 mistake in not knowing I was the daughter to one Master Lucas of St. 
 Jo/ill's, near Colchester in Essex, and second wife to the Lord Marquis 
 of Newcastle ; for my Lord having had two wives, I might easily have 
 been mistaken, especially if I should die and my Lord marry again. 
 
24 English Poetesses. 
 
 It is better to have given the whole of this passage, for it 
 contains specimens of all the excellences and faults, all the 
 sense and whimsicality, so characteristic of the writer. With 
 the last sentence quoted, her autobiography abruptly closes. 
 
 As has already been hinted, the dissolute Court wits of 
 the day made merry about the domestic virtue of the Duke 
 and Duchess of Newcastle; and, possibly, at the Restoration, 
 the pair had felt that they had grown out of sympathy with 
 all things of the Court, and so were the more content to re- 
 tire from it. The ending of their lives was quite unevent- 
 ful. The Duke lived for three years after the Duchess, who 
 died in 1673. Some who knew her have recorded that her 
 person was graceful ; in company, and especially among 
 strangers, she would not speak much ; she was pious and 
 generous ; an excellent economist, at the same time, and 
 a pattern in her conduct towards servants. So, even had 
 she not written for fame, she must still have been con- 
 spicuous for many attractions. 
 
 Of the numerous pieces of verse the Duchess of New- 
 castle composed, two only are at all known, save to students. 
 These two are, "The Pastime of the Queen of the Fairies," 
 and "A Dialogue between Melancholy and Mirth." Fairies 
 are strangely at a discount in poetry, now-a-days. They 
 have become too cheap. Nobody will write about them. I 
 have even heard an excellent living poet declare that he dis- 
 likes them. In the noontide days of our literature, however, 
 it was otherwise with Mab and her retinue ; and yet the 
 Duchess's poem on the subject compares well with anything 
 writers since Shakspeare have produced upon it. As a critic 
 has pointed out, its style resembles Herrick's workmanship 
 occasionally. Every line is not so good as it might be ; 
 
 " Omelettes made of ant-eggs new," 
 
 is rather repellent, for instance. But the lightness of the 
 rhythm, which sways and dances like a flower on which a 
 
The Duchess of Newcastle. 25 
 
 fairy would perch, the general daintiness of the imagery, 
 and the completeness of the description, make the piece 
 worthy of a place in any anthology of our literature. It 
 originally occurred in the volume by the Duchess entitled 
 " Poems and Fancies " (1653). 
 
 THE PASTIME OF THE QUEEN OF FAH^IES. 
 
 Queen Mab and all her Fairy fry, 
 
 Dance on a pleasant molehill high : 
 
 With fine straw pipes, sweet music's pleasure 
 
 They make and keep just time and measure. 
 
 All hand in hand, around, around. 
 
 They dance upon the P^airy ground. 
 
 And when she leaves her dancing-hall 
 
 She doth for her attendants call. 
 
 To wait upon her to a bower. 
 
 Where she doth sit beneath a flower. 
 
 To shade her from the moonshine bright ; 
 
 And gnats do sing for her delight. 
 
 The whilst the bat doth fly about 
 
 To keep in order all the rout. 
 
 She on a dewy leaf doth bathe. 
 
 And as she sits the leaf doth wave : 
 
 Like a new fallen flake of snow 
 
 All her white limbs in beauty show. 
 
 Her garments fair her maids put on, 
 
 Made of the pure light from the sun. 
 
 From whence such colours she inshades 
 
 In every object she invades. 
 
 Then to her dinner she goes straight, 
 
 Where all her imps in order wait. 
 
 Upon a mushroom there is spread 
 
 A cover fine of spider's web : 
 
 And for her stool a thistle-down ; 
 
 And for her cup an acorn's crown, 
 
 Wherein strong nectar there is filled, 
 
 That from sweet flowers is distilled. 
 
 Flies of all sorts both fat and good, 
 
 For snipe, quail, partridge, are her food. 
 
 Omelettes made of ant -eggs new — 
 
 Of such high meats she eats but few. 
 
26 English Poetesses. 
 
 Her milk is from the dormouse lulder, 
 
 Which makes her cheese and cream and butter : 
 
 This they do mix in many a knack, 
 
 And fresh-laid ants' eggs therein crack : — 
 
 Both pudding, custard, and seed-cake, 
 
 Her skilled cook well knows how to l)ake. 
 
 To sweeten them the bee doth bring 
 
 Pure honey gathered by her sting : 
 
 But for her guard serves grosser meat — 
 
 They of the stall-fed dormouse eat. . 
 
 When dined, she calls, to take the air. 
 
 Her coach, which is a nutshell fair ; 
 
 Lined soft it is and rich within. 
 
 Made of a glistering adder's skin, 
 
 And there six crickets draw her fast, 
 
 When she a journey takes in haste : 
 
 Or else two serve to pace a round. 
 
 And trample on the fairy ground. 
 
 To hawk sometimes she takes delight, 
 
 Her bird a hornet swift for flight. 
 
 Whose horns do serve for talons strong. 
 
 To gripe the partridge-fly among. 
 
 But if she will a hunting go, 
 
 The lizard answers for a doe ; 
 
 It is so swift and fleet in chase, 
 
 That her slow coach cannot keep pace ; 
 
 Then on the grasshopper she'll ride 
 
 And gallop in the forest wide. 
 
 Her bow is of a willow l)ranch, 
 
 To shoot the lizard on the haunch : 
 
 Her arrow sharp, much like a ]:>ladc, 
 
 Of a rosemary leaf is made. 
 
 Then home she's summoned by the cock, 
 
 W^ho gives her warning what's o'clock. 
 
 And when the moon doth hide her head, 
 
 Her day is done, she goes to bed. 
 
 Meteors do serve, when they are l^righl, 
 
 As torches do, to give her light, 
 
 Glow-worms for candles are lit uj^ 
 
 Set on the table while she sup. 
 
 But women, the inconstant kind. 
 
 Ne'er in one place content their n^ind : 
 
; The Duchess of Newcastle, 27 
 
 I She calls her chariot, and away 
 
 F To upper earth — impatient of long stay. 
 
 The stately palace in which the Queen dwells 
 
 Is a fal)ric l)uilt of hodmandod shells : 
 
 The hangings thereof a rainbow that's thin, 
 
 Which shew wondrous fine as you enter in ; 
 
 The chambers are made of amber that's clear, 
 f Which gives a sweet smell when fire is near : 
 
 \ Her bed is a cherry carved throughout, 
 
 \j And with a bright butterfly's wing hung about: 
 
 Her sheets are made of doves' eyes skin — 
 
 Her pillow's a violet bud laid therein : 
 
 The doors of her chamber are transparent glass. 
 
 Where the Queen may be seen as within she doth pass. 
 
 The doors are locked fast with silver pins ; 
 
 The Queen is asleep and now man's day begins. 
 
 A DIALOGUE BETWEEN MELANCHOLY AND MIRTH. 
 
 As I sat musing by myself alone, 
 
 My thoughts brought several things to work upon : 
 
 ****** 
 
 At last came two which were in various dress, 
 
 One Melancholy, the other did Mirth express ; 
 
 Melancholy was all in black array. 
 
 And Mirth was drest in colours fresh and gay. 
 
 Mirth laughing came, and, running to me, flung 
 
 Her fat white arms about my neck, and hung. 
 
 Embraced and kissed me oft, and stroked my cheek, 
 
 Saying she would no other lover seek. 
 
 " I'll sing you songs and please you every day, 
 
 Invent new sports to pass the time away, 
 
 I'll keep your heart and guard it from that thief 
 
 Dull melancholy care, or sadder grief: 
 
 And make your eyes with mirth to overflow, 
 
 And full with springing blood your cheeks shall grow. 
 
 \'our legs shall nimble be, your body light, 
 
 And all your spirits rise like birds in flight : 
 
28 English Poetesses. 
 
 Mirth shall digest your meat and make you strong, 
 
 Shall give you health and your short days prolong. 
 
 Refuse me not, but take me to your wife. 
 
 For I shall make you happy all your life. 
 
 If you take Melancholy, she'll make you lean, 
 
 Your cheeks shall hollow grow, your jaws be seen : 
 
 Your eyes shall buried be within your head, 
 
 You'll look as pale as if you were quite dead. 
 
 She'll make you start at every noise you hear. 
 
 And visions strange shall in your eyes appear. 
 
 Your stomach cold and raw, digesting naught : 
 
 \'our liver dry : your heart with sorrow fraught. 
 
 Thus would it be if you to her were wed. 
 
 But better far 'twould be that you were dead. 
 
 Her voice is low and gives a hollow sound : 
 
 She hates the light, in darkness only found : 
 
 Or set with blinking lamps or tapers small, 
 
 Which various shadows make against the wall. 
 
 She loves nought else but noise that discords make. 
 
 As croaking frogs which dwell down in the lake. 
 
 The raven hoarse, the mandrake's hollow groan, 
 
 And shrieking owls in night which fly alone, 
 
 The tolling bell which for the dead rings out, 
 
 A mill where rushing waters run about, 
 
 The roaring winds which shake the cedars tall, 
 
 Plough up the seas and beat the rocks withal. 
 
 She loves to walk in the still moonshine night. 
 
 Where in a thick dark grove she takes delight. 
 
 In hollow cave, house thatched, or lowly cell, 
 
 She loves to live, and all alone to dwell, 
 
 Her ears are stopped with thoughts, her eyes purl>]ind. 
 
 For all she hears or sees is in the mind. 
 
 (Though in her mind luxuriously she lives. 
 
 Imagination several pleasures gives). 
 
 Then leave her to herself, alone to dwell. 
 
 Let you and I with mirth and pleasure swell, 
 
 x\nd drink long, lusty draughts from Bacchus' bowl, 
 
 Until our brains on vaporous waves do roll ; 
 
 Let's 'joy ourselves in amorous delights, 
 
 There's none so happy as the carpet knights ! " 
 
 Melancholy, with sad and sober face, 
 Complexion pale, but of a comely grace, 
 
The Duchess of Newcastle, 29 
 
 With modest countenance, soft speech thus spake : 
 
 " May I so happy be your love to take ? 
 
 True, I am dull, yet by me you shall know 
 
 More of yourself — so wiser you shall grow. 
 
 I search the depth and bottom of mankind, 
 
 Open the eye of ignorance that's blind : 
 
 I travel far and view the world about, 
 
 I walk with Reason's staff to find Truth out : 
 
 1 watchful am all dangers for to shun, 
 
 And do prepare 'gainst evils that may come 
 
 I hang not on inconstant Fortune's wheel, 
 
 Nor yet with unresolving doubts do reel : 
 
 I shake not with the terror of vain fears. 
 
 Nor is my mind filled with unuseful cares : 
 
 I do not spend my time like idle Mirth, 
 
 Who only happy is just at her birth, 
 
 Who seldom lives so long as to be old, 
 
 And if she doth, can no affections hold : 
 
 For in short time she troublesome will grow : 
 
 Though at the first she makes a pretty show, 
 
 wShe makes a constant noise and keeps a rout. 
 
 And with dislike most commonly goes out. 
 
 Mirth good-for-nothing is, like weeds she grows, 
 
 Such plants cause madness Reason never knows. 
 
 Her face with laughter crumples in a heap. 
 
 Which ploughs large furrows — wrinkles long and deep : 
 
 Her eyes do water and her skin turns red. 
 
 Her mouth doth gape, teeth bared like one that's dead : 
 
 She fulsome is and gluts the senses all. 
 
 Offers herself and comes before a call ; 
 
 vSeeks company out and hates to be alone. 
 
 Unwelcome guests affronts are thrown upon. 
 
 Her house is built upon the golden sands, 
 
 Vet on no true and safe foundation stands ; 
 
 A palace 'tis, where comes a great resort, 
 
 It makes a noise and gives a loud report. 
 
 Yet underneath the roof disasters lie 
 
 That oft beat down the house and many kill thereby. — 
 
 " I dwell in groves that gilt are with the sun, 
 Sit on the banks by which clear waters run ; 
 In summers hot down in the shade I lie, 
 
3b English Poet esses. 
 
 My music is the buzzing of a fly, 
 
 Which in the sunny beams doth dance all day, 
 
 And harmlessly doth pass the time away. 
 
 I walk in meadows soft with fresh green grass. 
 
 Or fields where corn is high, through which I pass, 
 
 Walk up the hills whence round I prospects see, 
 
 Where brushy woods and fairest champaigns be ; 
 
 Returning back, in the fresh pasture go, 
 
 And hear the bleating sheep, the cows to low; 
 
 They gently feed, no evil think upon. 
 
 Have no designs to do each other wrong. 
 
 In winter cold when nipping frosts come on. 
 
 Then do I live in a small house alone ; 
 
 Although 'tis plain, yet cleanly 'tis within. 
 
 Like to a soul that's pure and clear from sin. 
 
 And there I dwell in quiet and still peace. 
 
 Not filled with care my riches to increase ; 
 
 I wish nor seek for vain and fruitless pleasures — 
 
 There is no wealth but what the Mind intreasures. 
 
 Thus am I solitary and live alone. 
 
 Vet better loved the more that I am known, 
 
 And though my face be. ill favoured at first sight. 
 
 After acquaintance it shall give delight. 
 
 For I am like a shade ; who sits in me 
 
 Shall not come wet, nor yet sun-burned be ; 
 
 I keep off blustering storms from doing hurt, 
 
 When Mirth is often smutched with dust and dirt. 
 
 Refuse me not, for I shall constant be. 
 
 Maintain your credit and your dignity." 
 
 The author scarcely ever refers to her reading, and 
 it is indeed Hkely enough that she read little. She may 
 have done in poetry as she did in philosophy, a science upon 
 which she began to write at the age of twelve, while she did 
 not attempt any reading on the subject till she was forty. 
 The cast of this dialogue between Mirth and Melancholy — • 
 not really a dialogue between them at all, by the way — 
 certainly suggests an inspiration from Milton ; yet beyond 
 a possible connection between the passage in which the 
 " raven hoarse " occurs, and a similar passage in " L' Allegro," 
 
TiiK Duchess of Newcastle, 31 
 
 nothing of the Duchess's wording betrays any close reminis- 
 cence of the two Miltonic poems which deal with the same 
 subject Comj^ared with Milton's work, or with the richly- 
 phrased " Ode to Melancholy" of Keats, the *' Dialogue" is 
 thin and colourless, of course. The characterisation of the 
 two figures is not well preserved. The part of Melancholy's 
 appeal beginning — 
 
 " I do not spend my time like idle Mirth, 
 Who only happy is just at her birth, 
 Who seldom lives so long as to be old," 
 
 destroys the identity of her competitor. There is perhaps 
 no phrase in the whole poem that is striking if taken by 
 itself, except the reference to Melancholy, 
 
 " Her ears are stopped with thought." 
 
 As a whole, however, the i)oem reads smoothly and reason- 
 ably, and with a quiet dignity of diction that makes it worth 
 remembering amid the literature of its time. 
 
 Of the Duchess's other productions in verse it must suffice 
 to quote Lady Happy's song in the "Convent of Pleasure." 
 Lady Happy is a detester of mankind, and, like the heroine 
 of " The Princess," resolves on the establishment of a colony 
 of encloistered virgins, who will devote themselves to the 
 pursuit of every rational pleasure in which the male sex can 
 be ignored. She lilts the following dainty verses : — 
 
 SONG BV LADV HAPPV. 
 
 As a Sea-Goddess, ^^^' 
 
 My cabinets are oyster-shells, 
 In which I keep my Orient pearls : 
 And modest coral I do wear, 
 Which bhishes when it touches air. 
 
32 English Poetesses. 
 
 On silver waves I sit and sing, 
 And then the fish lie listening : 
 Then resting on a rocky stone, 
 I comb my hair with fishes' bone : 
 
 The whilst Apollo with his beams 
 Doth dry my hair from soaking streams, 
 His light doth glaze the water's face, 
 And make the sea my looking-glass. 
 
 So when I swim on waters high, 
 I see myself as I glide by. 
 But when the sun begins to burn, 
 I back into my waters turn. 
 
 And dive unto the bottom low : 
 Then on my head the waters flow 
 In curled waves and circles round, 
 And thus with eddies I am crowned. 
 
 There is here a good deal of the roundness, the smooth 
 plumpness of phraseology — if one may use the expression — 
 which charms us in the song-writing of the Elizabethan 
 writers. The singing gift was greater in this author than 
 was the dramatic faculty. As dramas, her attempts in that 
 line are indeed void of all effect. At times they are non- 
 sense ; at other times they become dissertations : seldom is 
 a page of them compactly constructed to serve any plot. 
 Philosophy and the drama are undoubtedly her Grace's 
 weak points, in both senses of the phrase. 
 
 Towards furnishing a complete estimate of the Duchess's 
 gifts it remains to be added that in her essays and letters 
 there is occasionally exhibited an aphoristic tendency of 
 thought quite masculine. 
 
 " Disputers are captains or colonels of ragged regiments of argu- 
 ments, and when a multitude are gathered together in a rout they 
 seldom disperse until some mischief is done." 
 
 *' Reason and Judgment make passages of Memory to let objects in, 
 and doors of Forgetfulness to shut them out, and windows of Hope to 
 
The Dcchi.ss or Xz-avcas rrF. ;; 
 
 let in the light uf Joy, and shutters of I'aith to lvcc[) out the chills of 
 Doubt ; and long galleries of Contemplation carved and wrought by 
 Imagination, and hung with the pictures of Fancy." 
 
 " Miserly men believe they are masters to their wealth because llicy 
 have it in keeping : whereas they are slaves, not daring to use it unless 
 it be in getting ten in the hundred." 
 
 " Wit hath no bottom, but is like a perpetual spring." 
 '' The busy fool is one that had rather break his head at his neigh- 
 bour's door than keep it whole at home." 
 
 " Fancies are tossed in the ])rain as a ball against a wall, where 
 every bound begets an echo. " 
 
 " Some brains are barren grounds, that will not bring seed or fruit 
 forth, unless they are well manured with the old wit which is raked from 
 other writers and speakers." 
 
 " Pain and Oblivion make mankind afraid to die ; but all creatures 
 are afraid of the one, none but mankind afraid of the other." 
 " Prosperity is like perfume, it often makes the head ache." 
 " Tyrants may be said to keep their power by the sweat of their 
 brow." 
 
 Baconian, almost, these last two. 
 
 The direct power of such observations has been equalled 
 by very few women writers. Th^y possess that finest and 
 most useful quality of wit which commands more than the 
 smile of gratified fancy. This is the quality that does not 
 lend import to little themes, as wit may often do, but rather 
 sums a great theme in little, and tells a notable truth of 
 history like a trifle. 
 
 The three poetesses now dealt with I have arranged in 
 an order which conforms with tradition. Katherine Philips 
 has always been assumed to be our earliest great female 
 verse writer ; Mrs. Behn has served to contrast with her as 
 a rival in the literature of her era ; while the Duchess of 
 Newcastle has been scarcely so much depreciated as com- 
 pletely overlooked. In strict chronological order, so far as 
 the dates of her publications settle the question, the Duchess 
 is rather our first poetess. Matchless Orinda, however, was 
 a poetical power some years before her death, and her poems 
 
3 4 Engl is/j J \ ) /•; y vasw /;6". 
 
 were only published posthumously : hence she is really about 
 as early as the Duchess. Nor can it be doubted that in 
 point of contemporary pre-eminence and influence Katherine 
 Philips easily takes the higher rank. Even Mrs. Behn, 
 in virtue of an influence which, good or bad, was greater, 
 ranks as a stronger force in the literature of her time than 
 the Duchess. The judgment of their contemporaries, how- 
 ever, accords but badly with the modern student's verdict. 
 As influences, the three women took relative rank in the 
 order we have given them. But our latter-day criticism 
 upon their literary merits adjudges the Duchess much the 
 finest poetess of the trio, as well as superior to Mrs. Behn 
 with her own weapons of wit. In truth, the Duchess's 
 works, hitherto the least read, are now, of all the productions 
 we have been speaking of, the only ones that modern taste 
 could interest itself in at all. '' With all the divinity of wit," 
 as Horace Walpole says, '* it grows out of fashion like a 
 farthingale." The reflected lights which almost alone cast a 
 radiance on Orinda as a poetess are now faded. As for 
 Mrs. Behn, her lamp burned with so little purity of flame 
 that it has happily become extinguished in its own smoke. 
 Even fifty years ago she was tabooed. " Take back your 
 bonny Mrs. Behn," said an old lady who had borrowed her 
 works from Sir Walter Scott. " If you will take my advice, 
 put her in the fire. But is it not a very odd thing that I, an 
 old woman of eighty and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself 
 ashamed to read a book which, sixty years ago, I have heard 
 read aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of 
 the first and most creditable society in London ? " 
 
 Ere we leave these three writers, it may be well to note 
 that though they were the first women who wrote much 
 verse that gained any notice, or made any attempt at a 
 profcssiofi of poetry, others had preceded them with 
 fragmentary efforts of the kind The Lady Juliana 
 
The Duchess oe Newcastle. 
 
 35 
 
 Bcrners, who flourished about 1460, wrote (some say 
 only translated) three short treatises on " Hawking," " Hunt- 
 ing," and "Heraldry," the second of w^hich is in rhyme, 
 To Anne Boleyn (1507 — 1536) are commonly ascribed a 
 few verses descriptive of her misfortunes. Anne Askewe 
 (1520 — 1546), the Smithfield martyr, wrote and 
 sang a religious " ballad " when she w^as at New- ^^^^^^^ 
 gate. Queen Elizabeth has left us several clever 
 little bits of verse, the best of which is her answer to a 
 Popish priest, who pressed her to declare her opinion con- 
 cerning the Corporeal presence : 
 
 " Christ was the Word that spake it ; 
 He took the bread and brake it : 
 And what that Word did make it. 
 That I believe, and take it." 
 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, is credited with the authorship of 
 a fine little Latin hymn. Mary, Countess of Pembroke, who 
 died in 162 1, and to w^hom her brother. Sir Philip Sidney, 
 dedicated his "Arcadia," wrote a pastoral or two, and helped 
 Sir Philip with a translation of the Psalms. Lady Mary Wroth 
 (1620) included a little poetry in her romance of " Urania." 
 Among later writers, Diana Primrose, in a tract of 
 twelve pages called "A Chain of Pearls" (1630), eulogised 
 (^ueen Elizabeth in a style w^hich, as Hazlitt said of 
 Rogers's writings, may be called poetry, for the reason 
 that no line or syllable of it reads like prose. Anne 
 Bradstreet (1650), Ann Collins (1653), and the Queen 
 of Bohemia, daughter of James I. (1597 — 1662) also 
 experimented with verse forms in a simple way. Of the 
 contemporaries of the three principal subjects of this 
 chapter, the best known writers of occasional verse were 
 Frances Booth by, who wrote a fair love-song in a play called 
 " Marcelia " (1670); Anne Killigrew (1685), whose scanty 
 poems were edited after her death ; and Alicia D'Anvers, 
 J) 2 
 
author ot '' Academia,"' in burlesque ver.sc (1691). Hut it 
 may be doubted whether the curious critic, who should 
 insj)ect all the lucubrations of these ladies, royal and noble 
 though some of them were, would find, in the whole, ten 
 lines of such high thought as would pass for poetry now-a- 
 days. Of somewhat higher powers was Ann Finch, Countess 
 of Winchelsea (1720), who published in 1713 "Miscellany 
 Poems," and *' Aristomenes," a tragedy. Her " Nocturnal 
 Review " was once a favourite piece of verse. It is a smooth 
 piece of description, rather than a meditation. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 LADY MARY MONTAGU — MRS. PIOZZI — HANNAH COWLEY — 
 CHARLOITE SMITH. 
 
 IF some of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's " Town 
 Eclogues '' were attributed to Pope and (iay, and by 
 them not disclaimed, the circumstance may be taken as 
 proof that her verse was thought very good, in its 
 day. It was by no means equal to her prose, nevertheless 
 it sparkled with a considerable amount of satirical wit, as 
 indeed anything from her pen could hardly fail to do. 
 
 Lady Mary Pierrepont was the eldest daughter of 
 Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, and came into the world at 
 Thoresby, Nottinghamshire, about the year 1690. Possibly 
 the somewhat masculine tone of thought and 
 action she assumed through life may be partially ^^^, ^^ 
 accounted for by the fact that at the age of three Montagu, 
 she lost her mother, and was not long after- 
 wards turned over to the care of her brothers tutor. 
 Under his guidance, and by the exhibition of industry in 
 the direction of private study, Tady Mary made such pro- 
 gress as to earn the praise of Bishop Burnet, who in the 
 later years of her girlhood gave her his superintendence. A 
 translation of the " Enchiridion " of Epictetus, executed by 
 her, and amended by the Bishop, is included in Lady Mon- 
 tagu's works. Amid such occupation she grew up in retire- 
 ment to the age of twenty. 
 
 Her father had always made her a favourite. In her 
 childhood he was a leader in the Kit-cat Club, and on one 
 occasion, when the members were met to pro])ose toasts for 
 
3 ^ Encl I si I I\ ) /■; y •/■;.v.sv;.v. 
 
 the year, he nominated his pet Mary as the prettiest lady he 
 knew. When he added that she was not yet eight years 
 old, the club began to feel it was being trifled with. How- 
 ever, " You shall see her ! " the Duke cried. And accord- 
 ingly he dispatched a* messenger to have her finely dressed 
 and brought to the tavern, where the little thing made such 
 an impression on all present that they could hardly give 
 over fondling her, and her name was duly scratched on a 
 glass, while her health was toasted by acclamation. The 
 dainty, unsullied brightness of the child among these elderly 
 bucks and topers, assembled in a dingy tavern, must have 
 made indeed a very entertaining spectacle. The incident 
 was commemorated in a painting of her, which was hung in 
 the club-room. 
 
 While he was fond of his eldest daughter, however, it 
 did not occur to the Duke that when she had reached a 
 marriageable age her choice of a husband might be at 
 variance with his own intention. Lady Mary had en- 
 gaged herself — in rather a half-hearted way, however, that 
 boded no good for their happiness afterwards — to Edward 
 Wortley Montagu, a gentleman of refined education and 
 tastes, whose occupation, when not with literature, was 
 attendance on parliamentary duties. To the proposals of 
 Mr. Montagu the Duke returned a refusal, for no other 
 reason than that the suitor had views of his own on the 
 question of entail, and would not consent to settle before- 
 hand his whole estates on an unborn child who might turn 
 out an idiot or a rake. The history of his only son did 
 afterwards strangely illustrate the value of his theory, and 
 the half-prophetic truth of his surmises. He was as firm as 
 the Duke on the matter, and so negotiations were broken off 
 somewhat abruptly. On either side, therefore, there was 
 hesitation, and the situation recalls Marlowe's line, 
 
 *' Where both deliberate, the love is slight."' 
 
/..//)] .]f.\h')' U^n/r//./:) .]f(KYrA(:r. 
 
 39 
 
 But when Lady Mary found that another clahiiant to her 
 hand — a very wealthy claimant — was to be forced upon her, 
 she took means to communicate news of the fact to her 
 lover, with whom she finally eloped ; and their private mar- 
 riage was celebrated on the 12th of August, 17 12. 
 
 It was never productive of the truest happiness to either 
 husband or wife, this union. Mr. Montagu was an unim- 
 passioned, somewhat conventionalised, sort of person. Lady 
 Mary was audacious and original. A spirit like hers must 
 have longed for the freedom of the world ; but for some 
 years her marriage only brought immurement at Warncliffe 
 Lodge, near Barnsley, a country seat from which she writes 
 letter after letter to her absent husband complaining of his 
 lack of attention to her. Those who incline to think that 
 Lady Mary's worst characteristic through life was a want of 
 heart for anybody should duly study the indications of these 
 early letters. They are those of a woman who is -full of 
 passions and instincts for life, with keen observation of all 
 that passes before her eyes or comes to her ears, who is 
 somehow realising that her powers are meeting with nothing 
 worthy of their exercise — that her best nature is being fed too 
 sparely — and that, in short, she is but a poor image of the 
 wife she would like to be, and, in more genial circumstances, 
 could be. In one of her earliest love-letters, written to 
 Montagu before the marriage, there occurs the following 
 sentence : " (rive me leave to say it (I know it sounds vain), 
 I know how to make a man of sense happy ; but then that 
 man must resolve to contribute something towards it him- 
 self." And in another communication to him she writes 
 thus : " If we marry, our happiness must consist in loving 
 one another ; 'tis principally my concern to think of the 
 most probable method of making that love eternal." It is 
 true, other passages in her letters indicate that Lady Mary 
 doubted much whether they were really being drawn toge- 
 ther by an auspicious destiny ; but the sentences just quoted 
 
40 English Poetesses. 
 
 show at any rate that, once committed, she was capable of 
 looking towards the future in a very noble spirit. Fond as 
 he may have been of her, Mr. Montagu studied his wife 
 too little, or with poor judgment, during the earlier years of 
 their marriage. They entertained a mutual respect, but 
 they do not appear to have completely exchanged con- 
 fidences. The birth of their son in May or June of 17 13, 
 about a year aft»er the marriage, had not done much to 
 perfect the understanding the mother and father had of each 
 other. It appears to us strange that a long-sought, witty, 
 beautiful, and obedient wife should have matched him so 
 badly. Her impulsiveness must have been the only vexa- 
 tion her conduct could give him ; and save for this, we 
 must conclude that his carelessness about her at this period 
 of their connection does not appear to have had sufficient 
 justification. And too probably this disillusionment acted 
 upon Lady Mary's quickness of sensibility in an unfortunate 
 direction, so as to nurse into maturity the more cynical ten- 
 dencies from which her observant nature was not free. 
 
 After two brief appearances at London, Lady Mary was 
 brave enough to accompany her husband to the East, whither 
 he had been despatched as Ambassador to the Porte. This 
 was early in 17 16. Only two English ladies of position had 
 ever before followed their lords to these regions. The 
 journey was made very slowly by way of Vienna, and Con- 
 stantinople was not reached for about a year. An account 
 of the embassy is contained in the delightful " Letters of 
 Lady Wortley Montagu," which were prepared for publica- 
 tion by the author herself, but brought out posthumously 
 in 1763. Description and comment are blended throughout 
 these letters in the most lively manner. Something of the 
 French talent of making much of little gives Lady Mary a 
 resemblance to Madame de S^vigne, whom she avowedly 
 emulated. There is less equality of style, less delicacy of 
 taste in the English writer than in the French ; but, on the 
 
A.//)! J/./A'l //''A'77,/;i M'ONTACU. 4I 
 
 Other hand, Madame de Sevigne' does not describe with so 
 bold a touch, nor does she plumb the depths and shallows 
 of human nature so well, or so often pretend to a philosophy 
 of life. Madame de Sevigne rarely allows you to forget that 
 she is a woman ; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu frequently 
 writes as a witty man would write. The one is more grace- 
 ful and companionable ; the other is stronger and more 
 stimulating. You probably read the Frenchwoman oftener 
 than the Englishwoman ; but you can read more of the 
 Englishwoman at a sitting. 
 
 TO THE COUNTESS OF BRISTOL. 
 
 Adrianoplr, April i, 17 17. 
 
 The government here is entirely in the hands of the army ; and 
 the Grand Signior, with all his absolute power, is as much a slave as 
 any of his subjects, and trembles at a janissary's frown. Here is, 
 indeed, a much greater appearance of subjection than among us : A 
 Minister of State is not spoken to but upon the knee ; should a reflec- 
 tion on his conduct be dropped in a coffee-house (for they have spies 
 everywhere), the house would be razed to the ground, and perhaps the 
 whole company put to the torture. No huzzaing mobs, senseless 
 pamphlets, and tavern disputes about politics : 
 
 *' A consequential ill that freedom draws ; 
 A bad effect — but from a noble cause.'' 
 
 None of our harmless calling names ! but when a minister here dis- 
 pleases the people, in three hours' time he is dragged even from his 
 master's arms. They cut off his hands, head, and feet, and throw them 
 l)efore the palace gate, with all the respect in the world ; while that 
 Sultan (to whom they all profess an unlimited adoration) sits trembling 
 in his apartment, and dare neither defend nor revenge his favourite. 
 This is the blessed condition of the most absolute monarch upon earth, 
 who owns no law but his will. 
 
 I cannot help wishing, in the loyalty of my heart, that the par- 
 liament would send us hither a ship-load of your passive-obedient men, 
 that they might see arbitrary government in its clearest, strongest 
 lii^ht, where it is hard to judge whether the prince, people, or ministers. 
 
42 Ex(;/JSJ/ I\)/:t/:ss/:s. 
 
 are most miserable. I could make many reflections on this subject ; but 
 I know, madam, your own good sense has already furnished you with 
 better than I am capable of. 
 
 I went yesterday with the F'rench Embassadress to see the Grand 
 Signior in his passage to the Mosque. He was preceded by a numerous 
 guard of janissaries, with vast white feathers on their heads, spa/ices 
 and bosfajti^des {ihitsQ. are foot and horse-guard), and the royal gardeners, 
 which are a very considerable body of men, dressed in different habits 
 of fine lively colours, [so] that, at a distance, they appeared like d^parlerre 
 of tulips. After them the Aga of the janissaries, in a robe of purple 
 velvet, lined with silver tissue, his horse led by two slaves richly 
 dressed. Next him the Kyzlar-aga (your ladyship knows this is the 
 chief guardian of the Seraglio ladies) in a deep yellow cloth {which 
 suited very well to his black face) lined with sables ; and last, his Sul)- 
 limity himself, in green lined with the fur of a black Muscovite fox, 
 which is su})posed worth a thousand pounds sterling, mounted on a fine 
 horse, with furniture embroidered with jewels. Six more horses richly 
 furnished were led after him, and two of his principal courtiers bore, 
 one his gold, and the other his silver coffee-pot on a staff; another 
 carried a silver stool on his head for him to sit on. 
 
 It would be too tedious to tell your ladyship the various dresses and 
 turbans by which their rank is distinguished ; but they were all 
 extremely rich and gay, to the number of some thousands ; [so] that, 
 perhaps, there cannot be seen a more beautiful procession. The Sultan 
 appeared to us a handsome man of about forty, with a very graceful 
 air, but something severe in his countenance, his eyes very full and 
 l)lack. He happened to stop under the window where we stood, and 
 (I suppose being told who we were) looked u})on us very attentively, 
 [so] that we had full leisure to consider him, and the French Embas- 
 sadress agreed \\ ith me as to his good mien. . I see that lady very often ; 
 she is young, and her conversation would be a great relief to me, if 
 I could persuade her to live without these forms and ceremonies that 
 make life formal and tiresome. But she is so delighted with her guards, 
 her four-and-twenty footmen, gentlemen ushers, etc., that she would 
 rather die than make me a visit without them, not to reckon a coachful 
 of attending damsels yclep'd maids-of-honour. What vexes me is, that 
 as long as she will visit with a troublesome equipage, I am obliged to 
 do the same ; however, our mutual interest makes us much together. 
 
 1 went with her the other day all round the town, in an open gilt 
 chariot, with our joint train of attendants, preceded by our guards, 
 who might have summoned the people to see what they had never 
 seen, nor ever would see again : two young C'hristian cmbassadresses 
 
L.\nv Mary J I't^/c //./■: i- Moyr.icr. 43 
 
 never yet having been in this country at the same time, nor I believe 
 ever will again. Your ladyship may easily imagine that we drew a vast 
 crowd of spectators, but all silent as death. If any of them had 
 taken the liberties of our mob upon any strange sight, our janissaries 
 ti;i<l made no scruple of falling on them with their scimitars, without 
 danger for so doing, being above law. Yet these people have some 
 good qualities ; they are very zealous and faithful where they serve, and 
 look upon it as their business to fight for you upon all occasions. Of 
 this I had a very pleasant instance in a village on this side Philippopolis, 
 where we were met by our domestic guard. I happened to bespeak 
 pigeons for my supper, upon which one of my janissaries went 
 immediately to the cadi (the chief civil officer of the town), and ordered 
 him to send in some dozens. The poor man answered that he had 
 already sent about, but could get none. My janissary, in the height of 
 his zeal for my service, immediately locked him up prisoner in his room, 
 telling him he deserved death for his impudence in offering to excuse 
 his not ol)eying my command ; but, out of respect to me, he would not 
 punish him but by my order, and, accordingly, came very gravely to me 
 to ask what should be done to him, adding, by way of compliment, that 
 if I pleased he would bring me his head. This may give you some 
 idea of the unlimited power of those fellows, who are all sworn 
 brothers, and bound to revenge the injuries done to one another, 
 whether at Cairo, Aleppo, or any part of the world ; and this inviolable 
 league makes them so powerful, the greatest man at the Court never 
 speaks to them but in a flattering tone ; and in Asia, any man that is 
 rich is forced to enroll himself a janissary to secure his estate. 
 
 But I have already said enough ; and I dare swear, dear madam, 
 that, by this time, 'tis a very comfortable reflection to you that there is 
 no possibility of your receiving such a tedious letter but once in six 
 months ; 'tis that consideration has given me the assurance to entertain 
 you so long, and will, I hope, plead the excuse of 
 
 Dear Madam, &c. 
 
 Lady Mary returned to London with her husband in 
 October of 17 18, and at Pope's solicitation settled at 
 Twickenham, where she devoted herself to the enjoyment 
 of Uterary society, and the promulgation of her system of in- 
 oculation, for it is by her that inoculation was imported from 
 the East. Pope, as we know too well now, was a vain and 
 unscrupulously jealous little man, and Lady Mary was not 
 
44 EXCLIS// POKTESS/IS. 
 
 the person to get on smoothly with him. He had already 
 corresponded with her while she was abroad ; and the tone 
 of their letters shows sufficiently the relations upon which 
 their friendship began and terminated. Though then little 
 known to her, he writes in a fulsome and laboured love-sick 
 strain, that can only be tolerated as being what w^as then 
 fashionable enough between men and women in good 
 society. Complimented at the receipt of letters from Mr. 
 Pope, Lady Mary returns him carefully-written replies about 
 the East, and Homer, the Bible, and such topics, completely 
 ignoring the mawkish gallantry expressed in her corre- 
 spondent's epistles. The same positions were taken up by 
 the two at Twickenham. Lady Mary no doubt thought 
 Pope would be a great literary friend, and help her to form 
 a society of literary people. He found it would be very 
 pleasant to have near him so handsome and clever a woman, 
 able to appreciate his genius as few^ women were able, and 
 willing to allow him all the advantages of unconventional 
 friendship. The harmony was short-lived. Lady Mary 
 grew tired of Pope's school-mastering, and at last told him 
 he should have no more of her verses to correct, for he 
 claimed all the best for himself, and left her only the worst. 
 Other jealousies were insidiously creeping into the friendship, 
 which yet they did not openly break, and indeed did not 
 wish to break. The sudden ruj)ture that occurred has 
 never been clearly explained; but the common tradition 
 is that Pope one day forgot who she was and what he 
 was — poor little ricketty poet I — and made such grotesque 
 love to her that she was forced to stop his speeches with 
 painful laughter, and Pope took himself off in implacable 
 dudgeon. This story is probably true, though different 
 accounts given by Lady Mary herself perplex us much with 
 regard to the matter. Certain it is that after their great 
 quarrel Pope and Lady Mary remained enemies, and did 
 not refrain from expressing their dislike of each other. 
 
Lady M'akv \]\<i<rLEv MosrAi,i. 45 
 
 Pope's anger went much too far. He satirised her in verse 
 that was libellous and infamously coarse. He is supposed 
 also to have forged letters, and passages in letters, with the 
 purpose of implicating LadyMary in something like a scandal 
 with regard to himself. But his vanity did not help him 
 much towards this end, and his tricks have only earned him 
 our contemjit in these days. It was strange that this, of all 
 our poets, should have been the one to write about 
 
 " The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind." 
 
 He was assuredly one of the brightest and meanest men who 
 figure in the history of our literature. But the qualification 
 of a satirist is not necessarily or often virtue. Diseur de 
 bons mots, mativais charactere. 
 
 Unfortunately it was not alone with Pope that Lady 
 Mary quarrelled. Her satirical powers were little checked, 
 and even towards a friend she could be rude for the sake of 
 a jest. This carelessness of the feelings of others is the 
 worst fault that has been fastened on her. Moreover, she 
 and her husband grew still cooler towards each other, so that 
 at last they appeared to think it better they should part To 
 the end of Mr. Montagu's life they corresponded in cour- 
 teous and even moderately affectionate terms — such terms 
 as indicate no cause for their separation save incompati- 
 bility. In July of 1739 Lady Montagu left England for 
 the Continent, and shortly afterwards she was settled in 
 Venice. Her letters show that her relations with some of 
 the English there came to be anything but harmonious. 
 On the whole she contented herself well enough, how- 
 ever, with a little of gossipy society, and a great deal of 
 bookish solitude. In one or two other Italian centres she 
 also lived for a time, growing manifestly more eccentric in 
 her actions towards the outside public, but affectionate 
 towards a few friends, and particularly interested in her 
 daughter, the Countess of Bute, and the latter's young 
 
4 6 Engl/si/ /\)i:tesse^. 
 
 children. All kinds of books she devoured. Her letters 
 home constantly contain lists of romances and novels 
 of which she has heard, and which she wishes sent out 
 to while away her leisure. For instance : — 
 
 I see in the newspapers the names of the following ])ooks : For- 
 tunate Mistress, Accomplished Rake, Mrs. Charke's Memoirs, Modern 
 Lovers, History of Two Orphans, Memoirs of David Ranger, Miss 
 Mostyn, Dick Hazard, History of a Lady Platonist, Sophia Shakspear, 
 Jasper Banks, Frank Hammond, Sir Andrew Thompson, Van a Clergy- 
 man's Son, Cleanthes and Celimena. I do not doubt at least the 
 greatest part of these are trash, lumber ; however, they will serve to 
 pass away the idle time, if you will be so kind to send them to your 
 most affectionate mother. 
 
 And in answer to some gentle hint from her daughter that 
 such reading is somewhat like dissipation for one who is 
 nearly seventy years of age, the gay old lady replies : — 
 
 TO THE COUNTESS OF BUTE. 
 
 DAUCiHTER I daughter I don't call names; you are always abusing 
 my pleasures, which is what no mortal will l^ear. Trash, lumber, sad 
 stuff, are the names you give to my favourite amusement. If I called a 
 v^hite staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded ])rass, and the ensigns of 
 illustrious orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically true, but 
 would be very ill received. We have all our playthings : happy are 
 they that can be contented with those they can obtain I those hours 
 are spent in the wisest manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, 
 and are the least productive of ill consequences. I think my time 
 better employed in reading the adventures of imaginary people, than 
 the Duchess of Marlborough's, who passed the latter years of her life in 
 paddling with her will, and contriving schemes of plaguing some, and 
 extracting praise from others, to no purpose ; eternally disappointed, 
 and eternally fretted. The active scenes are over at my age ; I indulge, 
 with all the art I can, my taste for reading. If I would confine it to 
 valuable books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must be 
 content with what I can find. As 1 approach a second childhood, I 
 endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is, 
 })erhaps, at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not 
 at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an 
 
Lady Mary Wokti.ey .\foNTAGU. 47 
 
 Arabian horse, which he would not know how to manage. I am read- 
 ing an itlle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am very glad it is 
 not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or history to mislead my 
 opinion. He fortifies his health by exercise ; I calm my cares by 
 oblivion. The methods may appear low to busy people ; but, if he 
 improves his strength, and I forget my infirmities, we attain very desir- 
 able ends. 
 
 It was a curiously contented old age for a woman who 
 had so keenly enjoyed society and adorned it so much. 
 
 On Mr. Wortley Montagu's death, in 1761, Lady Mary 
 yielded to the desire of her daughter and returned to Eng- 
 land, after an absence of two and twenty years. Cancer had 
 threatened her^ and its progress was established on her 
 arrival in England. On the 21st of August, 1762, this 
 disease carried off the cleverest woman of letters her times 
 had produced. 
 
 In Lady Montagu's poems, as in her prose, a choice of 
 subjects is sometimes exhibited which does not accord with 
 our notions of refinement; but with regard to such a blemish 
 we had best remember that both in life and in utterance she 
 was purer than much of the high society in which she lived. 
 Save for certain of the graces which adorn our modern vers 
 de societe, her poems have not much about them to please 
 the modern taste. Some of her most natural lines occur at 
 the conclusion of " An Epistle to the Earl of Burlington," 
 where, after reference to the inconstancy of man's affections, 
 the poetess proceeds : — 
 
 EPISTLE TO THE EARL OF BURLINGTON. 
 
 Thus on the sands of Afric's burning plains, 
 However deeply made, no long impress remains ; 
 The slightest leaf can leave its figure there ; 
 The strongest form is scattered by the air. 
 So yielding the warm temper of your mind, 
 So touched by every eye, so tossed by wind ; 
 Oh, how unlike the heaven my soul designed I 
 
4^ English Pokiksses. 
 
 Unseen, unheard, the tlirong around me move 
 
 Not wishing praise, insensible of love ; 
 
 No whispers soften, nor no beauties fire : 
 
 Careless I see the dance, and coldly hear the lyre. 
 
 So numerous herds are driven o'er the rock, 
 
 No print is left of all the passing flock : 
 
 So sings the wind around the solid stone ; 
 
 So vainly beat the waves with fruitless moan. 
 
 Tedious the toil, and great the workman's care, 
 
 Who dares attempt to fix impressions there ? 
 
 But should some swain, more skilful than the rest, 
 
 ?^ngrave his name upon this marble breast, 
 
 Not rolling ages could deface that name ; 
 
 Through all the storms of life 'tis still the same : 
 
 Though length of years with moss may shade the ground. 
 
 Deep, though unseen, remains the secret wound. 
 
 AN ANSWER TO A LADY, WHO ADVISED LADY M. W. 
 MONTAGU TO RETIRE. 
 
 You little know the heart that you advise : 
 I view this various scene with equal eyes ; 
 In crowded courts I find myself alone. 
 And pay my worship to a nobler throne. 
 
 Long since the value of the world I know. 
 Pitied the folly, and despised the show ; 
 Well as I can my tedious part I bear, 
 And wait dismissal without pain or fear. 
 
 Seldom I mark mankind's detested ways, 
 Not hearing censure or affecting praise ; 
 And unconcerned, my future fate I trust 
 To that sole Being, merciful and just. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO , 1736. 
 
 With toilsome steps I passed through life's dull road 
 (No pack-horse half so tired of his load) ; 
 y\.nd when this dirty journey will conclude, 
 To what new realms is then my way pursued ? 
 
Lady Makv Worti.fa' Montagu. 49 
 
 Say, then, does the unembodied spirit fly 
 To happier climes and to a better sky ? 
 Or, sinking, mixes with its kindred cLay, 
 And sleeps a whole eternity away ? 
 Or shall this form be once again renewed, 
 With all its frailties, all its hopes, endued ; 
 Acting once more on this detested stage 
 Passions of youth, infirmities of age? 
 
 I see in Tully what the ancients thought, 
 And read unprejudiced what moderns taught : 
 But no conviction from my reading springs — 
 Most dubious on the most important things. 
 Yet one short moment would at once explain 
 What all philosophy has sought in vain : 
 Would clear all doubt and terminate all pain. 
 Why, then, not hasten that decisive hour, 
 Still in my view and ever in my power? 
 Why should I drag along this life I hate, 
 Without one thought to mitigate its weight ? 
 Whence this mysterious burning to exist, 
 When every joy is lost and every hope dismissed ? 
 In chains and darkness wherefore should I stay, 
 And mourn in prison while I keep the key ? 
 
 This last piece of verse was only discovered in time to 
 be included in the most recent edition of Lady Montagu's 
 works, which incorporated the " Town Eclogues," originally 
 published in 17 16, and the " Eastern Letters," together with 
 an iLssay or two, and further correspondence. Mr. Moy 
 Thomas has added a new memoir of the author to the col- 
 lection, which was produced by Bohn in 1861. 
 
 There was a little woman, neither plain nor positively 
 beautiful, vivacious, well-informed, shrewd and good- 
 humoured, who for twenty years acted as a kind of guar- 
 dian angel to Dr. Samuel Johnson. She obtains most of 
 such glory as we give her from the fact that she knew John- 
 son ; but the truth is, the history of their friendship is 
 
5© Rnglisii Poet ess fs. 
 
 much more to her credit than to that of the man whose name 
 
 confers on her an honourable lustre. This was 
 Mrs. Piozzi. 
 
 the person whom the lexicographer loved when 
 
 she was Mrs. Thrale, and at whom he and his friends laughed 
 a good deal when she became Mrs. Piozzi. 
 
 Mrs. Thrak's father was a scampish young fellow of good 
 family, named John Salusbury, who married his cousin and 
 squandered her fortune. The only child of the ill-starred 
 couple, however, Hester Lynch, became an heiress through 
 family connections, and after receiving an excellent educa- 
 tion, which included Latin and Italian, was bestowed on a 
 Mr. Thrale, brewer, and man of pleasure, who did not 
 care a pin for her, and took her because she was the only 
 woman, of all he had asked, who would live with him near his 
 place of business. For an heiress to be brought out of the 
 country to Dcadman's Place, Southwark, was not inspiriting 
 matrimony. However, in summer the establishment re- 
 moved to Streatham, Surrey, and it was thither that Mr. and 
 Mrs. Thrale invited Dr. Johnson to stay with them. Mr. 
 Thrale had been much charmed with Johnson's conversation, 
 and apparently had commanded rather than persuaded his 
 wife to add the moralist to their household, if possible, as a 
 permanent inmate. The great man availed himself of 
 the hospitality held out to him, and in 1766 began a 
 tenancy of sixteen years under their roof He was then 
 fifty-six, short-sighted, afflicted with stertorous breathing 
 and a nervous affection of the face, dressed shabbily, and 
 seldom attended to the cleanliness of his linen. His wigs 
 were so scrubby, and so burnt away in front by contact with 
 candles, that Mr. Thrale's valet had much ado to make him 
 in the least presentable for the dinner-table. AVhile engaged 
 on any meal he usually busied himself so intensely that the 
 veins in his forehead swelled, and perspiration broke out 
 upon him. His voice was loud, and of course his manners 
 were dictatorial. He was so fond of late hours that the 
 
J/av. Pi ('/./J. 
 
 51 
 
 servants of the house looked upon him as the curse of the 
 establishment. *'I lie down," said he, *' that my acquaintances 
 may sleep ; but I lie down to endure oppressive misery, and 
 soon rise again to pass the night in anxiety and pain." When 
 the candles did not burn brightly, he would seize them and 
 turn them upside down till they improved, the droppings fall- 
 ing to the carpets. He was never in time for breakfast. He 
 was ever (quarrelling with Mrs. Thrale's mother, who 
 was also an inmate of the house, and whom he loved to 
 irritate. He likewise would be very rude, upon occasion, to 
 visitors whom the Thrales might ask to their table. All 
 this, together with Johnson's frequent illnesses, these generous 
 hosts tolerated for so many years, in order to cherish a man 
 who was great at the bottom of his heart, and whom they 
 had the sense and charity to rate at his inner worth. There 
 is no record of Mrs. Thrale's having once lost her temper 
 with the shaggy philosopher, irritating to any hostess as his 
 habits must have been, She herself records with a pardon- 
 able pride that she had never anything to blame herself for 
 in her attentions to him, and even her enemy Boswell has 
 never accused her of disrespect to his hero. 
 
 Shortly after Johnson had joined the Thrales' household, 
 the Blue Stocking Club was inaugurated. Stillingfleet, who 
 frequented the Club, was fond of wearing blue stockings ; 
 apparently the name of the Association has no greater mystery 
 about it than this fact. The founders of the Club were 
 Mrs. Vesey and Mrs. Montagu, the latter a woman of great 
 sense and accomplishments, whose conversation was un- 
 rivalled among the members, except by Mrs. Thrale. These 
 two continued to contend amicably for the palm, therefore ; 
 but it was never decided which was the more agreeable, for 
 though Mrs. Thrale talked more brilliantly often, she talked 
 too much ; Mrs. Montagu neither ascended so high nor 
 descended so low. As the friend of Johnson, then, and a 
 loader in the Blue Stocking Club, lively little Mrs. Thrale 
 E 2 
 
5 2 EXCL IS// Pi ) E 7 /CSS /CS. 
 
 was not without her influence, and she was just the sort of 
 person to enjoy it. 
 
 Meanwhile, domestic affairs were far from being calcu- 
 lated to increase Mrs. Thrale's natural gaiety of spirits. 
 One child after another died in infancy. And Mr. Thrale, 
 who had never permitted his wife to meddle with any busi- 
 ness whatsoever — even that of her kitchen — was at last com- 
 pelled to inform her that his money affairs had gone wrong, 
 and asked for the assistance of her clear brain. Upon re- 
 ceiving authority to act, Mrs. Thrale now took upon herself 
 the most careful superintendence of the brewery, and also 
 directed the management of her estate in Wales. In addi- 
 tion to visits constantly paid to their place of business, the 
 lady did not scruple to go about among their customers and 
 solicit orders. She writes, for instance, " Careless, of the 
 * Blue Posts,' has turned refractory, and applied to Hoare's 
 ])eople, who have sent him in their beer. I called on him, 
 to-day, however, and by dint of unwearied solicitation (for I 
 kept him at the coach-side a full half-hour) I got his order 
 for six butts more as a final trial." At the same time, she 
 went the rounds of Southwark on electioneering expeditions, 
 for her husband was standing to be Member of Parliament 
 for that Borough. So, between one care and another, there 
 was abundance of occupation for the vivacious Blue Stock- 
 ing, who appears to have kept her spirits through every 
 trouble in her life. As for her husband's financial difficulties, 
 she enabled him to weather them. This result she brought 
 about in collaboration with their manager, Mr. Perkins, who, 
 with Barclay, afterwards bought up the brewery for ^135,000 
 and carried on the trade under the well-known style of 
 Barclay, Perkins & Co. In 1781 Thrale died of apoplexy, 
 leaving his widow and daughters comfortably provided for 
 by a will of which Johnson was an executor. 
 
 Dr. Johnson for a time continued to live in the Thrale 
 establishment, both at Streatham and at Brighton, and even 
 
Mrs. Pio/./h 53 
 
 two years later he was still associated with the same family in 
 Argyll Street. But it appears that Mrs. Thrale was now be- 
 ginning to feel the constant comj^anionship into which she 
 was forced rather irksome, and she allowed her conduct to 
 hint this to her friend. She went to Bath, leaving him in 
 London, where, in June, he suffered a paralytic shock, and 
 lost his speech for a time. He writes to Mrs. Thrale thus, 
 upon partial recovery of his powers : — 
 
 " I am sitting down in no cheerful solitude to write a narrative 
 which would once have affected you with tenderness and sorrow, but 
 which you will perhaps pass over now with the careless glance of frigid 
 indifference. For this diminution of regard, however, I know not 
 whether I ought to blame you, who may have reasons which I cannot 
 know, and I do not blame myself, who have, for a great part of human 
 life, done you what good I could, and have never done you evil." 
 
 Entirely absorbed in his own trouble, and treating him- 
 self like a spoiled child, he continues to write to her in a 
 tone of upbraiding, while the good lady herself is in the 
 lowest state of health, and with a daughter nearly at the 
 point of death. One of her replies to his grumbles begins 
 in this fashion (March 27th, 1784) : — 
 
 " You tell one of my daughters that you know not with distinct- 
 ness the cause of my complaints. I believe she who lives with me 
 knows them no better ; one very dreadful one, is, however, removed by 
 dear Sophia's recovery. It is kind in you to quarrel no more about ex- 
 pressions which were not meant to offend ; but unjust to suppose I have 
 not lately thought myself dying. Let us, however, take the Prince of 
 Abyssinia's advice, a7id not add to the other evils of life the bitterness of 
 controversy. If courage is a noble and generous cjuality, let us exert it 
 to the last, and at the last ; if Faith is a Christian virtue, let us wil- 
 lingly receive and accept that support it will most surely bestow. And 
 do permit me to repeat those words with which, I know not why, you 
 were displeased : — Let us Lave behind us the best example we can, 
 
 " All this is not written by a person in high health and happiness, 
 but by a fellow-sufiferer, who has more to endure than she can tell, or 
 you can guess.'' 
 
54 English Poetesses, 
 
 The reason of her having gone to Bath, Mrs. Thrale 
 puts in plain and interesting language, as follows : — 
 
 I had been crossed in my intentions of going abroad, and found 
 it convenient, for every reason of health, peace, and pecuniary circum- 
 stances, to retire to l^ath, where I knew Dr. Johnson would not follow 
 me, and where I could, for that reason, command some little portion of 
 time for my own use ; a thing impossible while I remained at Streatham 
 or at London, as my horses, carriage, and servants had long been at 
 his command, who would not rise in the morning till twelve o'clock 
 perhaps, and oblige me to make breakfast for him till the bell rang for 
 dinner, though much displeased if the toilet was neglected, and though 
 much of the time we passed together was spent in blaming or deriding, 
 very justly, my neglect of economy, and waste of that money which 
 might make many families happy. The original reason of our connec- 
 tion, his particularly disordered health and spirits, had been long at an 
 end, and he had no other ailments than old age and general infirmity, 
 which every professor of medicine was ardently zealous and generally 
 attentive to palliate, and to contribute all in their power for the pro- 
 longation of a life so valuable. Veneration for his virtue, reverence for 
 his talents, delight in his conversation, and habitual endurance of a yoke 
 my husband first put upon me, and of which he contentedly bore his 
 share for sixteen or seventeen years, made me go on so long with Dr. 
 Johnson ; but the perpetual confinement I will own to have been terrify- 
 ing in the first years of our friendship, and irksome in the last ; nor could 
 1 pretend to support it without help when my coadjutor was no more. To 
 the assistance we gave him, the shelter our house afforded to his uneasy 
 fancies, and to the pains we took to soothe or repress them, the world, 
 perhaps, is indebted for the three political pamphlets, the new edition 
 and correction of his Dictionary, and for the Poets' Lives, which he 
 would scarce have lived, I think, and kept his faculties entire to have 
 written, had not incessant care l)een exerted at the time of his first 
 coming to be our constant guest in the country ; and several times after 
 that, when he found himself particularly oppressed with diseases inci- 
 dent to the most vivid and fervent imagination. I shall for ever consider 
 it as the greatest honour which could be conferred on any one, to have 
 been the confidential friend of Dr. Johnson's health, and to have in 
 some measure, with Mr. Thrale's assistance, saved from distress at 
 least, if not from worse, a mind great beyond the comprehension of 
 common mortals, and good beyond all hope of imitation from perishable 
 beings. 
 
J/aw. Pio/./.i. 55 
 
 lUit there was at least one other important fact in the case 
 between Johnson and his hostess. She had engaged herself 
 to an Italian singer named Piozzi. The engagement was 
 kept as much a secret as possible from Johnson, and her 
 family tried hard to break it, eventually for a time succeed- 
 ing. Piozzi was sent away abroad, and it was this rupture 
 of their engagement that affected Mrs. 'I'hrale's health .so 
 much. Italian singers in those days were looked upon by 
 society as very contemptible people indeed, especially the 
 men ; and though Mrs. Thrale found a beauty of person 
 and a grace of mind in Piozzi that nobody else could 
 discover, it was certainly a wonder that so wealthy and 
 interesting a widow should not have aimed at some con- 
 nection better than a mesalliance. It can be said for Piozzi, 
 however, that he proved to the end of his life a simple- 
 hearted husband, fond of little in the w^orld but his wife and 
 his violin, and entirely harmless. His wife had enjoyed 
 little satisfaction from the company of her first husband, 
 who had never pretended to love her, so there is the more 
 excuse for her having felt at liberty to please herself in 
 forming a second engagement. To her it brought content, 
 though it sundered her from all her family and many of her 
 friends. Possibly, after many years of her happy second 
 marriage had passed over her head, she may have reflected, 
 as another lady once reflected, that " more follies are com- 
 mitted out of complaisance to the world than in following 
 our own inclinations." 
 
 When Mrs. Thrale announced that Piozzi had returned 
 to her, Johnson wTote to her thus : — 
 
 Madam, — If I interpret your letter aright, you are ignominiously 
 married : if it is yet undone let us once more talk together. If you 
 have abandoned your children and your religion, may God forgive your 
 wickedness ; if you have forfeited your fame and your country', may 
 your folly do no further mischief If the last act is yet to do, I who 
 have loved you, esteemed you, reverenced you, and served you ; I who 
 
56 Rngtjsh Poetesses. 
 
 long thought you the first of wt^mankind, entreat that, before your fate 
 is irrevocable, I may once more see you. I was, I once was, Madam, 
 most truly yours, ^^^, Johnson. 
 
 July 2, 1784. 
 
 I will come down if you permit it. 
 
 'J'he reply from Mrs. Piozzi is dignified enough : 
 
 July A,, 1784. 
 
 Sir, — I have this morning received from you so rough a letter in 
 reply to one which was both tenderly and respectfully written, that I 
 am forced to desire the conclusion of a correspondence which I can 
 bear to continue no longer. The birth of my second husband is not 
 meaner than that of my first ; his sentiments are not meaner ; his pro- 
 fession is not meaner, and his superiority in what he professes 
 acknowledged by all mankind. It is want of fortune, then, that is 
 ignominious ; the character of the man I have chosen has no other 
 claim to such an epithet. The religion to which he has been alw^ays a 
 zealous adherent, will, I hope, teach him to forgive insults he has not 
 deserved ; mine will, I hope, enable me to bear them at once with 
 dignity and patience. To hear that I have forfeited my fame is, 
 indeed, the greatest insult T ever yet received. My fame is as unsullied 
 as snow, or I should think it unworthy of him who must henceforth 
 protect it. 
 
 T write by the coach the more speedily and effectually to prevent 
 your coming hither. Perhaps by my fame (and I hope it is so) you 
 mean only that celebrity which is a consideration of a much lower 
 kind. I care for that only as it may give pleasure to my husband and 
 his friends. 
 
 Farewell, dear sir, and accept my best wishes. Vou have always 
 commanded my esteem, and long enjoyed the fruits of a friendship 
 never infringed by one harsh expression on my part during twenty years 
 of familiar talk. Never did I oppose your will, or control your wish ; 
 nor can your unmerited severity itself lessen my regard ; but till you 
 have changed your opinion of Mr. Piozzi, let us converse no more. 
 God bless you. 
 
 This was almost the last communication that passed 
 between them. Johnson felt that he had lost one of the 
 best friends of his life. Some say he was chagrined at not 
 
,)/a\v. Pio/.zi, ' 57 
 
 being able to marry her himself. Mrs. Piozzi ridiculed the 
 notion, and declared that she had always had the same 
 veneration for him as for Pascal. Johnson died that year. 
 
 Mr. Piozzi and his spouse had left for the Continent, on 
 their marriage, and heard of Johnson's death when they 
 were in full tide of Christmas festivities at Milan. When 
 (lying, Johnson would not allow her name to be mentioned 
 in his hearing. Mrs. Thrale, on the other hand, evidently 
 laboured under some revulsion of feelings regarding him, 
 and deemed herself ill-treated by him. And so the friends 
 who had been so closely associated for twenty years closed 
 their connection in the sulks. 
 
 It is dramatic, the ending of their friendship : Johnson 
 sinking under a complication of asthma, dropsy, paralysis, 
 and what not, and then more than ever in need of the little 
 guardian who had given comfort to his life for so long. Mrs. 
 Piozzi is engaged in a whirl of concerts and "lemonade 
 parties," which she and her husband spend their money on 
 to please the Milanese. " Why, ma'am, he is not only a 
 stupid, ugly dog, but he is an old dog, too." This was the 
 estimate the moralist somewhat brutally expressed of his 
 rival in his friend's attentions : but to the end she seems to 
 have thought her singer's kindness to her greater than 
 Johnson ever showed her. 
 
 At Florence Mrs. Piozzi contributed a good many poems 
 to " The Florence Miscellany," the book which gave rise to 
 Gifford's " Baviad " and " Maeviad." To this collection Mrs. 
 Piozzi contributed a preface. At the same city she col- 
 lected her well-known "Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson's Life," 
 a work only inferior in interest to that of Boswell, who 
 was very jealous of its success. 
 
 The Piozzis came back to London in March, 1787, and 
 for three years lived in Hanover Square, thereafter removing 
 to Streatham again. Before this removal Mrs. Piozzi had 
 published " Observations and Reflections on France, Italy, 
 
5 ^ /ixCrL isn I\ n: 1 7-:ss a.v. 
 
 and (jermany (1789)." The two volumes of this work are 
 filled with ecjual parts of sense and nonsense. Mrs. Piozzi's 
 greatest fault, as has been already hinted, was an incapacity 
 to see when she had said enough about anything. But 
 though this want of discrimination did not miss bringing 
 down attacks on her book, it nevertheless sold very well, 
 and pleased on the whole. It was followed by "British 
 Synonymy" in 1794, and "Retrospection," a loosely-con- 
 structed universal history, in 1801. 
 
 Meanwhile poor Piozzi was playing the violin, speaking 
 seldom, designing a home in Wales, and accumulating gout 
 It was of this gout he died in 1809, and he was sincerely 
 mourned by a widow whose various talents he seems to 
 have found a little puzzling. They were an oddly-matched 
 couple. 
 
 As Mrs. Piozzi grew older, her eccentricities increased, 
 and one of her most marked eccentricities was prodigality.- 
 After her husband's death she lived at her country seat in 
 N"orth Wales till 18 14, and then she gave it up to her 
 nephew, Sir John Salusbury, for no other reason than that he 
 wished to marry. At Bath and Clifton the gay old widow 
 became quite a recognised feature of the season. I'he only 
 incident of note in her remaining years was an absurd fancy 
 she conceived for a handsome young actor named Conway. 
 She was very foolish about him, and he accepted her pet- 
 ting. It w^as rumoured that she had offered her nephew a 
 great sum of money — which she did not possess — if he 
 would give up her estate again, for she wished to marry Mr. 
 Conway. Nothing definite supports this rumour, and more 
 probably Mrs. Piozzi's love for the actor never quite forgot 
 its grandmotherliness. Conway came to a sad end by 
 suicide, about seven years after his patroness had died. In 
 1842 the "Love Letters of Mrs. Piozzi, written when she 
 was Eighty, to William Augustus Conway," were published. 
 It is thought that much of the matter in these letters is not 
 
Mrs. Pio/./.i. 
 
 59 
 
 genuine ; but even at the worst their silliness is innocent 
 enough, when judged by the mode of the time. Madame 
 l)u Deffimd had written in just such strains to Horace 
 Walpole, though a very old woman too. 
 
 In January of 1820 Mrs. Piozzi gave a ball to some 
 seven hundred ])eople at Bath, in honour of her eightieth 
 birthday. 'J'he old lady danced through the night with 
 extraordinary spirit, and made complimentary jokes about 
 '• Tully\s Offices," Tully being the purveyor of refreshments. 
 To the end she was lively ; her death took place in the 
 following May. 
 
 The testimony rendered to her character after death by 
 friends who had known her throughout her long life, was 
 very generally in her favour. Of the opinions recorded by 
 these acquaintances, the most interesting is a parallel drawn 
 between Mrs. Piozzi and Madame de Stael. Such a 
 parallel between women to whom posterity has awarded 
 reputations so unequal may seem strange to our eyes ; yet 
 it was penned by one who had no reason to overpraise 
 Mrs. Piozzi, for she had a misunderstanding with that lady 
 that lasted many years. The writer was Fanny Burney, 
 Madame d'Arblay ; and we must recollect that Madame 
 (1 Arblay was as intimate with Madame de Stael as she had 
 ever been with Mrs. Piozzi. 
 
 Shk had a great deal, both of good and not good, in common 
 with Madame de wStael-Holstein. They had the same sort of highly 
 superior intellect, the same depth of learning, the same general acquaint- 
 ance with science, the same ardent love of literature, the same thirst for 
 universal knowledge, and the same buoyant animal spirits, such as 
 neither sickness, sorrow, nor even terror, could subdue. Their conver- 
 sation was equally luminous, from the sources of their own fertile minds, 
 and from their splendid acquisitions from the works and acquirements 
 of others. Both were zealous to serve, liberal to bestow, and graceful 
 to oblige ; and both were truly high-minded in prizing and praising 
 whatever was admirable that came in their way. Neither of them was 
 delicate nor polished, though each was flattering and caressing ; but 
 
6o Engt.ish Poetesses. 
 
 both had a fund iiKxhauslible of good -humour, and of sportive gaiety, 
 that made their intercourse with those they wished to please attractive, 
 instructive, and dehghtful ; and though not either of them had the 
 smallest real malevolence in their compositions, neither of them could 
 ever withstand the pleasure of uttering a repartee, let it wound whom 
 it might, even though each would serve the very person they goaded 
 with all the means in their power. Both were kind, charitable, and 
 munificent, and therefore beloved ; both w^ere sarcastic, careless, and 
 daring, and therefore feared. The morality of Madame de Stael was 
 by far the most faulty, but so was the society to which she belonged : 
 so were the general manners of those by whom she was encircled. 
 
 The parallel is a great deal more ingenious than exact. 
 Thiers called De Stael "the perfection of commonplace," 
 and nobody would have called Mrs. Piozzi commonplace ; 
 while yet Madame de Stael is many degrees the higher of 
 the two in the scale of intellect. Madame de Stael is 
 steady, easy, calculating ; Mrs. Piozzi is rambling, volatile, 
 careless. The one was a talker ; the other only a gossip. 
 The one was truly great ; the other was clever, and nothing 
 more. 
 
 Of Mrs. Piozzi's verses, by far the best-known and best- 
 written are to be found in "The Three Warnings," a tale so 
 neatly told that Johnson was credited by some with a share 
 in its production. There never was any real reason for thus 
 robbing the authoress of credit, and even Boswell writes that 
 he " cannot withhold from Mrs. Thrale the praise of being 
 the author of that admirable poem, ' The Three Warnings.' " 
 The piece first appeared along with Johnson's fairy-tale 
 called "The Fountains," in the "Miscellanies" published 
 by Mrs. Williams in 1766. 
 
 THE THREE WARNINGS. 
 
 A TALE. 
 
 The tree of deepest root is found 
 Least willing still to quit the ground ; 
 'Twas therefore said by ancient sages, 
 That love of life increased with years, 
 
So much that, in our latter stages, 
 
 When pains grow sharp and sickness rages. 
 
 The greatest love of life appears. 
 
 This great affection to believe, 
 
 Which all confess but few perceive, 
 
 If old affections can't prevail. 
 
 Be pleased to hear a modern tale. 
 
 When sports went round and all were gay. 
 
 On neighbour Dobson's wedding day. 
 
 Death called aside the jocund groom, 
 
 W^ith him into another room : 
 
 And looking grave, " You must," says he, 
 
 " Quit your sweet bride and come with me." . 
 
 " With you I and quit my Susan's side? 
 
 With you ? " the hapless husband cried : 
 
 " Young as I am ; 'tis monstrous hard ; 
 
 Besides, in truth, I'm not prepared : 
 
 My thoughts on other matters go, 
 
 This is my wedding night, you know." 
 
 What more he urged I have not heard, 
 His reasons could not well ])e stronger. 
 
 So Death the poor delinquent spared 
 
 And left to live a little longer. 
 
 Yet calling up a serious look, 
 
 His hour glass trembled while he spoke, 
 
 " Neighbour," he said, "farewell. No more 
 
 Shall Death disturb your mirthful hour ; 
 And further, to avoid all blame 
 Of cruelty upon my name. 
 To give you time for preparation, 
 And fit you for your future station. 
 Three several warnings you shall have 
 Before you're summoned to the grave : 
 W^illing, for once, I'll quit my prey. 
 And grant a kind reprieve ; 
 In hopes you'll have no more to say. 
 But, when again I call this way. 
 Well-pleased the world will leave." 
 To these conditions both consented, 
 And parted perfectly contented. 
 What next the hero of our tale befell, 
 How long he lived, how wise, hov/ well, 
 
62 English Poetesses. 
 
 How roundly he pursued his coursL*, 
 
 And smoked his pipe and stroked his horse, 
 
 The willing muse shall tell : 
 
 He chaffered, then, he bought, he sold, 
 
 Nor once perceived his growing old, 
 
 Nor thought of death as near ; 
 
 His friends not false, his wife no shrew, 
 
 Many his gains, his children few, 
 
 He passed his hours in peace ; 
 
 But while he viewed his wealth increase. 
 
 While thus along life's dusty road 
 
 The beaten track content he trod. 
 
 Old Time, whose haste no mortal spares, 
 
 Uncalled, unheeded, unawares, 
 
 Brought him his eightieth year. 
 
 And now one night in musing mood, 
 
 As all alone he sat, 
 
 The unwelcome messenger of fate 
 
 Once more before him stood. 
 
 Half stilled with anger and surj:)rise, 
 
 " So soon returned I " old Dobson cries. 
 
 " So soon, d'ye call it ? " Death replies : 
 
 " Surely, my friend, you're but in jest ; 
 
 wSince I was here before 
 
 'Tis six-and-thiriy years at least, 
 
 And you are now fourscore." 
 
 " So much the worse," the clown rejoined, 
 
 " To spare the aged would be kind ; 
 
 However, see your search be legal. 
 
 And your authority, is't regal ? 
 
 Else you are come on a fool's errand. 
 
 With but a secretary's warrant. 
 
 Besides, you promised me three warnings. 
 
 Which I have looked for nights and mornings ; 
 
 But for that loss of time and ease 
 
 I can recover damages." 
 
 '* I know," cries Death, " that at the best 
 
 I seldom am a welcome guest ; 
 
 But don't be captious, friend ; at least 
 
 I little thought you'd still be able 
 
 To stump about your farm and stable ; 
 
AIkS. II.\i\\\All Cow LEW 6^^ 
 
 Your years have run to a great length, 
 I wish you joy, though, of your strength. 
 *' Hold ! " says the farmer, "not so fast, 
 I have been lame these four years past." 
 " And no great wonder. Death replies ; " 
 '* However, you still keep your eyes. 
 And sure, to see one's loves and friends, 
 For legs and arms would make amends."' 
 " Perhaps," says Dobson, " so it might, 
 But latterly I've lost my sight." 
 " This is a shocking story, faith. 
 Yet there's some comfort still," says Death 
 " Each strives your sadness to amuse, 
 I warrant you have all the news." 
 "There's none," cries he, " and if there were 
 I'm grown so deaf I could not hear." 
 "Nay then," the spectre stern rejoined, 
 " These are unjustifiable yearnings ; 
 If you are lame, and deaf, and blind, 
 You've had your three sufficient warnings. 
 So come along, no more we'll part," 
 He said, and touched him with his dart ; 
 And now old Dobson, turning pale. 
 Yields to his fate — so ends my tale. 
 
 Mrs. Hannah Cowley deserves but a passing word of 
 notice here. Her dramatic works are so Hvely that it 
 astonishes one to find her poems so intolerably 
 dull. The pen that accomplished so interesting cowley. 
 a comedy as " The Belle's Stratagem " might 
 have been expected to be capable of at least pointed verse. 
 Mrs. Cowley's vers de societe^ however, are mawkish twaddle, 
 while her blank verse runs in this fashion :--- 
 
 Zorador's fury to such Transports grew. 
 At the destruction of his Hopes, he seemed 
 No longer man ! His eye]:)alls glared with Rage ; 
 His Hrain on Fire, his wrath spared not Himself ; 
 His beard in scattered fragments strewed the floor, 
 While his inflated bosom, racked within, 
 
64 Em; US// P(u:r/:ss/:s\ 
 
 Without resounded with his frenzied blows. 
 He raved, blasphemed, and wept. 
 
 This is a specimen from "The Maid of Arragon." 
 
 Mrs. Cowley, the daughter of a bookseller named Park- 
 house, was born at Tiverton in 1743. At the age of twenty- 
 five she married Mr. Cowley, a gentleman employed in the 
 East India Company's service, and about 1776, while witness- 
 ing a play at the theatre, she first took it into her head she 
 might be a dramatist. Turning to her husband she asserted 
 that she could easily write something as good as what they 
 w^ere witnessing ; and, in answer to his sceptical smile, she 
 presented him next morning with the first act of "The 
 Runaway." Her talent and dramatic composition thence- 
 forth were in great request, and deservedly. Her plays are 
 pure and natural, and well constructed. It is curious that 
 Mrs. Cowley cared little for stage representation, sometimes 
 absenting herself from the theatres for years together, and 
 never witnessing the first performances of her own pieces. 
 " The Belle's Stratagem," first produced at Covent Garden 
 in 1780, long held possession of the boards, and was repre- 
 sented before the Royal Family once every year for a 
 lengthened period. "The Runaway," " Who's the Dupe?" 
 " More Ways Than One," " A Day in Turkey," and " Albina," 
 are the others of her most successful dramatic efforts. As for 
 her poems, " The Maid of Arragon," a wretched " gazette in 
 verse " called " The Siege of Acre," " The Scottish Village,'' 
 " Edwina the Huntress," and other insipidities, they had all 
 a great reputation once, and have none now. They never 
 deserved any, and are perfectly dreary reading from begin- 
 ning to end. Their author died on the i ith of March, 1809. 
 
 Charlotte Smith, for whom Sir W\alter Scott seems to 
 have had quite a sentimental attachment, in a literary way, 
 was a lady who was driven to the use of her pen by mis- 
 
Mrs. CHARLorrr. Smith. 65 
 
 fortune. This writer was the eldest daughter of a Mr. R. 
 Nicholas Turner, of Bignor Park, in Sussex, 
 and was born in London on the 4th of May, smith. 
 1 749. After receiving her early education at 
 Chichester, she was removed to a school at Kensington, 
 where her aptitude, rather than her diligence, procured 
 her much attention ; and at the age of twelve she was 
 considered a very accomplished actress in French and 
 English plays. So much was made of her that her father 
 had to deliver her up to society as a plaything. Her good 
 looks and her spirit made her friends everywhere. She was 
 indulged in every whim, and appeared to spend nearly all 
 her time in fashionable dissipation, while yet she continued 
 to keep up her acquaintance with books. 
 
 Amid the whirl of excitement caused by so much adula- 
 tion as she received, the gay Miss Turner seems to have 
 found no male admirer who touched her heart. Unfortu- 
 nately, however, a marriage of convenience was proposed to 
 her, and accepted. Her father was himself about to marry 
 again, and the ill-advice of an aunt persuaded her that she 
 could never spend a happy day in the same house with a 
 step-mother, after the liberty she had been accustomed 
 to enjoy. A Mr. Smith, son of a wealthy East India 
 merchant, was introduced as a suitor to her hand at this 
 juncture, and, to the surprise of many, he was accepted. 
 Indolent, incapable, pleasure-loving, he had already been 
 nothing but an annoyance to his father, whose partner he 
 was. To his wife, who married him in her sixteenth year, he 
 proved a life-long experience in sorrow. 
 
 The pair took up residence in one of the narrowest and 
 dirtiest lanes of the city, in a portion of the Smiths* com- 
 mercial establishment. The head of the firm, who had no 
 taste in the world except for business, seemed to look on 
 his daughter-in-law as a cheap kind of housekeeper for the 
 office, and his own wife treated the young girl in the most 
 F 
 
66 English Poetesses. 
 
 supercilious fashion. She had ill-tempered West Indian 
 blood in her veins. The transformed little society flutterer 
 had now to amuse herself by reading aloud to her father-in- 
 law, or helping to keep his books, a task which she per- 
 formed so much to his admiration that he once offered her 
 a salary to become his permanent clerk. These were the 
 matrimonial joys for which Miss Turner had too hastily ex- 
 changed her light-hearted girlhood. One of the last copies 
 of verses she wrote bears reference to the awakening to 
 stern realities in life : — 
 
 Far from my native fields removed, 
 
 From all I valued, all 1 loved ; 
 By early sorrow soon beset, 
 
 Annoy'd and wearied past endurance. 
 
 With drawbacks, bottomry insurance, 
 With samples drawn, and tare and tret- 
 It was a strange apprenticeship to letters. 
 
 At length Mrs. Smith was indulged with a cottage in the 
 village of Southgate, where even her husband left her pretty 
 much to herself Amid this tranquillity she was able to de- 
 vote much of her time to reading ; but such of her hours as 
 she gave to thought seem to have produced the unhappiest 
 effect on her mind. It was then that she first procured the 
 opportunity to reflect at leisure on the incongruity of her 
 surroundings in life with her own upbringing and her tastes. 
 "The more my mind expanded," so runs her own record, 
 " the more I become sensible of personal slavery. The 
 more I improved and cultivated my understanding, the 
 farther I was removed from those with whom I was con- 
 demned to pass my life, and the more clearly I saw by 
 these newly-acquired lights the horror of the abyss into 
 w^hich I had unconsciously plunged." 
 
 At Tottenham, and subsequently at Lys Farm, in Hants, 
 further searches after happiness were made by the unfortu- 
 
Mrs. Charlotte Smith, 67 
 
 nate young couple ; but the retirement of these residences 
 had not the desired effect on Mr. Smith. Wherever it was 
 possible to be extravagant and foolish, he seems to have 
 been eager to employ himself in squandering the money his 
 father's thrift had placed within his reach. Removed from 
 the immediate supervision of his father, he only became 
 more reckless, and more inconsiderate of his wife's happiness. 
 The elder Smith died in 1776, and in the following year 
 the loss of her own eldest son rendered Mrs. Smith almost 
 disconsolate ; for, being always delicate, the boy had re- 
 ceived from his mother all the wealth of affection she felt it 
 useless to attempt to bestow elsewhere. It was while suffer- 
 ing the trial of this bereavement that Mrs. Smith composed 
 her first sonnets, which, at that time, were not intended for 
 publication. The enthusiasm of friends surprised her into 
 consent that they should be printed, some five years later. 
 
 These " Elegiac Sonnets " (this was the title under which 
 they appeared in 1784) met with so warm a reception that a 
 second edition was quickly called for, and from first to last 
 the volume brought considerable and much-needed profit 
 to the author, whose husband's affairs were now hopelessly 
 involved in trouble. He had fled from his debts to Dieppe, 
 in the neighbourhood of which his customary extravagance 
 induced him to lease a large chateau. Here his wife lan- 
 guished in his company, and bore him a son in 1783, having 
 a foreboding, not unaccompanied with hope, that this birth 
 might be the cause of ending her many earthly cares. She 
 recovered very speedily, however, and it was in the dreary 
 loneliness of the Norman chateau that Mrs. Smith executed 
 her translation of *' Manon L'Escaut," published in 1785. 
 The morality of this well-known novel by the Abbd Prevost 
 is open to question ; and the translator was subjected to a 
 good deal of censure for undertaking such a work. *' The 
 Romance of Real Life," a very interesting compilation of 
 causes celebres, was the author's next performance. It 
 F 2 
 
68 English Poetesses. 
 
 appeared in 1786. By this time Mrs. Smith had returned 
 to England, and at length, becoming convinced that com- 
 plete incompatibility rendered her union with her husband 
 only a constant misery to both, she obtained an informal 
 separation from him, and went to live at Chichester, ac- 
 companied by all her children. 
 
 It was now that — for the first time since she married — 
 Mrs. Smith w^as able to enjoy society she chose for herself, 
 and pursuits consonant with her tastes. Having the entire 
 support of her family resting upon her, she plunged with 
 delight into the exercise of her literary faculties, and in 
 1788, the success of her first novel, "EmmeHne," assured 
 her that she might hope for a prosperous career in the 
 literary world. So many editions of this work were called 
 for, that Cadell, who published it, voluntarily increased the 
 price which had been agreed upon for the copyright. This 
 was followed by " Ethelinda " (1789) ; " Celestina " (1791); 
 " Desmond," a tale of violently democratic tendencies 
 (1792); "The Old Manor House" (1793), and many 
 other novels. *' The Emigrants " w^as the chief poetical 
 effort that interrupted this successful production of prose 
 fiction. Lively and industrious to the last, Mrs. Smith 
 ended a laborious life on the 28th of October, 1806, at Til- 
 ford, near Farnham, and she was buried at Stoke, according 
 to her own request. Her husband had died before her by 
 about half a year. 
 
 The vivacity and courage of Mrs. Smith's character 
 preserved to her the use of her talents throughout all the dis- 
 couragements of her married career, and the qualities of 
 her heart surrounded her with attached friends. A certain 
 quickness of temper, which is said to have marked her dis- 
 position, may have contributed to the family embroilments 
 which embittered her life, but on the whole she appears to 
 have been loyal to the interests of her husband, even in his 
 darkest days; and his conduct towards her was such as 
 
Mrs. Charlotte Smith. 69 
 
 would have warranted complete indifference to him on his 
 wife's part. 
 
 Throughout both the prose and the poetry of Charlotte 
 Smith there is a vein of deep melancholy which has rather 
 a monotonous effect on the reader. Sir Walter Scott takes 
 note of it thus : — 
 
 "Those who have few sorrows of their own, as Coleridge beauti- 
 fully expresses it, love the tales which call forth a sympathy for which 
 their own feelings give little occasion ; while others, exhausted by the 
 actual distresses of life, relish better those narratives which steal them 
 from a sense of sorrow. But every one, whether of sad or gay tem- 
 perament, must regret that the tone of melancholy which pervades Mrs. 
 Smith's compositions was derived too surely from the circumstances and 
 feelings of the amiable authoress. We are, indeed, informed by Mrs. 
 Dorset that the natural temper of her sister was lively and playful ; 
 but it must be considered that the works on which she was obliged, 
 often reluctantly, to labour, were seldom undertaken from free choice. 
 Nothing saddens the heart so much as that sort of literary labour which 
 depends on the imagination, when it is undertaken unwillingly, and 
 from a sense of compulsion. The galley-slave may sing when he is un- 
 chained, but it would be uncommon equanimity which could induce 
 him to do so when he is actually bound to his oar. If there is a mental 
 drudgery which lowers the spirits and lacerates the nerves, like the toil 
 of the slave, it is that which is exacted by literary composition when 
 the heart is not in unison with the work upon which the head is em- 
 ployed. Add to the unhappy author's task sickness, sorrow, or the 
 pressure of unfavourable circumstances, and the labour of the bondsman 
 becomes light in comparison." 
 
 This melancholy is especially felt in the sonnets of this 
 author, which are, nevertheless, a pleasing body of verse, 
 though most of the examples are somewhat astray from the 
 received model of the sonnet form. 
 
 WRITTEN AT THE CLOSE OF SPRING. 
 
 The garlands fade that spring so lately wove. 
 Each simple flower which she had nurs'd in dew, 
 
 Anemones, that spangled every grove. 
 
 The primrose wan, and harebell mildly blue. 
 
70 English Poetesses, 
 
 No more shall violets linger in the dell, 
 
 Or purple orchis variegate the plain, 
 Till spring again shall call forth every bell 
 
 And dress with humid hands her wreaths again. 
 Ah, poor humanity ! so frail, so fair. 
 
 Are the fond visions of thy early day, 
 Till tyrant passion and corrosive care 
 
 Bid all thy fairy colours flee away ! 
 Another May new buds and flowers shall luring ; 
 Ah ! why has happiness no second spring ? 
 
 THE GLOW-WORM. 
 
 When on some balmy breathing night of Spring, 
 
 The happy child, to whom the world is new. 
 Pursues the evening moth of mealy wing, 
 
 Or from the heath-bell beats the sparkling dew. 
 He sees, before his inexperienced eyes 
 
 The brilliant glow-worm, like a meteor shine 
 On the turf bank ; — amazed and pleased he cries, 
 
 *' Star of the dewy grass, I make thee mine ! " 
 Then, ere he sleep, collects the moistened flower, 
 
 And bids soft leaves his glittering prize enfold. 
 And dreams that fairy lamps illume his bower — 
 
 Yet with the morning shudders to behold 
 His lucid treasure rayless as the dust ; 
 So turn the world's bright joys to cold and blank disgust. 
 
 Mrs. Smith's descriptive powers were of a high order, 
 as may be seen from the following specimen, which reminds 
 one of Crabbe's style. The lines are taken from the 
 posthumous volume entitled " Beachy Head, and other 
 Poems." 
 
 ST. MONICA. 
 
 Among deep woods is the dismantled site 
 Of an old abbey, where the chanted rite 
 By twice ten brethren of the monkish cowl 
 Was duly sung ; and requiems for the soul 
 Of the first founder ; for the lordly chief, 
 Who flourished paramount of many a fief, 
 
Mrs. Charlotte Smith. 71 
 
 Left here a stipend, yearly paid, that they 
 The pious monks for his repose might say 
 Mass and orisons to Saint Monica. 
 
 Beneath the falling archway, overgrown 
 With briars, a bench remains, a single stone 
 Where sat the indigent, to wait the dole 
 Given at the buttery, that the baron's soul 
 The poor might intercede for ; there would rest, 
 Known by his hat of straw with cockles drest. 
 And staff and humble weed of watchet gray, 
 The wandering pilgrim, who came there to pray 
 The intercession of Saint Monica. 
 
 Stern Reformation and the lapse of years 
 Have reft the windows, and no more appears 
 Abbot or martyr on the glass annealed ; 
 And half the falling cloisters are concealed 
 By ash and elder : the refectory wall 
 Oft in the storm of night is heard to fall, 
 When, wearied by the labours of the day. 
 The half-awakened cottars, starting, say, 
 '* It is the ruins of Saint Monica." 
 
 Now with approaching rain is heard the rill 
 Just trickling through a deep and hollow gill 
 By osiers and the alder's crowding bush. 
 Reeds, and dwarf elder, and the pithy rush. 
 Choked and impeded : to the lower ground 
 Slowly it creeps ; there traces still are found 
 Of hollow squares, embanked with beaten clay, 
 Where brightly glitter in the eye of day 
 The peopled waters of Saint Monica. 
 
 The chapel pavement where the name and date, 
 Or monkish rhyme, had marked the graven plate, 
 W^ith docks and nettles now is overgrown ; 
 And brambles trail above the dead unknown. 
 Impatient of the heat, the straggling ewe 
 Tinkles her drowsy bell, as, nibbling slow. 
 She picks the grass among the thistles gray, 
 Whose feathered seed the light air bears away 
 Over the relics of Saint Monica, 
 
English Poetesses. - 
 
 Re-echoed by the walls, the owl obscene 
 Hoots to the night as through the ivy green, 
 Whose matted tods the arch and buttress bind, 
 Sobs in low gusts the melancholy wind : 
 The conium there, her stalks bedropped with red 
 Rears, with circea, neighbour of the dead ; 
 Atropia, too, that as the beldams say, 
 Shows her black fruit to tempt and to betray, 
 Nods by the mouldering shrine of Monica. 
 
 Old tales and legends are not quite forgot. 
 Still superstition hovers on the spot, 
 And tells how here the wan and restless sprite, 
 By some way-wildered peasant seen at night, 
 Gibbers and shrieks, among the ruins drear ; 
 And how the friar's lanthorn will appear 
 Gleaming among the woods, with fearful ray. 
 And from the churchyard take its wavering way, 
 To the dim arches of Saint Monica. 
 
 The antiquary comes not to explore. 
 
 As once, the unraftered roof and pathless floor ; 
 
 For now, no more beneath the vaulted ground 
 
 Is crozier, cross, or sculptured chalice found, 
 
 No record telling of the wassail ale. 
 
 What time the welcome summons to regale, 
 
 Given by the matin peal on holyday. 
 
 The villagers rejoicing to obey, 
 
 Feasted in honour of Saint Monica. 
 
 Yet often still, at eve or early morn, 
 Among these ruins shagged with fern and thorn, 
 A pensive stranger from his lonely seat 
 Observes the rapid martin, threading fleet 
 The broken arch : or follows with his eye 
 The wall-creeper that hunts the burnished fly ; 
 Sees the newt basking in the sunny ray. 
 Or snail that sinuous winds its shining way 
 O'er the time-fretted walls of Monica. 
 
 He comes not here, from the sepulchral stone 
 To tear the ol)livious pall that Time has thrown, 
 
Mrs. Charlo'ite Smith. 73 
 
 But, meditating, marks the power proceed 
 
 From the mapped Hchen, to the plumM weed, 
 
 From thready mosses to the veined flower. 
 
 The silent, slow, but ever-active power 
 
 Of vegetative life, that o'er decay 
 
 Weaves her green mantle, when returning May 
 
 Dresses the ruins of Saint Monica. 
 
 O Nature ! ever lovely, ever new. 
 
 He who his earliest vows has paid to you 
 
 Still finds that life has something to bestow ; 
 
 And while to dark forgetfulness they go, 
 
 Man, and the works of man, immortal Youth, 
 
 Unfading Beauty and eternal Truth, 
 
 Your Heaven-indited volume will display, 
 
 While Art's elaborate monuments decay. 
 
 Even as these shattered aisles, deserted Monica. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 MRS. BARBAULD. 
 
 IT may be questioned whether, in an average assemblage 
 of professedly literary people, we should now-a-days 
 find more than one person w^ho had read forty pages of Miss 
 Hannah More's works ; yet that lady wrote more than thirty 
 volumes. In her own days she was a power in the land. 
 Garrick called her the Nine Muses ; Johnson deferred to 
 her ; cynical Horace Walpole said she was not only one of 
 the cleverest, but one of the best of human beings ; the 
 equally cynical Quarterly Review said : " How many^ 
 have thanked God for the hour that first made them 
 acquainted with her writings ! " and she made over fprty 
 thousand pounds by her literary popularity. Who now- 
 a-days reads Miss Edgeworth? Miss Mitford is half- 
 forgotten ; Mrs. Marcet is wholly so ; Madame D'Arblay 
 has achieved a precarious claim upon posterity's atten- 
 tion, not because she wrote " Cecilia," and received 
 ^2,000 for so doing, but because she has bequeathed 
 to us a mass of piquant gossip about other people. 
 Mrs. Montagu wrote and published charming letters, in 
 the style of Lady Mary's ; but probably most of those 
 who read this page never heard of them. Miss Berry, 
 the Misses Lee, Miss Caroline Herschell, Mrs. Trimmer, 
 Lady Smith, are all defunct as women of letters. Miss 
 Jane Porter, Lady Morgan, Joanna Baillie, are talked of 
 
Mrs. Barbauld, 75 
 
 and read by a few curious students of our literature, 
 but have now no influence on our taste. Yet these 
 ladies were all contemporaries of Mrs. Barbauld, a writer 
 somehow or other better known to this generation by 
 name, probably by reason of the odour of sanctity with 
 which her reputation is preserved in popular hymn-books. 
 Few people know anything about Mrs. Barbauld's works, 
 however. Hymn-writing w^as the least of her labours, 
 and, indeed, was no labour at all, but an occasional 
 religious diversion. Her prose has vanished from our 
 shelves, or at any rate from our knowledge. Of all the 
 literary women who flourished at the end of the last cen- 
 tury, and the beginning of this century, Jane Austen alone 
 retains her hold on popular interest. 
 
 Never did English women write more unaffectedly, 
 more vigorously, more captivatingly, than these. Perhaps, 
 like the French women of the same time, they owed 
 much of their natural charm to the practice in letter- 
 writing which then filled so much of the leisure at the 
 disposal of the feminine world. But they also partook of 
 the sound solid sense which characterises the male English 
 writers of their period, and seem to have wTitten, not 
 because they wanted to be writers, but because they had 
 something to write about, and must out with it. In 
 Elizabeth's time many a lady could converse in Italian 
 fluently, and read Latin and Greek with delight. But no 
 literature was the result of this culture. For such people 
 literature was only the art of quotation. Ladies acquired 
 learning that they might not be behind-hand in rendering 
 themselves agreeable to the Spensers and Raleighs and 
 Sidneys, and hundred other polished gentlemen of the 
 court. Above all, they were cultivated because their Queen 
 was. After them womankind sank again, until in the latter 
 half of the seventeenth century, and the greater portion of 
 the eighteenth, the gentle-ladies of the land w^ere mere pie- 
 
76 English Poetesses. 
 
 makers and needlewomen, hardly able to write, and caring 
 not a straw about literature. If here and there a woman 
 rose out of the mediocrity of her fate, and mingled 
 among the men, and raised her voice to speak out the 
 thoughts that were in her, the effect was one of oddity. If, 
 when Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon were writing, there 
 were many women who could appreciate all that these 
 wrote, it may be doubted whether the learned styles of 
 Milton, Hooker, and Jeremy Taylor, only a little later, 
 were at all relished, save by the men. As to the rank that 
 woman holds among dramatists like Wycherley, Dryden, 
 Congreve, Farquhar, and Savage, everybody knows that 
 female understanding w^as with them considered as be- 
 ginning and ending with the talent for intrigue, and 
 female virtues were valued only as some sportsmen 
 admire pigeons, for the sport they afford. Among poets, 
 essayists and novelists, such as Pope, Addison, Smollett, 
 Fielding, Richardson, we find that English womankind 
 is figured or reflected as very homespun stuff. It never 
 occurs to one of these gentlemen to give us a picture 
 of a brainful, clever woman, capable of being a power 
 in the world by means of other qualities than mere 
 beauty. 
 
 A loftier age of thought then dawned. Poetry became 
 more idyllic. Goldsmith, Collins, Gray, Burns, revived a 
 pure delight in nature and in humanity. Even Thomson, 
 though his landscape studies smell of the lamp to us, was the 
 Wordsworth of his day, in teaching the English people to 
 look at skies and rivers, and trees, as they had not been 
 looked at since the bright days of Spenser and Shakespeare. 
 It was in this age of soberness and natural feeling that many 
 clever women rose and took their places beside the teachers 
 of the stronger sex. They had but a glimmer of " women's 
 rights" in their heads. If, indeed, one of them did, in a 
 certain poem, begin the strain of rebellion, it was only to 
 
Mrs. Barbauld. 77 
 
 abandon the cry before she came to the end of her verses, 
 which conclude 
 
 *' That separate rights are lost in mutual love." 
 
 But the work that this band of women-writers did in the 
 early eighteenth century was the work of purifying and 
 strengthening social relations. With clear heads and 
 pure minds they studied society as neither prudes nor 
 coquettes could study it ; and not only did they win for 
 themselves individually the respectful homage of earnest 
 men, from Dr. Johnson downwards, but they taught at 
 large that their sisters should be made worthier helpmeets 
 for mankind, by being esteemed capable of higher life with 
 man, and educated to live the higher life. But, more 
 than anything else, the writings of Miss More, Mrs. 
 Barbauld, and some others of this female coteri of 
 whom we are now speaking, raised the tone of English 
 thought with regard to the value of their sex. Yet in 
 all their writings they never lost sight of domesticity as 
 the basis of their sociology ; and half-unconsciously they 
 preached the best of women's rights — the right to men's 
 hearts. 
 
 Clearest-headed, strongest-minded of all the ladies, Mrs. 
 Barbauld might have easily taken rank as the female 
 Johnson of her day, had not circumstances, together with 
 a natural indolence of temperament, largely associated 
 with modesty, prevented her from making more than 
 occasional use of her literary powers. As it is, this writer 
 leaves behind her a body of very respectable verse and 
 some prose of the highest excellence, with a private 
 reputation which every writer cannot boast of, namely, 
 the reputation of having led a God-fearing, spotless life, 
 as a tender wife to an afflicted husband, a cheerful 
 toiler in the shadow of trouble, a charitable critic of all 
 her acquaintance, and a woman who died, at a very 
 
78 English Poetesses. 
 
 advanced age, idolised by a large family circle. The 
 serene nobility of such a life as Mrs. Barbauld's is a 
 refreshing thing to come across. It was a most natural 
 nobility, and 
 
 " Deeds of week-day holiness 
 
 Fell from her noiseless as the snow." 
 
 Anna Letitia Barbauld, eldest child and only daughter 
 of John Aikin, D.D., and descended by the mother's side 
 from an ancient Bedfordshire family named Wingate, was 
 born at Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, on June 20, 
 1743. At a very early period she exhibited signs of 
 marked precocity. At the age of two she could read 
 sentences and short stories in w^hat she called her " wise- 
 book ; " and in half-a-year more she could read any volume 
 as easily as most women could. She used, in later life, 
 to speak of the excitement she remembered to have been 
 caused in her family circle by the advance of the Pre- 
 tender's army into England. At that time the child was 
 barely three. 
 
 Dr. Aikin was a schoolmaster, and kept a private 
 academy for boys ; and his wife, having declared that a 
 girl brought up in a boy's school had no alternative between 
 becoming a prude or degenerating into a hoyden, resolved 
 that her. daughter had better be too shy than too bold. 
 Accordingly the girl was educated entirely by her mother's 
 side, in the most absolute and uneventful quiet, until she 
 had reached an age at which she was capable of forming 
 opinions of her own regarding the acquisition of knowledge. 
 At that period it was thought ungraceful for a woman to be 
 learned like a man ; and Dr. Aikin received with little favour 
 his daughter's request that she might be taught Latin and 
 Greek. However, in the end he acceded to her desires ; 
 and though he did not ground her very thoroughly in 
 Greek, he imparted to her such a knowledge of Latin as 
 made its literature a resource through all her days, 
 
Mrs, Barbauld. 79 
 
 Just when the young student had turned fifteen, a 
 welcome change occurred in the history of the household. 
 Dr. Aikin accepted the post of classical tutor in an im- 
 portant dissenting academy at Warrington. This institution 
 was the root from which the influential association known as 
 Manchester New College sprang. It numbered among its 
 teachers Dr. Priestley and Dr. Enfield, whose " History of 
 Philosophy " still ranks on many shelves with more 
 recent and reliable authorities, as Lempriere rests beside 
 Smith. Dr. Taylor (" Taylor of Norwich ") also taught 
 in the college, and so did the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield. 
 Transplanted into the society of these men and their 
 families, Anna Aikin was in a position to avail herself of the 
 excellent preliminary cultivation which she had received in 
 the retirement of her former home. In spite of her mother's 
 prediction she was not much of a " miss " or prude, though 
 she ascribed to her early up-bringing a certain angularity of 
 manner of which she never quite got rid. 
 
 On arriving at Warrington, the clever country lass 
 astonished every one by her feats of strength. Her 
 most notable feat, performed shortly after her arrival 
 within the academic shades, was to elude a suitor in a 
 spring-heeled fashion. Mr. Haynes was a farmer of Kib- 
 worth, rich and amorous, but stupid. He followed the 
 object of his attachment to Warrington, and there obtained 
 of her father a private interview, in which he declared his 
 love. Dr. Aikin replied very candidly that he w^ould find 
 his daughter in the garden, and might there plead his suit 
 before her without more ado. However ardently he may 
 have unbosomed his secret, she would have none of it ; and 
 at length, tired of his importunities, and perhaps a little 
 flustered and frightened, she nimbly ran up a tree which 
 grew near the garden wall, and dropped out of her admirer's 
 sight on the other side. The poor man, it is said, lived and 
 died a bachelor, He was never known to possess any 
 
8o English Poetesses. 
 
 literature except the complete works of Mrs. Barbauld, a 
 splendidly-bound edition of which garnished a shelf in his 
 parlour to the end of his days. 
 
 Miss Aikin was run after, even already, by more swains 
 than the farmer. She was at this time, according to her 
 biographer, Lucy Aikin, possessed of great beauty, the 
 traces of which not even extreme age could afterwards 
 obliterate. Her figure was slender, and her complexion was 
 of exquisite fineness. Her features were regular, and dark- 
 blue eyes lit up the face with animated humour. The 
 senior students of the college were allowed entrance to the 
 social circle of the professors' families. Many distinguished 
 men, likewise, left the big world every now and then to 
 enjoy the serene atmosphere of the Warrington Academy. 
 In particular, the philanthropist Howard frequented the 
 Aikin fireside. By the misfortune of having narrow-minded 
 guardians in his youth, he found himself so deficient in 
 education as not to be able to write his own language 
 with propriety. He had, therefore, to enlist the assistance 
 of a friend w^hen any of his books were on the stocks ; 
 and Miss Aikin's only brother John was his chief coad- 
 jutor in the production of his widely-read and influential 
 works. Roscoe, the biographer of Lorenzo de' Medici, also 
 visited the Aikins often ; so did Pennant, the naturalist ; 
 and Currie, who chronicled the life of Burns ; and sundry 
 other men of repute, who kept the community alive to all 
 the news of the outer sphere of society. It is a pity that 
 among all the clever men who visited the Aikins, the 
 daughter of the house did not give her affections to one who 
 would have afforded her that support through life which a 
 man of mind can give to a woman of sensitive and imagi- 
 native temperament. We hear of two young lovers as 
 prominent among her admirers. One was Archibald 
 Hamilton Rowan, who in after-life identified himself in 
 such a reckless way with Irish revolutionary movements 
 
Mrs, Barbauld. 8i 
 
 that not all the eloquent defences Curran made for him 
 could save him from incurring the condemnation of the 
 Government. He was convicted and imprisoned for 
 treason, but escaped to America. Ultimately he received a 
 State pardon, and he died on his own estate in Ireland, at 
 the age of eighty-four. His autobiography forms a very 
 entertaining volume. The other hopeful aspirant to Miss 
 Aikin's hand w^as Rochemont Barbauld, the son of a Church 
 of England clergyman of Huguenot extraction. This 
 clergyman destined his son for the Established Church, 
 but was induced by the repute in which the Warrington 
 College was held to place the lad there for a period. 
 The result of this step was that the son soon found 
 his opinions too free to admit of his entering the 
 communion of the Church of England, but he looked 
 forward to becoming a Unitarian minister after his course 
 of theological studies should have been accomplished 
 By all accounts he w^as an excitable, warm-hearted young 
 fellow, without a great deal of ballast, pure and simple 
 in his tastes, but a visionary, and a man of irritable 
 temper, wholly unfit to make much of life. It w^as to 
 this divinity student that Miss Aikin gave her heart. To 
 the sorrow of her friends she gave it unreservedly, and was 
 not to be argued into withdrawing the troth she plighted. 
 
 Meanwhile she had been casting off verses from time to 
 tmie, and at the urgent request of her brother these had 
 been published in 1773. They passed through four editions 
 within a year. Thus encouraged to use the pen, she next 
 engaged herself, together with her brother, upon a volume 
 which appeared as " Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose, by J. 
 and A. L. Aikin" (1773). This book was also received 
 very favourably, and was several times reprinted. 
 
 Thus, without any great striving on her part, the 
 sweet sounds of popular applause came to her, and the 
 natural destiny opening up to her seemed to be that of 
 G 
 
82 English Poetesses. 
 
 a great literary influence. But literature was the accident 
 in her life just then ; and forever after it was resumed only 
 by fits and starts. Literary reputation never was a fixed aim 
 with Mrs. Barbauld. 
 
 " Mrs. Barbauld " she soon became. Although she had 
 been warned that her lover had even had an attack of 
 insanity, she refused, with a generous devotion, to break her 
 engagement with him. " If I were now to disappoint him,'* 
 was her womanly answer, " he would certainly go mad 
 again." The marriage was celebrated in May, 1774. The 
 bride was of mature enough age — thirty. 
 
 No sooner had the marriage taken place than Mrs. 
 Barbauld was offered another opening for her talents than 
 that of literature. Mrs. Montagu, on behalf of an association 
 of ladies, probably all members of her Blue Stocking Club, 
 invited her to found and superintend in London a high- 
 class seminary or college for young ladies — a sort of 
 eighteenth century Girtoa The grounds upon which this 
 invitation was declined are so admirably shown forth in 
 the reply forwarded by Mrs. Barbauld to Mrs. Montagu, 
 and have still so much interest in relation to the general 
 question of women's education, that the document is 
 well worth reproducing. 
 
 *' A kind of academy for ladies," she says, " where they are to be 
 taught in a regular manner the various branches of science, appears to 
 me to be better calculated to form such characters as Prccieuses^ or 
 Feninies Savanies^ than good wives or agreeable companions. The best 
 way for a woman to accjuirc knowledge is from conversation with a 
 father or brother, and by such a course of reading as they may recom- 
 mend. Perhaps you may think that having myself stepped out of the 
 bounds of female reserve in becoming an author, it is with an ill-grace 
 I offer these sentiments ; but my situation has been jKHuliai , and will 
 be no rule for others. I should likewise object to the age j)roposed ; 
 geography, languages, &c., are best learned from about nine to thirteen. 
 I should have little hopes of cultivating a love of knowledge in a young 
 lady oriiftceii who came to nic ignorant and uncultivated : it is too late 
 
Mrs, Barbauld. 83 
 
 then to begin to learn. The empire of the passions is coming on ; those 
 attachments begin to be formed which influence the happiness of future 
 life ; the care of a mother alone can give suitable attention to this 
 important period. The ease and grace of society, the duties of their 
 own family — to their friends, the detail of domestic economy ; lastly, 
 their behaviour to the other half of their species, who then begin to 
 court their notice : these are the accomplishments which a young 
 woman has to learn till she is married, or fit to be so ; and surely these 
 are not to be learned in a school. My next reason is that I am not at 
 all fit for the task. I have seen a good deal of the education of boys, 
 but in a girls' school I should be quite a novice. I was never at one 
 myself ; I have not even the advantage of sisters ; indeed, for the early 
 part of my life I conversed little with my own sex. In the village 
 where I was there were none to converse with, and this I am sensible 
 has given me an awkwardness about common things which would 
 make me peculiarly unfit for the education of girls. I could not judge 
 of their music or their dancing ; and if I pretended to correct their air 
 they might be tempted to smile at my own, for I know myself to be 
 remarkably deficient in gracefulness of person, in my air and manner. 
 I am sensible the common schools are upon a very bad plan, and believe 
 I could project a better, but I could not execute it. " 
 
 The young couple now took up their abode at Palgrave, 
 in Suffolk, where Mr. Barbauld accepted the pastorate of 
 a dissenting congregation, and likewise opened a boys* 
 school. The school became a rapid and unmistakable 
 success, chiefly by reason of Mrs. Barbauld's energy. She 
 kept all the accounts, and managed the purse, attended to 
 the numerous household requirements connected with such 
 an establishment, and yet found time to write lectures on 
 " History and Geography " for the senior pupils, and take 
 entire charge of the younger boys. The first Lord Denman, 
 Sir William Gell, and William Taylor, of Norwich, were 
 among her earliest and youngest pupils ; and it was for them 
 and her adopted nephew Charles that she wrote " Early 
 Lessons" (1774) and "Hymns in Prose" (1774X both 
 books of which the popularity has been prodigious. 
 Such educational methods as Mrs. Barbauld's might 
 G 2 
 
84 English Poetesses, 
 
 appear very simple and inefficient in these days of codes 
 and premiums. Yet it may well be questioned whether 
 the style of teaching her example dictated (and it must be 
 remembered that this style was quite a striking innovation 
 and advance in its time) had not in it some elements of 
 strength which our modern ideas are apt to neglect. 
 
 Throughout the years in which the Barbaulds kept 
 school at Palgrave, it was their annual practice to spend 
 a holiday in London. During these pleasant vacations 
 Mrs. Barbauld's facile pen sent to her friends lively 
 descriptions of all she saw and heard in society. In one 
 of these letters occurs the following estimate of Johnson's 
 character : — 
 
 ** We are reading, in idle moments, Boswell's long-expected ' Life 
 of Johnson.' It is like going to Ranelagh, you meet all your acquain- 
 tances : but it is a base and a mean thing to bring thus every idle word 
 into judgment, the judgment of the public. Johnson, I think, was far 
 from being a great character. He was continually sinning against his 
 conscience, and then afraid of going to hell for it. A Christian, and a 
 man of the town ; a philosopher, and a bigot ; acknowledging life to be 
 miserable, and making it more miserable through fear of death ; pro- 
 fessing great distaste to the country, and neglecting the urbanity of 
 towns ; a Jacobite, and pensioned ; acknowledged to be a giant in 
 literature, and yet we do not trace him as we do Locke, or Rousseau, 
 or Voltaire in his influence on the opinion of the times. We cannot 
 say Johnson first opened this view of thought, led the way to this dis- 
 covery, or this turn of thinking. In his style he is original, and there 
 we can track his imitators. In short, he rather seems to me to be one 
 of those who have shone in the belles lettres, than what he is held out to 
 be by many, an original and deep genius in investigation." 
 
 Eleven years of constant labour in connection with their 
 school had now impaired the vigour of both Mr. and Mrs. 
 Barbauld. The establishment was given up ; after spending 
 two years abroad and in London, they set up house in 
 Hampstead, and there took a pupil or two again. Mr. 
 Barbauld accepted the charge of a small chapel in the 
 
Mrs. Barbauld. 85 
 
 neighbourhood. A frequent attender at this chapel was 
 a young lady whose demure and innocent face attracted 
 Mrs. Barbauld's notice. It was not until a considerable 
 period of time had elapsed that this innocent face was 
 found to belong to a writer of highly popular plays. The 
 young lady was Miss Joanna Baillie. 
 
 At Hampstead, Mrs. Barbauld wrote fourteen pieces 
 for her brother's "Evenings at Home." In 1790, the 
 rejection of a bill to repeal the Corporation and Test Acts 
 induced her to write an "Address to the Opposers of the 
 Repeal of the Test Acts " ; the Slave Trade agitation called 
 forth her "Poetical Epistle to Mr. Wilberforce "in 1791 ; iii 
 1792 appeared her "Remarks upon Mr. Gilbert Wakefield's 
 Inquiry into the Propriety of Public Worship ; " and in the 
 following year she published her " Sins of the Government, 
 Sins of the Nation.'' Of these productions, the last is the 
 most impassioned. Its language is oratorical throughout, in 
 this style : — 
 
 " The enemies of reformation, who palliate what they cannot 
 defend, and defer what they dare not refuse ; who, with Festus, put off 
 to a more convenient season what, only because it is the present season, 
 is inconvenient, stand aghast, and find they have no power to put back 
 the important hour, when nature is labouring with the birth of great 
 events. Can ye not discern ? But you do discern these signs ; you 
 discern them well, and your alarm is apparent. You see a mighty em- 
 pire breaking from bondage, and exerting the energies of recovered 
 freedom : and England — which was used to glory in being the 
 assertor of liberty and refuge of the oppressed — England, who with 
 generous and respectful sympathy, in times not far remote from our own 
 memory, afforded an asylum to so many of the subjects of that very 
 Empire when crushed beneath the iron rod of persecution ; and, by so 
 doing, circulated a livelier abhorrence of tyranny within her own veins — 
 England, who has long reproached her with being a slave, now censures 
 her for daring to be free. England, who has held the torch to her, is 
 mortified to see it blaze brighter in her hand. England, for whom, and 
 for whose manners and habits of thinking, that Empire has for some 
 time past felt even an enthusiastic predilection, and to whom, as a 
 model of laws and government, she looks up with affectionate reverence 
 
86 English Poetesses. 
 
 — England, nursed at the breast of Liberty, and breathing the purest 
 spirit of enlightened philosophy, views a sister nation with affected 
 scorn and real jealousy, and presumes to ask whether she yet exists ? 
 Yes ; all of her exists that is worthy to do so. Her dungeons, indeed, 
 exist no longer ; the iron doors are forced, the massy walls are thrown 
 down, and the liberated spectres, trembling between joy and horror, 
 may now blazon the infernal secrets of their prison house. Her 
 cloistered monks no longer exist, nor does the soft heart of sensibility 
 beat behind the grate of a convent ; but the best affections of the 
 human mind, permitted to flow in their natural channel, diffuse their 
 friendly influence over the brightening prospect of domestic happiness. 
 Nobles, the creatures of kings, exist there no longer ; but man, the 
 creature of God, exists there. Millions of men exist there, who only 
 now truly begin to exist, and hail with shouts of grateful acclamation 
 the better birthday of their country." 
 
 This was an eloquent sympathy for the revolutionary 
 cause, which many of the clearest-sighted men and women 
 in England shared. The cause w^as noble, and the sym- 
 pathy was noble. But a mob can never be noble for 
 long. 
 
 The continued anxiety and gloom consequent on the 
 achievement of the American Revolution, and the warlike 
 audacities of Napoleon, seem for a time to have deprived 
 Mrs. Barbauld's pen of its vigour. We hear of nothing 
 that she wrote during the next few years, except prefatory 
 essays to accompany Akenside's " Pleasures of Imagination," 
 and Collins's "Odes." The edition of Akenside appeared 
 in 1795 ; that of Collins in 1797. 
 
 In the year 1802 Mr. Barbauld accepted the pastorate 
 of a congregation at Newington Green, and thither his 
 household was transferred from Hampstead. The congrega- 
 tion was a larger one than that of Hampstead, and had 
 once enjoyed the ministry of Dr. Price. The chief induce- 
 ment, however, which led the Barbaulds to abandon a 
 neighbourhood so pleasant as that of Hampstead, was the 
 affection subsisting between Mrs. Barbauld and her only 
 brother, Dr. Aikin, a [)hysician. Dr. Aikin lived with his 
 
Mrs, Barbauld, 87 
 
 family at Stoke Newington, and it was the earnest desire of 
 brother and sister that they might pass the evening of life 
 near each other. Being childless, the Barbaulds had 
 adopted Dr. Aikin's young son Charles. Their house was 
 now close to that of the Aikins, and here the poetess re- 
 mained to the end of her life. 
 
 About the period of the removal to Hampstead, Mrs. 
 Barbauld was approached by Maria Edgeworth and her 
 father — the gentleman for whose suppression Byron desired 
 to found a society — with reference to a project Mr. Edge- 
 worth had in his mind for a periodical to be entirely written 
 by ladies. The notion was, after much discussion, aban- 
 doned as impracticable. Perhaps it might not be so 
 impracticable now, when so many more women make their 
 living out of literature. Such a magazine need not be 
 written for women alone. Its novelty would consist in its 
 being written by women alone. 
 
 Meanwhile, Mr. Barbauld's mental malady was in- 
 creasing distressingly. Had it not been for the comparative 
 sense of security afforded her by the proximity of her 
 brother and his family, Mrs. Barbauld could scarcely have 
 continued to reside in the same house with her mad hus- 
 band. At last the unhappy sufferer, in a paroxysm of 
 lunacy, seized a knife from the dinner-table one day, and 
 ran round the room after his wife, who only escaped by 
 leaping from the window into the garden. This incident 
 brought matters to a crisis. A separation had to be 
 arranged, and Mr. Barbauld was placed in private confine- 
 ment in London Being imprudently trusted with money, 
 however, he before long bribed his attendant to allow him 
 to go out alone one afternoon. He never returned ; and 
 his dead body was found in the New River. Mrs. Barbauld 
 sincerely and deeply mourned her unfortunate husband 
 during all the rest of her life. In the '' Monthly Repository 
 of Theology and (ieneral Literature," the widow wrote 9 
 
88 English Poetesses, 
 
 sketch of his life and character ; and among her poems, a 
 ** Dirge " records her affection and admiration for him. It 
 is a strange circumstance that a few years later Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld again ran the risk of losing her life at the hands of 
 a lunatic. A young man named Elton, a gentleman of 
 varied talents and handsome appearance, was introduced to 
 Mrs. Barbauld by the Edgeworths, and became a constant 
 visitor at her house. His manner gradually became so 
 strange as to alarm his friends, and eventually he destroyed 
 himself. Among his papers his executor found a careful 
 document which discussed, at great length, the best way 
 of "putting an end to Mrs. Barbauld's life" — by poison, 
 sudden blow, shooting, or stabbing. 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld's bereavement happened in November of 
 1808. Four years before the sad event she had edited 
 for the press a selection from the " British Essayists," 
 and "Richardson's Letters," with introductory essay. Sir 
 James Mackintosh has declared that a certain portion of 
 the paper on Richardson — that portion which deals with 
 the moral of "Clarissa" — is "as fine a piece of mitigated 
 and rational stoicism as our language can boast of." This 
 paper and the introduction to the " British Essayists " were 
 probably undertaken in order to withdraw the author's mind 
 from the domestic trials which her spirit had then to endure. 
 With the same object, that of abstracting her mind from 
 personal sorrows, Mrs. Barbauld, soon after her husband's 
 death, entered on the labour of editing a collection of the 
 British Novelists, and this edition, with biographical and 
 critical notices prefixed to the works of each writer, was 
 given to the world in 181 o. Next year she edited an un- 
 important compilation of verse and prose, entitled "The 
 Female Speaker," and wrote a long and laboured poem, 
 entitled " Eighteen Hundred and Eleven." Its dismal 
 prognostications were happily all false, and its poetry is 
 not of a high order. The following picture of ruined and 
 
Mrs. Barrauld, 89 
 
 deserted London has been now and again cited from it as 
 a fair piece of descriptive writing : — 
 
 But who their mingled feelings shall pursue, 
 
 When London's faded glories rise to view ? 
 
 The mighty city, which, by every road. 
 
 In floods of people poured itself abroad ; 
 
 Ungirt by walls, irregularly great. 
 
 No jealous drawbridge, and no closing gate ; 
 
 Whose merchants (such the state which commerce brings) 
 
 Sent forth their mandates to dependent kings ; 
 
 Streets where the turban'd Moslem, bearded Jew, 
 
 And woolly^Afric met the brown Hindu ; 
 
 Where through each vein spontaneous plenty flowed, 
 
 Whose wealth enjoyed, and charity bestowed. 
 
 Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet 
 
 Each splendid square, and still untrodden street ; 
 
 Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time. 
 
 The broken stairs with perilous step shall climb ; 
 
 Thence stretch their view the wide horizon round, 
 
 By scattered hamlets trace its ancient bound, 
 
 And, choked no more with fleets, fair Thames survey, 
 
 Through reeds and sedge pursue his idle way. 
 
 With throbbing bosoms shall the wanderers tread 
 The hallowed mansions of the silent dead, 
 Shall enter the long aisle and vaulted dome 
 Where genius and where valour find a home ; 
 Awe-struck, midst chill sepulchral marbles breathe, 
 Where all above is still as all beneath ; 
 Bend at each antique shrine, and frequent turn 
 To clasp with fond delight some sculptured urn ; 
 The ponderous mass of Johnson's form to greet. 
 Or breathe the prayer at Howard's sainted feet. 
 
 Perhaps some Briton, in whose musing mind, 
 Those ages live which Time has cast behind. 
 To every spot shall lead his wondering guests, 
 On whose known site the beam of glory rests ; 
 Here Chatham's eloquence in thunder broke. 
 Here Fox persuaded, or here Garrick spoke ; 
 Shall boast how Nelson, fame and death in view, 
 To wonted victory led his ardent crew. 
 
9© English Poetesses. 
 
 In England's name enforced, with loftiest tone, 
 Their duty, and too well fulfilled his own ; 
 How gallant Moore, as ebbing life dissolved. 
 But hoped ** his country had his fame absolved.* 
 Or call up sages, whose capacious mind 
 Left in its course a track of light behind ; 
 Point where mute crowds on Davy's lips reposed. 
 And Nature's coyest secrets were disclosed ; 
 Join with their Franklin, Priestley's injured name, 
 Whom, then, each continent shall proudly claim. 
 
 Oft shall the strangers turn their eager feet 
 The rich remains of ancient art to greet, 
 The pictured walls with critic eye explore. 
 And Reynolds be what Raphael was before. 
 On spoils from every clime their eye shall gaze, 
 Egyptian granites and th' Etruscan vase ; 
 And when, midst fallen London, they survey 
 The stone where Alexander's ashes lay. 
 Shall own with humbled pride the lesson just. 
 By Time's slow finger written in the dust. 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld had now nothing further to disturb the 
 evenness of declining life, in the way either of great joy or 
 heavy sorrow, save, indeed, for the death of her dear brother. 
 She did not write anything else of note, but her house at 
 Stoke Newington became increasingly the resort of clever 
 people, who found her always cheerful, and always willing 
 to exert the powers of conversation and frank charms of 
 manner which were her characteristics. Wordsworth, Lamb, 
 Channing, Rogers, and Crabb Robinson, were among those 
 who visited her, and the diary of the last-named contains 
 several entries like the following : " Called on the Colliers, 
 and then went to Mrs. Barbauld's. She was in good spirits, 
 but is now the confirmed old lady. Independently of her 
 fine understanding and literary reputation she would be 
 interesting. Her white locks, fair and unwrinkled skin, 
 brilliant starched linen, and rich silk gown, make her a 
 
Mrs. Barbauld. 91 
 
 fit object for a painter. Her conversation is lively ; her 
 remarks are judicious and always pertinent." 
 
 This serene old age was long enjoyed. Mrs. Barbauld 
 had attained the age of eighty-two before an asthmatical 
 affection, which for some time had troubled her, assumed 
 an alarming aspect. It was this complaint that carried her 
 off, in the house of her sister-in-law Mrs. Aikin, on the 
 9th of March, 1825. 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld's poetical works were not collected 
 completely till 1826, when her niece, Lucy Aikin, edited 
 them in two volumes, adding to them a few letters and a 
 memoir. This memoir was extended by a great-niece, Anna 
 Letitia Le Breton, and published separately in 1874. Mrs. 
 Ellis also wrote a more recent account of this author. 
 
 So far as its bulk is concerned, Mrs. Barbauld's verse 
 cannot be said to earn for her the praise due to great 
 industry. And even of such poems as her pen has left us, 
 it must be confessed that many are common-place enough, 
 when judged by modern standards of taste. But opinions 
 about poetry were very different in Mrs. Barbauld's time. 
 These were days when a Hayley was a great poet ; and 
 compared with him Mrs. Barbauld was a very great poetess. 
 She was at her best when in the pathetic vein. She shone, 
 as Jean Paul did by his own account, when " tracing with 
 the soft chalk of sensibility upon the dark background of 
 pathos." Of this cast of verse the lines on "Life" are 
 perhaps the best example : — 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 Life ! I know not what thou art, 
 But know that thou and I must part ; 
 And when, or how, or where we met, 
 I own to me's a secret yet. 
 But this I know — when thou art fled, 
 Where'er they lay these limbs, this head, 
 
92 English Poetesses, 
 
 No clod so valueless shall be, 
 As all that there remains of me. 
 Oh, whither, whither dost thou fly ? 
 
 Where ])end unseen thy trackless course ? 
 
 And in this strange divorce. 
 Ah, tell where I must seek this compound, I ! 
 
 To the vast ocean of empyreal flame, 
 From whence thy essence came. 
 Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed 
 From matter's base encumbering weed ? 
 
 Or dost thou, hid from sight. 
 
 Wait, like some spell-bound knight. 
 Through blank oblivious years th' appointed hour. 
 To break thy lance and reassume thy power ? 
 Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be ? 
 Oh, say, what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee ? 
 
 Life ! we've been long together. 
 Through pleasant and through cloudy weather ; 
 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear ; 
 Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 
 
 Then steal away, give little warning. 
 
 Choose thine own time ; 
 Say not Good-Night, but in some brighter clime 
 
 Bid me Good -Morning. 
 
 Few could deny the lyric charm of these concluding 
 lines. Moore or Barry Cornwall could scarcely have written 
 smoother. Rogers, sitting with Madame D'Arblay, some 
 weeks before that lady died, said to her, " Do you remember 
 those lines of Mrs. Barbauld's ' Life/ which I once repeated 
 to you ? " " Remember them ! " she answered ; " I repeat 
 them to myself every night before I go to bed." Crabb 
 Robinson relates that on his quoting the same lines to 
 Wordsworth, the poet made him repeat them again and 
 again, until he himself had them by heart. " I am not in 
 the habit of grudging other people their good things," said 
 Wordsworth, *^but I wish 1 had written these lines.'' 
 
 Some thirty years ago Walter Savage Landor, at a dinner 
 party at Bath, was asked for his opinion of Mrs. Barbauld's 
 
Mrs. Barbauld. 93 
 
 poetry, and forthwith became so eloquent in praise of it as 
 to reduce the rest of the company to attentive silence. He 
 quoted passage after passage, and ended his illustrations 
 with the following lines from "A Summer Evening's 
 Meditations " : — 
 
 * * But are they silent all ? or is there not 
 A tongue in every star that talks with man, 
 And woos him to be wise ? nor woos in vain. 
 This dead of midnight is the noon of thought, 
 And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars. 
 At this still hour the self-collected soul 
 Turns inward and beholds a stranger there 
 Of high descent and more than mortal rank. 
 An embryo god, a spark of fire divine, 
 Which must burn on for ages, when the sun. 
 Fair transitory creature of a day. 
 Has closed his golden eye, and, wrapt in shades, 
 Forgets his wonted journey through the east." 
 
 With his wonted impetuosity, either when blaming or when 
 praising, Landor then challenged his audience with these 
 words : " Can you show me anything finer in the English 
 language ? " 
 
 Of the Hymns in Prose it is perhaps needless to quote 
 any specimen here. They were designed for infant minds, 
 and their adaptation to their purpose has been evinced by 
 their circulation. In America particularly, they have been 
 successful to an extraordinary degree ; and they have been 
 translated, not only into French, German, Italian, and 
 Spanish, but even into Latin Hexameters. 
 
 As a specimen of the devotional verse upon which 
 so much of Mrs. Barbauld's present popularity rests, the 
 following metrical " hymn " may be cited : — 
 
 HYMN. 
 Jehovah reigns : let every nation hear, 
 And at his footstool bow with holy fear ; 
 Let Heaven's high arches echo with his name, 
 And the wide peopled earth his praise proclaim ; 
 
94 
 
 English Poetesses, 
 
 Then send it down to hell's deep gloom resounding, 
 Through all her caves in dreadful murmurs sounding. 
 
 He rules with wide and absolute command, 
 O'er the broad ocean and the steadfast land : 
 Jehovah reigns, unbounded, and alone, 
 And all creation hangs beneath his throne : 
 He reigns alone ; let no inferior nature 
 Usurp, or share the throne of the Creator. 
 
 He saw the struggling beams of infant light 
 vShoot through the massy gloom of ancient night ; 
 His spirit hushed the elemental strife. 
 And brooded o'er the kindling seeds of life ; 
 Seasons and months began their long procession, 
 And measured o'er the year in bright succession. 
 
 The joyful sun sprang up th' ethereal way. 
 Strong as a giant, as a bridegroom gay ; 
 And the pale moon diffused her shadowy light 
 Superior o'er the dusky brow of night ; 
 Ten thousand glittering lamps the skies adorning. 
 Numerous as dew-drops from the womb of morning. 
 
 Earth's blooming face with rising flowers he drest, 
 And spread a verdant mantle o'er her breast ; 
 Then from the hollow of his hand he pours 
 The circling water round her winding shores, 
 The new-born world in their cool arms embracing. 
 And with soft murmurs still her banks caressing. 
 
 At length she rose complete in finished pride, 
 All fair and spotless, like a virgin bride ; 
 Fresh with untarnished lustre as she stood, 
 Her Maker blessed his work and called it good ! 
 The morning stars with joyful acclamation 
 Exulting sang, and hailed the new creation. 
 
 Yet this fair world, the creature of a day, 
 Though built by God's right hand, must pass away ; 
 And long oblivion creep o'er mortal things, 
 The fate of empires, and the pride of kings ; 
 Eternal night shall veil their proudest story, 
 And drop the curtain o'er all human glory. 
 
Mrs. Barbauld. 95 
 
 The sun himself, with weary clouds opprest, 
 
 Shall in his silent dark pavilion rest ; 
 
 His golden urn shall broke and useless lie, 
 
 Amidst the common ruins of the sky ; 
 The stars rush headlong in the wild commotion, 
 And bathe their glittering foreheads in the ocean. 
 
 But fixed, O God ! for ever stands Thy throne ; 
 
 Jehovah reigns, a universe alone ; 
 
 Th' eternal fire that feeds each vital flame. 
 
 Collected, or diffused, is still the same. 
 He dwells within his own unfathomed essence. 
 And fills all space with his unbounded presence. 
 
 But oh ! our highest notes the theme debase, 
 
 And silence is our least injurious praise ; 
 
 Cease, cease your songs, the daring flight control, 
 
 Revere Him in the stillness of the soul ; 
 With silent duty meekly bend before Him, 
 And deep within your inmost hearts adore Him. 
 
 Here, albeit there are faults of metaphor and doubtful 
 rhymes, there is a certain breadth of language that recalls 
 Addison's devotional style. 
 
 As a specimen of Mrs. Barbauld's lightest vein, take the 
 few lines — 
 
 WRITTEN ON A MARBLE. 
 
 The world's something bigger, 
 But just of this figure, 
 And speckled with mountains and seas ; 
 Your heroes are over-grown schoolboys 
 Who scuffle for empires and toys, 
 And kick the poor ball as they please. 
 Now Caesar, now Pompey, gives law : 
 And Pharsalia's plain, 
 Though heaped with the slain, 
 Was only a game at taw. 
 
 Lastly, we may include among our selections a poem 
 designedly written in imitation of Addison's allegorical 
 
g6 English Poetesses. 
 
 manner. It was originally inscribed to S. T. Coleridge. 
 How strangely descriptive of Coleridge's later mind the 
 first portion of the poem is ! 
 
 THE HILL OF SCIENCE. 
 
 TO MR. S. T. COLERIDGE (l797). 
 
 Midway the hill of science, after steep 
 
 And rugged paths that tire the unpractised feet, 
 
 A grove extends, in tangled mazes wrought, 
 
 And filled with strange enchantment. Dubious shapes 
 
 Flit through dim glades, and lure the eager foot 
 
 Of youthful ardour to eternal chase ; 
 
 Dreams hang on every leaf ; unearthly forms 
 
 Glide through the gloom ; and mystic visions swim 
 
 Before the cheated sense. Athwart the mists. 
 
 Far into vacant space, huge shadows stretch. 
 
 And seem realities ; while things of life. 
 
 Obvious to sight and touch, all glowing round, 
 
 Fade to the hue of shadows. Scruples here. 
 
 With filmy net, most like the autumnal webs 
 
 Of floating gossamer, arrest the foot 
 
 Of generous enterprise, and palsy hope 
 
 And fair ambition with the chilling touch 
 
 Of sickly hesitation and blank fear. 
 
 Nor seldom Indolence these lawns among 
 
 Fixes her turf-built seat, and wears the garb 
 
 Of deep philosophy, and museful sits. 
 
 In dreamy twilight of the vacant mind. 
 
 Soothed by the whispering shade ; for soothing soft 
 
 The shades, and vistas lengthening into air. 
 
 With moonbeam-rainbows tinted. Here each mind 
 
 Of finer mould, acute and delicate, 
 
 In its high progress to eternal truth. 
 
 Rests for a space, in fairy bowers entranced, 
 
 And loves the softened light and tender gloom ; 
 
 And, pampered with most unsubstantial food. 
 
 Looks down indignant on the grosser world, 
 
 And matter's cumbrous shapings. Youth, beloved 
 
 Of Science, of the Muse beloved, not here. 
 
 Not in the maze of metaphysic lore, 
 
Mrs, JyAKBAULl). 97 
 
 Huild ihou thy place of resting ! lightly tread 
 The dangerous ground, on noble aims intent ; 
 And be this Circe of the studious cell 
 Enjoyed, but still subservient. Active scenes 
 Shall soon with healthful spirit brace thy mind ; 
 And fair exertion, for bright fame sustained, 
 For friends, for country, chase each spleen-fed fog 
 That blots the wide creation. — 
 Now Heaven conduct thee with a parent's love ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MISS SEWARD — MRS. OPIE — MARY LAMB. 
 
 IF to have been a prime favourite in the Hterary and 
 fashionable society of her day as an agreeable talker 
 and a genial friend, and if the reputation of being a great 
 poetess, which was accorded by many critics of note, may be 
 
 considered evidence enough to decide our own 
 S^^ A^ judgment, we must accord Miss Anna Seward 
 
 quite a prominent place in these pages. Her 
 admirers were wont to call her " The Swan of Lichfield," 
 and she herself seems to have imagined the title not 
 unmerited. Her chief foible, indeed, must have been 
 this poetry. She could never have earned such hearty 
 esteem from men like Sir Walter Scott, and have avoided 
 so successfully the numberless jealousies which writing 
 people have to encounter, had she not in all her private 
 relations shown herself a much more perfect mistress of 
 her conduct than she was of the poet's pen. From her 
 earliest days she cherished the notion of becoming a 
 songstress. Her father, the Rev. Thomas Seward, Canon 
 Residentiary of Lichfield, prided himself on a certain knack 
 he had of turning off verses. But his daughter takes care 
 to inform us that, when she was yet a very little child, Dr. 
 Darwin, then a great poet according to the absurd tastes of 
 the moment, told her father that his daughter could write 
 much better verses than he himself could. 
 
Miss Anna Seward. 99 
 
 Miss Anna wSeward was born at Eyam, Derbyshire, in 1 747. 
 She had several sisters and one brother, but these, with a 
 single exception, all died in infancy. This exception was Miss 
 Sarah Seward, a very beautiful girl, who had been destined 
 for the hand of a wealthy beau named Porter. A few of 
 Miss Seward's letters give a curious account of the matter- 
 of-fact and abrupt manner in which the courtship between 
 these two was effected ; the inference left to the reader's 
 mind being that most people thought he would probably 
 have chosen Anna instead of Sarah. Within a day or two of 
 the time fixed for the marriage, the interesting bride-elect 
 took sudden fever, and the consumptive tendencies with 
 which the whole family seemed deeply imbued caught fire 
 at this illness, and swiftly carried her off from her friends in 
 about ten days. The sisterly affection which, in the letters 
 descriptive of this sad event, and in other letters written at 
 different periods of her life, Miss Anna Seward poignantly 
 expresses for the girl whose beautiful life had been so sadly 
 cut short, is a fine testimony to the genuineness of her 
 character. 
 
 About the time of this occurrence. Miss Seward was in 
 the full flow of her epistolary vein, which she assiduously 
 cultivated as a means to self-improvement. These com- 
 positions have been carefully preserved by her own hand, 
 and they read as if, even at that early age, they had been 
 intended for the eyes of the public. The earlier letters of 
 the series are chiefly communicated to a young lady of her 
 acquaintance who seemed to have formed a romantic but 
 unwise attachment to a man of the world. In her letters 
 to this friend, she assumes all the serious dignity of a 
 matron and a moralist to boot. The strain of these 
 epistles is not very natural. They are not the frank gossip 
 of girl to girl, but are rather moral essays, and occasionally 
 formal critiques of books. Some of these critiques are 
 certainly original for a young lady of her age, and in more 
 H 2 
 
loo English Poetesses, 
 
 than one letter she discusses Rousseau's '' Nouvelle Heloise " 
 in a manner which does great credit to her understanding. 
 
 Anna Seward herself did not pass through her girlhood 
 without a love affair. This is but obscurely referred to in 
 her correspondence, and did not tinge her life with either 
 much joy or much sadness. Her father disapproved of the 
 attachment between herself and her lover, whose name has 
 not been given to us, and in a most matter-of-fact and 
 prudent manner the girl bowed to the parental decision. 
 Thenceforth we hear nothing of any project of marriage 
 in her life. 
 
 At Lichfield, the Sewards enjoyed considerable dis- 
 tinction. Their home was the Palace, and in the clerical 
 aristocracy of a cathedral city their days must have passed 
 very pleasantly. In one of her letters, Anna Seward says : 
 " Whatever little talents I may possess, they have not to 
 struggle up to the notice of my neighbours from the gloom 
 of an inferior station. My father is a gentleman by his 
 birth and by his profession, a scholar by education, and 
 being Canon of his Cathedral, necessarily converses on 
 terms of equality with the proudest inhabitants of our little 
 city." 
 
 Enjoying to the full the many facilities which her refined 
 position gave her for the acquirement of literary knowledge 
 and tastes, Miss Seward carried on, together with the ex- 
 tensive literary correspondence already mentioned, a con- 
 stant practice of verse- writing. This verse-writing seems 
 to have been the greatest pleasure which Miss Seward 
 afforded herself; throughout her life her opinion of what 
 she wTote was consistently exalted, and thus, although the 
 greater part of her poetry was not given to the j)ublic 
 during her lifetime, she was contented to carry on these 
 efforts with the aim of establishing a posthumous reputation 
 by their means. " Some few people," she writes to one 
 correspondent, '' besides yourself have fancied that I had 
 
Miss Anna Seward, ioi 
 
 genius. Whether they are or are not mistaken, it cannot 
 be for me to determine ; but certainly Lichfield is now an 
 inauspicious soil for nourishing that very sensitive plant." 
 To a very dear relative — Miss Honora Sneyd — she addressed 
 an Elegy which concludes with an insinuation after the 
 manner of the well-known passages in Spenser and Shake- 
 speare, Wordsworth, and Shelley : — 
 
 ^' Love and the Muse can boast superior power, — 
 Indelible the letters they shall frame, 
 They yield to no inevitable hour, 
 
 But will on lasting tablets write thy name." 
 
 In 1790 Canon Seward died. He had survived his wife 
 ten years, and his daughter was now left the possessor of a 
 comfortable fortune, and continued to reside in the Bishop's 
 Palace at Lichfield. 
 
 Lady Miller was the first to seriously urge Miss Seward 
 to publish any of her metrical compositions, and to this 
 solicitation a response was made, first with an obscure col- 
 lection of a few poems which gained her the applause of 
 Hayley, Mundy, and other great poetasters of the day; 
 and afterwards with "Original Sonnets," published in 1799. 
 The chief merit of these sonnets is that the writer's aim was 
 to restore the true forms of sonnet construction, which had 
 been widely departed from by many who attempted to use this 
 classic vehicle of poetic thought. In 1804 Dr. Darwin died, 
 and this occurrence led his protegee to publish a Biographical 
 Sketch of her friend. The memoir contains much inte- 
 resting information regarding the literary society to be found 
 in Lichfield at that time ; and it bestows a very hearty, if to 
 our eyes a somewhat undiscriminating, eulogy upon its hero. 
 It was in this volume that Miss Seward first laid claim to 
 the fifty verses which begin Darwin's " Botanic (harden." 
 These verses had appeared with her name in more than one 
 ephemeral print before the date at which Darwin published 
 
I02 English Poetesses. 
 
 his book. Miss Seward's claim to them, therefore, is 
 thoroughly well-established, although her old friend had 
 appropriated and published them without the smallest sign 
 of acknowledgment to her. Sir Walter Scott, in his brief 
 memoir of this lady, tells us that when he became acquainted 
 with her, in 1807, her appearance and conversation were 
 calculated to make a strong impression upon the stranger, 
 and were, indeed, well worth a long pilgrimage. He was 
 under the belief that in youth she must have been ex- 
 quisitely beautiful, for even in her advanced age she had 
 regular features, and such a fire in her expression as lent 
 her the charms of youth. Her eyes and hair were of a 
 light brown, but, when animated, these eyes became darker, 
 and flashed vividly. Her voice w^as melodious, and gave 
 grace to the style of her recitations, with which she w^as 
 fond of favouring her friends. She was full of literary anec- 
 dote, and told her stories well, having — what few w^omen 
 have in perfection — a ready perception of the ludicrous. 
 She was an enthusiastic friend, though very sensitive in 
 regard to the courtesy shown to her by her acquaintances. 
 Upon literary matters, her judgments were very dogmatic, 
 and her tastes were such as we could not always assent to. She 
 considered her hero Darwin one of the first poets, and was wont 
 to applaud Pope's " Iliad " as a model translation. Spenser 
 she had little taste for, and those poets who attach importance 
 to grandiloquence were those whom she most favoured. 
 
 In 1807 Miss Seward had prepared for the press an 
 edition of her letters and poems, but shortly after these had 
 been arranged, a scorbutic affection attacked her with such 
 violence as to reduce the whole vigour of her frame. The 
 best medical advice proved insufficient to remove this com- 
 plaint, and, after a lingering illness, the authoress died in 
 March, 1809. She bequeathed all her literary produc- 
 tions to Sir Walter Scott, with clear instructions as to 
 what he should do with them. They consisted of all her 
 
Miss Anna Seward. 103 
 
 poems, a collection of juvenile letters from 1763 — dZ^ four 
 sermons, and a critical dissertation. To these she added 
 a small collection of her father's poetry, with a desire that 
 his productions should be added to her own. A large col- 
 lection of her other letters Miss Seward bequeathed to Mr. 
 Constable, who printed some of them in 181 1. Sir Walter 
 Scott took it upon himself to reject Canon Seward's verses, 
 and the prose compositions of Miss Seward he also dispensed 
 with in order to bring his edition of her works within the 
 compass of three volumes. This edition, with a memoir 
 from the great novelist's pen, was published in 18 10, and 
 the kindly editor expressed a belief that these volumes 
 would prove an acceptable present to the authoress's 
 numerous friends, not only because of their poetical merit, 
 but because they formed a pleasing register of her senti- 
 ments, her feelings and her affections. The editorial 
 reference here made to the poetical merits of the effusions 
 he gave to the world. Sir Walter Scott appears to have 
 penned more from kindliness of heart than from conviction ; 
 for elsewhere he has characterised these verses as execrable, 
 and modern taste is inclined to the same condemnatory 
 opinion of them. 
 
 DECEMBER MORNING. 
 
 I LOVE to rise ere gleams the tardy light, 
 
 Winter's pale dawn ; and as warm fires illume, 
 And cheerful tapers shine around the room, 
 
 Through misty windows bend my musing sight. 
 
 Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white. 
 With shutters closed, peer faintly through the gloom 
 That slow recedes ; while yon grey spires assume, 
 
 Rising from their dark pile an added height 
 
 By indistinctness given. — Then to decree 
 
 The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold 
 
 To friendship or the Muse, or seize with glee 
 
 Wisdom's rich page. O hours more worth than gold, 
 
 By wl^ose blest use we lengthen life, and, free 
 From drear decays of age, outlive the old ! " 
 
I04 English Poetesses. 
 
 It is a pleasure now to turn to one of the most agree- 
 able biographies in the history of our authors. Mrs. Opie's 
 
 poems still retain some hold upon public 
 ^' ® ^ attention. Judged by our own canons of taste, 
 
 she cannot be refused credit for real poetical 
 feeling. She was a bright, winning, lovely woman in 
 her girlhood. She was the light of her father's house- 
 hold. In the early maturity of womanhood she be- 
 came the much-beloved wife of a man of talent, and 
 it were hardly too much to say that she, as much as his 
 original genius, was the making of his fortune. During the 
 short seven years of her married life, and afterwards for a 
 longer period, she mixed in the gayest and most fashionable 
 London circles as an altogether privileged woman. Dukes 
 and princes, and even kings, cherished her friendship with 
 affection, and the spontaneous charms of her nature were 
 such that during her varied career, flattered and successful 
 though it was, she scarcely made an enemy. After long 
 enjoying the pleasures of the world, she entered upon a 
 third phase of life when she resigned all close connection 
 with the world to the dazzling light of which she had 
 become so accustomed, and entered the communion of the 
 Society of Friends, to adorn that body by a constant ex- 
 ample of cheerful piety, unfailing charity, and unimpaired 
 vigour of mind, which characterised all her acts until her 
 death. 
 
 Amelia Opie was the only daughter of Dr. Alderson, 
 and was born at Norwich in 1769. One of the most 
 attractive characteristics of Mrs. Opie's nature was the 
 unsurpassable attachment which she manifested to her 
 father. The sorest struggle upon her marriage was the sepa- 
 ration which had to take place between her and her father ; 
 and when death had prematurely snatched from her the com- 
 panionship of her husband, she eagerly returned to that of 
 her parent, which was as lovingly recommenced on his side 
 
Mrs. a MEL/ a Opie. 105 
 
 as it was on hers. At the age of nineteen she took the head 
 of her widowed father's table, and assumed the management 
 of all his domestic affairs. His establishment must have 
 called for much attention from her. He was a man of 
 handsome appearance and engaging manners, widely known 
 throughout the society of his neighbourhood, and that not 
 only among the rich, but among the poorer classes. He 
 prescribed gratis for four or five hundred persons at his 
 own house every week, and long after his death the poor 
 at Norwich continued to refer to "the Doctor " as the ideal 
 of a charitable being. 
 
 Amelia's early education was marked chiefly by the 
 accuracy with which she acquired a knowledge of French 
 from a Dutch teacher named Bruckmann, and the musical 
 skill w^hich developed almost like a process of nature 
 within her in after-life ; she owed not a little of her winning 
 power to the effect she could produce in society by singing 
 her own ballads with a delicacy of expression which was 
 very touching. . 
 
 A visit to London in the year 17 94 was the first occasion 
 on which the tranquillity of Amelia Opie's girlhood was 
 disturbed by anything more important than an Assize ball. 
 The political allusions which crowd the letters she wrote 
 from London show what stirring times these w^ere, and what 
 pleasurable excitement she derived from the fascinating 
 society into which she was introduced. The mighty changes 
 which were then occurring in France were producing a 
 corresponding agitation of the public mind in our own 
 country, and the air seemed charged with electricity. The 
 sudden transition from the placid society of Norwich to the 
 eddying whirl of London life must have had an almost over- 
 powering effect upon Miss Alderson, and from the record 
 she has left us of her impressions, we can easily see that 
 the observing powers, naturally good, were quickened by 
 what she then saw and heard to a great degree of intensity. 
 
io6 English Poetesses. 
 
 P>om her father she had imbibed liberal tendencies, and 
 these induced her to send to her friends in the country such 
 descriptions of the famous Old Bailey trials of Home Tooke, 
 Holgrove, and others, who were then being arraigned for 
 sedition, that it was actually deemed expedient to burn her 
 letters, lest they should implicate the writer in an awkward 
 manner. The London visit was protracted for several 
 months, and in the spring of 1797 she again returned to 
 town, for we find her attending a sermon of Bishop Horsley's 
 in Westminster Abbey, accompanied by the beautiful, 
 sensible, and worthy Mrs. Inch bald. P>om one of her 
 letters, written during her second visit, we have the first 
 glimpse of her future husband : — 
 
 " Tuesday, 1797. 
 
 *' * Well I a whole page, and not a word yet of the state of her heart, 
 the subject most interesting to me ! ' methinks I hear you exclaim. 
 Patience, friend, it will come soon, but not go away soon, were I to 
 analyse it, and give it you in detail. Suffice, that it is in the most 
 comical state possible ; but I am not unhappy ; on the contrary, I 
 enjoy everything, and if my head be not turned by the large draughts 
 which my vanity is daily quaffing, I shall return to Norwich much 
 happier than I left it. Mr. Opie has (but imtm) been my declared 
 lover almost ever since I came. I was ingenuous with him upon 
 principle, and I told him my situation and the state of my heart. He 
 said he should still persist and risk all consequences to his own peace ; 
 and so he did and does, and I have not resolution to forbid his visits. 
 Is not this abominable ? Nay, more, were I not certain that my father 
 would disapprove such, or indeed any connection for me, there are 
 moments when, ambitious of being a wife and a mother, and of securing 
 to myself a companion for life capable of entering into all my pursuits, 
 and of amusing me by his, I could almost resolve to break all fetters, 
 and relinquish, too, the wide and often aristocratic circle in which I now 
 move, and become the wife of a man whose genius has raised him from 
 obscurity into fame and comparative affluence ; but, indeed, my mind 
 is on the pinnacle of its health when I thus feel, and on a pinnacle one 
 can't remain long. But I had forgotten to tell you the attraction that 
 Mr. O. held out, that staggered me beyond anything else : it was that 
 if I was averse to leaving my father he would joyfully consent to his 
 living with us. What a temptation to me, who am every moment 
 
Mrs. Amelia Opie. 107 
 
 sensible that the claims of my father will always be, with me, superior 
 to any charms that a lover can hold out! Often do I rationally and 
 soberly state to Opie the reasons that might urge me to marry him in 
 time, and the reasons why I never could be happy with him nor he 
 with me ; but it always ends in his persisting in his suit, and pro- 
 testing his willingness to wait for my decision, even when I am 
 seriously rejecting him, and telling him I have decided. ♦ * ♦ 
 Mr. Holcroft, too, has a mind to me, but he has no chance." 
 
 The history of Mr. Opie is very striking, as an example 
 of the simple force of genius. He was born near Truro, in 
 1 76 1. The son of a carpenter he early evinced his talent 
 for art by decorating the walls of his father's workshop, and 
 the boards he planed, with likenesses of his acquaintances, 
 and with comical sketches. Doctor Wolcot took him to 
 London in 1781, and the "Cornish Wonder" soon became 
 the talk of the town. Many celebrated people sat to him 
 for their portraits ; and the too easily-won popularity which 
 he had achieved was almost his ruin. Luckily, the injurious 
 flattery which society unthinkingly bestowed upon the young 
 genius was withdrawn as suddenly as it had been given, 
 and Opie, wisely taking the lesson to heart, set to work 
 undauntedly by beginning a course of self-instruction of 
 English literature, to rectify the want of education which 
 was the result of early circumstances, and by pushing him- 
 self into society, w^here he could attain some degree of polish 
 by imitating those with whom he came in contact. All the 
 while he assiduously cultivated art, and with such deter- 
 mination and thoroughness that when Fuseli died, he was, 
 to the astonishment of most people, selected to succeed that 
 artist as Professor of Painting in the Royal Academy. He 
 had married a woman every way unfitted and unworthy to 
 be a helpmate to him. The only advantage that any of his 
 friends could possibly see in his union with her, was the fact 
 that she was possessed of property. However, the result of 
 their union was disastrous. With ])ain and shame he had to 
 
io8 ExGiJSii Poetess F.s, 
 
 divorce her, and probably in doing so he made resolves that 
 thenceforward his energies and affections should be wholly 
 reserved for the art to which his genius had so passionately 
 attached him. Ere long a new^ affair of the heart took com- 
 plete possession of him. At an evening party in London, 
 at which he was present, the chief attraction was to be the 
 charming Miss Alderson of Norwich, whose presence at 
 such entertainments had already come to be counted on as 
 something exceptionally delightful. Whether the artist's 
 expectations had been raised by his host with any definite 
 intention is not clear, but the evening w^as wearing away, 
 and Miss Alderson was not forthcoming. At last, when her 
 attendance was despaired of, the door was flung wide open, 
 and in she sailed, brightly smiling, dressed in a robe of blue, 
 her neck and arms bare, and on her head a coquettish 
 bonnet, placed sideways and plumed with three white 
 feathers. Her appearance had something like the effect of 
 a fairy apparition, and its result upon the Cornish painter 
 was quite magical. Shy and still unpolished in society arts 
 as he was, he broke through his reserve on the very instant, 
 and eagerly pressed forward to be one of the first to earn 
 the pleasure of being introduced to the charming girl. 
 " Almost from my arrival," she has recorded, '' Mr. Opie 
 became my avow^ed lover ; " and the affection with which he 
 then became possessed he pressed upon her so persistently 
 that all objections that could have been raised to her union 
 with him were at last overruled in her mind by his manly 
 passion. She knew him to be widely respected for his ster- 
 ling worth of character among his brother artists, and in 
 society at large. She knew also that if his appearance w^as 
 ungainly, his attachment to her was absolutely devout ; and 
 if his manners were not those of a courtier, his powers were 
 those of a genius. 
 
 The two were married at Marylebone Church on the 
 8th of May, 1798, and it is hardly possible to say whether 
 
AIks. Amelia Orii:. 109 
 
 during their subsequent union her pride in his constant 
 affection and his brilliant achievements, or his loyal admira- 
 tion for her, was the more to be admired. There is some- 
 thing that can only be described as exquisitely touching in 
 all the fragments of his letters to her which have been 
 preserved. Childlike simplicity of heart shines through 
 them all. He addressed her with a certain wonderment, 
 as if he never could quite realise how it came about that 
 so perfect a creature could be linked with his life. Amid 
 all the temptations which society offered to him afterwards 
 in the way of amusements, he was never happy except when 
 painting hard all day to make money for her, and sitting in 
 her companionship all the evening, reading to her or hearing 
 her read, while he would leisurely make sketches for his 
 morrow's work. When she leaves him for a day or two to 
 go on any short visit, he seems to follow her (if I may use 
 the expression) with a dog-like wistfulness of the eye. 
 " My dearest wife," he writes when she has left him on one 
 of these brief journeys, '* I cannot be sorry that you do 
 not stay longer, though, as I said, on your father's account I 
 would assent to it. Pray, love, forgive me and make yourself 
 easy, for I did not suspect till my letter was gone that it 
 might be too strong. I had been counting almost the hours till 
 your arrival for some time, and have been unwell and unable 
 to sleep these last three weeks, so that I could not make up 
 my mind to the disappointment. Pray, love, be easy, and as 
 I suppose you will not stay, come up as soon as possible, for 
 1 long to see you as much as ever I did in my life." It is 
 in this tone that he always writes to her, and in return, his 
 wife by her conduct rendered him the fullest recognition of 
 his tenderness, and both when he was alive and when he 
 was dead, gave expression to the completeness of their 
 conjugal happiness. In the life of her husband which she 
 afterwards published, she says : — *' When Mr. Opie became 
 again a husband, he found it necessary, in order to procure 
 
I to English Poetesses, 
 
 indulgences for the wife whom he loved, to make himself 
 popular as a portrait painter, and in that productive and 
 difficult part of art, female portraiture. He therefore turned 
 his attention to those points he had long been in the habit 
 of neglecting, and his pictures soon acquired an air of grace 
 and softness, to which of late years they had been strangers. 
 At the second exhibition after our marriage, one of his 
 fellow artists came up to him, and complimented him on 
 his female portraits, adding, * We never saw anything like 
 this in you before, Opie; this must be owing to your 
 wife.' " 
 
 In the year after her marriage, Mrs. Opie contributed to 
 a popular keepsake book of the day one of her earliest 
 poems, "Addressed to Mr. Opie on his having painted 
 for me a picture of Mrs. Twiss.^' In the concluding lines 
 of this poem, her wifely feelings thus find expression — 
 
 " Within my breast contending feelings rise, 
 While thus loved symbols fascinate my eyes ; 
 Now pleased, I mark the artist's skilful line, 
 ' Now joy, because the skill I marked was thine. 
 
 And while I prize the gift by thee bestowed, 
 My heart proclaims, I'm of the giver proud. 
 Thus pride and friendship war with equal strife, 
 And now the friend excels, and now the wife." 
 
 It is to be noted that it was Mr. Opie who most strongly 
 urged his wife to become an avowed author, and to his 
 urgency in the matter, the first volume to which she put her 
 name was the response. The year before her marriage she 
 had published anonymously "The Dangers of Coquetry," 
 a novel which attracted very little attention. In 1801, how- 
 ever, her volume of poems entitled " Father and Daughter," 
 at once drew upon her general notice. The Edinburgh 
 Review treated her with distinction, and the London people 
 laid at her feet the same conventional flattery which they 
 
Mrs. Amelia Opie. hi 
 
 had formerly proffered to her husband. In the following 
 year a second volume of poems appeared. In this volume 
 that beautiful song occurs, which was quoted by the 
 Edinburgh., eulogised in an Indian letter of Sir James 
 Mackintosh's, and selected by vSidney Smith in one of his 
 Royal Institution Lectures, as an example of simple beauty 
 of composition : — 
 
 " Go, youth beloved, in distant glades, 
 New friends, new hopes, new joys to find ! 
 Yet sometimes deign, midst fairer maids 
 To think on her thou leav'st behind. 
 Thy love, thy fate, dear youth, to share. 
 Must never be my happy lot ; 
 But thou may'st grant this humble prayer. 
 Forget me not ! forget me not ! 
 
 " Vet should the thought of my distress 
 Too painful to thy feelings be. 
 Heed not the wish I now express, 
 Nor ever deign to think of me. 
 But oh ! if grief thy steps attend. 
 If want, if sickness be thy lot, 
 And thou require a soothing friend, 
 Forget me not I forget me not ! " * 
 
 When Sidney Smith referred to these lines at the Royal 
 Institution in terms of unqualified praise, it happened that 
 the authoress herself w^as present in the audience, and she 
 used to tell how suddenly the overwhelming compliment 
 came upon her, causing her to shrink within herself, and al- 
 most to cower down lest those near her might recognise her 
 by her confusion. It was in this year that Charles Lamb pub- 
 lished his "JohnWoodvil," Bloomfield his "Rural Tales," 
 Southey his "Thalaba," Scott the first volume of his 
 
 * These lines were addressed to Lord Herbert Stuart, who, according 
 to Miss Mitford, had been engaged to Miss Alderson, but had to give 
 her up through lack of means to marry upon. 
 
112 English Poetesses, 
 
 ** Minstrelsy," and Bowles the eighth edition of " Sonnets," 
 which nobody cares to look at now. 
 
 The beginning of Mr. Opie's married life had been 
 prosperous enough so far as the modest demands of his 
 domestic establishment were concerned, but after a year 
 or two things went less fortunately with him ; he became 
 even despondent, and without the encouragement of his 
 wife, might have become permanently embittered by the 
 want of success which his labours then encountered. He 
 was never too well satisfied with his work, and he would 
 sometimes come from his painting room, throw himself 
 down on a couch beside his wife, and exclaim " I shall 
 never be a painter, never ! " The cloud under which the 
 pair laboured was dark but fleeting. 
 
 However, this despondency did not make him indolent. 
 He continued to paint regularly as usual, and no doubt by 
 that means increased his ability to do justice to the torrent 
 of business which soon after set in towards him, and never 
 ceased to flow till the day of his death. It is certain that 
 amid all the fits of despondency alternating with elation and 
 of the strenuous labours which he unremittingly imposed 
 upon himself, Opie was indebted for this turning of the tide 
 in a great measure to the talents of his wife ; it has always 
 been a sort of proverb that a painter's wife is half his fortune, 
 if she be a good one. In this case Mrs. Opie's attractions 
 were so irresistibly wielded over society, that she earned for her 
 husband the attention of many more paintable people than 
 would otherwise have been secured. Stress of circumstances 
 *in Opie's instance, as in many similar instances in the history 
 of art, had induced him to devote a large portion of his 
 time to the profitable painting of portraits, and fashionable 
 society is pretty much to the portrait painter what the sea 
 is to the fisherman. 
 
 In the autumn of 1805 the Opies enjoyed a long-earned 
 holiday in Paris, where they revelled in the I.ouvre, then 
 
Mrs. Amelia OriE. ■ 113 
 
 much richer than it is now in the glories of Italian art. 
 There they one day met Charles James Fox, who procured 
 them admission to the private chamber in which Raphael's 
 " Transfiguration " had just been set up. From the windows 
 of the Louvre also, they saw Bonaparte step into his carriage 
 to address the assembly as Consul for the first time. 
 They had the pleasure of meeting Kosciusko there also. 
 They spent a forenoon with Cardinal Fesch (uncle of 
 Bonaparte), then only Bishop of Lyons ; and not the least 
 of their treats was a visit to the atelier of David, where 
 Mrs. Opie remained powerfully impressed before his picture 
 of " Brutus returning from the Tribunal after adjudging 
 his Sons to Death." 
 
 Upon their return to London Opie plunged himself 
 again into work, but now with the assurance of prosperity. 
 He talked of allowing his wife to enlarge their house in the 
 manner she had long desired. He was now to keep his 
 horse too, and they would be able to receive society more 
 freely than they had up to that time been able to afford. 
 Altogether, the future of the admired couple was very happy. 
 In the spring of 1806 Mrs. Opie published her four volumes 
 of ^' Simple Tales," productions which vary between excel- 
 lence and careless mediocrity. It was after the appearance 
 of these volumes that the authoress submitted some of her 
 MSS. to the judgment of Sidney Smith, who gave her 
 almost in a word the best criticism of her works which has 
 ever been written : " Tenderness is your forte, carelessness 
 is your fault.'* 
 
 In the autumn of this year Mr. Opie had to add to his 
 labours as a painter the task of writing four lectures which 
 the terms of academical office required of him. He be- 
 stowed much labour upon these disquisitions, which were 
 duly delivered, but their accomplishment had overtasked his 
 strength. A baffling sickness came upon him which his 
 physicians were unable to encounter successfully. It left 
 I 
 
114 English Poetesses. 
 
 him only a few weeks to live, and while he lay on the point 
 of death the solicitude of his relatives was increased by 
 the fact that his mother, aged eighty-three, lay also upon a 
 dangerous sick bed. Strange that one who had compara- 
 tively completed the sum of her life should have recovered, 
 while the son, who was in the hey-day of success and 
 promise, should be carried away from the arms of his wife 
 and so large a circle of admiring friends ! He died on the 
 9th of April, 1807, in the forty-sixth year of his age. Once 
 walking through St. Paul's with his sister, he had stopped by 
 the tomb of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and in a proud undertone 
 had said : *' Aye girl, I shall be buried here." His prophecy 
 was accomplished, for he was buried by the very side of 
 Reynolds. 
 
 That a woman of Mrs. Opie's sensibility deeply mourned 
 a husband with whom her union had been so complete, 
 need not be said. The purpose of her life seemed to her 
 gone. But there was a buoyancy of spirit in her nature 
 which bore her through the trial, and indeed before very 
 long gave her the appearance which many thought a sign 
 that the affliction she had undergone was almost forgotten. 
 She, like Lady Grisell Baillie, had something of the nature 
 which made the earlier poetess cry, " Werena my heart 
 licht I w^ad dee." Mrs. Opie was childless, and having no 
 establishment to keep up, w^as glad to return to the home 
 of her father, of whose declining years she became the 
 guardian angel. In 1808 she published "The Warrior's 
 Return and other Poems " : a volume composed of pieces 
 chiefly written some years previously. In 1807 she pub- 
 lished her husband's " Lectures on Painting," and prefaced 
 these lectures with a memoir in which she described 
 Mr. Opie's life and labours with a graceful and delicate 
 hand. 
 
 Gradually Mrs. Opie yielded herself up to the combined 
 pleasures of gratifying her many friends by the exercise of 
 
Mrs. a MP. f. I a Or//:. 
 
 115 
 
 her talents and charms, and receiving amusement from 
 meeting the distinguished people with whom her position 
 enabled her to come in contact. For the next fiwt years 
 she was quite a woman of fashion. During this period 
 she published "Temper; a Tale," (1812), and next year 
 "Tales of Real Life." Her letters of this period are most 
 entertaining, giving us many glimpses of remarkable gather- 
 ings at which she was present. 
 
 In 1 8 14, Mrs. Opie, yielding to the gentle counsels of 
 Mr. J. J. Gurney, the well known Quaker, associated herself 
 with the Society of Friends, and throughout the whole course 
 of her subsequent life she referred to this step as having had 
 the best influence on her mind. The next of her literary 
 productions, a story called "Valentine's Eve," bears remark- 
 able traces of the changed opinions regarding life which 
 the author had received from contact with the Quaker 
 community. Her London friends regretted much her with- 
 drawal from their midst, and bantered her good-humouredly 
 regarding the matter. Lady Cork in particular resenting the 
 loss of her friend in one of those playfully eccentric letters 
 with which she was so readily able to call up smiles. Mrs. 
 Opie's mind, however, was quite made up for a quiet life. 
 She never resumed her place in the fashionable world, 
 though once or twice she visited London as it were on the 
 sly, to enjoy quiet chats with some of her former intimates. 
 In 1818 appeared her "Tales of the Heart," and in 1822, 
 the last of her novels, " Madeline." In 1823, a popular 
 book called " Lying in all its Branches " came from her pen, 
 and in 1828 she gave to the world " Detraction Displayed." 
 These works, like Hannah More's, were all written with a 
 decided moral, but though so much more impressed than 
 formerly with religious convictions, Mrs. Opie by no means 
 devoted herself to moroseness, when she exchanged London 
 fashions for Quaker garb. Southey in one of his Colloquies 
 takes occasion to describe her thus : — " I have another 
 I 2 
 
Ti6 English Poetesses. 
 
 woman in my mind's eye : one who has been the liveliest 
 of the lively : the gayest of the gay ; admired for her talents 
 by those who knew her only in her writings, and esteemed 
 for her worth by those who were acquainted with her in the 
 relations of private life ; one who having grown up in the laxest 
 sect of semi-christians, felt the necessity of vital religion 
 while attending upon her father with dutiful affection during 
 the long and painful infirmities of his old age ; and who has 
 now joined a sect distinguished from all others by its forma- 
 lities and enthusiasm, because it was among its members 
 that she first found the lively faith for which her soul thirsted. 
 She has assumed the garb and even the shibboleth of the 
 sect, not losing in the change her warmth of heart and 
 cheerfulness of spirit, nor gaining by it any increase of sin- 
 cerity and frankness ; for with these nature had endowed 
 her, and society, even that of the great, had not corrupted 
 them. The resolution, the activity, the genius, the benevol- 
 ence, which are required for such a work, are to be found 
 in her ; and were she present in person as she is in imagina- 
 tion, I would say to her * ^ =^ Thou art the woman ! " 
 
 Her visit to Paris when that city was agitated by a 
 revolution, and excursions to Belgium and Scotland make up 
 the only remaining incidents of any note in Mrs. Opie's old 
 age. Serenely and even hopefully she passed on to death, 
 and breathed her last on Friday the 2nd of September, 
 1853. Her "Life" has been written by Cecilia Brightwell. 
 This volume was published in 1854. 
 
 A LAMENT. 
 
 There was an eye whose partial glance 
 Could ne'er my numerous failings see ; 
 There was an ear that heard untired 
 When others spoke in praise of me. 
 
 There was a heart time only taught 
 With warmer love for me to burn — 
 
Mrs. Amelia Opie, 117 
 
 A hearl, whene'er from home I roved, 
 Which fondly pined for my return. 
 
 There was a lip which always breathed 
 E'en short farewells in tones of sadness ; 
 There was a voice whose eager sound 
 My welcome spoke with heartfelt gladness. 
 
 There was a mind whose vigorous power 
 On mine its own effulgence threw, 
 And called my humble talents forth, 
 While thence its dearest joys it drew. 
 
 There was a love which for my weal 
 
 With anxious fears would overflow, 
 
 Which wept, which pray'd for me, and sought 
 
 From future ills to guard, — but now 
 
 That eye is closed and deaf that ear, 
 That lip and voice are mute for ever ; 
 And cold that heart of anxious love, 
 Which death alone from mine could sever : 
 
 And lost to me that ardent mind. 
 Which loved my various tasks to see ; 
 And oh ! of all the praise I gain'd, 
 His was the dearest far to me ! 
 
 Now I, unloved, uncheered, alone, 
 Life's dreary wilderness must tread. 
 Till He who heals the broken heart, 
 In mercy bids me join the dead. 
 
 O Thou ! who from Thy throne on high, 
 Can'st heed the mourner's deep distress, 
 O Thou, who hear'st the widow's cry 
 Thou ! Father of the Fatherless ! 
 
 Though now I am a faded leaf, 
 That's sever'd from its parent tree, 
 And thrown upon a stormy tide — 
 Life's awful tide, that leads to Thee I — 
 
ii8 English Poetesses. 
 
 Still, gracious Lord, the voice of praise 
 Shall spring spontaneous from my breast, 
 Since, though I tread a weary way, 
 I trust that he I mourn is blest. 
 
 THE ORPHAN BOY'S TALE. 
 
 Stay, lady, stay for mercy's sake. 
 And hear a helpless orphan's tale ; 
 Ah ! sure my looks must pity wake, 
 'Tis want that makes my cheek so pale. 
 Yet I was once a mother's pride. 
 And my brave father's hope and joy ; 
 But in the Nile's proud fight he died, 
 And I am now an orphan boy. 
 
 ]*oor foolish child ! how pleased was I, 
 When news of Nelson's victory came, 
 Along the crowded streets to fly 
 And see the lighted windows flame ! 
 To force me home my mother sought, 
 She could not bear to see my joy ; 
 For with my father's life 'twas bought, 
 And made me a poor orphan boy. 
 
 The people's shouts were long and loud, 
 My mother, shuddering, closed her ears ; 
 " Rejoice, rejoice," still cried the crowd, 
 My mother answered with her tears. 
 " Why are you crying thus," said I, 
 " While others laugh and shout with joy? " 
 She kissed me, and, with such a sigh, 
 She called me her poor orphan boy. 
 
 " What is an orphan ])oy?" I cried, 
 As in her face I looked and smiled ; 
 My mother through her tears replied, 
 " You'll know too soon, ill-fated child I " 
 
Marv Lamb. 119 
 
 And now they've toll'd my mother's knell, 
 And I'm no more a parent's joy, 
 O lady ! I have learnt too well 
 What 'tis to be an orphan boy, 
 
 O were I by your bounty fed ! 
 — Nay, gentle lady, do not chide — 
 Trust me, I mean to earn my bread ; 
 The sailor's orphan boy has pride. 
 Lady, you weep ! — ha ! — this to me? 
 You'll give me clothing, food, employ ? 
 Look down, dear parents ! look and see 
 Your happy, happy, orphan boy. 
 
 In the whole range of Enghsh history, there is scarcely 
 a story which has more pathetic fascinations than that of 
 Charles and Mary Lamb. Those who consider 
 the character of Charles, with its one great jj^ 
 frailty, and condemn him for this too strongly, 
 should acquaint themselves intimately with the complete 
 tragedy of his sister's existence before they call him 
 into judgment. It could not be said of Charles Lamb's 
 bachelor life as it was said of Macaulay's, that it was 
 a life without a woman in it. However colourless and 
 
 visionary the picture of fair Alice W n may have been, 
 
 Lamb's life was entirely devoted, with a rapt chivalry which 
 is almost unparalleled, to a woman whom he adored. This 
 woman was his sister, who had in a fit of madness stabbed 
 her mother to the heart, who, throughout all his life, was a 
 constant care and expense to him ; who prevented him 
 from ever thinking of leaving his lone bachelorhood, and 
 pressed him down with such anxieties on her account, that 
 at times he himself feared that his reason would give way, 
 as it had once done for a few weeks in his youth. And yet, 
 mad or sane, as she was by turns, Mary Lamb was such an 
 influence in his being that the love of books themselves, 
 
I20 English Poetesses, 
 
 or the secret pride he took in his secured fame of 
 authorship, was as nothing to him, compared with the 
 tender joy with which the charge of his distressed sister 
 filled him. " For other things," says Emerson, " I make 
 poetry of them, but the moral sentiment makes poetry of 
 me." The right which Mary Lamb has to appear in these 
 pages is constituted by the share she has in the volume of 
 poetry which she and her brother published ; but the great 
 interest which makes her a truly poetical figure in our eyes 
 is the beautiful moral sentiment which is cast around the 
 story of brother and sister's fortunes ; and for tragic interest 
 indeed there is hardly any story more poetical than theirs. 
 
 In 1795, there lived in lodgings at 7, Little Queen Street, 
 Holborn, a family circle consisting of Lamb, senior, his 
 wife, his daughter, and his son Charles, with whom also 
 lived a maiden aunt, whose small payment for board formed 
 an important item in the family income. Mr. Lamb had an 
 annuity from an old bencher named Salt, in whose service he 
 had been employed for many years. The sons and daughter 
 had grown up in Crown Office Row, Temple — the young 
 family originally numbering seven — and as boy and girl, 
 Charles and Mary, being allowed access to Mr. Salt's cham- 
 bers, were tumbled into a spacious closet of good old English 
 reading, and browsed at will on that fair and wholesome pas- 
 turage. Charles w^as a clerk of three years' standing in the 
 India House, and Mary Lamb eked out the gains of the family 
 by needle-work. It w^as a dismal household. Mr. Marcus 
 Clarke, an ingenious Australian writer of our times, makes 
 the odd remark that ^' to call a man a genius is to physio- 
 logically insult the mother that bore him." The main truth 
 of his observation is plain enough. Most geniuses come 
 of a strumous stock. Whether in the case of Charles and 
 Mary Lamb the taint came from the father's or the mother's 
 side, or from both, is not stated by his biographers. We 
 only know that at Little Queen Street the father was a 
 
Makv Lamh. 12 1 
 
 dotard, and the mother lay deprived of the use of her 
 limbs. Mary's ways were always reckoned eccentric, and 
 she had undoubtedly been beyond the verge of sanity once 
 at least in her girlhood. Charles had actually to be sent to 
 Hoxton Asylum for a few weeks, and the brother John, of 
 whose whereabouts we are not informed, at this time had a 
 bad leg. But from this dingy abode, so little calculated to 
 foster in the mind of any occupant such a perennial sweetness 
 of character as has rendered Charles Lamb inexpressibly dear 
 to all who have ever read him, we find the young India House 
 clerk already writing on terms of equality to men who have be- 
 come even greater than himself, Coleridge and Wordsworth. 
 Between Mary and Charles, literary sympathies were strong. 
 They discussed the doings and fortunes of their literary 
 friends with a zest which was all the more concentrated, 
 because their parents could not encourage their tastes to 
 the smallest degree, and their brother John held himself so 
 selfishly aloof from all the family interests, that they could 
 hardly look upon him as a brother at all. Upon Charles 
 devolved the hardest work in contributing towards the 
 support of the family. Whether it was the early strain 
 which induced in him the attack of madness which happily 
 never occurred again, we cannot say. His own account of 
 this attack is given in a letter to Coleridge, from which the 
 following is an extract : — 
 
 " Le Grice is gone to make puns in Cornwall. He has got a tutor- 
 ship to a young boy living with his mother, a widow lady. He will, of 
 course, initiate him quickly in a ' Whatsoever things are lovely, honour- 
 able, and of good rejMjrt.' Coleridge, I know not what suffering 
 scenes you have gone through at Bristol. My life has been somewhat 
 diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began 
 this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse at 
 Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. 
 But mad I was ! And many a vagary my imagination played with me, 
 enough to fill a volume if all were told, ^fy sonnets I have extended 
 to the number of nine since I saw you, and will some day communicate 
 
122 English Poetesses, 
 
 to you. I am beginning a poem in blank verse, which, if I finish, I will 
 publish. White is on the eve of publishing (he took the hint from 
 *Vortigern') * Original letters of P'alstaff, vShallow, &c.,' a copy you 
 shall have when it comes out. They are, without exception, the best 
 imitations I ever saw. Coleridge ! it may convince you of my regards 
 for you when I tell you my head ran on you in my madness as much 
 almost as on another person, who, I am inclined to think, was the more 
 immediate cause of my temporary frenzy. 
 
 " The sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry ; but you will be 
 curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my prison-house in 
 one of my lucid intervals. 
 
 'To MY Sister. 
 
 ' If from my lips some angry accents fall. 
 Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind, 
 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind 
 And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well. 
 And waters clear of Reason ; and for me 
 Let this, my verse, the poor atonement be 
 My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined 
 Too highly, and with partial eye to see 
 No blemish ; thou to me didst ever show- 
 Kindest affection ; and wouldst oft-times lend 
 An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, * 
 
 Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay 
 But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, 
 Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend. ' 
 
 " With these lines, and with that sister's kindest remembrances to 
 
 C , I conclude. 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " C. Lamb." 
 
 Mary's needlework was of a very systematic kind, and 
 involved the employment of a young apprentice. Her 
 mind, however, always less stable than that of her brother, 
 suddenly gave way under the toils which she had braved so 
 long unmurmuringly, and it is another letter of Charles to 
 his friend Coleridge which tells the story of the terrible 
 tragedy which happened in the autumn of 1796. 
 
Marv Lamb. 123 
 
 " My dearest Friend, — White, or some of my friends, or the 
 public papers, by this time have informed you of the terrible calamities 
 that have fallen on our family : I will only give you the outlines. My 
 poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of her 
 own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out 
 of her gras}). She is at present in a madhouse, from whence, I fear, she 
 must be moved to an hospital. Ciod has preserved to me my senses. I 
 cat, and drink, and sleep, and have my judgment, I believe, very 
 sound. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take 
 care of him and my aunt. Mr. Norris, of the Bluecoat School, has 
 been very kind to us, and we have no other friend ; but, thank God, 
 I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to 
 do. Write as religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is 
 gone and done with. With me ' the former things are passed away,' 
 and I have something more to do than to feel. 
 
 " Ciod Almighty have us well in His keeping. 
 
 *' C. Lamb." 
 
 " Mention nothing of poetry; I have destroyed every vestige of 
 past vanities of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, 
 ]niblish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never 
 send me a ])ook, I charge you. Your own judgment will convince you 
 not to take any notice of this yet to your dear wife. Vou look after 
 your family ; I have my reason and strength left to take care of mine. 
 I charge you don't think of coming to see me. W^rite. I will not see 
 you if you come. God Almighty love you and all of us. 
 
 *' C. Lamb." 
 
 To this account may be added the brief paragraph from 
 the Times of Monday, 26th September, giving a report of the 
 affair in which the names of those concerned are withheld. 
 
 " On Friday afternoon, the coroner and a jury sat on the body of a 
 lady in the neighbourhood of Holborn, who died in consequence of a 
 wound from her daughter the preceding day. It appeared by the 
 evidence adduced, that, while the family were preparing for dinner, the 
 young lady seized a case-knife lying on the table, and in a menacing 
 manner pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round the room. On the 
 calls of her infirm mother to forbear she renounced her first object, and, 
 with loud shrieks, approached her parent. The child by her cries 
 quickly brought up the landlord of the house, but too late. The dread- 
 fal scene presented to him tlu mot Ik i lifeless, pierced to the heart, on a 
 
124 English Poetesses, 
 
 chair, her daughter yel wildly standing over her with the fatal knife, 
 and the old man, her father, weeping by her side, himself bleeding at 
 the forehead from the effects of a severe blow he received from one of 
 the forks she had been hurling madly round the room. 
 
 "For a few days prior to this, the family had observed some symptoms 
 of insanity in her, which had so much increased on the Wednesday 
 evening, that her brother, early the next morning, went to Dr. Pitcairn, 
 but that gentleman was not at home. 
 
 *' It seems the young lady had been once before deranged. The 
 jury, of course, brought in their verdict — ' lunacy.' " 
 
 The mention in this paragraph of the landlord instead 
 of the brother was a mistake. 
 
 This was the awful beginning of Charles Lamb's martyr- 
 doms, which he endured with a religious spirit of such 
 noble self-sacrifice as cannot but make the man greater than 
 anything he wrote. To complete the tragedy of the picture 
 which the dreadful occurrence presents, it need only be 
 mentioned that the father scarcely realised, by reason of his 
 imbecility, the full significance of what had happened, and 
 compelled Charles to play cribbage with him for his amuse- 
 ment, while the inquest on the body was being held across 
 the street. 
 
 Mary Lamb was removed to the restraint of an asylum, 
 and her brother's whole mental occupation became the 
 thought of how he could best insure for her such comforts 
 as could be had in her retreat. 
 
 In writing to Coleridge on the subject — Coleridge, by 
 the way, acknowledged Lamb's account of the catastrophe 
 in one of his most remarkable letters — he makes out the 
 combined incomes of his father and himself to amount to 
 the sum of jQi'jo or ;^i8o, and cheerfully adds that out of 
 this he can easily afford ;^5o or ;^6o to keep Mary at an 
 asylum during her father's lifetime. He mentions that the 
 lady superintendent there, together with her daughter, had 
 already been strongly drawn towards Mary, whose mind had 
 in a great degree calmed ; and in his love for her he loses 
 
Mary Lamb. 125 
 
 sight so much of her lunacy, as ahiiost to have thought that 
 any one might be happy who was near his sister. " Of all 
 the people I ever saw in the world," he says, still writing to 
 Coleridge, " my poor sister was most devoid of the least 
 tincture of selfishness. I understand her thoroughly, and if 
 I mistake not, in the most trying situation that a human 
 being can be found in —I speak not with sufficient humility 
 I fear, but hurrianly and foolishly speaking — she will be found 
 I trust uniformly great and amiable." In his next letter to 
 his friend he writes : — 
 
 " Mary continues serene and cheerful. I have not by me a little 
 letter she wrote to me ; for though I see her almost every day, yet we 
 delight to write to one another, for we can scarce see each other but in 
 company with some of the people of the house. I have not the letter by 
 me, but will quote from memory what she wrote in it. * I have no bad 
 terrifying dreams. At midnight when I happen to awake, the nurse 
 sleeping l)y the side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people 
 around me, I have no fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend 
 and smile upon me, and bids me live to enjoy the life and reason which 
 the Almighty has given to me. I shall see her again in heaven; she will 
 then undertand me better. My grandmother too will understand me 
 better, and will then say no more as she used to do, " Polly, what are 
 those poor crazy moythered brains of yours thinking of always ? " Poor 
 Mary ! My mother indeed never understood her right. She loved her 
 as she loved us all, with a mother's love ; but in opinion, in feeling, 
 and sentiments, and disposition, bore so distant a resemblance to her 
 daughter, that she never understood her right ; never tould believe 
 how much she loved her ; but met her caresses, her protestations of 
 filial affection, too frequently with coldness and repulse.' " 
 
 In the following year the imbecile father died, and it was 
 then that Lamb eagerly intimated his intention of cherishing 
 Mary in a home of their own for the remainder of the time 
 that life might be given them together. There were diffi- 
 culties in the way of accomplishing this re-union. It was 
 hinted to him that the circumstances which led to her retire- 
 ment were such as would prevent the law from allowing her 
 to be at large again, and it is supposed that it was only after 
 
T26 English Poetfsses. 
 
 communication with the Home Secretary that Lamb 
 obtained his wish and received his sister into his charge, 
 on his giving an undertaking that he would never permit her 
 to be removed from it. He seems to have had no fears as 
 to the financing of the future, thinking himself quite rich on 
 his salary of ;^ioo a year; and a certain tranquillity pos- 
 sessed him when he had his sister back with him. The 
 aunt, too, made part of the new menage^ but ere long this 
 old creature fell sick, and the task of nursing her brought 
 insanity once more upon Mary. It was then that Lamb 
 wrote almost the only bitter words his trouble wrung from 
 him : "I almost wish that Mary was dead." She had to 
 go into confinement again. 
 
 From their Pentonville quarters, we find that the Lambs 
 next removed to chambers in No. i, Southampton Buildings, 
 Chancery Lane, and there brother and sister, with occasion- 
 ally a threatening cloud of the old distress hovering over 
 them, passed a period of reasonable contentment. When 
 she was ill, indeed, his health was luckily good enough to 
 stand the strain, and it happened that when he in return was 
 out of sorts his sister was well enough to brighten him. 
 And thus they wagged along, as one of his friends ex- 
 pressed it, ''like Gumboil and Toothache; for they used 
 to say that a gumboil is a great relief to a toothache." 
 
 The jealous care which Charles took of his sister's health 
 -in the smallest particular is constantly shown by little refer- 
 ences to her which crop up in almost every letter he then 
 wrote. " Mary's love to all of you," he would add in a letter to 
 Wordsworth, "I would not let her write." To Mrs. Hazlitt 
 he says the same thing. " Mary is by no means unwell, but 
 I made her let me write." About this time Lamb instituted 
 his glorious Wednesday evening gatherings, w^hich have been 
 compared with the more splendid but less genial assemblies 
 of notable people which were taking place weekly at Hol- 
 land House, It was indeed a task which any lady in the 
 
Af.i/n- Lamh. 127 
 
 country would have felt herself honoured in the highest 
 degree to be trusted with, that which poor crazy Mary ful- 
 filled week after week, in presiding over the hospitalities of 
 the humble Lamb establishment. She ministered in a most 
 substantial, though homely manner to the refreshment of the 
 various guests who frequented these Wednesday gatherings. 
 There you could hear Coleridge solilocjuise like " an arch- 
 angel, a little damaged." Wordsworth could be found there 
 too, William Godwin, Hazlitt, and queer George Dyer, 
 and dirty white-souled Martin Burney ; John Thelwall 
 the reformer, Thomas Barnes, Benjamin Haydon, and 
 Charles Lloyd, Rickman, Alsagar, Allan Cunningham, Cary 
 the translator of Dante, Hood, Edward Irving, Miss Kelly 
 the actress, Kemble, and quite a host of occasional but not 
 least brilliant visitors could be found by the hearth of the 
 Lambs. At the Southampton Tavern, round the corner, 
 some of these worthies, Hazlitt and Lamb, particularly, 
 would often assemble on other evenings in the parlour, to 
 discuss high themes — metaphysics, poetry, and art — over 
 a modest tumbler and a pipe. It is recorded that George 
 Cruikshank, hob-nobbing with Hazlitt in that parlour, would 
 dip his finger in his ale and draw sketches on the table. 
 The conversation of the men who met here and at Lamb's 
 rooms reminds one of these evanescent sketches. They are 
 gone ; and there is nothing like them in these days of ours. 
 In 1808 the brother and sister took a trip to visit the 
 Hazlitts at Winterslow, and the delight which the visit gave 
 them is expressed in the following letter, written by Mary 
 to their hostess on her return to London : — 
 
 " My Dear Sarah, — I hear of you from your brother, but you do 
 not write of yourself, nor does Hazlitt. I beg that one, or both of you 
 will amend this fault as speedily as possible, for I am very anxious to 
 hear of your health. I hope, as you say nothing about your fall to your 
 l)rother, you are perfectly recovered from the effects of it. You cannot 
 think how very much we miss you and H of a Wednesday evening ; 
 
128 Enclis/i Poetesses. 
 
 all the glory of the night, I may say, is at an end. I* — - makes his 
 
 jokes, and there is no one to applaud him. R ■ argues, and there is 
 
 no one to oppose him. 
 
 '*The worse miss of all to me is, that when we are in the dismals 
 there is now no hope of relief from any quarter whatsoever. Hazlitt 
 was most brilliant, most ornamental, as a Wednesday man, but he was 
 a more useful one on common days, when he dropped in after a fit of the 
 glooms. The Sheffington is quite out now : my brother having got 
 merry with claret and Tom Sheridan. This visit and the occasion of 
 it is a profound secret, therefore I told it to n()l:)ody but you and Mrs. 
 Reynolds. Through the medium of Wroughton there came an invita- 
 tion and proposal from T. S., that C. L. should write some scenes in a 
 speaking pantomime, the other parts of which Tom now and his father 
 formerly have manufactured between them. So in the Christmas holi- 
 days, my brother and his two great associates, we expect, will be all 
 three awarded together ; that is, I mean if Charles' share, which is done 
 and sent in, is accepted. 
 
 " I left this unfinished yesterday, in the hope that my l^rother would 
 have done it for me. His reason for refusing me w^as * no exquisite 
 reason,' for it was because he must write a letter to Manning in three 
 or four weeks and therefore ' he could not alway be writing letters,' 
 he said. I wanted him to tell your husl^and about a great work which 
 (iodwin is going to publish to enlighten the world once more, and I shall 
 not be able to make out what it is. He (Godwin) took his usual walk one 
 evening about a fortnight since to the end of Hatton Garden and back 
 again. During that walk a thought came into his mind which he instantly 
 sat down and improved upon, till he brought it in seven or eight days 
 into the compass of a reasonable sized pamphlet. 
 
 "To propose a subscription to all well disposed people, to raise a 
 certain sum of money, to be expended in the care of a cheap monu- 
 ment for the former and the future great dead men ; the monument to 
 be a white cross with a wooden slab at the end, telling their names and 
 qualifications. This wooden slab and white cross to be perpetuated to 
 the end of time, to survive the fall of empires and the destruction of 
 cities, by means of a map, which in case of an insurrection among the 
 people, or any other course by which a city or country may be de- 
 stroyed, was to be carefully preserved ; and then when things got again 
 into their usual order, the white cross wooden slab-makers were to go to 
 work again, and set the wooden slabs in their former places. This, as 
 nearly as I can tell you, is the sum and substance of it ; but it is written 
 remarkably well — in his very best manner—for the proposal (which seems 
 to me very like throwing salt on a sparrow's tail to catch him) occupies but 
 
Mary Lamh. 129 
 
 half a page, which is followed by very tine writing on the benefits he 
 conjectures would follow if it were done ; very excellent thoughts on 
 death, and our feelings concerning dead friends, and the advantages 
 an old country has over a new one, even in the slender memorials we 
 have of great men who once flourished. 
 
 " Charles has come home and wants his dinner, so the dead men 
 must be thought of no more. Tell us how you go on, and how you like 
 Winterslow, and winter evenings. Knowles has not got back again, but 
 he is in better spirits. John Hazlitt was here on Wednesday. Our 
 love to Hazlitt. 
 
 *' Yours affectionately, 
 
 **M. Lamb." 
 
 The Godwin scheme here hinted at, and satirised so 
 good-humouredly, is one of those anomalies from which 
 atheists can hardly escape, and of w^hich indeed they seem 
 to be grotesquely unconscious. The only monument of eternal 
 humanity which Godwin can think of, is a cross, of all things 
 in the world : that symbol at which it was the aim of his life 
 to preach. Another of Mary's letters is worth preservation; 
 it was again written to Mrs. Hazlitt, after the second visit to 
 Winterslow: — 
 
 " My Dear Sarah, — The dear quiet, lazy, delicious month we 
 spent with you is remembered by me with such regret that I feel quite 
 discontented, and Winterslow-sick. I assure you I never passed such 
 a pleasant time in the country in my life, both in the house and out of 
 it : the card -playing quarrels and a few gaspings for breath after your 
 swift footsteps up the high hills excepted ; and these drawbacks are not 
 unpleasant in the recollection. We have got some salt butter to make 
 our toast seem like yours, and we have tried to eat meat suppers, but that 
 would not do, for we left our appetites behind us, and the dry loaf which 
 offended you now comes in at night unaccompanied ; but sorry am I to 
 add, it is soon followed by the pipe. W^e smoked the very first night 
 of our arrival. 
 
 ** Great news ! I have just been interrupted by Mr. Daw who came 
 to tell us he was yesterday elected a Royal Academician. He said none 
 of his own friends voted for him ; he got in by strangers who were 
 pleased with his picture of Mrs. White. 
 
 ** Charles says he does not believe Northcote ever voted for the 
 J 
 
130 English Poetesses, 
 
 admission of any one. Though a very cold day, Daw was in a pro- 
 digious perspiration for joy at his good fortune. 
 
 " More great news ! My beautiful green curtains were put up yester- 
 day, all the doors listed with green baize, and four new l^oards put to 
 the coal-hole, and fastening hasps put to the window, and my dyed 
 morning silk cut out. 
 
 "We had a good cheerful meeting on Wednesday, much talk of 
 Winterslow, its woods and its sunflowers. I did not so much like 
 
 P at Winterslow as I now like him for having been with us at 
 
 Winterslow. We roasted the last ' Beech of oily nut prolific ' on 
 Friday at the Captain's. Nurse is now established in paradise, alias the 
 incurable ward of Westminster Hospital. I have seen her sitting in 
 most superb state, surrounded by her seven incural)le companions. 
 They call each other ladies ; nurse looks as if she would be considered 
 as the first lady in the ward ; only one seemed at all to rival her in 
 dignity. 
 
 "A man in the India House has resigned, by which Charles will 
 get £2.0 a year, and White has prevailed on him to write some more 
 lottery puffs. If that ends in smoke the £20 is a sure card, and has 
 made him feel very joyful. 
 
 *' I continue very well and return you very sincere thanks for my good 
 
 health and improved looks, which has almost made Mrs die with 
 
 envy. vShe longs to come to W^interslow as much as the spiteful elder 
 sister did to go to the well for a gift to spit diamonds. 
 
 "Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of beef for your suppers 
 when you come to town again. She (Jane) broke two of the Hogarth's 
 glasses while we were away, whereat I made a great noise. Farewell. 
 Love to William, and Charles' love and good wishes for the speedy 
 arrival of the ' Life of Holcroft ' and the bearer thereof. 
 
 "Yours most affectionately, 
 
 "M. LAMli. " 
 
 But the excitement of the visit here alluded to was too 
 intense. It necessitated one of Mary Lamb's periodical re- 
 tirements to an asylum. How gently rounded and justly 
 balanced the expressions of thought in these letters of hers 
 are ! One could imagine that she had got her brother to 
 write them for her. In this year 1808 Mary brought out 
 her charming stories for children, entitled " Mrs. Leicester's 
 School " (three of the narratives being her brother's), 
 
Marv Lamb. 131 
 
 and in this year also she undertook the writing of her 
 *' Tales from Shakespeare," a book of which the charm 
 is still fresh, and which no one has been able to better. 
 Charles had to help her through with it, by undertaking 
 to summarise the tragedies. Here, as in the case of the 
 other two volumes which brother and sister wrote together, 
 Charles is vehement in maintaining that all the credit of 
 the fine writing is not his, but Mary's. In the following year 
 the still more lovely volume of " Poetry for Children " was 
 produced. Of these poems, Lamb wrote to Coleridge : 
 " Perhaps you will admire the number of subjects of the 
 children, all picked out by an old bachelor and an old maid; 
 many parents w^ould not have found so many ! " 
 
 Every now and again Mary was away under restraint, and 
 Lamb was never happy till he had her back. They were 
 fond of strolling about the streets in the evenings together, 
 and particularly delighted to dawdle past the doors of the 
 theatres, dallying with the temptation to enter and partake 
 of the joys of the pit. To this temptation they frequently 
 succumbed. One can picture them taking up their posi- 
 tion early to secure a place in the front pit row that 
 evening, when they attended to applaud Munden in his 
 benefit performance, and the luxurious zest with which 
 after they had wrought themselves into a perspiration with 
 their plauditory labours, they received the mug of stout 
 with which the worthy actor stumbled up through the 
 orchestra, into which they had been crowded.'^ One can 
 imagine also the mingled feelings and the grotesque actions 
 with which Lamb, accompanied by his sister, witnessed from 
 the pit the production of his ill-starred little farce, " Mr. H." 
 which was damned emphatically by those around him, but 
 hissed by none so heartily as by Lamb himself. 
 
 The last city residence of the Lambs was in Great 
 
 * It was apropos of this last benefit of an excellent actor that Mary 
 Lamb made her single great joke, " Sic transit gloria Munden." 
 J 2 
 
t32 ExCLISIl POETKSSKS. 
 
 Russell Street, Covent (harden, where the noise of market 
 people and theatre-goers, morning and night, seemed rather 
 to inspire them than disturb them. They were thorough 
 city birds ; their affections clung to the pavements and 
 smoky chimneys with that fervent feeling to which Lamb 
 himself so humorously referred when he said that on reach- 
 ing the top of Helvellyn he had to think of the ham and beef 
 shop near St. Martin's Lane. From Great Russell Street 
 they went to Islington, from Islington they went to Enfield, 
 and from Enfield they removed to their last dwelling at 
 Edmonton, a mile or two nearer town, as Lamb hungrily 
 observed. The tale of these latter days is not pleasant. 
 Mary Lamb's affliction became more and more chronic, and 
 the one great fault of the brother became, alas, more confirmed. 
 Most people know the story of Charles Lamb staggering 
 across the road to his home, and the window^ opening to 
 admit a cloud of feathers which the crazy sister had plucked 
 from the mattress to distribute to the winds in a paroxsym 
 of her mental malady. Charles was the first to die, although 
 out of his slender gains he had saved as much money as 
 would have provided for Mary comfortably after his death. 
 He ended his life on the 27th September, 1834, and his sister, 
 after continuing her darkly clouded existence under the care 
 of a nurse at Alpha Road, St. John's Wood, faded away 
 in total darkness and vacuity, on the 20th of May, 1847. 
 Charles Lamb was buried in the churchyard at Edmonton, 
 and w^hen his sister's coffin was taken to be placed upon his 
 own, the case in which his body was concealed was found to 
 be as fresh as when it was first let into the earth. 
 
 On a summer's day of 1880 I went to visit this grave. 
 A very beautiful old church is Edmonton church — one 
 that must have quietly gladdened the eye of Elia on 
 many a spring Sunday, as he meditatively paced among 
 the grave-stones while the hymn was wafted to him through 
 the open windows. The first man I met in the graveyard 
 
iMarv Lam/'.. 
 
 133 
 
 said that he had worked about it for years, but had never 
 seen such a name as Lamb in it. He called to a flaxen- 
 headed boy, son of the sextoness, he explained, and this boy 
 hesitatingly pointed to a section of the somewhat extensive 
 burying-ground that ultimately proved to be the right one, 
 though he could not indicate the exact site I was in search 
 of. Two other rustics sitting on the wall, watching a game 
 of cricket in a neighbouring field, knew nothing about the 
 spot. At last application at a neighbouring cottage brought 
 out an old man who led the way to a modest undistin- 
 guished tombstone. One dead man is so much like 
 another ! It is only amid these unknowing boobies, the 
 dead and the living alike careless, that the memory of Lamb 
 is buried. 
 
 There the husk, however, lies amid a waste of insignifi- 
 cants, like the hull of a treasure ship at the bottom of 
 the sea. Most people in Edmonton could no doubt have 
 directed me to the grave of Lamb's neighbour, a Mr. 
 Smith, of such-and-such a place, "and the Bank of 
 England." My old guide, curiously enough, never saw 
 Lamb at Edmonton, but knew him at Enfield, where 
 his mother did the washing for brother and sister. He 
 remembered well, just fifty years ago, moving a piano for 
 him. I was pleased to hear of this piano, because the 
 tradition is that Lamb and his sister did not care for music, 
 and were often bored by Hazlitt's enthusiasm about it. 
 Perhaps this piano had been procured for the sake of Isola, 
 the adopted daughter of their latter days, who married young 
 Moxon the poet publisher. It was strange to hear my guide 
 speak of Mr. Lamb. He went regularly to church, said my 
 informant, and the simple village joke, was, that the vicar 
 was very friendly with Lamb because he often wrote his ser- 
 mons for him. This piece of gossip at any rate indicates 
 that the vicar was on good terms with our dear Samaritan. 
 As the old man remembered him, Lamb wore a short-waisted 
 
134 English Poetesses. 
 
 coat cut away in front, and knee-breeches and stocking?. 
 The house which brother and sister occupied stands back 
 retiringly from the main street, as its occupants must have 
 held aloof from the cackling villagers of their day. 
 
 The history of the little volume called " Poetry for 
 Children," by Charles and Mary Lamb, has a curious biblio- 
 graphical interest. William Godwin, fiercely sceptical as 
 he was, w^as not above making a considerable portion of 
 his living out of the faith of others ; under the name of 
 Thomas Hodgkins — afterwards under the name of his 
 second wife, Mary Wolstonecroft — he conducted a publish- 
 ing business which dealt chiefly in books for children, 
 many of which were strikingly tinged with orthodox re- 
 ligion to suit the public taste. It was through this agency 
 that " Mrs. Leicester's School " was put before the Avorld. 
 The " Tales from Shakspeare " likewise passed through 
 his hands ; and in 1809 the volume of " Poems for Children," 
 already mentioned, was published by him also. 
 
 An edition of this work was quickly disposed of, but the 
 thing went out of print, and its next appearance was in 
 America, where it was republished by a Boston firm. When 
 collecting his works in 181 8, Charles Lamb reprinted from 
 the collection three poems by his own hand, '^ The Three 
 Friends," " Queen Oriana's Dream," and '' To a River in 
 which a Child was Drowned.". In 1827, he wrote to 
 Bernard Barton that a copy of " Poems for Children " was 
 not to be had for love or money. The book had indeed 
 totally disappeared. Up to the year 1877, this country had 
 been searched for it in vain. Copies of the Boston edition 
 were to be had, though even these were scarce. Moreover 
 this Boston edition was not a complete one. But in this 
 year (1877) the Hon. William Sandover sent home from 
 Adelaide, in South Australia, the two slender i8mo volumes 
 forming the original edition. In July of that year the 
 Gentleman' s Magazine contained a description of these 
 
Mary Lamh. 
 
 '35 
 
 volumes, and the whole history of the work. Thence we 
 learn that Mr. Sandover had purchased his treasure at a sale 
 of furniture and books held at Plymouth, when he was on a 
 visit to England in 1866. From these precious volumes the 
 poems were reprinted in several editions, the best of which is 
 that published by Chatto and Windus in 1878, under the 
 editorship of Mr. Richard Heme Shepherd. 
 
 In endeavouring to ascertain which of these poems are 
 Charles Lamb's and which are Mary's, we are helped by 
 Charles's remark in a letter to Mr. Manning : " Mine are 
 but one third in quantity of the whole." We know that 
 Charles republished three of these poems in his works, and 
 he has also republished two of his sister's, viz., " David in the 
 Cave of Adullam," and "The Two Boys." His testimony 
 establishes the fact that it was his sister who wrote " The 
 First Tooth." Further than this evidence goes, we have 
 only our own judgment to rely upon in ascertaining what 
 poems Charles wrote, and what Mary wrote. Looseness of 
 construction and cockney rhymes may be taken as almost 
 conclusive indications that certain of the poems, such as 
 " The Duty of a Brother," The Rook and the Sparrows," 
 and " Incorrect Speaking," are Mary's work. There is a 
 natural temptation on the other hand to look upon any 
 peculiarly graceful touches in the remaining poems as in- 
 dicating the authorship of Charles. But it would be unjust 
 to take away all the good things from the credit of his 
 sister, especially as Lamb so markedly expressed his opinion 
 that the balance of good in the whole book was hers. I 
 have exercised my discretion as best I could in selecting the 
 following poems as probably Mary's : — 
 
 THE NEW-BORN INFANT. 
 
 Whether beneath sweet beds of roses 
 As foolish little Ann supposes, 
 The spirit of a babe reposes 
 Before it to the body come ; 
 
136 English Poetesses. 
 
 Or, as philosophy more wise 
 Thinks it descendeth from the skies, 
 
 We know the babe's now in the room. 
 
 And that is all which is quite clear, 
 Even to philosophy, my dear. 
 
 The Ciod that made us can alone 
 Reveal from whence a spirit's brought 
 Into young life, to light, and thought ; 
 
 And this the wisest man must own. 
 
 We'll now talk of the babe's surprise. 
 When first he opens his new eyes, 
 
 And first receives delicious food. 
 Before the age of six or seven. 
 To mortal children is not given 
 
 Much reason, else I think he would 
 
 (And very naturally) wonder 
 
 What happy star he was born under, 
 
 That he should be the only care 
 Of the dear, sweet, food -giving lady. 
 Who fondly calls him her own baby, 
 
 Her darling hope, her infant heir. 
 
 FEIGNED COURAGE. 
 
 Horatio, of ideal courage vam, 
 
 W^as flourishing in air his father's cane. 
 
 And, as the fumes of valour swelled his pate. 
 
 Now thought himself ///w hero, and now that ; 
 
 *' And now," he cried, " I will Achilles be ; 
 
 My sword I brandish, see, the Trojans flee. 
 
 Now I'll be Hector when his angry blade 
 
 A lane through heaps of slaughtered Grecians made I 
 
 And now by deeds still braver I'll convince, 
 
 I am no less than Edward the Black Prince. 
 
 Give way, ye coward French ! " As thus he spoke, 
 
 And aimed in fancy a suflicient stroke 
 
 To fix the fate of Cressy or Poictiers 
 
 (The nurse relates the hero's fate with tears) ; 
 
Marv Lamb. 137 
 
 He struck his milk-white hand against a nail, 
 Sees his own blood, and feels his courage fail. 
 Ah ! where is now that boasted valour flown. 
 That in the tented field so late was shown ! 
 Achilles weeps, great Hector hangs his head. 
 And the Black Prince goes whimpering to bed. 
 
 PARENTAL RECOLLECTIONS. 
 
 A child's a plaything for an hour : 
 
 It's pretty tricks we try 
 For that, or for a longer space ; 
 
 Then tire and lay it by. 
 
 But I knew one that to itself 
 
 All seasons would control ; 
 That would have mocked the sense of pain 
 
 Out of a grieved soul. 
 
 Thou struggler into loving arms, 
 
 Young climber up of knees. 
 When I forget thy thousand ways, 
 
 Then life and all shall cease. 
 
 This chapter should not end without allusion to one or 
 more writers whose epoch these pages have almost left 
 behind. Hannah More (1745 — 1833) was thought a 
 poetess by some of her own time. Her first work was a 
 pastoral drama, entitled, "The Search after Happiness" 
 (1773) ; her " Sacred Dramas " (with " Sensibility,") appeared 
 in 1782 ; and her other poetical efforts are "The Inflexible 
 Captive" (1774), "Percy" (1777), "The Fatal Falsehood" 
 (1779), "Florie" (1786), "The Bas Bleu" (1786), "The 
 Feast of Freedom" (1827), and the "Sir Eldred of the 
 Bower," to which some lines of Garrick's allude in terms of 
 unstinted praise. The life of this estimable lady can hardly 
 be given here ; for, in spite of our ancestors* opinions, it 
 
138 English Poetesses. 
 
 would be a very hard task to prove Hannah More possessed 
 of any poetical talent at all. Her verses, entitled " The 
 Two Weavers," are still occasionally quoted, but her best 
 poem may be said to be the well-known couplet — 
 
 " In men this blunder still you find, 
 All think their little set mankind." 
 
 Mary Robinson, better known as Perdita (1758 — 1800), 
 published a pleasant volume of poems that sweeten her 
 memory somewhat. These appeared in 1775. 
 
 Mrs. Mary Tighe (1773 — 18 10) is still held in esteem 
 for her poem entitled Psyche (privately printed in 1805). 
 
 Helen Maria Williams (1780 — 1823) published two 
 volumes of poems (1786 and 1823) which Wordsworth 
 liked. He particularly admired her 
 
 SONNET TO liOPE. 
 
 O EVER skilled to wear the form we love ! 
 To bid the shapes of fear and grief depart ; 
 Come, gentle Hope ! with one gay smile remove 
 The lasting sadness of an aching heart. 
 Thy voice, benign enchantress ! let me hear ; 
 Say that for me some pleasures yet shall bloom, 
 That fancy's radiance, friendship's precious tear. 
 Shall soften, or shall chase, misfortune's gloom. 
 But come not glowing in the dazzling ray 
 Which once with dear illusions charmed my eye ; 
 O, strew no more, sweet flatterer ! on my way 
 The flowers I fondly thought too bright to die : 
 Visions less fair will soothe my pensive breast, 
 That asks not happiness, but longs for rest. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SCOTTISH POETESSES : LADY GRISELT. BAILLIE — MRS. COCK- 
 r.URN — MISS JANE ELLIOT — LADY ANNE BARNARD — THE 
 BARONESS NAIRNE — ^MISS JOANNA BAILLIE. 
 
 EVERY country has its renascences, and the two periods 
 of rejuvenation which occur in the history of Scot- 
 land are, first of all of course, the time of the Reformation, 
 which was literary, be it marked, before it was theological ; 
 and secondly, what may be called the golden age of Edin- 
 burgh. This golden age extended through the latter part of 
 the 1 8th century, into the first quarter of the 19th. The 
 men who adorned it might be compared with the French 
 Encyclopaedists. In point of philosophy and wit they could 
 almost hold their own with Voltaire and his French contem- 
 poraries, and half a dozen of them at least have produced 
 more lasting work than that of any half dozen of the Ency 
 clopaedists. It was during this golden age that Dugald 
 Stewart explored metaphysics and ethics ; Adam Smith 
 developed the doctrine of free-trade ; Hume exercised the 
 function of the historian ; Smollett, all but a Londoner by adop- 
 tion, tickled the world into laughter with his novels ; Scott 
 made the past a pageantry ; and Burns sang with that simple 
 genius which all the culture in the world has never been able 
 to rival. These were the greatest minds of the literary move- 
 ment in Scotland ; but for one of these geniuses there were 
 ten writers of the second rank, who were bringing honour 
 to their country by writings which have been stamped in 
 literature as productions of lasting merit. Adam Ferguson, 
 the student of Roman anti(|uities ; Robertson, the historian 
 
140 English Foetkssfs. 
 
 of Charles V. ; Hutcheson, the moral philosopher ; Brown, 
 the metaphysician ; Christopher North, the genial humourist ; 
 Hogg, the poet of the "Queen's Wake"; Mackenzie, the 
 ** Man of Feeling " ; Lockhart, the literary knight-errant ; 
 Jeffrey, critical prince of his day : such men as these were 
 enough to bring honour to Scotland, even had the other 
 greater geniuses been left out of account. 
 
 Not the least remarkable feature in this age of talent was 
 the literary fecundity of a set of women who well deserve 
 a place in these pages. The author of " Mystifications," 
 and one or two other women writers, certainly made some 
 solid additions to the Scotch prose of this period ; but the 
 majority of ladies who then took up the pen adopted their 
 native Doric tongue, and made it into songs which are as full 
 of life now as they ever were, and which are not likely to be 
 forgotten for a long time to come. To English readers, of 
 course, the merit of their w^ork is somewhat obscured by 
 the medium of dialect through which they conveyed their 
 thoughts. Nevertheless these women were thoroughly 
 original in what they wrote. They were full of genuine fancy, 
 and although most of them belonged to the aristocracy, their 
 imagination played upon the humblest, homeliest themes, 
 interesting us not in knights, but in country swains ; not in 
 Ovidian elegies or mediaeval love-romances, but taking the 
 shape of a simple analysis of love among the poor. They were 
 full, also, of that admiration of nature of which people with 
 so many hills around them could scarcely fail to be possessed. 
 They did not magnify their office. They did not set them- 
 selves out as divinely inspired to teach the world through poesy. 
 They seemed rather to write because they could not help it, 
 and they were desirous to hide their work, as if they felt that 
 they had been presumptuous in taking up the poet's pen at all. 
 There w^as no epic grandeur, no magnificent dreaming about 
 their style. They were people who enjoyed life to the full 
 themselves ; who were hapi)y in their country, and among 
 
ScoTCJ/mhMjix. 1 4 1 
 
 their friends ; who were full of sympathy for the ploughman 
 and the milkmaids and the cottage bairns whose country 
 life most of them had lived to a certain extent themselves, 
 and whose broadly vowelled speech was sweeter to their 
 tongues than the language which passed the muster of 
 Johnson's Dictionary. On the whole, they were simple- 
 minded, with simple tastes and simple concentrated sym- 
 pathies ; they chose simple themes to write about, and the 
 result was a body of simple songs, which to this day are sung 
 by the shepherd in the fields, by the merry-makers at the har- 
 vest home, or by the ploughman's wife who dandles her babe 
 on her knee beside the "ingle neuk." It was in thinking of 
 the men and women who then sang so much that spoke to the 
 heart of the common folk as well as to the imagination of 
 the cultured, that Fletcher of Saltoun made the oft-repeated 
 exclamation, " Let others make the laws of a people, give 
 me the making of its songs." It is only in our own day 
 that an Englishwoman has to anything like the same degree 
 penetrated to the inner life which the humble lead, with 
 simple joys and patient sufferings. George Eliot interests 
 us in the poor, but the methods by which she reveals 
 these people to us are analytical, whereas the Scotch songs- 
 tresses told us about them in words of such natural spon- 
 taneity, that in the homeliest of their descriptions w^e do not 
 feel there is any difference of position between the describer 
 and the described. 
 
 Too much must not be claimed for these Scotchwomen. 
 They did not soar ; they did not voyage into the lands of 
 mystery ; they had none of the subjective sense of life's dark- 
 ness and failure which has proved so sadly inspiring to many 
 of our later writers of poetry ; they were objective. They 
 mostly chose thoroughly mundane themes ; they sang about 
 things that were within their own observation or experience. 
 The very simplicity of their aim seems to hide from them a 
 knowledge of how far they reach. They " builded better 
 
14^ English Poetesses, 
 
 than they knew." Though they were not high thinkers, they 
 
 were, within their sphere, as truly poetical as any women 
 
 have ever been. 
 
 The first of the more notable Scottish songstresses was 
 
 Lady Grisell Baillie, who was born at Redbraes Castle in 
 
 the Merse, on Christmas Day of 1665. She was the eldest 
 
 of eighteen children, and her father was Sir 
 
 ^t^4?i^ ^^ Patrick Home, who afterwards became Earl of 
 Baillie. ' 
 
 Marchmont. The care of this large family of 
 brothers and sisters devolved to a great extent upon the 
 shoulders of young Lady Grisell, who speedily became 
 accomplished in the many arts of Scotch housewifery. 
 When yet a child, she was once chosen to ride into Edin- 
 burgh in order to carry a political message to a prisoner of 
 quality. This prisoner was Mr. George Baillie, of Jerviswood, 
 whom the same damsel succoured in a still more important 
 manner when he was afterwards accused of treason. Mr. 
 Baillie and Sir Patrick Home both belonged to the strongly 
 anti-Jacobite section of the Scotch nobility, and it was not 
 long before Lady Grisell's father was himself in hiding among 
 the family vaults at Polwarth. It was thither that Lady 
 Grisell, according to a story known even in the nurseries, 
 carried from the table by stealth the daily portion of food 
 necessary for her father's sustenance, until the disappearance 
 of a whole sheep's head nearly betrayed the fond girl's 
 secret to the troopers who were maintaining watch and guard 
 at her home. 
 
 The disturbances of the country at length made it 
 necessary for the ringleaders of the anti-Jacobite party to 
 escape from the Stuart's clutches as hastily and discreetly as 
 they could. Sir Patrick's family settled at Utrecht, and there, 
 for three-and-a-half years, endured all the hardships that 
 exile and poverty could together impose. Poor as they were, 
 however. Sir Patrick and his bustling young daughter con- 
 trived to make their home the centre of the Scotch com- 
 
Lady Oris ell Baillie, 143 
 
 m unity at Utrecht. They and their guests seem to have 
 partaken of small beer in place of wine, and simple por- 
 ridge and milk not seldom. But for all their plain fare, they 
 kei)t a merry heart ; Christine, the youngest daughter of the 
 family, grew up quite a noted singer, and (}risell was able, 
 amid all her occupations, to fill a manuscript volume with a 
 variety of songs composed entirely by herself. 
 
 Grisell's favourite brother, Patrick, was the close com- 
 panion of young George, son of Mr. Baillie of Jerviswood, 
 already mentioned. These two young fellows rode together 
 in the Prince of Orange's guard, and at times stood sentry 
 at his gate. They were as poor as the rest of the com- 
 munity, but full of youthful spirits, and seem to have been 
 the life of all the Scotch, and it gradually grew to be an 
 understood thing that Grisell and George Baillie would 
 become man and wife as soon as a more fortunate sun shone, 
 and Scotland could be regained. It is said that Grisell had 
 strong pretensions to good looks ; she had a graceful figure, 
 delicate features, chestnut hair, and a complexion that 
 rivalled the most dazzling red and white of the Dutch 
 women. At length, on the 17th September, 1692, the 
 wished-for marriage came about in the old ancestral home 
 of Redbraes Castle. The Prince of Orange had come to 
 the throne in England, and his friends had reaped the 
 l)enefit of his accession. The union which the Revolution 
 made possible between our two lovers seems to have been 
 of the happiest kind. Lady Grisell's daughter records that 
 during the forty-eight years of her marriage there never was 
 anything like a quarrel between husband and wife, and 
 adds : " he never went abroad but that she went to the 
 window to look after him, never taking her eyes from him 
 so long as he was in sight." George Baillie died in 1738, 
 at Oxford, and eight years later his wife followed him, 
 dying in London, and being buried beside her husband in 
 the family vault at Mellerstein. 
 
144 English Pokt esses. 
 
 Lady Grisell's life was not such as would tend to the 
 formation of a literary character. Born in stormy times, 
 nurtured upon a passionate political creed, burdened with the 
 care of a large family, and subjected to all the trials of a 
 wanderer — and a poor wanderer — she seems yet to have 
 preserved within herself, as the last and infinite resource of 
 a kindly womanly nature, that brightness of spirit which 
 forms the theme of one of her best songs, 
 
 " Werena my heart licht I wad dee." 
 
 Lady Grisell has become quite an historic character by 
 reason of her maidenly heroism, exhibited so often in the 
 days when her friends were undergoing persecution. Were 
 it not for this fact, perhaps her Hterary reputation would not 
 have been considered so great. Had a Flora Macdonald 
 or a Grace Da'rling written a passable set of verses, those 
 lines would no doubt have acquired a preciousness in the 
 eyes of posterity which a strictly literary judgment would 
 not confer upon them. However, several of Lady Grisell's 
 songs have been reckoned very fair specimens of minstrelsy 
 by most competent judges, and the lines with the title 
 already quoted have much of the mingled humour and 
 pathos w^hich characterise the best Scotch songs. 
 
 WERENA MY HEART LICHT 
 
 TjlKKr: ^\as ance a may^ and she loo'd na men : 
 She biggit" her bonnie ])ower down i' yon glen ; 
 But now she cries Dool ! and Well-a-day ! 
 C )nic down the green gate-^ and come here away. 
 But now she cries, &c. 
 
 When bonnie young Johnnie cam' owcr iIk >ca, 
 He said he saw naething sae lovely as nic ; 
 He hechf* me baith rings and monie braw"' things, 
 And werena my heart licht I wad dee. 
 
 He hecht me, &c. , 
 
 ' l";iir inaiclcn. - lUiilt. ^ ^Vay. * Promised. 5 JJ^;^nlif^l, 
 
L.uu- CiRisrj.L Bailiji-:. 145 
 
 Me had a wee tittie^ that loo'cl na mc, 
 Because I was twice as bonnie as she ; 
 She raised sic a pother'-^ 'twixt him and his mother, 
 That werena my heart licht I wad dee. 
 She raised, &c. 
 
 The day it was set for the bridal to l^e. 
 The wife took a dwam^ and lay down to dee ; 
 She mained and she grained"* wi' fause dolour and pain, 
 Till he vow'd he never wad see me again. 
 She mained, &c. 
 
 His kin was for ane o' a higher degree. 
 Said, What had he to do wi' the like of me? 
 Albeit I was bonnie, I wasna for Johnnie, 
 And werena my heart licht I wad dee. 
 Albeit I was bonnie, &c. 
 
 They said I had neither coo nor cawf,"* 
 Nor dribbles^ o' drink coming through the draflf,^ 
 Nor pickles^ o' meal rinnin' frae the mill-e'e ;■' 
 And werena my heart licht I wad dee. 
 Nor pickles, &c. 
 
 His tittie she was baith wylie and slee,^" 
 She spied me as I cam ower the lea ; 
 And then she ran in, and made a loud din ;^^ 
 Believe your ain een^- an ye trow^^ na me. 
 And then she ran in, &c. 
 
 His bonnet stood aye fu' round on his brow ; 
 His auld ane look'd better that mony ane's new ; 
 But now he lets 't wear ony gait^^ it will hing,^-^ 
 And casts himself dowie ^^ upon the corn-bing.^" 
 But now he, &c. 
 
 And now he gaes daundrin'^^ about the dykes, ^^ 
 And a' he dow^*^ do is to hound -^ the tykes : 
 
 Diminutive of sister. * Quarrel. ^ pjt of sickness. •* Moaned and groaned, 
 
 5 Cow nor calf. ^ Drops. ' Grain. « Small quantities. 
 
 ®The opening in the case of a mill by which the meal comes out. ^° Sly, 
 
 "Noise. 12 Eyes. ^3 Relieve. i*Way. i* Hang. i^Sad. 
 
 " Corn-heap. ^^ Sauntering, l^ WuUm. *" Dare, *• To set on the dogs. 
 
 K 
 
146 itxcrjSI/ PoKTE^iSES, 
 
 The live-lang nicht he ne'er steeks his e'e ;^ 
 And werena my heart licht I wad dee. 
 The live-lang nicht, &c. 
 
 Were I young for thee as I ha'e been, 
 We should hae been gallopin' down on yon green, 
 And linkin'- it ower the lily-white lea ; 
 And now ! gin^ I were young for thee ! 
 And linkin' it, &C. 
 
 Some fifty years later than Lady Grisell Baillie, there was 
 born upon the bleak hills of Ettrick a babe who in after 
 times was to touch the hearts of thousands by her art, and 
 influence the whole of Edinburgh society by her wit and 
 
 capability of managing other people. This 
 ^bura^^' ^^'^'^^ Allison Rutherford, daughter of Robert 
 
 Rutherford, of Fairnalee, born in the year 
 1 7 1 2. Robert Rutherford was a Border laird, and thought 
 not a little of his blood, as his daughter did after him. 
 There are very few facts recorded regarding the early train- 
 ing little Allison received in her home near the banks of 
 the Tweed, except such reminiscences as she herself has 
 left us. 
 
 ** I can this minute figure myself running as fast as a greyhound on 
 a hot summer day to have the pleasure of plunging into the Tweed to 
 cool me. I see myself made up like a ball, with my feet wrapped in 
 my petticoat, on the acclivity of the hill at Fairnalee, letting myself roll 
 down to the bottom with infinite delight. As for the chase of the silver 
 spoon at the end of the rainbow, nothing could exceed my ardour, 
 except my faith which created it. I can see myself the first favourite at 
 Lamotte's dancing, and remember turning pale and red with ambition 
 and applause. I can remember, when 1 was seven or eight years old, 
 there was a very ancient gardener at Fairnalee, almost blind. He 
 employed me to clip his white beard every Saturday, which office I 
 performed with the greatest pride and pleasure." 
 
 All we know of Allison's youth is that she grew up a belle 
 in the borders, and became not a little vain in consequence, 
 
 1 Closes his eye, 2 Wj^U^ing arm-in-arm. ^ If, 
 
Mi< s . C \ H ■ KB urn: '147 
 
 Throughout her life this naive vanity characterised her speech 
 and her letters ; however, it was not accompanied by any 
 more harmful faults of disposition, and it never affected 
 the esteem in which she was held by her friends. It would 
 seem that a certain John Aikman was the earliest lover upon 
 whom Allison Rutherford bestowed attention. For some 
 unknown reason, however — want of fortune probably, or 
 want of birth — the mutual affection of the pair never came 
 to anything definite, and Allison was married to Patrick 
 Cockburn, son of the T.ord Justice Clerk. It seems like a 
 hint of some hidden soul-tragedy to learn that within two 
 months of this marriage John Aikman died in London, in 
 his twenty-second year. Sarah Tytler and Miss Watson, 
 in the delightful book which they have written on the 
 "Songstresses of Scotland" (here largely drawn upon for 
 facts) have endeavoured to establish the identification of 
 John Aikman with a nameless gentleman who once at 
 Fairnalee played for Allison Rutherford the air of a very 
 old ballad called the " Flowers of the Forest," and asked her 
 if she could furnish words for it. The theory that this was 
 John Aikman is only conjectural, but not improbable. If 
 he was really the inspirer of the " Flowers of the Forest," 
 he thus becomes of more importance in the literary student's 
 eyes than worthy Patrick Cockburn himself, the successful 
 suitor though he was, and son of a Lord Justice Clerk to boot. 
 Young Mrs. Cockburn took up her abode at the family 
 house of Ormiston, not far from Edinburgh, and at once 
 became the life and soul of her coterie of relations, who were 
 all devoted to Whiggism and Presbyterianism. It was not 
 so fashionable then for women to be Whigs at heart ; indeed, 
 it seemed to be as unfashionable for a lady to be a Whig 
 as to be a Blue-stocking. Jacobite Romanticism seemed to 
 suit the feminine graces better, and handsome Prince Charlie 
 was certainly more of a lady's man than any prince ol 
 the rival house has been, George IV. himself not excepted. 
 K 2 
 
148 Enctjsii Poetesses. 
 
 Mrs. Cockburn, however, had a shrewd wit, and was very 
 fond of laughter. She amused herself a great deal with the 
 Jacobite proclivities of some of her friends and relatives, and 
 occasionally got herself into hot water by so doing. On one 
 occasion she had ridden out from Edinburgh to make a call 
 upon the Keiths of Ravelston, who were related to her, and 
 who were sturdy upholders of the Stuart family. In the 
 course of her visit the witty dame took occasion to poke a 
 good deal of fun at the adored Prince Charlie ; but on re- 
 turning home in the Ravelston coach she was hindered at 
 the Port by the Prince's Highland guard, whose claymores 
 promptly induced the coachman to pull up. A grim officer 
 thereupon stepped forward and expressed his intention of 
 searching her person, in case she might be found to have 
 Whig letters secreted about her. Judge of Mrs. Cockburn's 
 dismay, for she had in her pocket nothing less than a metrical 
 parody, newly produced by her own pen, which bestowed a 
 good deal of lively mockery upon Prince Charles's proclama- 
 tion ! However, a finger pointed to the Ravelston arms 
 emblazoned upon the coach was sufficient to induce the gruff 
 officer to allow the equipage to proceed ; and it may be pre- 
 sumed that for the future Mrs. Cockburn did not carry her 
 jeux-d' esprit so freely aboiJt her when she went visiting. 
 
 In 1753 Mr. Cockburn died, and left Allison a widow of 
 lorty-one. She had one child, Adam, who was an officer in 
 a dragoon regiment. When, or where, Mrs. Cockburn had 
 written the verses with which her name is chiefly associated, 
 the "Flowers of the Forest," nobody can say. In accord- 
 ance with the fashion of her day, she seems to have con- 
 sidered it necessary to keep her authorship a most profound 
 secret. Women were then specially afraid of being con- 
 sidered literary, and talked of books and such things with 
 as bated a breath as if they were hatching scandal. Jane 
 Austen was only permitted by her mother to work at her 
 manuscripts on condition that she kept a large ])iece of 
 
Mks. Cock burn. 149 
 
 embroidery at hand, with which to conceal the contraband 
 jjaper if any visitors were announced. Even among the 
 men, the great Sir Walter had set an example inclining 
 song-writers, novelists, and people of the kind, to give them- 
 selves additional importance in their own eyes, and after- 
 wards in the eyes of other people, by making a great secret 
 of the fact that they could write at all. 
 
 The first acknowledgment of her verses which Mrs. 
 Cockburn permitted herself to make was the printing of 
 the " Flowers of the Forest " some twelve years after her 
 husband's death ; and Sir Walter Scott and others, who had 
 already committed snatches of the song to heart, spread the 
 fame of the production far and wide. Another lady, of 
 whom we have afterwards to speak, Miss Jane Elliot, had 
 meanwhile also written a set of verses with the same title. 
 These were not thought so much of in their day as Mrs. 
 Cockburn's ; but the general opinion has now changed with 
 regard to the rival poems, although association has rendered 
 it expedient for the music-sellers to continue wedding the 
 well-known air to the words which have accompanied it 
 so long. Miss Jane Elliot's composition is undoubtedly 
 the more touching of the two. 
 
 Great reader though she was, and an indefatigable writer 
 of capital letters, as well as the associate of many of the 
 best literary people who at that time gave Edinburgh its 
 highest fame, Mrs. Cockburn appears never to have de- 
 sired the credit of being a literary person. She was fond of 
 having literary people at her dinners, or her still cosier 
 suppers ; she was very catholic in her tastes, admired Rous- 
 seau, and was the warm friend of Hume ; although herself 
 imbued with strong religious feelings, was in her element 
 when acting as the matron of the ball-room ; and loved 
 nothing on earth better than match-making. She was quite 
 a queen in her circle ; everybody deferred to her, even Sir 
 Walter Scott, the development of whose powers she had 
 
150 English Poetesses. 
 
 had the enjoyment of witnessing from their earliest be- 
 ginnings. The old lady gives us a curious reminiscence of 
 Sir Walter's childhood in the following manner : — 
 
 " I last night supped in Mr. Walter Scott's. He has the most 
 extraordinary genius of all boys I ever saw. He was reading a poem to 
 his mother when I went in ; I made him read on. It was a description 
 of a shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm ; he lifted up his eyes 
 and hands. ' There's the mast gone,' says he, ' crash it goes ; they will 
 all perish ! ' After his agitation, he turns to me, ' That is too melan- 
 choly,' says he. *I had better read you somewhat more amusing.' I 
 preferred a chat, and asked his opinion of Milton and other books he 
 was reading, which he gave me wonderfully ; indeed, one of his ob- 
 servations was, ' How strange it was that Adam just new come into the 
 world should know everything. That must be the poet's fancy,' says 
 he. But when told that Adam was created by God, he instantly gave- 
 way. When he was taken to bed last night, he told his aunt ' he liked 
 that lady ! ' * What lady ? ' says she. ' Why, Mrs. Cockburn, for I 
 think she is a virtuoso like myself.' 'Dear Walter,' says his aunt, 
 * what is a virtuoso ? ' ' Don't you know ? Why, it is one who will 
 know everything.' Now, sir, you will think this a very silly story. 
 Pray what age do you suppose the boy to be ? Name it, now, before I 
 tell you. Why, twelve or fourteen. No such thing, he was not quite six, 
 and he has a lame leg, for which he was a year at Bath ; and has acquired 
 the perfect English accent, which he has not lost since he came, and he 
 reads like a Garrick. Vou will allow this an uncommon exotic." 
 
 These recollections, of course, relate to a comparatively 
 early period of Mrs. Cockburn's life. When she was about 
 fifty, Miss Anne P'orbes painted a picture of her friend, Mrs. 
 Cockburn. This portrait represents her with hair turning 
 back, and covered by a hood, with ends meeting under her 
 chin. The upper part of the face is fine, though the eyebrows 
 slant down instead of arching. The mouth is rather a hard 
 one, and the chin retreats. The whole likeness gives the idea 
 of a well-bred, frank, and saucy w^oman. Such is the account 
 of this portrait given by one who has had the privilege of 
 seeing it. As she grew older, Mrs. Cockburn became 
 fonder of improving the resemblance which was said to exist 
 
, I Ir .v. Ci k:kb u r a\ t 5 i 
 
 between her and Queen Elizabeth, and she adapted her 
 dress as much as possible to enhance this fancied similarity 
 of appearance. These were the days when Mme. de Sevigne 
 was the great female power in France, and no doubt the 
 French lady would have been struck with considerable 
 wonder at the frank, blunt ways of the Scotch Mme. de 
 SeVigne' who was then reigning in the northern metropolis, 
 and who, like many ladies of her time and country, partook 
 to no small degree of the fancies and manners of the sterner 
 sex. Sir Walter Scott relates a curious instance, perhaps 
 beyond the common experience even of that time, of the 
 affected roughness which some of the ladies of his ac- 
 quaintance then indulged in. He, and certain others, were 
 assembled one evening at Mrs. Cockburn's house, in 
 Crichton Street, and among the party was Miss Suff John- 
 stone, a friend of Lady Anne Barnard, a strange, whimsical 
 mixture of good nature, roughness, miserliness, and talent. 
 As a rule, she wore a man's great-coat, hat, and shoes ; she 
 took pains in walking to stride like a man, and was also 
 addicted to spitting and swearing. We learn, moreover, 
 that she shod a horse better than a smith, keeping a small 
 anvil in her bedroom for practice ; played on the fiddle, and 
 sang men's songs in a deep voice. Young Anne Scott, 
 happening, amid the crowd of the company, to jostle 
 somewhat this talented virago, was summarily punished 
 by a smart kick on* the shins, and the fierce question, 
 " What are ye wab-wabstering there for ? " Accustomed 
 as they w^ere to the eccentric manners of Suff Johnstone, 
 the company were utterly taken aback, and poor Anne 
 Scott shrank aw^ay as if she had been shot. 
 
 With a great zest for life, and a kindly affection for the 
 many relations by whom she was surrounded, Mrs. Cock- 
 burn passed through a happy old age, with no serious 
 misfortune to break the pleasant current of her existence, 
 except the death of her son Adam. She attained the age 
 
152 English Poetesses. 
 
 of eighty-two, and died at Edinburgh, on the 22 nd of 
 November, 1794. 
 
 THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST. 
 
 ( Mrs. Cockburn 's Version . ) 
 
 I've seen the smiling 
 
 Of Fortune beguiling ; 
 I have felt all its favours, and found its deca} . 
 
 Sweet was its blessing, 
 
 Kind its caressing, 
 But now it has fled — fled far away. 
 
 I've seen the forest 
 
 Adorned the foremost. 
 With Flowers of the Forest most pleasant and gay. 
 
 Sae bonnie was their blooming, 
 
 Their scent the air perfuming ; 
 But now they are withered, and a' wede-^ away. 
 
 I've seen the morning, 
 With gold the hills adorning, 
 'And loud tempests storming before the mid-day. 
 I've seen the Tweed's sillar ^ streams 
 Glittering in the sunny beams, 
 Grow drundy ^ and dark as they row'd ^ on their way. 
 
 Oh, fickle Fortune, 
 
 Why this cruel sporting ? 
 Oh, why still perplex us poor sons of the day 
 
 Nae mair your smiles can cheer me, 
 
 Nae mair your frowns can fear me. 
 For the Flowers of the Forest are a' wede ^ away. 
 
 Ten years before Mrs. Cockburn had printed her 
 
 " Flowers of the Forest," a young lady w^as riding home 
 
 through Ettrick after nightfall in the family coach, accom- 
 
 l)anied by her brother. They had passed Selkirk ^ 
 
 ^f„ ^® and the town with memories of hundreds of 
 Elliot. 
 
 years ago had made them talk of the Flodden 
 Field, and the banner which the Selkirk man named 
 
 * Weeded. ' Silver. ^ Troubled, muddy. * Rolled. 
 
Miss Jane Elliot. 155 
 
 Fletcher had snatched at that battle from an English 
 captain, and proudly presented to his fellow-burghers. 
 " I will lay you a wager of a pair of gloves, or a set 
 of ribbons," said the young man to his sister, '^hat you 
 will not write a ballad on Flodden." The young man 
 was himself, it seems, a wTiter of respectable ballads, and 
 may perchance have flung out the challenge in order to 
 receive from his sister a counter challenge to write the verses 
 himself However, without further words at the time. Miss 
 Jane Elliot, for so the young lady was called, conceived at 
 once a general notion of a ballad on the subject indicated, 
 and shortly afterwards w^as enabled to win the wager by 
 producing her complete poem. This she did with diffi- 
 dence, and with such desire that her connection with the 
 poem should not be trumpeted abroad, that her family 
 were enjoined to keep her secret in the closest manner. 
 Speedily the verses she had written were widely spread 
 through the country, as a long-lost ballad of spirit revived. 
 The author, who had been born in 1727, was the second 
 daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot, of Minto, and was brought 
 into the world at Minto House, near Jedburgh. She was 
 never beautiful, but she had a sensible face, and a slender, 
 well-made figure. Her father, like Grisell Baillie's, was a 
 ^Vhig, and in '45 a party of Jacobites came to Minto House 
 to arrest Sir Gilbert. But hearing of the party's approach, 
 the laird hastily withdrew himself to the ruined watch-tower 
 of a neighbouring castle, which bore the odd name of 
 Eatlips. While he was thus lying in hiding, his young 
 daughter Jane had to receive the company of troopers, and 
 so well did she execute her difficult task, that they believed 
 her father could not be in the house, since such a young 
 girl as herself received them with such an air of nonchalance. 
 Accordingly they made off without much search, and her 
 father was saved. 
 
 Miss Jane Elliot became very proud of her brothers, 
 
154 Em; us// Poetess/cs. 
 
 who, in one service or another, brought a good deal of dis- 
 tinction on their family as they went through life. Miss 
 Jane seems to have predestinated herself to a maiden 
 life, and after family changes had made it desirable for her 
 to leave her old home at Minto House, she became an 
 inhabitant of Brown Square, in Edinburgh, a set of houses 
 which have recently been removed. In one of them the 
 late Archbishop Tait was born. There was plqnty of 
 gaiety, and quite enough of gossiping female society, or 
 intellectual society also, for Miss Jane Elliot in Edin- 
 burgh, if she had cared to avail herself of it. However, her 
 tastes were always quiet, and her habits retiring, and she 
 was absorbed in the pleasure of watching her brothers' 
 success in life. With no inconsiderable share of family 
 hauteur bred in her blood, she passed an uneventful 
 existence in comparative loneliness, and returned to Minto 
 House to die. She breathed her last on March 29th, 1805, 
 having then attained the ripe old age of seventy-eight. 
 
 THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST. 
 
 {Miss Jane Elliot'' s Version.) 
 
 lit may be noted that the line which recurs as the last of the verse, both in Mrs. 
 Cockburn's song and in Miss B^lliot's, is the remnant of a still later set of wordb 
 with which the delicate air has been associated.] 
 
 I've heard them lilting ^ at our yowe-milking,- 
 
 Lasses a-lilting before the dawn of day ; 
 But they are moaning on ilka'^ green loaning,"* 
 
 The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away. 
 
 At buchts,^ in the morning, nae blythe lads are scorning,^ 
 The lasses are lanely and dowie ^ and wae ; 
 
 Nae daffin', nae gabbin',® but sighin' and sabbin',^ 
 Ilk ^^ ane lifts her bylen ^^ and hies her away. 
 
 1 Singing. ' Ewe-milking. ' Each. * A broad pathway through the fields. 
 •' Sheep-pens. ^ Teasing. 7 Sad and sorrowful. * Romping and talking. 
 
 « Sobbing. i" Each. >» Milk-pail. 
 
Ladv Anne Barnard. 155 
 
 In hairst,^ at the shearing, nae youths now are jeering, 
 The ])andsters - are lyart,** and runkled and gray ; 
 
 At fair or at ))reaching, nae wooing, nae fleeching,"* 
 The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away. 
 
 At e'en in the gloaming^ nae swankies^ are roaming 
 Bout stacks wi' the lasses at bogle to play,*^ 
 
 l)Ut ilk ane sits drearie, lamenting her dearie : 
 The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away. 
 
 Dule^ and wae*^ to the order sent our lads to the Border, 
 The English for ance by guile won the day ; 
 
 The P^lowers of the Poorest that foucht aye the foremost, 
 The prime of our land are cauld in the clay. 
 
 We'll hae nae mair lilting at the yowe-milking ; 
 
 Women and loairns are heartless and wae, 
 Sighing and moaning, on ilka green loaning : 
 
 The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away. 
 
 Beautiful as are many of the Scotch melodies, scarcely 
 any of the best have been associated with the name of any 
 composer. With many successive modifications, they have 
 come filtered through the hearts of the people like 
 streams through their glades. It is to be noted ^ ^ ^® 
 that some of the finest poems Scotch writers 
 have produced have not been the result of direct inspiration, 
 but are the response to a real need of suitable words for 
 beautiful tunes. How many people you will hear say at the 
 mention of Burns's name, " Ah ! yes, what beautiful poems 
 he wrote ! * Scots wha hae,' ' Ye Banks and Braes,' " and so 
 on. If you asked these people to repeat a verse of either of 
 the two poems, they would not accomplish the task. Indeed 
 they have probably never read the lines or had any acquain- 
 tance with them beyond their garbled utterance through the 
 mouth of some songster. It is the music that they know, and it 
 
 1 Harvest. 2 Corn-binders. * Grey-haired. 
 
 Making fine speeches, cajoling. * Twilight. * Clever, active young fellows. 
 
 7 Playing the ghost. * Sorrow. • Woe, 
 
T56 Enclisii Poet /CSS ks, 
 
 is the charm of this music which lends itself to the associated 
 words. It has been hinted that there w^as formerly consider- 
 able need of suitable words for these fine old tunes, since the 
 earlier and rougher tunes had often linked them with songs 
 of a coarse kind. The history of Burns's labours in connec- 
 tion with such a purification of Scottish minstrelsy, through the 
 editorship of Thomson, is well known ; but even his songs 
 again were submitted to a revising committee headed by 
 I.ady Nairne. In the end, this committee did not feel itself 
 competent to effect the alterations it desired, and perhaps this 
 was as well. One of the most celebrated of all the Scotch 
 songs is " Auld Robin Gray." Its mournfully romantic tune 
 (but not the tune now sung under this title) was often to be 
 heard, about one hundred years ago, lilted by a woman's voice 
 at Balcarres House, in Fifeshire. She who sang it was the 
 same Suff Johnstone mentioned in an earlier portion of this 
 chapter as being addicted to a few of the more petty manly 
 vices, which she considered she could turn into feminine graces. 
 Suff Johnstone was in no wise particular as to anything she 
 did, and although there were young people in the house at 
 Balcarres, w^here she frequently made lengthy visits, the fact 
 did not deter her from going about the house singing the 
 tune in question to the words commonly associated with it. 
 These words were of a doubtful character, and one of the 
 young ladies of Balcarres, who often grieved to hear so fine 
 an air sullied by such words, conceived the idea of furnish- 
 ing a new song for the music. The result of this resolution 
 was the present " Auld Robin Gray," the pathetic story of 
 the young Scotch peasant lass whom stress of family circum- 
 stances induced to marry an old man, while her lover was 
 away at sea. Fine as was the old air, the more modern tune 
 which has supplemented it, composed in 1770 by the Rev. 
 William Leeves, Rector of Wrington, in Somersetshire, 
 is still more accordant with the spirit of the verses. 
 Words and music arc now so i)crfcctly combined in their 
 
L\i>)- .Ixr/-: f> iKXAKD. 157 
 
 sensibility, that " Auld Robin Gray " '" ranks in popular 
 estimation as the very first of Scotch songs. Many are the 
 stories which exist to testify to its charms. I remember to 
 have read in somebody's memoirs, a few years ago, an account 
 of a musical gathering in some distinguished Roman circle ; 
 after a number of virtuosi had exerted themselves to amuse 
 the company assembled, an English lady, being asked to con- 
 tribute to the evening's entertainment, sang this simple ballad, 
 and the whole company was affected almost hysterically. 
 
 Lady Anne Barnard, the author of " Auld Robin Gray," 
 was the daughter of Earl Lindsay, and was born at 
 Balcarres in 1750. Brought up in a spirit of Spartan sim- 
 plicity. Lady Anne and her brothers and sisters were educated 
 by means of a country life which was wholesome both for 
 mind and body. Their father had odd notions of his own 
 about many things, and so was reckoned quite an eccentric 
 in the county where his power was mostly exercised. The 
 unbounded kindliness of his heart, however, was the chief 
 characteristic of his eccentricity. It is told of him that when, 
 on one occasion, he overtook on the road an old woman who 
 had stolen a quantity of turnips from one of his fields, he 
 began to bluster at her in such a manner as would have 
 frightened any strange tramp who had thus trespassed on his 
 property. The woman, however, quietly w^aited, with many 
 courtesies, until the storm had subsided, and then she said, 
 " Ay, my lord, they're unco' heavy ; will ye no gie me a 
 lift?" and he immediately dismounted, and helped her to 
 take the sackful on her back. Old Earl James's advice 
 to his daughters on the subject of their education was very 
 ]3ractical, and he did not conceal from them the fact that 
 he meant his training to be such as would turn them into 
 useful wives, holding up to them as models his aunt, Lady 
 Sophia, and his sister. Lady Betty, both of them shining 
 
 * The name was that of a bailiflf on the Balcarres estate. 
 
158 EXGLISH POETF.SSE!^. 
 
 examples of womanhood, " whom I wish," he used to add, 
 "to embrace you in another world, when you have had 
 enough of this." 
 
 In the rambling old house of Balcarres, which used to 
 hold about eighty people within its walls, there was much 
 variety of character and temper for the Lady Anne to study. 
 But her chief friends were Miss Suff Johnstone, and Miss 
 Henrietta Gumming, a curious gentlewoman who discharged 
 the duties of governess to the young family in a somewhat 
 condescending manner. These two ladies were* great enemies 
 of one another, though Lady Anne liked them both, and it 
 caused her much manoeuvring to keep the peace between 
 them. It was at Balcarres that Miss Johnstone kept a minia- 
 ture forge in her bedroom ; thither Lady Anne many a time 
 betook herself, to hear her queer stories and songs, and see 
 her strange doings. Her own little boudoir was in an out-of- 
 the-way corner of the house, at the top of a steep winding 
 staircase, and commanding a view over the Firth of Forth. 
 Here, as she grew older, she more and more secluded herself 
 with books and scribbling paper ; and after her favourite 
 sister, Lady Margaret, a great beauty, w^ent away to be the 
 unhappy wife of Mr. Fordyce, of Roehampton, she appears 
 to have never tired of the privacy of this chamber, with its 
 somewhat sad eastern outlook on the cold gray waters that 
 swept in from the North Sea. 
 
 One day Lady Anne was interrupted in her labours by her 
 little sister Elizabeth, some twelve or thirteen years younger 
 than herself. " I am writing a ballad," said Lady Anne ; " it 
 is about a poor girl, upon whom I am trying to heap all 
 kinds of ill-luck. I have sent her lover to sea, her father 
 has broken his arm, her mother has fallen sick, and the two 
 parents want her to marry an old suitor named Robin. I 
 want just another sorrow to heaj) upon her. Can you help 
 me?" "Steal the cow, sister," said the little Elizabeth. 
 The dramatic touch was added, and the poem completed. 
 
La d j • Anxf. 11 lAw.iA'/K 159 
 
 This ballad must have been written by Lady Anne when she 
 was about twenty. She never did anything again half as good. 
 Subsequently joining her sister Margaret in London, she 
 enjoyed society there in a quiet manner, and when her 
 youth had left her, she became the wife of a Mr. Barnard, 
 and accompanied him to the Cape, while he acted as private 
 secretary to Lord Macartney. In the " Lives of the Lind- 
 says," a journal of her experiences at the Cape is to be 
 found. It is full of sense, and reads like the production of 
 a woman who enjoyed life, was happy in her husband, 
 and was not disposed to make too little of her dignity. 
 In response to a request of her old mother. Lady Anne 
 wrote a sequel to " Auld Robin Gray," which may here 
 be printed, as it is not commonly to be met with ; but as a 
 dramatic effort it is poor indeed, compared with the 
 original verses, which are. Sir Walter Scott said, " a real 
 pastoral, worth all the dialogues Cory don and Phyllis have 
 together spoken from the days of Theocritus, downwards." 
 Lady Anne Barnard died in 1825, at London, in the 
 Berkeley Square house which she and her sister Lady 
 Margaret had long inhabited together. 
 
 AULD ROBIN GRAY. 
 
 When the sheep are in the fauld,^ and the kye^ at hame, 
 And a' the weary warld to rest are gane, 
 The waes of my heart fall in showers frae my e'e, 
 While my giideman lies sound by me. 
 
 Young Jamie lo'ed me well, and sought me for his bride ; 
 But, saving a crown, he had naething mair beside. 
 To make the crown a pound, my Jamie gaed to sea ! 
 And the crown and the pound were baith for me. 
 
 He hadna been awa a week, but only twa. 
 
 When my father brak his arm, and our cow was stawn^ awa' ; 
 
 My mother she fell sick, and my Jamie at the sea, 
 
 An' Auld Robin (iray came a-courting me. 
 
 ' Foia. ^ Cows. 3 Stolen, 
 
l6o EXCLISII PoilTESShS. 
 
 My father couldna work, my mother coukhia spin, 
 I toiled day and night, but their bread I couldna win. 
 Auld Rob maintained them baith, and wi' tears in his e'e. 
 Said, *'Jeanie, for their sakes, will you no marry me?" 
 
 My heart it said na ; — I looked for Jamie back, 
 But the wind it blew high, and the ship it was a wrack. 
 His ship it was a wrack. Why didna Jeanie dee ? 
 Oh ! why do I live to say, " Wae's me I " 
 
 My father argued sair, my mother didna speak, 
 But she looked in my face till my heart was like to break. 
 So they gied him my hand, though my heart was at the sea, 
 And Auld Robin Gray is gudeman to me. 
 
 I hadna been a wife a week, but only four, 
 
 When, mournful as I sat on the stane at the door, 
 
 I saw my Jamie's ghaist ; I couldna think it he. 
 
 Till he said, " I'm come hame, my love, to marry thee." 
 
 Oh ! sair did we greet, ^ and mickle - did we say ; 
 I gi'ed him a kiss, and bad him gang awa'. 
 I wish that I were dead, but I'm no like to dec, 
 Oh ! why was I l^orn to say, '* Wae's me I " 
 
 I gang like a ghaist, an' I care not to spin ; 
 I darena think on Jamie, for that would be a sin. 
 But I will do my best a gude wife to be. 
 For Auld Robin Gray he is kind to me. 
 
 Part II. 
 
 The winter was come, 'twas summer nae mair. 
 And, trembling, the leaves were fleeing through the air. 
 " Oh ! winter," says Jeanie, " we kindly agree. 
 For the sun he looks wae^ when he shines upon me." 
 
 Nae longer she mourned, her tears were all spent. 
 Despair it had come, and she thought it content ; 
 She thought it content, but her cheek it grew pale. 
 And she bent like a lily broke down by the gale. 
 
 Her father and her mother observed her decay — 
 
 " What ails "^ thee, my bairn ? " they oft-times would say. 
 
 ' Weep. 2 ^luch. ^ Sorrowful, * 'l'rouble«i, 
 
Lady Anne Barnard. i6i 
 
 ** Ye turn round your wheel, but ye come little speed ; 
 For feeble's your hand, and silly's your thread." 
 
 vShe smiled when she heard them, to banish'their fear, 
 But wae looks a smile when it's seen through a tear ; 
 And bitter's the tear that is forced by a love 
 Which honour and virtue can never approve. 
 
 Her father was vexed, and her mother was wae,^ 
 And pensive and silent was auld Robin Gray. 
 He wandered his lane,' and his face it grew lean, 
 Like the side of a brae where the torrent had been. 
 
 Nae question he spiered^ her concerning her health, 
 He looked at her often, but aye 'twas by stealth. 
 When his heart it grew grit,"* and often he feigned 
 To gang to the door to see if it rained. 
 
 He took to his bed, na physic he sought. 
 But ordered his friends all around to be brought ; 
 While Jeanie supported his head in its place, 
 Her tears trickled down, and fell on his face. 
 
 " Oh ! cry nae mair, Jeanie," said he, with a groan ; 
 *' I'm nae worth your sorrow, the truth maun be known. 
 Send round for your neighbours, my hour it draws near, 
 And I've that to tell, that it's fit all should hear. 
 
 " I have wronged her," he said, "and I kent* it ower^ late ; 
 I have wronged her, and sorrow is speeding my date. 
 But a' for the best, since my death will soon free 
 A faithfu' young heart that was ill matched with me. 
 
 *' I loved her and courted her many a day. 
 The auld folks were for me, but still she said nae. 
 I kent na of Jamie, nor yet of her vow. 
 In mercy forgi'e me, 'twas I stole the cow. 
 
 ** I cared not for crummie,^ I thought but o' thee ; 
 I thought it was crummie stood 'twixt you and me ; 
 
 ^ Sorrowful. * " His lane " — by himself alone. ' Asked. 
 ♦ " His heart it grew grit " — he felt ready to cry. * Knew. • Too. 
 7 A pet name for cow, 
 L 
 
1 62 English Poetesses. 
 
 While she fed your parents, oh, did you not say. 
 You never would marry with Auld Robin Gray ? 
 
 *' But sickness at hame, and want at the door, 
 
 Ye gied me your hand while your heart it was sore ; 
 
 I saw it was sore, why took I your hand ? 
 
 Oh ! that was a deed to my shame o'er the land. 
 
 *' How truth, soon or late, comes to open daylight ! 
 For Jamie came back, and your cheek it grew white ; 
 White, white grew your cheek, but aye dear unto me ; 
 Ay, Jeanie, I'm thankfu', I'm thankfu' to dee. 
 
 *' Has Jamie come here, yet ? " and Jamie they saw : 
 *' I've injured you sair, lad, so leave me you may a' ; 
 Be kind to my Jeanie, and soon it may be ; 
 W'aste nae time, my darties,^ in mourning for me.' 
 
 " They kissed his cold hands, and a smile o'er his face 
 Seemed hopefu' of being accepted by grace. 
 *' Oh ! doubt na'," said Jamie, "forgiven he will be ; 
 Who wouldna be tempted, my love, to win thee ? " 
 
 ***** 
 
 The first days were doure,- while time slipped awa' ; 
 But saddest and sairest to Jeanie o' a', 
 Was thinking she couldna be honest and right, 
 Wi' tears in her e'e while her heart was sae light. 
 
 But nae guile had she, and her sorrow away. 
 The wife of her Jamie, the tear couldna stay ; 
 A bonnie wee bairn, the old folks by the fire, 
 And now she has a' that her heart could desire. 
 
 Caroline Oliphant, Baroness Nairne, was third daughter 
 of Laurence Oliphant, of (lask, " the staunchest 
 "^^N^r^^ Jacobite in Scotland," and was born at Gask, 
 Perthshire, on the i6th of July, 1766. Her 
 musical talent was such as to attract the attention of 
 Niel Gow, but her beauty was still more talked about, 
 and at a Carlisle ball which she once attended, a Royal 
 
 1 Dears. » Hard. 
 
The Baroness Na/rne, 163 
 
 Duke was so much smitten by her charms that, as the 
 story reaches us, he actually wanted to marry her. Whether 
 he made definite proposals to Caroline Oliphant, is not on 
 the record, but we know that her affections were already 
 engaged to her cousin. Major Nairne, heir to the attainted 
 title of Lord Nairne. 
 
 It was many years before this faithful young couple were 
 able to realise the hopes of their union, for Major Nairne 
 had to find his way slowly towards promotion, and finally 
 had to content himself with the position of Inspector- 
 General of Barracks at Edinburgh. The marriage took 
 place in 1806. By this time Major Nairne's wife had al- 
 ready written a good many songs which had attained unani- 
 mous popularity. Mrs. Nairne appears to have had a great 
 deal of quiet enjoyment in watching the fate of her pieces 
 of verse, which were sung to her and recited to her in all 
 kinds of ways, without anybody's knowing that she herself 
 was the author. At .the amusing Saturday musical gather- 
 ings which the Keiths of Ravelston used to hold at their 
 house near Edinburgh, her songs were in great demand. 
 She herself was a frequenter of these parties, and on one 
 occasion was appealed to for the continuation of an old Scotch 
 song which a young lady had broken down in singing. This 
 chance introduction enabled the young lady to begin a closer 
 intimacy with our author, who at length admitted to her 
 that she was the writer of the " Land of the Leal ; " but 
 even while making the admission, she said with a, smile, 
 " Don't whisper it to anybody ; I have not been able to tell it to 
 Nairne, for fear he would blab." Mrs. Nairne has recorded, 
 as an instance of her experience at that time with reference 
 to the history of her songs, that she was once in a company 
 where the " Land of the Leal " was referred to as having 
 been written by Burns on his death-bed, and although the 
 supposed fact was accepted by everybody present save her- 
 self, she offered no word to disprove it 
 L 2 
 
164 English Poetesses, 
 
 In 182 1 an Edinburgh music-seller, called Purdie, pro- 
 jected a musical publication, to be entitled " The Scottish 
 Minstrelsy," and succeeded in enlisting Mrs. Nairne's sym- 
 pathies with his undertaking. Mrs. Nairne was introduced 
 lo him in a very mysterious manner, and communicated to 
 him only through letters, which were signed " Mrs. Bogan, of 
 Bogan." Only once, during her long labours for "The Scottish 
 Minstrelsy," did Mrs. Nairne venture to visit the music- 
 seller personally, and then she was altogether " made up " 
 to look the part of the ancient Mrs. Bogan, of Bogan. This 
 " Scottish Minstrelsy " assumed the size of six volumes, and 
 was a very successful affair, because of the interest which 
 a few people like Mrs. Nairne took in it, and in no small 
 degree also, because of the rich songs which Mrs. Bogan, 
 of Bogan, contributed to it. 
 
 In 1824 Major Nairne was granted his peerage by 
 George IV., and thenceforth, of course, the " B. B." of the 
 Minstrelsy was in reality a Baroness. In July of 1830 Lord 
 Nairne died, and four years after, Lady Nairne carried her 
 only child, the young Lord Nairne, to the Continent for 
 the sake of his health ; but towards the close of 1837 this 
 son was taken from her. Later on in life Lady Nairne be- 
 came deeply attached to the Free Kirk of Scotland, which was 
 then rousing a good deal of attention in the north. She was 
 a devoted admirer of Chalmers, and spiritually threw in 
 her lot with people whose political as well as religious prin- 
 ciples were very different from those to which her Jacobite 
 training had accustomed her. The Baroness died at Gask, 
 on the 27 th December, 1845. 
 
 THE LAND O' THE LEAL. 
 
 I'm wcarin' awa', John, 
 
 Like snaw wreaths in thaw, John, 
 
 I'm wearin' awa' 
 
 To the land o' the leal.^ 
 
 J Loyal. 
 
The Baroness Nairne, 165 
 
 There's nae sorrow there, John, 
 There's neither cauld nor care, John, 
 The day is aye fair 
 
 In the land o' the leal. 
 
 Our bonnie bairn's there, John, 
 She was baith gude and fair, John, 
 And oh ! we grudged her sair 
 
 To the land o' the leal. 
 
 But sorrow's sel' wears past, John, 
 And joy is comin' fast, John, 
 The joy that's aye to last, 
 
 In the land o* the leal. 
 
 Sae dear that joy was bought, John, 
 Sae free the battle fought, John, 
 That sinfu' man e'er brought 
 
 To the land o' the leal. 
 
 Oh, dry your glist'ning e'e, John, 
 My soul langs to be free, John, 
 And angels beckon me 
 
 To the land o' the leal. 
 
 Oh ! haud ^ ye leal and true, John, 
 Your day it's wearing through, John, 
 And I'll welcome you 
 
 To the land o' the leal. 
 
 Now, fare ye well, my ain John, 
 This warld's cares are vain, John, 
 We'll meet, and we'll be fain 
 
 In the land o' the leal. 
 
 THE LAIRD O' COCKPEN. 
 
 The Laird o' Cockpen, he's proud and he's great, 
 His mind is ta'en up with the things o' the state, 
 He wanted a wife his braw '^ house to keep, 
 But favour wi' wooin' was fashious ^ to seek. 
 
 * Hold, remaia, * Beautiful. * Troublesome, 
 
1 66 English Poetesses, 
 
 Down by the dyke^ side, a lady did dwell, 
 At his table head he thought she'd look well ; 
 McClish's ae daughter, o' Claverse-ha' Lee, 
 A penniless lass wi' a lang pedigree. 
 
 His wig was well powdered, and as gude as new, 
 His waistcoat was white, his coat it was blue ; 
 He put on a ring, a sword, and cock'd hat. 
 And wha could refuse the laird wi' a' that ? 
 
 He took the grey mare and rade cannily,^ 
 An' rapped ^ at the gett ^ o' Claverse-ha' Lee, 
 *' Gae tell mistress Jean to come speedily ben,^ 
 She's wanted to speak to the Laird o' Cockpen. " 
 
 Mistress Jean was making the elder-flower wine, 
 " An' what brings the laird at sic a like time?' 
 She put off her apron, and on her silk gown. 
 Her mutch ^ wi' red ribbons, and gaed awa' down. 
 
 An' when she cam' ben he bowed fu' low, 
 An' what was his errand he soon let her know ; 
 Amazed was the laird when the lady said " na," 
 And wi' a laigh ^ curtsie, she turned awa'. 
 
 Dumbfoundered he was, nae sigh did he gie, 
 He mounted his mare, and he rode cannily ; 
 And aften he thought, as he gaed thro' the glen, 
 *' She's daft ^ to refuse the Laird o' Cockpen.' 
 
 And now that the laird his exit had made, 
 Mistress Jean reflected on what she had said ; 
 *' Oh for ane I'll get better, it's waur^ I'll get ten, 
 I was daft to refusfe the Laird o' Cockpen." 
 
 Next time that the laird and the lady were seen, 
 They were gaun arm-in-arm to the kirk on the green ; 
 Now she sits in the ha' like a well-tappit ^^ hen. 
 But as yet there's nae chickens appeared at Cockpen. 
 
 •Wall. * Cautiously. » Knocked. * Gate. * The inner room of the house. 
 « Cap. ' Low. 8 siUy^ foolish. » Worse. ^o Crested, topped. 
 
Miss Joanna Baillie, 167 
 
 Already we have had the glimpse of a certain demure 
 young lady who caught the observant eye of Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld in the Unitarian Chapel at Hampstead. Demure 
 and self-contained she was, from girlhood to the close of a 
 long life. The Hampstead people amid whom she dwelt 
 were not very sure in what light to regard her, 
 for although she made herself known to the BaiU^B"^ 
 world as a woman of great mental power, and 
 as the possessor of a most refined literary taste, her speech 
 never brought itself within the amenities of southern pro- 
 nunciation, and she clung obstinately to every association 
 of her Scottish home which she had brought with her 
 over the Border. A writer of fine English, she nevertheless 
 scorned the attempt to become a fine English lady. With 
 a grim mixture of humour and earnestness, she would 
 try to impress upon the neighbouring matrons who had 
 children, the good results that would follow if they would 
 allow them to run about bare-footed, as many little Scotch 
 lasses were accustomed to do in those days, even though 
 they belonged to respectable parents. 
 
 We often wonder, indeed, why this intensely Scotch 
 woman lived in the neighbourhood of London at all, for 
 her heart never went out freely to the society which was 
 there opened to her. The moors in the neighbourhood of 
 her birthplace were much more to her than ever was 
 Hampstead Heath ; the gentility of Bond Street, or the 
 human interest of the motley Strand, scarcely equalled, in 
 her mind, the glories of the Glasgow Trongate, in which 
 she first became acquainted with the attractions of city 
 life. This author, Joanna Baillie, was, and is, chiefly 
 known as a writer of plays ; but we have here to take 
 account of the many interesting contributions which she 
 made to the song literature of her country. 
 
 Joanna Baillie, the daughter of a Presbyterian clergy- 
 man, was born at Bothwell, Lanarkshire, in 1762. She was 
 
1 68 English Poetesses, 
 
 a delicate babe, brought into the world along with a twin 
 sister who did not survive the first moments of existence. 
 The family was of a good stock. In that mysterious way by 
 which Scotch people are so clever and earnest in tracing 
 their pedigrees, the Baillies traced theirs from William Wallace 
 himself, and Joanna could likewise reckon herself as having 
 in her veins some of the patriotic blood which had made 
 Grisell Baillie so picturesque a character. Her early train- 
 ing was good, in so far as the healthy freedom of country 
 life was hers ; but it lacked the tenderness with which 
 affectionate parents make infancy sweet to be remembered. 
 Her mother was a strong woman of business, able to look 
 after the many duties of a minister's wife, but with 
 little disposition to fondle her bairns, or be fondled by 
 them. Her sister records that, although her father once 
 sucked the poison from a bite which she had suffered from 
 a dog, she had never received a kiss from him in all her 
 life. Such being the atmosphere of home, it can easily 
 be imagined that Joanna Baillie's character, original and 
 assertive by nature, was helped towards its development by 
 the austerity of her parents. At the Bothwell school she 
 was far from exhibiting any talents for learning. There was 
 nothing precocious about her; at the age of eleven she 
 could scarcely read a book with ease, and the only glory 
 she attained among her companions was the credit of 
 general fearlessness, and the reputation of being able to 
 ride a pony as well as any person in the parish. Perhaps it 
 should be added that a talent for story-telling was the 
 earliest indication of anything original in her ; and when 
 she afterwards went to Glasgow to be made into a finished 
 Miss at McDonald's boarding-school, it was still this faculty 
 for romancing that rescued her from the stigma of being 
 altogether a backward girl. Sarah Tytler, in her excellent 
 account of Joanna Baillie, quotes from one of her books a 
 short description of the natural childhood she and her sister 
 
Miss Joanna Bail lie, 169 
 
 Agnes used to lead by the wooded banks of the Clyde at 
 Boswell : — 
 
 *' Two tiny imps, who scarcely stooped to gather 
 The slender harebell or the purple heather ; 
 No taller than the foxglove's spiky stem, 
 That dew of morning studs with silvery gem. 
 Then every butterfly that crossed our view 
 With joyful shout was greeted as it flew ; 
 And moth and ladybird, and beetle bright, 
 In shining gold were each a wondrous sight. 
 Then as we paddled barefoot, side by side 
 Among the sunny shallows of the Clyde, 
 Minnows and spotted fish with twinkling fin 
 Swimming in mazy rings the pool within, 
 A thrill of gladness through our bosoms sent, 
 Seen in the power of early wonderment." 
 
 When the girl had attained the critical age of fifteen, and 
 the healthy bracing of country life had given her most of the 
 good which could be drawn from it, Mr. Baillie removed his 
 establishment to the precincts of Glasgow University, in 
 which he had obtained a professorship ; and with no little 
 pride the family found themselves denizens of the High Street, 
 which was then tenanted by many of the wealthy and most 
 of the learned people of the city, though now the old col- 
 lege there has been converted into a squalid railway station 
 chiefly used for goods traffic, and the street itself is given 
 over to a population of Irish labourers and fish-wives. For 
 two happy years the Baillie family enjoyed all the advantages 
 which the cultivated college community was calculated to 
 bestow upon them ; at the end of that period, however, un- 
 timely death carried the Professor away from the labours 
 upon which he had entered, and his widow, left with little 
 means to support her children, had to retire to the country 
 house of a relative at Long Calderwood, not many miles 
 away. Mrs. Baillie's brothers were the celebrated anatomists, 
 Dr. William Hunter and Dr. John Hunter, and in the year 
 
lyo English Poetesses. 
 
 1784 Dr. William died, leaving to her son, Matthew, his 
 London establishment and this estate of Long Calderwood. 
 
 Dr. John Hunter had been the presumptive heir to this 
 property, but made a marriage which displeased his brother, 
 and was consequently disinherited in favour of his nephew. 
 The strong wholesome blood of the Baillies makes itself 
 seen in the action which young Matthew, just then about to 
 commence the world himself as a medical man, took, upon 
 receiving the windfall caused by his relative's death. Con- 
 ceiving that his uncle John had been hardly dealt with, he 
 made over the establishment to him completely ; and without 
 so much as seeming to think that he had done anything 
 more generous than the performance of a simple duty, he 
 betook himself to London with his mother and sisters, there 
 to support them by his own labours. In London, accord- 
 ingly, we find mother and son and daughters established in 
 the same year 1784. The house which had been left to them 
 was a somewhat dingy mansion in Windmill Street, and it 
 was rendered additionally gloomy by having attached to it 
 an operating theatre, and the anatomical museum which 
 Dr. William Hunter had accumulated with so much zeal, 
 and which afterwards formed the nucleus of the well-known 
 Hunterian museum at Glasgow. 
 
 Young Dr. Matthew Hunter had received much of his 
 training in England, and had scarcely any of the Scotchman 
 left in him. His sisters, however, had little capacity or wish 
 to adapt themselves to the conventionalities of London town, 
 and their aunt, Mrs. John Hunter, an elegant w^oman who is 
 known to us as the writer of the song, " My mother bids me 
 bind my hair," had much ado to make Miss Joanna pre- 
 sentable to the people with whom she came in contact. Shy 
 and serious, the young girl left to her more engaging sister 
 Agnes such chances of becoming a society favourite as fell 
 in her way. Joanna continued the self-secluding habits of 
 thought which her early training had engendered in her. 
 
Miss Joanna Baillie, 171 
 
 A ballad book was more to her than the finest fashionable 
 concert, and the scribblings of her own pen amused her 
 more than the conversation of bigwigs. 
 
 In her twenty-ninth year, that is to say in 1790, Joanna 
 published anonymously a volume of miscellaneous poems 
 that attracted scarcely any attention. Shortly after this effort 
 she quite suddenly formed the conviction that her mission 
 would be that of a dramatic writer who should try to elevate 
 stage literature by interesting the people iii plays dependent 
 less upon plot and incident than on illustrative analysis 
 of sentiment and character. After conceiving this aim, she 
 laboured for three months upon the production of a play 
 called "Arnold;" but this was laid aside as unsatisfactory, 
 and in the following year her brother's marriage to Sophia 
 Denman, sister to the Lord Chief Justice of that name, de- 
 prived her of the quietude to which her brooding mind had 
 been accustomed in the dull seclusion of Windmill Street. 
 She and her mother and sister lived a migratory life for 
 some time, attempting a settlement at Colchester, among other 
 places, but finally returning to London again, where in 1798 
 Joanna brought out the first volume of her celebrated "Plays 
 of the Passions." It was this volume which contained the 
 tragedy of " De Montfort," an interesting dramatic effort 
 which Kemble put on the boards of Drury Lane two weeks 
 later. His sister, the great Mrs. Siddons, acted with him in 
 this piece, and the two together did all they could to make 
 a splendid reputation for the author, in whose talent 
 they sincerely believed. The prologue was written by the 
 Hon. Y. North, and the Duchess of Devonshire contri- 
 buted an epilogue. Those who went to see the tragedy 
 heartily admired the power of many splendid passages which 
 no stage writer but herself w^as then capable of having 
 written. People were content to admit that the author 
 had made her mark intellectually ; but while the Drury Lane 
 performance served to advance her literary reputation, it no 
 
172 English Poetesses. 
 
 less signally demonstrated the fact that even first-rate acting 
 and superb mounting could not inspire the play with suffi- 
 cient dramatic vitality to captivate the play-going public. 
 '' De Montfort " was withdrawn, after hanging in the critical 
 balance for eleven nights. 
 
 Joanna Baillie, however, was so far from being dis- 
 heartened by the partial failure of this fine play, that she set 
 herself to work upon further studies, still clinging to her 
 preconceived idea that it was her mission to point out a new 
 intellectual fashion which her stage-craft was to form, a 
 literature which would elevate as well as interest the theatre- 
 going masses. In 1802 her second volume of plays appeared, 
 but this was as sharply criticised on the score of dramatic 
 weakness as the previous volume had been ; and when, two 
 years after, a third volume, entitled " Miscellaneous Plays," 
 was put before the world, Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review^ 
 quite bitterly attacked the author ; and while admitting 
 that she was capable of expressing poetic thought, gave her 
 clearly to understand that in the Revieui's opinion she 
 would never make a decent dramatist. 
 
 By this time the Baillies had set up house at Hampstead, 
 where, before long, the sisters lost their surviving parent. 
 While on terms of general intimacy with a large circle of 
 acquaintances, they gave their friendship to only a very few. 
 Charming Miss Berry was intimate with them, and often 
 came to confab with them upon her own manuscripts or upon 
 Joanna's. She was quite a propagandist with regard to her 
 Scotch friend's talent, and as she was a very popular person in 
 high and cultivated circles, she had considerable influence in 
 obtaining attention for Joanna's writings. Sir Walter Scott 
 had already exhibited a generous interest in the plays which 
 Jeffrey had so fiercely attacked, and had taken pains to 
 become acquainted with the author, in order to give her 
 all the personal encouragement which his sympathy was so 
 capable of imparting. In 1808 the sisters made a tour in 
 
Miss Joanna Bailue, 173 
 
 Scotland, and amid some friends Joanna happened one day 
 to take up a volume, the newly-published " Marmion," to 
 extol the beauties of that poem, into which she had then 
 done no more than peep. Her enthusiasm led her to begin 
 reading it out aloud, and as she read she came to the fol- 
 lowing passage : — 
 
 *' From the wild harp, which silent hung 
 By silver Avon's holy shore. 
 Till twice an hundred years roU'd o'er ; 
 When she, the bold enchantress, came. 
 With fearless hartd and heart on flame ! 
 From the pale willow snatch 'd the treasure. 
 And swept it with a kindred measure. 
 Till Avon's swans, while rung the grove 
 With Montfort's hate and Basil's love, 
 Awakening the inspired strain, 
 Deem'd their own Shakspeare lived again." 
 
 It w^as characteristic of this stout-hearted, self-sufficient 
 woman, who hid her affections and emotions deep down in 
 her bosom, and who preserved a studied calm that was 
 almost coldness to the outside world, that on reading this 
 very strong compliment for the first time, her voice main- 
 tained its steadiness, and only betrayed a quiver when one 
 person in her audience was obliged to give way to the ex- 
 pression of uncontrollable feeling. 
 
 In 181 1 the third volume of the original series of 
 *' Plays of the Passions " was put before the critics, and still 
 Jeffrey w^as snappish. Once or twice further attempts were 
 made to test the strictly dramatic merits of her plays upon 
 the boards. Sir Walter Scott managed to introduce her 
 "Family Legend" at the Edinburgh theatre, and the 
 personal interest he took in its production (amounting to 
 the practical stage-managership of the piece) gave it a run 
 of fourteen nights. The same play was reproduced at 
 Drury Lane, but there it failed. Joanna Baillie had to 
 
174 English Poetesses. 
 
 recognise at last, that whatever encouragement her play-writing 
 had received, it was not to be her mission to give any 
 practical impulse to theatrical literature. For many years 
 these " Plays of the Passions " formed favourite chamber- 
 reading, but now even this acceptance has been withdrawn 
 from them ; hardly anybody in these days takes them down 
 from the shelf 
 
 In 1815 Joanna Baillie paid a visit to France, in order 
 to join her friend, Miss Berry, in Paris. Six years after- 
 wards she spent a memorable time in Scotland as an 
 honoured guest at Abbotsford. She was one of Sir Walter 
 Scott's most favoured friends ; his correspondence with her 
 was as free and intimate as it could well have been, and 
 every sentence and word he wrote to her is plainly charged 
 with the most affectionate esteem. It was upon her return 
 from this delightful visit to her native country that she 
 published her " Metrical Legends." Next year she edited 
 a volume of " Original Poems by Various Authors," for the 
 benefit of a friend in misfortune. In 1831 she offended 
 many of her friends, and achieved little good, by bringing 
 out a theological disquisition, "A View of the General Tenor 
 of the New Testament Regarding the Nature and Doctrine 
 of Jesus Christ." Joanna Baillie's last volume was a col- 
 lection of " Fugitive Verses," some of these being songs of 
 her old age, while others were selected from the poems of 
 her youth. 
 
 As a song- writer, Joanna Baillie is rarely impassioned, 
 but she is always hearty and sympathetic. Her humour is 
 full-flavoured, and her pathos is natural if it is not deep. 
 She used to say to Sir Walter Scott that she could never 
 write these songs except on a fine sunny day, and this 
 curious remark may be taken as an index to the character 
 of these compositions. 
 
 The very strength of character and simplicity of aim 
 which attended Joanna Baillie from her earliest years, 
 
Miss Joanna Baillie. 175 
 
 perhaps tended to make her too self-contained. She passed 
 through the world without really marking much of it, or 
 caring much for its society. As she preserved to the last 
 moment the broad Doric tongue which was her native gift, 
 so she preserved also, during the greater part of her life, 
 a certain ruggedness of manner towards the most of people, 
 through which an ordinary gaze can scarcely pierce to the 
 beautifully pure and affectionate soul which her friends 
 valued and reverenced her for. Reverence is indeed the 
 word with which to characterise the affection she obtained 
 from her intimates. As she drew towards the close of life, 
 this clear spirit of hers shone through her more, and added 
 a softness to her appearance which completed the charm 
 which an old woman who still preserves a fine intellect in 
 maturity never fails to wield. In youth Joanna Baillie had 
 possessed no claims to good looks, but Miss Martineau, who 
 does not usually paint pictures with too lavish a brush, de- 
 scribes her appearance in the most attractive manner : — 
 
 '* Her figure was small, light and active; her eyes were beautiful, 
 dark, bright and penetrating, with the full innocent gaze of childhood ; 
 her face was altogether comely, and her dress did justice to it. She 
 wore her own silvery hair, and a mob-cap with its delicate lace border 
 fitting close round her face. wShe was well-dressed in handsome black 
 silks, and her lace cuffs and collars looked always new. No Quaker 
 ever was neater ; while she kept up with the times in her dress as in 
 her habits of mind, as far as became her years. In her whole ap- 
 pearance there was always something for even a passing stranger to 
 admire, and never anything for the most familiar friend to wish other- 
 wise." 
 
 And Ticknor writes thus in 1838 : — 
 
 " We made a most delightful visit to Miss Joanna Baillie. She 
 talked of Scott with a tender enthusiasm that was contagious, and of 
 Lockhart with a kindness that is uncommon when coupled with his 
 name, and which seemed only characteristic of her benevolence. It is 
 very rare that old age, or, indeed, any age, is found so winning or 
 
176 English Poetesses. 
 
 agreeable. I do not wonder that Scott, in his letters, treats her with 
 more deference, and writes to her with more care and beauty, than to 
 any other of his correspondents, however high or titled." 
 
 Such is the pleasant picture of the impression this old 
 Scotchwoman, with her brave heart and her limpid soul, pro- 
 duced on a sufficiently keen observer. The peaceful record 
 of her life closed on 23rd F'ebruary, 185 1, w^hen at Hamp- 
 stead she rendered up her account to God, after having 
 entered on the ninetieth year of a blameless and industrious 
 life. Her sister Agnes reached the age of loi. 
 
 WOO'D AND MARRIED AND A'. 
 
 The bride she is winsome and bonny, 
 
 Her hair it is snooded sae sleek, ^ 
 And faithfu' and kind is her Johnny, 
 Yet fast fa' the tears on her cheek. 
 New pearlins are cause of her sorrow. 
 New pearlins - and plenishing ^ too ; 
 The bride that has a' to borrow. 
 Has e'en right mickle * ado. 
 
 Woo'd and married and a' ! 
 Woo'd and married and a' ! 
 Isna she very weel aff 
 To be woo'd and married and a ' ?. 
 
 Her mither then hastily spak : 
 
 *' The lassie is glaikit^ wi' pride ; 
 In my pouch I had never a plack^ 
 
 The day that I was a bride. 
 E'en tak to your wheel and be clever. 
 
 And draw out your thread in the sun ; 
 The gear^ that is gifted, it never 
 Will last like the gear that is won. 
 Woo'd and married and a' ! 
 Wi' havins ^ and tocher sae sma' ! 
 I think ye are very weel aff 
 To be woo'd and married and a' ! " 
 
 ' Smooth. 2 Lace. ^ j.'urnishing. * Much trouble. spooUsh. ''Penny, 
 7 Goods, property. * Dress and dowry. 
 
Miss Jo. i nn. i J3a illir. \ 7 7 
 
 " Toot ! toot ! " quo' her grey-headed faither, 
 
 '* She's less o' a bride than a bairn ; ^ 
 She's ta'en like a cowt ^ frae the heather, 
 
 Wi' sense and discretion to learn. 
 Half husband, I trow, and half daddy,'* 
 
 As humour inconstantly leans, 
 The chiel "* maun * be patient and steady 
 That yokes wi' a mate in her teens. 
 
 A 'kerchief sae douce and sae neat. 
 O'er her locks that the wind used to blaw ; 
 I'm baith like to laugh and to greet, ^ 
 When I think o' her married at a' ! " 
 
 Then out spak the wily bridegroom ; 
 
 Weel waled ^ were his wordies I ween ; 
 " I'm rich, though my coffer be toom,^ 
 
 Wi' the blink o' your bonny blue e'en. 
 I'm prouder o' thee by my side. 
 
 Though thy ruffles and ribbons be few, 
 Than if Kate o' the Crafts were my bride, 
 Wi' purples and pearlins enou' ! ^ 
 Dear and dearest of ony ! 
 Ye're woo'd and beecket ^^ and a' ! 
 And do ye think scorn o' your Johnny, 
 And grieve to be married at a' ? " 
 
 She turned, and she blushed, and she smiled, 
 
 And she lookit sae bashfully down ; 
 The pride o' her heart was beguiled, 
 
 And she played wi' the sleeve o' her gown. 
 She twirled ^^ the tag o' her lace. 
 
 And she nippit her bodice sae blue, 
 Syne ^- blinkit ^^ sae sweet in his face, 
 And aff, like a mawkin, she flew. 
 Woo'd and married and a' ! 
 Wi' Johnny to roose ^** her and a ! 
 She thinks hersel' very weel aff 
 To be woo'd and married and a' ! 
 
 1 Child. 3 Colt. 3 Father. ♦Fellow. * Must. «Weep. 7 Chosen. 
 
 8 Empty. 'Enough. ^o Housed. i^ Twisted. i^Then. 
 
 »3 Looked. "Extol. 
 
 M 
 
178 English Poetesses, 
 
 THE WEARY FUND O' TOW. 
 
 A YOUNG giulewife is in my house, 
 
 And thrifty means to be ; 
 But aye she's runnin* to the town 
 Some ferlie ^ there to see. 
 
 The weary pund,- the weary pund, 
 
 The weary pund o' tow ! 
 I soothly think, ere it be spun, 
 I'll wear a lyart pow•^ 
 
 And when she sets her to the wheel 
 
 To draw the threads wi' care, 
 In comes the chapman ^ wi' his gear, 
 
 And she can spin nae mair. 
 
 The weary pund, etc 
 
 And she, like mony merry May, 
 
 At fairs maun still be seen. 
 At kirk -yard preaching, near the tent. 
 
 At dances on the green. 
 
 The weary pund, etc. 
 
 Her dainty ear a fiddle charms, 
 
 A bag-pipe's her delight ; 
 But for the croonings ^ of her wheel 
 
 She doesna care a mite. 
 
 The weary pund, etc. 
 
 You spak, my Kate, of snow-white webs 
 
 Made of your linkum-twine,^ 
 But ah ! I fear our bonnie burn '' 
 
 Will ne'er lave ^ web of thine. 
 
 The weary pund, etc. 
 
 Nay, smile again, my winsome Kate ! 
 
 Sic jibings mean nae ill ; 
 Should I gae sarkless ^ to my grave, 
 
 I'll lo'e and bless thee still. 
 
 The weary pund, etc. 
 
 * Wonder. * Pound. ^ Grey-haired head, ♦Pedlar. ^ Hummings, 
 
 •Pack-thread; probably Lincoln. 7 Stream, 8 Wash. "Shirtless. 
 
Miss Jo A NNA Ba ILLIE. 1 7 9 
 
 **TAM O' THE LIN. 
 
 Tam o' the Lin was fu' o' pride, 
 And his weapon he girt to his valorous side, 
 A scabbard of leather wi' de'il hair't ^ within, 
 " Attack me wha daur ! " quo' Tam o' the Lin. 
 
 Tam o' the Lin, he bought a maer ; ^ 
 She cost him five shillings, she wasna dear ; 
 Her back stuck up, and her sides fell in, 
 " A fiery yaud ! "^ quo' Tam o' the Lin. 
 
 Tam o' the Lin, he courted a May ; 
 
 She stared at him sourly and said him nay ; 
 
 But he stroked down his jerkin, and cocked up his chin, 
 
 *' She aims at a laird, then ! " quo' Tam o' the Lin. 
 
 Tam o' the Lin, he gaed "* to the fair, 
 Yet he looked wi' disdain on the chapman's ^ ware ; 
 Then chucked out a sixpence, the sixpence was tin, 
 " There's coin for the fiddlers," quo' Tam o' the Lin. 
 
 Tam o' the Lin wad show his lear^, 
 
 And he scained ^ o'er the book wi' wise-like stare ; 
 
 He muttered confusedly, but didna begin, 
 
 " This is Dominee's business," quo' Tam o' the Lin. 
 
 Tam o' the Lin had a cow wi' ae horn, 
 That likit to feed on his neighbour's corn ; 
 The stanes he threw at her fell short o' the skin, 
 *' She's a lucky auld reiver," ^ quo' Tam o' the Lin. 
 
 Tam o' the Lin, he married a wife. 
 
 And she was the torment, the plague of his life ; 
 
 She lays so about her and makes sic a din ^, 
 
 *' She frightens the baby, ' quo' Tam o' the Lin. 
 
 Tam o' the Lin grew dowie and douce ^^, 
 
 And he sat on a stane at the end o' his house ; 
 
 " What ails,^^ auld cheild? " he looked haggard and thin, 
 
 *' I'm no very cheery," quo' Tam o' the Lin. 
 
 J A bit, anything. * Mare. * Jade. * Went. * Pedlar's. 
 
 •Wished to show his learning. 7 Conned. ^ Robber, 'Such a noise, 
 
 10 Sad and sedate. ** Troubles. 
 
 M 2 
 
I So English Poetesses, 
 
 Tam o' the Lin lay down to die, 
 
 And his friends whispered softly and woefully : 
 
 ** We'll buy you some masses to scour ^ away sin," 
 
 *' And drink at my lyke-wake,"^ quo' Tam o' the Lin. 
 
 SAW YE JOHNNY COMIN'? 
 
 ** Saw ye Johnny comin'? " quo' she, 
 
 " Saw ye Johnny comin' ? 
 Wi' his blue bonnet on his head. 
 
 And his doggie runnin' ? 
 Yestreen,^ about the gloaming ^ time, 
 
 I chanced to see him comin', 
 Whistling merrily the tune 
 
 That I am a' day hummin," quo' she, 
 " I am a' day hummin." 
 
 *' Fee him^, faither, fee him," quo' she ; 
 
 " Fee him, faither, fee him ; 
 A' the wark about the house 
 
 Gaes wi' me when I see him. 
 A' the wark about the house, 
 
 I gang sae lightly through it ; 
 And though ye pay some merks ^ o' gear, 
 
 Hoot ! ye winna rue ^ it," quo' she, 
 ** Na, ye winna rue it." 
 
 *' What wad I dae wi' him, Meggy? 
 
 What wad I dae wi' him ? 
 He's ne'er a sark ^ upon his back, 
 
 And I hae nane to gie him." 
 *' I hae two sarks into my kist. 
 
 And ane of them I'll gie him. 
 And for a merk o' mair fee 
 
 Oh ! dinna stand wi' him," quo' she, 
 ** Dinna stand wi' him." 
 
 1 Wash. 2 'X'he watching a dead body. 3 Yester-evening. * Twilight. 
 
 * Engage him as servant. « A merk was in value thirteen and fourpence, 
 
 of our money. 7 Repent * Shirt. 
 
Miss Joanna Baillie. i8i 
 
 ** Weel do I lo'e him," quo' she ; 
 
 " Weel do I lo'e him ; 
 The brawest lads about the place 
 
 Are a' but haverels ^ to him. 
 Oh, fee him, faither ; lang, I trow, 
 
 We've dull and dowie been ; 
 He'll baud the plough, thrash i' the bam, 
 
 And crack 2 wi' me at e'en," quo' she, 
 *' Crack wi' me at e'en." 
 
 Among other Scottish women who have written verse, 
 the most prominent are Jean Adam (1710 — 1765), author 
 of the song " There's nae Luck about the House," and Mrs. 
 Anne Grant of Luggan (1755 — ^^3^) who wrote "The 
 Highlanders" (1803), " Letters from the Mountains" (1806), 
 "Eighteen Hundred and Thirteen" (1814), and other 
 forgotten works. These were extraordinarily popular in 
 their day, and brought a considerable and much needed 
 income to Mrs. Grant. Her letters were incorporated in 
 her Life, published in 1844. 
 
 1 Fools. 2 Talk. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MRS. HEMANS. 
 
 THE term of " English Sappho " has been applied to 
 several of our poetesses, chiefly to " L. E. L. " Perhaps, 
 however, none of our women writers has so much deserved 
 the appellation as Mrs. Hemans. Somebody has said that we 
 could cut the whole of Sheridan's wit out of one of Shakspeare's 
 comedies, and never miss it. The remark, of course, has only 
 a certain amount of truth in it ; but with a greater amount of 
 accuracy one might say that the whole of what " L. E. L.'s" 
 genius accomplished might easily be cut out of Mrs. Hemans' 
 works without causing the other writer much loss of reputa- 
 tion. " L. E. L.," indeed, of the two poetesses, resembles 
 Sappho the more, in leaving us less to read. It is true that 
 Mrs. Browning, in her Portuguese sonnets, touches the chord 
 of love with a far subtler finger, and produces from it a 
 vibration far more intense than Mrs. Hemans, at her best, pro- 
 duces. But yet there was little of the Sapphic tone of mind 
 about Elizabeth Barrett Browning ; her love was objective ; 
 it clung to something with a sense of requital ; and such 
 touch of suffering as may be found in the famous Portuguese 
 sonnets is not that of the pining spirit so much as it is the 
 over-delicate sensibility generated in an invalid's room. 
 But there is something in the more subjective yearning 
 characteristic of Mrs. Hemans's poetry that more recalls the 
 interpretation of Sappho's mind which we have been accus- 
 tomed to put upon the fragments of her love-writings that 
 
Mrs. Hemans, 183 
 
 are left us. It has also to be said that in much of the verse 
 Mrs. Hemans devoted to personal themes less connected 
 with love the motherliness which was so strange a sign in the 
 virgin Sappho makes itself felt. There is far more in Mrs. 
 Hemans than in Mrs. Browning that corresponds with the 
 feeling of Sappho's sweetest fragments, — 
 
 ** Hesperus brings all things back, 
 Which the daylight makes us lack ; 
 Brings the sheep and goats to rest, 
 Brings the baby to the breast." 
 
 At best, however, the parallel cannot carry us far. As it 
 has been said that the poetry of Wordsworth lacks a trumpet 
 note, so it must be said that the poetry of Mrs. Hemans 
 lacks any note of supreme passion. It is full of womanly 
 tenderness, of acute sensibility to all truly beautiful things ; 
 it is " all pure womanly," but it does lack that passion which 
 is the chief greatness of the highest poetry. If the dis- 
 tinction may justly be made, her love-poetry may be said 
 to be that of the domestic affections rather than that of the 
 elective affinities by which the sublimest souls, with peril to 
 themselves, grope for each other. Precocious as the pub- 
 lished verses of her extreme youth were, there w^as not any 
 amount of striking aspiration in them. The unhappy sur- 
 render of her heart, when she was in the singularly lovely 
 bloom that made her a woman at fifteen, did not draw 
 from her emotions any great cry that has left to us an ap- 
 pealing echo ; and had the marriage in which this surrender 
 of her affections consummated proved as contenting as it 
 was in reality harassing, perhaps we should have had from 
 her much less poetry of any kind. 
 
 For amid the happy surroundings of her girlhood she 
 did not exhibit tokens of that consecrated, awful loneliness 
 that nearly always makes the high poetic mind dwell like a 
 star, apart. To the end of life all the things that sweeten 
 
184 English Poetesses, 
 
 a household, the love of home, and mother, and husband, 
 and child were the themes upon which her fancy dwelt most 
 constantly, and it was on this account that she found so wide 
 a response in the grateful hearts of the people. 
 
 The great element of freshness in Mrs. Hemans's writings 
 was her abandonment of the classical style, which had been 
 wearily done to death by her predecessors. She, in common 
 with most literary people of her time, had felt the very last 
 ebbing wave of classicalism, and recognised that a new in- 
 spiration must be sought. The joyous, half-pagan influences 
 that had never been allowed to die in England since that 
 " glorious time, when learning, like a pilgrim from afar, roused 
 with his trumpet peasant and king," had at last worked 
 themselves out. Romance was in the air. Byron, Southey, 
 and Scott, were its great heralds ; and Mrs. Hemans was the 
 first woman of distinction who joined them in the new move- 
 ment. Now that this phase of literary taste has also passed 
 to so large an extent, it is impossible for us not to become 
 impatient sometimes at the constant processions, and flapping 
 of banners, and liltings of troubadours, and war-songs of 
 crusaders, and all the other mediaevalisms which were then 
 so new and delightful to readers of imaginative writing. Any 
 poetess who should take up such themes now would be 
 smiled at ; but Mrs. Hemans was one of the greatest of those 
 writers who originated or at least revived them, and in the 
 varied music of our literature her verse is a sweet and 
 clear fanfare like that of silver bugles. 
 
 There is no great writer whom succeeding ages do not 
 discover to echo largely the voice of his or her times ; and to 
 say that Mrs. Hemans's themes now strike us as hackneyed 
 is no more than to say that three or four contemporary 
 writers, of whom she was one, made them hackneyed by 
 treating them so well. There is this at least to be said of 
 this author, that though she wrote so much, and in an age 
 when Byron was the favourite poet of Englishwomen, not 
 
Mrs. Hemans. 185 
 
 a line left her pen that indicated anything but a spotless 
 and habitually lofty mind. Mrs. Hemans is not a poetess 
 for 'poets. Her range of thought is too limited to satisfy a 
 daring imagination ; but who can calculate how much of 
 gentle goodness and of home-sweetening purity her verse 
 has made our English people the better for ? 
 
 Perhaps Mrs. Hemans was most successful in the con- 
 stant attempt she made to approach as closely as possible to 
 the brink of what we are now taught to call the pathetic fallacy. 
 This may be a reason for the uniform approbation which 
 the critic Jeffrey accorded to her works, while he with equal 
 steadiness condemned the more masculine work of Joanna 
 Baillie, for the Englishwoman's notion of a poet's mission 
 would apparently have coincided with Jeffrey's own defini- 
 tion of poetry, as a perception of subtle analogies between 
 external nature and the human emotions. The circum- 
 stances of her early life made Mrs. Hemans an observing 
 and exultant lover of nature, from her almost infant days, 
 when she climbed up among the apple blossoms to sit upon 
 a branch and read Shakspeare by the hour. The winds of 
 heaven, the trees, the flowers, and the streams were her 
 familiar studies ; and be it remembered that poetic minds at 
 that time were still less addicted to the close study of nature 
 than they were addicted to the romance of the ages that 
 preceded them. But the melancholy w^hich tinged most of 
 her life caused Mrs. Hemans more and more to write about 
 nature in a tone of subjective feeling which Ruskin's famous 
 canon of criticism would pronounce morbid. 
 
 It was much that Mrs. Hemans was the first poetess to 
 devote her verse to nature, as Wordsworth was the first poet 
 to do so. But Wordsworth had a healthier way of study- 
 ing it ; he may be said to have gone to nature for teaching, 
 while Mrs. Hemans went to it for sympathy. There is as 
 much difference between the outlook of the poetess and that 
 of the poet upon the external universe, as there is between 
 
i86 English Poetesses. 
 
 the way in which Longfellow and the way in which Emerson 
 regarded it. Partly a student of the bygone ages, Mrs. 
 Hemans yet could write — 
 
 *' Oh that the mind could throw from it 
 The burthen of the past for ever ! " 
 
 Scott could never have given utterance to such an expression. 
 And while she was a student of nature, she yet could wTite : 
 " How often are our affections thrown back upon our own 
 ^hearts, to press them down with a weight of ^ voiceless 
 thoughts ' and of feelings that find no answer in the world." 
 Wordsworth would hardly have written so. 
 
 Piety, purity, tender and chivalrous affection could scarcely 
 farther go than in the poems of Mrs. Hemans. Her power 
 is past. To most of us now she has the interest of a faded 
 beauty, about whom one wonders how the electric influence 
 of her glance and speech could ever command such lavish 
 admiration. We know that Byron admired her. And Words- 
 worth lamented her death in verses which contain a line of 
 almost unbounded praise : — 
 
 " As if but yesterday departed, 
 
 Thou who art gone before : but why, 
 O'er ripe fruit seasonably gathered, 
 Should frail survivors heave a sigh ? 
 
 *' Mourn rather for that holy spirit, 
 
 Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep, 
 For her who, ere her summer faded. 
 Has sunk into a breathless sleep." 
 
 Scott also revered her powers, while yet he happily defined 
 her failings by saying that her poetry had " too much foliage 
 and too little wood." This metaphor, by the way, is paral- 
 lelled in Goethe's remark about the poetry of young lady 
 writers : — " Like trees too full of sap which have a number 
 
Mrs. Hemans. 187 
 
 of parasitical shoots, they have a superabundance of thought 
 and feelings." Lastly, we know that Landor admired her : 
 
 *' Gone is she 
 Who shrouded Casa Bianca, she who cast 
 The iron mould of Ivan ; yet whose song 
 Was soft and varied as the nightingale's, 
 And heard above all others." 
 
 Felicia Dorothea Browne, the daughter of a merchant, 
 was born at Liverpool on the 25th September, 1793. 
 Her mother, who had come of a mingled Italian and 
 German stock, bore seven children, of whom Felicia was 
 the fifth. The father was an Irishman, and had at- 
 tained considerable prosperity. His foreign wife, how- 
 ever, was the better of the pair, and indeed was quite 
 remarkable not only for the household talents which make 
 a wife as good as a business partner to a man, but for 
 distinct piety of mind combined with a noble breadth ot 
 view regarding the ends of life, which does not always 
 accompany the pietism of female minds. Felicia was not 
 more than seven when the prosperity of her father suf- 
 fered a severe check ; and in consequence of their troubles, 
 the family moved into retirement in Wales, taking up their 
 abode at the old baronial mansion of Gwrych, near Abergele, 
 in Denbighshire. At six, the precocious little Felicia exhi- 
 bited the remarkable imaginative tendency which we may 
 presume to have resulted partly from the mixture of Celtic 
 and Latin blood in her veins ; and " the green land of Wales," 
 amid the beauties of which her nature developed itself, she 
 always looked upon with a passionate fondness as the real 
 country of her birth, " the land of her childhood, her home, 
 and her dead." At the early age already mentioned, Shak- 
 speare was her favourite reading, and one of her juvenile 
 poems is devoted to the praise of the great bard who had 
 
1 88 English Poetesses, 
 
 found so earnest and enthusiastic admirer. The lines run 
 thus : — 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 I LOVE to rove o'er history's page, 
 
 Recall the hero and the sage ; 
 
 Revive the actions of the dead, 
 
 And memory of ages fled. 
 
 Yet it yields me greater pleasure, 
 
 To read the poet's pleasing measure ; 
 
 Led by wShakspeare, bard inspired, 
 
 The bosom's energies are fired ; 
 
 We learn to shed the generous tear. 
 
 O'er poor Ophelia's secret bier ; 
 
 To love the merry moonlit scene, 
 
 With fairy elves in valleys green ; 
 
 Or, borne on fancy's heavenly wings, 
 
 To listen while sweet Ariel sings. 
 
 How sweet the "native woodnotes wield" 
 
 Of him, the Muse's favourite child ! 
 
 Of him, whose magic lays impart 
 
 Each various feeling to the heart ! 
 
 These lines, not by any means the most remarkable among 
 her early efforts, were penned by the young girl at the age of 
 eleven, just before she went to London with her parents to 
 pass the winter amid gay city life, which exercised no attrac- 
 tive influence upon her, but only made her long to return to 
 the green trees of home. A later poem of hers, the sonnet 
 called " Orchard Blossoms," written in 1834, recalls the 
 favourite perch already alluded to, in which she and her 
 Shakspeare used to while away many a summer hour. 
 
 *' Doth some old nook, 
 Haunted l)y visions of thy first-loved book. 
 Rise on thy soul, with faint-streaked blossoms white 
 Showered o'er the turf, and the lone primrose knot, 
 And robin's nest still faithful to the spot. 
 
Mrs. Hemans. 189 
 
 And the bees* dreamy chime ? O gentle friend ! 
 The world's cold l^reath, not Time's^ this life bereaves 
 Of vernal gifts ; Time hallows what he leaves, 
 And will for us endear spring memories to the end. '* 
 
 Poetic thought, such as it was, flowed so easily and constantly 
 from this child's mind, that her friends were induced, in 1808, 
 to prepare a collection of her verses for publication ; and 
 this was put before the world in the imposing form of a 
 quarto volume dedicated to the Prince Regent, and entitled 
 "Blossoms of Spring." The critics treated this "large 
 quarto by a little child " as somewhat of an impertinence, 
 and those who published it were certainly ill-advised. 
 
 It happened that shortly after the imprudent venture 
 which her friends made on her behalf, one of Felicia's 
 brothers was sent to serve with the 23rd Royal Welsh Fusi- 
 liers in the Spanish campaign, under Sir John Moore. 
 The tender solicitude with which she followed her brother 
 into that land of romance fired her with the ambition of 
 producing an heroic poem on the Land of the Cid, and 
 although only fourteen she produced the remarkable effusion 
 called " England and Spain." Of this production it may at 
 any rate be said that it afforded as much promise of future 
 excellence as Byron's early poems exhibited. From this 
 time there seemed to be no doubt that there was ample 
 justification for Miss Browne's expectation of subsequent 
 fame as a great poetess. 
 
 In the following year her thoughts took a new turn. 
 Captain Hemans, of the King's Own regiment, had crossed 
 her path. She was too young to become a wife, and he was 
 not possessed of means sufficient to support any establishment, 
 even had she been more mature. Her relatives did not re- 
 gard his advances with favour, and when the calls of regi- 
 mental duty withdrew him to a foreign land, it was hoped that 
 the attachment between the two would die a natural death. It 
 was to Spain, however, that he had gone, and thus he be- 
 
190 English Poetesses. 
 
 came twice a hero in her eyes. Nothing could withdraw her 
 affections from him, and her parents had to recognise the 
 fact, that should Captain Hemans come back to claim her, 
 it would be necessary for her peace of mind to allow their 
 union, and endeavour to find suitable provision for them. 
 Meanwhile the family removed from Gwrych to Bronwylfa, 
 near St. Asaph's, in Flintshire. In spite of the disturbance 
 which her nature must have suffered from her unfortunate 
 attachment, Felicia continued to pursue varied studies with 
 an extraordinary energy, and her natural faculties abetted her 
 industry in making her quite a prodigy among her neighbours. 
 Her powers of memory were almost incredible. She could 
 repeat long pieces of prose and poetry after twice glancing 
 them over ; and on one occasion perfectly learned by heart, 
 in one hour and twenty minutes, the whole of Heber's 
 *' Europe," a poem which extends to the length of 424 lines. 
 Her linguistic studies had made her acquainted intimately 
 with French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. She was 
 less perfectly acquainted with German, and it was not until 
 a considerably later period that she was enabled to enjoy 
 the literature of that language with a zest which had an im- 
 portant effect upon her thinking. 
 
 In 181 2 her second volume, entitled "The Domestic 
 Affections, and Other Poems," appeared ; and in the same 
 year she became the wife of Captain Hemans, who had 
 returned from the Peninsula and obtained the post of Adju- 
 tant to the Northamptonshire Militia at Daventry. This 
 post he was only fortunate enough to hold for one year, as 
 the regiment was dissolved, and thereafter his modest 
 establishment was joined to that of his mother-in-law at 
 Bronwylfa. Under the sheltering wing of her mother, Mrs. 
 Hemans brought into the world a family of ^wq sons. She 
 had soon after her marriage learned how much truth there 
 was in the fears of her friends as to the compatibility which 
 might subsist between herself and Captain Hemans. In 
 
Mrs. Hemans. 191 
 
 18 18, the year in which her "Translations" were pub- 
 lished, her husband went to take up his abode for a time 
 at Rome. It was not then supposed that this separation 
 amounted to actual estrangement, but the result in reality 
 was a total severance of all ties save for occasional corre- 
 spondence. Captain Hemans lived for seventeen years from 
 that time, but he and his wife never saw each other again. 
 
 Two years before this occurrence Mrs. Hemans had 
 published *'The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy," 
 and *' Modern Greece." The first did not exhibit much 
 intimate acquaintance with the spirit or history of the artists 
 with whom it deals ; the second is written in a very pleasing 
 and romantic vein. Byron applauded it, but with qualifica- 
 tions to his praise. As Bentley said to Pope of his transla- 
 tion of the Iliad, "It is very pretty, Mr. Pope, but you 
 mustn't call it Homer," so Byron seems to have thought 
 that this was an excellent poem, but was a very erroneous 
 picture of Greece. Shelley, as well as Byron, thought 
 highly of the author of these poems, and addressed to her a 
 series of letters, of which, unfortunately, no trace remains. 
 About this period Mrs. Hemans contributed some articles 
 on foreign literature to Blackwood^ s Magazine, 
 
 In 18 1 9 a Scotch patriot announced that he would give 
 ;^i,ooo towards the erection of a monument to Wallace, 
 and ;^5o as a prize for the best poem on the subject. A 
 large amount ot competition ensued with regard to this 
 prize. So many were the aspirants for the reward that the 
 accumulated manuscripts brought before the judges were 
 sufficient to form solid reading for several months, and one 
 contribution was as long as " Paradise Lost." Mrs. Hemans 
 was one of the competitors, and gained the prize. Her 
 poem on Wallace is a short one, and since it towered above 
 all the other sets of verses on the subject, one cannot help 
 pitying the adjudicators for the task of selection imposed 
 upon them. Mrs. Hemans's lines are quite poor. 
 
192 English Poetesses. 
 
 Next year Mrs. Hemans produced " The Sceptic," a 
 longish poem of the didactic order, which was received with 
 favour, and exercised a great deal of influence upon many 
 readers of its day. Few people would care to read it now. 
 It contains some of the author's very worst work, as may 
 be seen in the following lines about Hope ; nearly every 
 line contains a confused metaphor : — 
 
 ** For she was born beyond the stars to soar, 
 And kindling at the source of life, adore ; 
 Thou couldst not, mortal ! rivet to the earth 
 Her eye, whose beam is of celestial birth ; 
 She dwells with those who leave her pinion free. 
 And sheds the dews of heaven on all but thee." 
 
 In June of the following year our author gained a prize 
 from the Royal Society of Literature, for the best com- 
 petitive poem on the unpromising subject of " Dartmoor ; " 
 and in 1823 the dramatic poem entitled "The Siege of 
 Valencia," was published by Murray. This is a piece of 
 strong sustained writing. By some mistake of the printers 
 it was assigned a secondary place in the volume, "The 
 Last Constantine " taking the place of honour. It is a pity 
 that it is impossible to detach any short passage from " The 
 Last Constantine " that would exhibit the lofty qualities of 
 its style in any just degree. Fine as it is, however, "The 
 Siege of Valencia " — the story of a conflict between a 
 mother's love and a father's sense of chivalrous honour — is 
 finer. 
 
 No sooner had the " Siege of Valencia " impressed the 
 public with a sense of its author's dramatic talent, than Mrs. 
 Hemans presented them with " The Vespers of Palermo," 
 which was bought by Murray for two hundred guineas, and 
 at once accepted by Kemble for production on the Covent 
 Garden stage. The well-known theme is treated in this 
 dramatic poem with much subtlety, and Young and Kemble 
 
Mrs. Hemans. 193 
 
 were provided with two powerful parts which they worthily 
 filled, in the characters of the elder and younger Procida. 
 But amid minor faults which an author so inexperienced 
 in writing for the stage is almost sure to make, Mrs. 
 Hemans failed most signally in the leading female cha- 
 racter. This role of Constance was undertaken by Miss 
 Kelly, whose powers were of course of a more than 
 respectable order; but her performance, whether from sim- 
 ple misjudgment of her part, or from the inherent weak- 
 ness of the character, was received with such amusement 
 on the first night that the piece was irretrievably damned, 
 so far as the London public was concerned. It was after- 
 wards brought out at Edinburgh by Mr. Henry Siddons, 
 with a prologue which came from the pen of Sir Walter 
 Scott, but it did not make its mark in the north either. 
 It is curious to think that the combined literary and 
 dramatic talents of Coleridge, Milman, Croly, Heber, 
 Kemble, Young, and Yates, predicted for this drama a 
 signal success, while the public in the most emphatic 
 manner disabused them of such preconceptions. Mrs. 
 Hemans next engaged herself upon the completion of a 
 third tragedy, called " De Chatillon, or, the Crusaders." 
 This has reached us in an imperfect form, and though its 
 merits are not great, it is scarcely fair to condemn what is 
 only a blurred image of the real work. 
 
 " The Forest Sanctuary," a laboured poem, upon the 
 claims of which its author laid great stress (it was written in 
 the curiously unromantic seclusion of a laundry), appeared 
 in 1825, together with " Lays of Many Lands," one of her 
 most deservedly popular efforts. The plan of this collec- 
 tion of short narrative poems was suggested by Herder's 
 '* Stimmen der Volker in Liedern ; " but it differs from 
 Herder's in this respect, that each set of verses is an original 
 composition, and not merely a ballad recovered from the 
 people. 
 
 N 
 
194 English Poetess f.s. 
 
 In the spring of this year Mrs. Hemans with her mother 
 and her family removed to Rhyllon, a house belonging to 
 her brother four miles from Eronwylfa ; but within twelve 
 months the admirable mother whom she had reverenced 
 with so much affection was taken from her. Her father 
 had gone to pursue business in America years before this. 
 To America Mrs. Hemans had herself been tempted by the 
 offer of a well-paid post as editor of a magazine. 
 
 The " Records of Woman," a collection of pieces each 
 one of which is of undeniable excellence, appeared in 1828, 
 and after its production Mrs. Hemans set up her establish- 
 ment at Wavertree, near Liverpool. Not long after this 
 settlement had been effected, she made an excursion to 
 Scotland. She had many admirers in that country, and 
 herself admired the literary spirit that was then at its 
 brightest in the Scotch capital. Sir Walter Scott and Jef- 
 frey were ready to welcome her, and she links herself with 
 our own times by having been one of the first to detect the 
 literary faculties of Carlyle. She writes thus to a friend 
 regarding Carlyle's Edinburgh Review article, now so well 
 known : — 
 
 *'I have been delighted with the paper on Burns which you were 
 kind enough to lend me. I think that the writer has gone farther into 
 " the heart of the mystery " than any other, because he, almost the 
 first of all, has approached the subject with a deep reverence for 
 genius, but a still deeper for truth ; all the rest have seemed only 
 anxious to make good the attack or the defence ; and there is a feeling, 
 too, of *' the still sad music of humanity " throughout, which brings 
 upon a heart a conviction full of power that it is listening to the voice 
 of a brother. I wonder who the writer is ! he certainly gives us u 
 great deal of what Boswell, I think, calls "brick and steel " for the 
 mind. I at least found it in several passages ; but I fear that a woman's 
 mind never can l)e able and never was formed to attain that power of 
 sufficiency to itself, which seems to lie somewhere or other amongst the 
 rocks of a man's." 
 
 This must strike the reader as a very shrewd guess for a 
 retired woman to make at the singularly rough earnestness 
 
Mrs, Hemans. 195 
 
 of the man who was then not only an anonymous, but an 
 obscure struggler in the world of letters. 
 
 The Scotch tour was originally designed as a visit to 
 friends at Chiefswood, near Melrose. It is here that Sir 
 Walter Scott is supposed to have written most of "The 
 Pirate." Abbotsford was not far off, and it was natural 
 that Mrs. Hemans should have been invited to partake of 
 the hospitality that was then making the great novelist's 
 home a kind of Scottish court of letters. Of the few 
 specimens of Mrs. Hemans's correspondence which have 
 reached us, undoubtedly the most interesting portions are 
 those which refer to Scott and Wordsworth, the latter ot 
 whom she shortly afterwards visited. She writes : — 
 
 \ 
 
 ** I have now had the gratification of seeing Sir Walter in every 
 point of view I could desire : we had one of the French Princes here 
 yesterday with his suite — the Due de Chartres, son of the Ducd'Orleans, 
 and there was naturally some little excitement diffused through the 
 household by the arrival of a royal guest. Sir Walter was, however, 
 exactly the same in his own manly simplicity — kind, courteous, unaf- 
 fected, ' his foot upon his native heath,' and his attention even to Henry 
 and Charles, and their little indulgences, considerate and watchful as ever. 
 .... I was a little nervous when Sir Walter handed me to the piano, 
 on which I was the sole performer, for the delectation of the courtly party. 
 
 I must not forget to tell you how I sat, like Minna in ' The 
 
 Pirate ' (though she stood, or moved, I believe), the very * Queen of 
 Swords. ' I have the strongest love for the flash of glittering steel, and Sir 
 Walter brought out I know not how many gallant blades to show me, one 
 which had fought at Killiecrankie, and one which had belonged to the 
 young Prince Henry, James the First's son, and one which looked as of 
 r.pble race and temper as that with which Coeur de Lion severed the 
 
 block of steel in Saladin's tent We talked a good deal of 
 
 tr6es. I asked Sir Walter if he had not observed that every tree gives out 
 
 ■ its own peculiar sound to the wind. He said he had, and suggested to 
 me that something might be done by the union of music and poetry to 
 imitate those voices of trees, giving a measure and time to the oak, the 
 pine, the willow, &c. He mentioned a Highland air of somewhat 
 similar character, called ' The Notes of the Sea Birds.' 
 
 " Lord Napier at dinner made some observations upon a recent his- 
 N 2 
 
T96 English Poetesses. 
 
 tory of the Peninsular War, in which the defence of vSaragossa had been 
 spoken of as a vain and lavish waste of life. I was delighted with the 
 kindling animation of Sir Walter's look and tone as he replied, ' Never 
 let me hear that brave blood has been shed in vain ! It sends a roaring 
 voice down through all time ! ' In the evening we had music. Not 
 being able to sing, I read to him the words of a Bearnaise song, on the 
 captivity of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette in the Temple ; though 
 simple even to homeliness, they affected him to tears, and he begged 
 me not to finish them. I think the feeling of loyalty, chivalrous 
 loyalty, such as must have existed among the Paladins and prcttx 
 chevaliers of old, seems the truest and deepest in his character ; he 
 gives me the idea of being born an age too late for its free scope. This 
 day has been (I was going to say, one of the happiest, but I am too 
 isolated a being to use that word), at least, one of the pleasantest and 
 ,most cheerfully exciting of my life. I shall think again and again of 
 that walk under the old solemn trees that hung over the mountain 
 stream of Yarrow, with Sir Walter Scott beside me ; his voice 
 frequently breaking out, as if half unconsciously, into some verse of the 
 antique ballads, which he repeats with a deep and homely pathos. 
 One stanza in particular will linger in my memory like music : 
 
 " His mother through the window look'd 
 
 With all the longing of a mother, 
 His little sister, weeping, walked 
 
 The greenwood path, to find her brother. 
 They sought him east, they sought him west, 
 
 They sought him far with moan and sorrow, 
 They only saw the cloud of night, 
 
 They only heard the roar of Yarrow." 
 
 Before we retired for the night, he took me into the hall, and showed 
 me the spot where the imagined form of Byron had stood before him. 
 This hall, with the rich gloom shed by its deeply-coloured windows, 
 and with its antique suits of armour, and inscriptions all breathing of 
 * the olden time,' is truly a fitting scene for the appearance of so 
 stately a shadow. The next morning I left Abbotsford ; and who can 
 leave a spot so brightened and animated by the life, the happy life, of 
 genius, without regret ? " 
 
 The frank and hearty hospitality Sir Walter lavished on 
 his guests culminated in a farewell which she and her 
 descendants can never have forgotten : ** There are some 
 whom we meet and should like ever after to claim as kith 
 and kin ; 2SiAyou are one of those," 
 
Mrs. He mans. 197 
 
 After the visit to Scott, a sojourn in the less genial but 
 more intellectual atmosphere of Wordsworth's home — what 
 a great epoch in the self-chosen quiet of her life this northern 
 tour must have made ! Had Mrs. Hemans become ac- 
 cjuainted earlier With Wordsworth, perhaps we might have 
 been disposed to attribute too much of her nature-worship 
 to his influence ; on the other hand, had they met younger, 
 it is far from impossible that her instincts would have 
 quickened, and her intellectual appreciation of nature's 
 hidden meaning have been greatly increased, by intercourse 
 with the high priest of the Lakes. Wordsworth seems to 
 have been particularly gracious to Mrs. Hemans, and the 
 following extracts from her home letters, written during her 
 stay with him, are quite as interesting as the accounts she 
 gives of her intercourse with Scott : — 
 
 ** I seem to be writing to you almost from a spirit land ; all is here 
 so brightly still, so remote from every day's cares and tumults, that 
 sometimes I can hardly persuade myself that I am not dreaming. It 
 scarcely seems to be ' the light of common day ' that is clothing the 
 woody mountains before me ; there is something almost visionary in its 
 soft gleams and ever-changing shadows. I am charmed with Mr. 
 Wordsworth, whose kindness to me has quite a soothing influence over 
 my spirits. Oh ! what relief, what blessing there is in the feeling of 
 acbiiiration, when it can be freely poured forth ! ' There is a daily 
 l>cauty in his life,' which is in such lovely harmony with his poetry, 
 iliat I am thankful to have witnessed andy^// it. He gives me a good deal 
 of his society, reads to me, walks with me, leads my pony when I ride ; 
 and I begin to talk to him as a sort of paternal friend. The whole of this 
 morning he kindly passed in reading to me a great deal from Spenser, 
 and afterwards.his own * Laodamia,'my favourite ' Tintern Abbey,' and 
 many of his noble sonnets. His reading is very peculiar, but to my 
 ear very delightful ; slow, solemn, earnest in expression, more than any 
 I have ever heard ; when he reads or recites in the open air, his rich 
 deep tones seem to proceed from a spirit voice, and belong to the 
 religion of the place ; they harmonise so fitly with the thrilling tones 
 of woods and waterfalls. His expressions are often strikingly poetical ; 
 such as, ' I would not give up the mists that so spiritualise our moun- 
 tains, for all the blue skies of Italy.' Yesterday evening he walked 
 
19^ English Poetesses. 
 
 beside me, as I rode on a long and lovely mountain path, high above 
 Grasmere Lake. I was much interested by his showing me, carved 
 deep into the rock, as we passed, the initials of his wife's name, 
 inscribed there many years ago by himself; and the dear old man, like 
 Old Mortality, renews them from time to time. I could scarcely 
 help exclaiming, ' Esto perpetua ! ' 
 
 *' It is delightful to see a life in such perfect harmony with all that 
 his writings express, 
 
 'True to the kindred points of heaven and home.' 
 
 Vou may remember how much I disliked, and I think you agreed with 
 me in reprobating, that shallow theory of Mr. Moore's with regard to 
 the unfitness of genius for domestic happiness. I was speaking of it 
 yesterday to Mr. Wordsworth, and was pleased by his remark : ' It is 
 not because they possess genius that they make unhappy homes, but 
 because they do not possess genius enough ; a higher order of mind 
 would enable them to see and feel all the beauty of domestic ties.' 
 His mind, indeed, may well inhabit so untroubled an atmosphere ; for, 
 as he himself declares, no wounded affections, no embittered feelings, 
 have ever been his lot ; the current of his domestic life has flowed on 
 bright and pure and unbroken. Hence, I think, much of the high 
 sculpture-like repose which invests both his character and writings 
 with so tranquil a dignity. 
 
 "Mr. Wordsworth's kindness has inspired me with a feeling of confi- 
 dence which it is delightful to associate with those of admiration and re- 
 spect, before excited by his writings ; and he has treated me with so much 
 consideration and gentleness and care, they have been like a balm to 
 my spirit after all the fades flatteries with which I am hlasces, I wish 
 I had time to tell you of mornings which he has passed in reading to 
 me, and of evenings when he has walked beside me while I rode through 
 the lovely vales of Grasmere and Rydal ; and of his beautiful, sometimes 
 half unconscious recitation, in a voice so deep and solemn that it has 
 often brought tears into my eyes. One little incident I must describe. 
 We had been listening, during one of these evening rides, to various sounds 
 and notes of birds which broke upon the stillness, and at last I said, 
 * Perhaps there may be a deeper and richer music pervading all nature 
 than we are permitted in this state to hear ! ' He answered by reciting 
 those glorious lines of Milton's — 
 
 * Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth, 
 Unseen both when we wake and when we sleep,' &c. 
 
 And this in tones which seemed rising from such depths of veneration ! 
 I cannot describe the thrill with which I listened ; it was like the feeling 
 
Mrs, He mans. 199 
 
 whicli Lord Byron has embodied in one of his best and purest moments, 
 when he so beautifully says, 
 
 * And not a breath crept through the rosy air, 
 And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred in prayer I ' 
 
 *' Mr. Wordsworth's daily life in the bosom of his family is delight- 
 ful, so affectionate and confiding. I cannot but mournfully feel, in 
 the midst of their happiness, * Still, still I am a stranger here ! ' But 
 where am I not a stranger now ! " 
 
 In the spring of the following year (1831) Mrs Hemans, 
 finding her health in a delicate state, resolved to join her 
 brother, Major Browne, Commissioner of the Police in 
 Dublin, and thither she went accordingly ; and during the 
 next three years she occupied her leisure in collecting 
 further specimens of her muse in volumes entitled " Scenes 
 and Hymns of Life." In August of 1834 Mrs. Hemans 
 caught scarlet fever, and in recovering from this malady 
 she was unfortunate enough to be attacked by a severe 
 ague, which developed into a still more dangerous disease, 
 dropsy. From this she had no hope to recover, and she 
 applied herself quietly to arranging her writings and affairs 
 in general. Archbishop Whately and his wife for a time 
 affectionately attended her at their residence, Redesdale; 
 but as the dropsy became more severe, it was necessary for 
 her to return to her physician's care at Dublin. Here, in 
 the April of 1835, Mrs. Hemans dictated her last piece of 
 verse, "A Sabbath Sonnet," which, with her last lyric, 
 " Despondency and Aspiration," sufficiently proves that her 
 poetical powers were in their full vigour and sweetness to 
 the last. This tast came on the i6th of the following May, 
 when, after a long sleep, she sank away without an effort, 
 at the age of forty-two. A tablet in St. Anne's Church, 
 Dublin, marks the spot where this gifted woman lies at 
 rest, and in the Cathedral of St. Asaph her brother erected a 
 similar stone with this appropriate inscription : " In memory 
 of Felicia Hemans, whose character is best pourtrayed in her 
 
2O0 English Poetesses, 
 
 writings." A volume of her poetical remains was published 
 after death. The best edition of her works is that of 1851, 
 in six volumes ; and the most valuable biography is H. F. 
 Chorley's *' Memorials of Mrs. Hemans," published in 185 1. 
 
 THE CID'S FUNERAL PROCESSION. 
 
 The Moor had beleaguered Valencia's towers, 
 And lances gleamed up through her citron-l)owers, 
 And the tents of the desert had girt her plain, 
 And camels were trampling the vines of Spain ; 
 For the Cid was gone to rest. 
 
 There were men from wilds where the death-wind sweeps. 
 There were spears from hills where the lion sleeps, 
 There were bows from sands where the ostrich runs, 
 For the shrill horn of Afric had called her sons 
 To the battles of the West. 
 
 The midnight bell, o'er the dim seas heard. 
 Like the roar of waters, the air had stirred ; 
 The stars were shining o'er tower and wave. 
 And the camp lay hushed as a wizard's cave ; 
 But the Christians woke that night. 
 
 They reared the Cid on his barbed steed. 
 Like the warrior mailed for the hour of need. 
 And they fixed the sword in the cold right hand 
 Which had fought so well for his father's land, 
 And the shield from his neck hung bright. 
 
 There was arming heard in Valencia's halls, 
 There was vigil kept on the rampart walls ; 
 Stars had not faded nor clouds turned red. 
 When the knights had girded the noble dead, 
 And the burial train moved out. 
 
 With a measured pace, as the pace of one, 
 Was the still death-march of the host begun ; 
 With a silent step went the cuirassed bands, 
 Like a lion's tread on the burning sands ; 
 And they gave no battle-shout. 
 
Mks. He mans, 201 
 
 When the first went forth, it was midnight deep, 
 In heaven was the moon, in the camp was sleep ; 
 When the last through the city's gates had gone, 
 O'er tent and rampart the bright day shone, 
 With a sun-burst from the sea. 
 
 There were knights five hundred went armed before. 
 And Bermudez the Cid's green standard bore ; 
 To its last fair field, with the break of morn, 
 Was the glorious banner in silence borne. 
 On the glad wind streaming free. 
 
 And the Campeador came stately then. 
 Like a leader, circled with steel-clad men ; 
 The helmet was down o'er the face of the dead. 
 But his steed went proud, by a warrior led, 
 For he knew that the Cid was there. 
 
 lie was there, the Cid with his own good sword. 
 And Ximena following her noble lord ; 
 Her eye was solemn, her step was slow. 
 But there rose not a sound of war or woe. 
 Not a whisper on the air. 
 
 The halls in Valencia were still and lone, 
 The churches were empty, the masses done ; 
 There was not a voice through the wide streets far, 
 Not a foot-fall heard in the Alcazar ; 
 So the burial train moved out. 
 
 With a measured pace, as the pace of one. 
 Was the still death-march of the host begun ; 
 With a silent step went cuirassed bands, 
 Like a lion's tread on the burning sands ; 
 And they gave no battle-shout. 
 
 But the deep hills pealed with a cry ere long. 
 When the Christians burst on the Paynim throng ! 
 With a sudden flash of the lance and spear, 
 And a charge of the war-steed in full career, 
 It was Alvar Fafiez came ! 
 
202 English Poetesses. 
 
 He that was wrapt with no funeral shroud, 
 Had passed before like a threatening cloud I 
 And the storm rushed down on the tented plain, 
 And the Archer-Queen, with her bands, lay slain ; 
 P'or the Cid upheld his fame. 
 
 Then a terror fell on the King Bucar, 
 And the Lil)yan kings who had joined his war ; 
 And their hearts grew heavy, and died away, 
 And their hands could not wield an assagay, 
 For the dreadful things they saw ! 
 
 For it seemed, where Minaya his onset made. 
 There were seventy thousand knights arrayed, 
 All white as the snow on Nevada's steep. 
 And they came like the foam of a roaring deep ; 
 'Twas a sight of fear and awe ! 
 
 And the crested form of a warrior tall, 
 With a sword of fire went before them all ; 
 With a sword of fire, and a banner pale. 
 And a blood-red cross on his shadowy mail ; 
 He rode in the battle's van ! 
 
 There was fear in the path of his dim white horse. 
 There was death in the giant-warrior's course ! 
 Where his banner streamed with its ghostly light. 
 Where his sword blazed out, there was hurrying flight ; 
 For it seemed not the sword of man ! 
 
 The field and the river grew darkly red. 
 As the kings and leaders of Afric fled ; 
 There was work for the men of the Cid that day ! 
 They were weary at eve, when they ceased to slay, 
 As reapers whose task is done ! 
 
 The kings and the leaders of Afric fled ! 
 The sails of their galleys in haste were spread ; 
 But the sea had its share of the Paynim slain. 
 And the bow of the desert was broke in Spain: 
 So the Cid to his grave passed on ! 
 
Mrs. Hemans. 203 
 
 GERTRUDE ; OR, FIDELITY TILL DEATH. 
 
 [The Baron Von der Wart, accused — though it is believed unjustly — as' an accom- 
 plice in the assassination of the Emperor Albert, was bound alive on the wheel, and 
 attended by his wife Gertrude, throughout his last agonising hours, with the most 
 heroic devotedness. Her own sufferings, with those of her unfortunate husband, are 
 most affectingly described in a letter which she afterwards addressed to a female friend, 
 and which was published some years ago, at Haarlem, in a book entitled Gertrude 
 I 'on der Wart ; or, Fidelity unto Death.] 
 
 Dark lowers our fate, 
 And terrible the storm that gathers o'er us ; 
 But nothing, till that latest agony 
 Which severs thee from nature, shall unloose 
 This fixed and sacred hold. In thy dark prison-house. 
 In the terrific face of armed law, 
 Yea, on the scaffold, if it needs must be, 
 I never will forsake thee. — Joanna Baillie. 
 
 Her hands were clasped, her dark eyes raised. 
 
 The breeze threw back her hair ; 
 Up to the fearful wheel she gazed — 
 
 All that she loved was there. 
 The night was round her clear and cold, 
 
 The holy heaven above. 
 Its pale stars watching to behold 
 
 The might of earthly love. 
 
 '* And bid me not depart," she cried ; 
 
 ** My Rudolph, say not so ! 
 This is no time to quit thy side — 
 
 Peace ! peace ! I cannot go. 
 Hath the world aught for mc to fear. 
 
 When death is on thy brow ? 
 The world ! what means it ? Mine is here — 
 
 I will not leave thee now. 
 
 ** I have been with thee in thine hour 
 Of glory and of bliss ; 
 Doubt not its memory's living power 
 To strengthen me through thiv! 
 
2t4 English Poetesses, 
 
 And thou, mine honoured love and true, 
 
 Bear on, bear nobly on ! 
 We have the blessed Heaven in view, 
 
 Whose rest shall soon be won." 
 
 And were not these high words to flow 
 
 From woman's breaking heart ? 
 Through all that night of bitterest woe 
 
 She bore her lofty part ; 
 ])Ut oh ! with such a glazing eye, 
 
 With such a curdling cheek — 
 Love, Love ! of mortal agony 
 
 Thou, only thoii^ shouldst speak ! 
 
 The wind rose high — but with it rose 
 
 Her voice, that he might hear : — 
 Perchance that dark hour brought repose 
 
 To happy bosoms near ; 
 While she sat striving with despair 
 
 Beside his tortured form, 
 And pouring her deep soul in prayer 
 
 Forth on the rushing storm. 
 
 She wiped the death -damps from his brow 
 
 With her pale hands and soft, 
 Whose touch upon the lute-chords low 
 
 Had stilled his heart so oft. 
 She spread her mantle o'er his breast. 
 
 She bathed his lips with dew. 
 And on his cheek such kisses pressed 
 
 As hope and joy ne'er knew. 
 
 Oh ! lovely are ye. Love and Faith, 
 
 Enduring to the last ! 
 She had her meed — one smile in death — 
 
 And his worn spirit passed ! 
 While even as o'er a martyr's grave 
 
 She knelt on that sad spot, 
 And, weeping, blessed the God who gave 
 
 Strength to forsake it not ! 
 
Mrs. Hrmans. 205 
 
 PARTING WORDS. 
 
 Leave me ! oh, leave me ! Unto all below 
 Thy presence binds me with too deep a spell ; 
 Thou makest those mortal regions, whence I go, 
 Too mighty in their loveliness. Farewell, 
 
 That I may part in peace ! 
 
 Leave me ! — thy footstep, with its lightest sound, 
 The very shadow of thy waving hair, 
 Wakes in my soul a feeling too profound. 
 Too strong for aught that loves and dies, to bear : 
 Oh ! bid the conflict cease ! 
 
 I hear thy whisper — and the warm tears gush 
 Into mine eyes, the quick pulse thrills my heart ; 
 Thou bid'st the peace, the reverential hush. 
 The still submission, from my thoughts depart ; 
 Dear one ! this must not be. 
 
 The past looks on me from thy mournful eye, 
 The beauty of our free and vernal days ; 
 Our communings with sea, and hill, and sky — 
 Oh ! take that bright world from my spirit's gaze ! 
 Thou art all earth to me ! 
 
 Shut out the sunshine from my dying room. 
 The jasmine's breath, the murmur of the bee : 
 Let not the joy of bird-notes pierce the gloom ! 
 They speak of love, of summer, and of thee. 
 
 Too much — and death is here ! 
 
 Doth our own spring make happy music now, 
 From the old beech- roots flashing into day? 
 Are the pure lilies imaged in its flow ? 
 Alas ! vain thoughts ! that fondly thus can stray 
 From the dread hour so near I 
 
 If I could but draw courage from the light 
 Of thy clear eye, that ever shone to bless ! 
 
2o6 English Poetesses, 
 
 — Not now ! 'twill not be now ! — my aching sight, 
 Drinks from that fount a flood of tenderness, 
 Bearing all strength away ! 
 
 Leave me ! — thou com'st between my heart and Heaven ; 
 I would be still, in voiceless prayer to die ! — 
 Why must our souls thus love, and then be riven ? 
 Return ! thy parting wakes mine agony ! 
 Oh, yet awhile delay ! 
 
 THE TREASURES OF THE DEEP. 
 
 What hidest thou in thy treasure-caves and cells ? 
 
 Thou hollow-sounding and mysterious main I — 
 r*ale glistening pearls, and rainbow-coloured shells, 
 
 Bright things which gleam unrecked of, and in vain ! — 
 Keep, keep thy riches, melancholy sea I 
 We ask not such from thee. 
 
 Yet more, the depths have more ! — what wealth untold, 
 Far down, and shining through their stillness lies ! 
 
 Thou hast the starry gems, the burning gold. 
 Won from ten thousand royal Argosies ! — 
 
 Sweep o'er thy spoils, thou wild and wrathful main ; 
 Earth claims not these again. 
 
 Yet more, the depths have more ! — thy waves have rolled 
 
 Al)ove the cities of a world gone by ! 
 Sand hath filled up the palaces of old. 
 
 Seaweed o'ergrown the halls of revelry : 
 
 Dash o'er them, ocean ! in thy scornful ]:)lay ! 
 
 Man yields them to decay. 
 
 Yet more ! the billows and the depths have more ! 
 
 High hearts and brave are gathered to thy breast ! 
 They hear not now the booming waters roar, 
 
 The battle thunders will not break their rest. — 
 Keep thy red gold and gems, thou stormy grave ! 
 Give back the true and brave ! 
 
Mrs, He mans. 207 
 
 Give back the lost and lovely ! — those for whom 
 The place was kept at board and hearth so long, 
 
 The prayer went up through midnight's breathless gloom, 
 And the vain yearning woke 'midst festal song ! 
 
 Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o'erthrown — 
 But all is not thine own. 
 
 To thee the love of woman hath gone down, 
 Dark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head. 
 
 O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowery crown. 
 Yet must thou hear a voice — Restore the dead ! 
 
 Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee ! — 
 Restore the dead, thou sea ! 
 
 THE HOUR OF DEATH. 
 
 Leaves have their time to fall. 
 And flowers to wither at the north- wind's breath, 
 
 And stars to set — but all. 
 Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death ! 
 
 Day is for mortal care ; 
 Eve, for glad meetings round the joyous hearth ; 
 
 Night, for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer ; 
 But all for thee, thou Mightiest of the earth. 
 
 The banquet hath its hour. 
 Its feverish hour, of mirth, and song, and wine ; 
 
 There comes a day for griefs o'erwhelming power, 
 A time for softer tears — but all are thine. 
 
 Youth and the opening rose 
 May look like things too glorious for decay, 
 
 And smile at thee — but thou art not of those 
 That wait the ripened bloom to seize their prey. 
 
 Leaves have their time to fall, 
 And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath, 
 
 And stars to set— but all, 
 Thou hast a// seasons for thine own, O Death ! 
 
2o8 English Poetesses. 
 
 TO WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Thine is a strain to read among the hills, 
 
 The old and full of voices ; by the source 
 Of some free stream, whose gladdening presence fills 
 
 The solitude with sound ; for in its course 
 Even such is thy deep song, that seems a part 
 Of those high scenes, a fountain from their heart. 
 
 Or its calm spirit fitly may be taken 
 
 To the still breast in sunny garden bowers, 
 
 Where vernal winds each tree's low tones awaken. 
 And bud and bell with changes mark the houis. 
 
 There let thy thoughts be with me, while the day 
 
 Sinks with a golden and serene decay. 
 
 Or by some hearth where happy faces meet. 
 
 When night hath hushed the woods, with all their birds, 
 
 There, from some gentle voice, that lay were sweet 
 As antique music, linked with household words ; 
 
 While in pleased murmurs woman's lip might move,' 
 
 And the raised eye of childhood shine in love. 
 
 Or, where the shadows of dark solemn yews 
 Brood silently o'er some lone burial-ground. 
 
 Thy verse hath power that brightly might diffuse 
 A breath, a kindling, as of spring, around ; 
 
 From its own glow of hope and courage high, 
 
 And steadfast faith's victorious constancy. 
 
 True bard and holy ! — thou art e'en as one 
 
 Who, by some secret gift of soul or eye. 
 In every spot beneath the smiling sun 
 
 Sees where the springs of living waters lie ; 
 Unseen awhile they sleep, till, touched by thee, 
 Bright healthful waves flow forth, to each glad wanderer free. 
 
 THE GRAVES OF A HOUSEHOLD. 
 
 They grew in beauty side by side, 
 They filled one home with glee ; — 
 
 Their graves are severed far and wide. 
 By mount, and stream, and sea. 
 
Mrs. Hemans, 209 
 
 The same fund niotlier benl at night 
 
 O'er each fair sleeping brow : 
 She had each folded flower in sight — 
 
 Where are those dreamers now ? 
 
 One 'midst the forest of the West, 
 
 By a dark stream, is laid ; 
 The Indian knows his place of rest. 
 
 Far in the cedar-shade. 
 
 The sea, the blue lone sea, hath one ; 
 
 He lies where pearls lie deep ; 
 He was the loved of all, yet none 
 
 O'er his low bed may weep. 
 
 One sleeps where southern vines are drest 
 
 Above the noble slain : 
 He wrapt his colours round his breast 
 
 On a blood-red field of Spain. 
 
 And one — o'er her the myrtle showers 
 
 Its leaves, by soft winds fanned ; 
 She faded 'midst Italian flowers — 
 
 The last of that bright band. 
 
 And parted thus they rest, who played 
 
 Beneath the same green tree ; 
 Whose voices mingled as they prayed 
 
 Around one parent knee ! 
 
 They that with smiles lit up the hall, 
 
 And cheered with song the hearth ! — 
 Alas, for love ! if thoii^ wert all. 
 
 And nought beyond, O Earth ! 
 
 THE BETTER LAND. 
 
 ** I HEAR thee speak of the better land. 
 Thou callest its children a happy band ; 
 Mother ! oh, where is that radiant shore ? 
 Shall we not seek it, and weep no more ? 
 O 
 
210 ENGLisif Poetesses. 
 
 Is it where the Hower of the orange blows, 
 And the lire-flies glance through the myrtle boughs ? "- 
 *' Not there, not there, my child ! " 
 
 ** Is it where the feathery palm-trees rise, 
 And the date grows ripe under sunny skies? 
 Or 'midst the green islands of glittering seas, 
 Where fragrant forests perfume the breeze. 
 And strange, bright birds, on their starry wings. 
 Bear the rich hues of all glorious things ? " 
 " Not there, not there, my child ! " 
 
 ** Is it far away, in some region old. 
 Where the rivers wander o'er sands of gold ? — 
 Where the burning rays of the ruby shine. 
 And the diamond lights up the secret mine. 
 And the pearl gleams forth from the coral strand ? — 
 Is it there, sweet mother, that better land ? " — 
 *' Not there, not there, my child ! 
 
 ** Kye hath not seen it, my gentle boy ! 
 Ear hath not heard its deep songs of joy ; 
 Dreams cannot picture a world so fair. 
 Sorrow and death may not enter there ; 
 Time doth not breathe on its fadeless bloom. 
 For beyond the clouds, and beyond the tomb, 
 It is there, it is there, my child I '* 
 
 WOMAN AND FAME. 
 
 Thou hast a charmed cup, O Fame ! 
 
 A draught that mantles high. 
 And seems to lift this earthly frame 
 
 Above mortality. 
 Away ! to me — a woman — bring 
 Sweet waters from affection's spring. 
 
 Thou hast green laurel -leaves that twine 
 
 Into so proud a wreath ; 
 For that resplendent gift of thine. 
 
 Heroes have smiled in death. 
 
Mrh. Hemans. 
 
 Give ine from some kind hand a flower, 
 The record of one happy hour ! 
 
 Thou hast a voice, whose thrilling tone 
 
 Can bid each life-pulse beat, 
 As when a trumpet's note hath blown, 
 
 Calling the brave to meet : 
 13ut mine, let mine — a woman's breast, 
 By words of home-born love be blessed. 
 
 A hollow sound is in thy song, 
 
 A mockery in thy eye. 
 To the sick heart that doth but long 
 
 For aid, for sympathy ; 
 For kindly looks to cheer it on, 
 For tender accents that are gone. 
 
 Fame, Fame ! thou canst not be the stay 
 
 Unto the drooping reed, 
 The cool fresh fountain, in the day 
 
 Of the soul's feverish need ; 
 Where must the lone one turn or flee ? — ■ 
 Not unto thee, oh ! not to thee ! 
 
 2 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " L. E. L." — ADELAIDE PROCTER — CAROLINE NORTON — LADY 
 DUFFERIN — MRS. SOUTHEY — MARY MITFORD — SARAH 
 FLOWER ADAMS — SARA COLERIDGE. 
 
 MRS. BROWNINC; has addressed a very kind poem 
 to Letitia Landon, but other verse writers, espe- 
 cially the more modern ones, have not held her in high 
 esteem. There has been a natural jealousy about her, 
 and the real truth is that this jealousy was not irrational. 
 " L. E. L." was a spoiled woman. 
 
 Not pretty enough to be a beauty, not patient enough to 
 be a clear thinker, not inspired enough to be a fine poet, 
 not sincere enough to be steadfast in her affections ; a little 
 of the flirt and gadabout, so hungry for applause that she 
 hasted too eagerly to win it, — she was doomed to the early 
 disappointment which her curious foreboding disposition 
 seemed to court for itself. On the other hand, if not 
 beautiful, she was graceful ; if not inspired, she had such a 
 taste as came very near the true poetical nature ; if not pos- 
 sessed of that great-hearted sincerity which makes the highest 
 lives a succession of long calms and a few great storms, she 
 was possessed of sweet amiability, and that longing to be 
 loved constantly betraying itself even in feeble natures, 
 though with an appeal that is often touching. There was 
 nothing to make her early days miserable, but from child- 
 hood her style of thought, so far as it was expressed in lite- 
 rary form, was sickly. Ere she had become a full-grown 
 woman, the world did everything it could to help her on. 
 
''L.E.Lr 213 
 
 A kindly editor opened up to her the glory of print as soon as 
 she could write facile verses ; the public repaid her with its 
 courtesy. At the Oxford Union there was a rush of young 
 students whenever a new number of the magazine containing 
 her poems appeared. Emolument came to her with more 
 ease than it has come to almost any woman-writer of our 
 own times. Society was willing to dandle her, and more 
 than one man of genius sought to marry her. With many 
 sensibilities, but no distinct aim, Letitia Landon allowed 
 the circumstances of her first success to master her. 
 Finding that money and flattery could be had in abun- 
 dance by such facile productions as her pen had produced 
 for the Literary Gazette^ she devoted her powers to 
 endless contributions for " Books of Beauty," " Keepsakes," 
 and all such ephemera of the time. Finding also that one 
 or two men of exceptional literary power took an interest in 
 her which her winning disposition elicited as much as her 
 talents, she gave herself up to their company and guidance 
 with a heedlessness that her best friends called ingenuous, 
 but which w^as still unbecoming in a young girl whom 
 circumstances had made her own mistress. The conse- 
 quence was that invidious calumny ere long attacked her. 
 Some whom she had eclipsed in the literary world won- 
 dered that the public did not grow tired of her conceits, 
 and in their jealousy they found means to characterise her 
 want of circumspection in private life as levity, and at 
 length rumour had it that her levity had come to be some- 
 thing worse. Then true sorrow fell upon her. No one 
 now believes that her purity was ever really sullied by 
 her conduct ; but yet the mysterious allegations brought 
 against her by her enemies were never fully faced and 
 exposed. She continued to write, always with acceptance 
 to the reading public, and increasingly with a sad burden in 
 her song. Lovers still clung to her, however ; and one to 
 whom she had given her affection was prepared to front and 
 
214 English Poetesses. 
 
 live down with her all the backbiting that her carelessness 
 had allowed to grow into serious scandal ; but with that 
 curious knack of making herself misunderstood which 
 characterised her so much, she considered it necessary to 
 renounce her connection with this gentleman. The con- 
 sequence of this severance was the very opposite to what 
 she had anticipated, since the rupture was considered by the 
 ill-natured to cause new reasons for distrust. Then came 
 another engagement in which her heart seemed less con- 
 cerned at the commencement. It was her last chance 
 of happiness, and apparently she was resolved to cast her 
 hopes into it. Its dhiouement was a tragic fate which befell 
 her in circumstances already well-known to so many, and 
 to be referred to more particularly on a subsequent page. 
 Smiling in society and sighing in her study, thirsting for 
 love and too heedless of that maiden reticence which best 
 hoards a woman's affections for the worthiest object, she 
 had herself to blame in a great measure for the shadow that 
 makes her so pensive a picture on the page of our literature. 
 She reminds us of Clarissa, who with the bloom of lovely 
 womanhood upon her young cheek, sat with such sad 
 persistence, stitching at her own shroud. 
 
 " L. E. L." was the daughter of John Landon, a gentle- 
 man of good family, who had been to sea in his youth, 
 and who in middle-age became a successful army agent 
 in London, although speculation ruined him before his 
 family of three had passed out of childhood. Of these three 
 children, Letitia Elizabeth was the oldest. She was born at 
 25, Hans Place, Chelsea, on 14th August, 1802. Her ear- 
 liest education was conducted by a Miss Rowen, w^ho subse- 
 quently had the fortune to become a French countess ; and 
 passing from this lady's charge at the age of seven, Letitia was 
 placed under the care of a cousin, who was not very capable 
 of firmly superintending her relative's studies. The little 
 girl and her brother, who subsequently became a respected 
 
''L,E,Lr 215 
 
 clergyman, plunged into any kind of literature that came 
 into their hands ; and geographies, grammars, and catechisms 
 gave place considerably to miscellaneous reading, which 
 included " RoUin's Ancient History," " Hume and Smollet's 
 History," " Plutarch's Lives," " Gay's Fables," " The Life of 
 Josephus," " Dobson's Memoir of Petrarch," and ** Mon- 
 tesquieu's Spirit of the Laws ; " and besides such solid 
 stuff, the little children ran through 150 volumes of 
 " Cooke's Poets and Novelists." Many a wild flower of 
 fancy must have taken root in their imaginations during 
 this period of eccentric self-education. 
 
 As she grew a little older, Letitia exhibited many apti- 
 tudes for learning ; but two subjects she could never master 
 — namely, penmanship and music. The waywardness of 
 the brother and sister vented itself in strange vagaries. 
 Their constant amusement — and a very serious one it 
 often was — was imagining themselves to be Spartans. 
 They laid upon themselves odd ascetic rules in order to 
 give to themselves the simple dignity which they imagined 
 must have characterised little Spartan boys and girls ; and 
 it is related that if some beggar child came to the door, 
 Letitia would bestow upon it some choice delicacy destined 
 for her own use, observing, with her head in the air, " I 
 would rather be a Spartan than a Sybarite." 
 
 Up to the age of thirteen the girl who was afterwards 
 to write so many mawkish verses was a gleeful, passionate 
 romp. She would on occasion shower a volley of books at 
 the head of any one who offended her ; but the moment 
 such a freak had been indulged in, her winning entreaties 
 would quickly procure her forgiveness. 
 
 Before she had attained the age of eighteen, Letitia 
 became a literary woman. Jerdan, the editor of the Literary 
 Gazette^ then the best periodical in London, was a neighbour 
 of her father's at Brompton. He has recorded his first 
 recollections of the future poetess as that of a plump girl 
 
2i6 English Poetesses. 
 
 bowling a hoop round the walks of her father's garden with 
 stick in one hand and book in the other. Neighbourly 
 intimacy caused Mr. Jerdan to interest himself in what 
 this buxom young lady read and wrote, and ere long the 
 guidance which he gave to her powers enabled her to com- 
 pose lines w^hich were inserted in the Gazette. From 
 their first appearance the numerous contributions to the 
 Gazette which were signed " L. E. L." piqued the public 
 curiosity. They were evidently the work of a young 
 lady ; and as they were romantic and a little sad though 
 sweet in tone, speculation as to their authorship became 
 quite a popular topic. Letitia Landon accordingly found a 
 pleasing stimulus to her pen, and went on writing in Mr. 
 Jerdan's periodical until she was able to publish a complete 
 poetical romance of Switzerland entitled " The Fate of 
 Adelaide" (182 1). This was dedicated to Mrs. Siddons. 
 Between the years 1821-24, a long series of poetical sketches 
 was contributed to the Literary Gazette. In July of 1824, 
 Messrs. Hurst and Robinson published Miss Landon's 
 better known poem " The Improvisatrice," a tale of 
 Florence, interspersed with many songs of various lands. 
 Next year the same firm brought out her " Troubadour," in 
 a volume which also contained " Poetical Sketches.'' In 
 1827 came "The Golden Violet, with its Tales of Chivalry 
 and Romance;" two years later "The Venetian Bracelet," 
 and other poems followed; and in 1835, this facile pen took 
 a subject from a picture by Maclise, and worked it into a 
 volume called " The Vow of the Peacock." 
 
 While these works were being produced " L. E. L." was 
 also constantly engaged in contributing to, editing, or wholly 
 writing some of the most fashionable annuals of the time. 
 Perhaps her most important task in this line was " Fisher's 
 Drawing-Room Scrap-Book," a work which she produced 
 for eight years in succession. The popularity of such 
 expensive, valueless books was then astounding. No form 
 
''l,e.l:' 217 
 
 of literary venture better paid a publisher of capital than 
 this, and the best writers were tempted by the page-pay- 
 ment offered for contributions to anything of the kind. It 
 is clear enough that the big-wigs of literature were half- 
 ashamed of using their powers for books like these, and it 
 is not less clear that for the high pay they often did their 
 very worst work. 
 
 I have before me a sample of this kind of annual — "The 
 Keepsake for 1829." It contains 360 small octavo pages, 
 and nineteen illustrations — each illustration being an en- 
 graved plate. Now, the editor's preface declares that 
 11,000 guineas had been spent on the production of this 
 little work. Certainly, Sir Walter Scott, Southey, Coleridge, 
 and other celebrated men contributed to its pages, and 
 must have been paid large sums for their assistance. What 
 they produced must be pronounced, as a whole, mere trash. 
 The prose, save for one respectable though dull perform- 
 ance of Sir Walter's, is flimsy, and marked by a curiously 
 free morality for such a drawing-room book. As for the 
 poetry, the volume contains verses by Shelley, Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, Moore, Southey, Scott, Mrs. Hemans, "L. E. L.," 
 and J. G. Lockhart, yet it offers scarcely a line of real 
 poetry from first page to last. The most interesting piece 
 of verse in the book is an effort of Southey's, which I can- 
 not recollect to have seen in any collection of his poems. 
 It is called " Lucy and her Bird," and it has a value as 
 an early experiment in that romantic simplicity of diction 
 which was so much an aim with the Lake poets in their 
 salad days. The straining after simplicity of theme and 
 treatment is most marked in this example, and the effect is 
 as ludicrous as anything in " Peter Bell." It begins thus: — 
 
 ** The Sky-lark hath perceived his prison door 
 Unclosed ; for liberty the captive tries : 
 Puss eagerly has watched him from the floor, 
 And in her grasp he flutters, pants, and dies. 
 
2i8 English Poetesses. 
 
 Lucy's own Puss, and Lucy's own clear Bird, 
 Her fostered favourites both for many a day ; 
 That which the tender-hearted girl preferred. 
 She in her fondness knew not sooth to say." 
 
 One of Shelley's effusions in this precious volume begins 
 in the following exalted strain : — 
 
 " It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, 
 
 Towards the end of the sunny month of June, 
 When the north wind congregates in crowds 
 The floating mountains of the silver clouds 
 From the horizon." 
 
 Wordsworth announces himself as a matrimonial agent 
 in a poem called the " Triad " : — 
 
 " Show me the noblest youth of present time, 
 Whose trembling fancy would to love give birth ; 
 Some god or hero from the Olympian clime 
 Returned to seek a consort upon earth ; 
 Or, in no doubtful prospect, let me see 
 The brightest star of ages yet to be. 
 And I will mate and match him blissfully ! " 
 
 And Moore advertises himself thus : — • 
 
 " When they shall tell, in future times, 
 Of thousands given for idle rhymes 
 Like these— the pastimes of an hour — 
 They'll wonder at the lavish taste 
 That could, like tulip-fanciers, waste 
 A little fortune on a flower ! " 
 
 Yes, indeed, we do wonder. 
 
 Meanwhile, in 1830-31 a hastily-written novel, called 
 " Romance and Reality," came from the pen of "L. E. L.", 
 and a sounder experiment in prose fiction, " Francesca 
 Carrara," in 1834, compelled the critics to acknowledge 
 
''L.E,Lr 219 
 
 that besides a knack for writing troubadour verses, Miss 
 Landon was capable of writing capital prose analyses of 
 female character, and of penning descriptions of set scenes 
 in very effective prose. Indeed, anyone who wishes to see 
 ''L. E. L.'s" powers at their best will find them exhibited, 
 not in the wearily musical moan of her poetry, but in the 
 sparkling paragraphs which light up not only the novel just 
 alluded to, but the subsequent prose works of the author. 
 These works are " Traits and Trials of Early Life," a book 
 for the young (1836); "Ethel Churchill" (1837); "Lady 
 Anne Granard," a posthumous novel (1842) ; " and a set of 
 short studies upon " Scott's Female Characters," contri- 
 buted to the Neiv Monthly Magazine^ and collected in her 
 " Literary Remains." To this enumeration of " L. E. L.'s'* 
 writings the only important addition is " Castruccio Cas- 
 trucani," a poor tragedy written with the design of pro- 
 duction by Mr. Macready, but never acted, and only 
 published in the " Literary Remains " which were edited, 
 with a memoir, by Laman Blanchard. 
 
 It was between the year 1835 and 1837 that "L. E. L." 
 passed through the severest trial of her life. Mr. Jerdan, a 
 married man old enough to be her father, had been a 
 constant visitor at her house, and his kindly interest in her, 
 warmly responded to on her part, had been misinterpreted 
 by spies. Dr. Maginn, another married man, cleverer and less 
 scrupulous than Mr. Jerdan, had also given the young poetess 
 much attention, and received from her a certain kind of 
 homage ; therefore in his case also busy-bodies were very 
 anxious "to put two and two together," and fiy. a scandal 
 upon poor "L. E. L." Impetuously defiant for a time of all 
 such attacks upon her fair fame, Miss Landon had not at 
 the most fitting time taken pains to silence evil insinuations 
 by at once challenging her detractors, and respecting con- 
 ventionality more in the guidance of her conduct. However, 
 about the period already mentioned her friends took up her 
 
220 • English Poetesses. 
 
 defence, and though their efforts did not probe matters to 
 the bottom (for they considered circumstantial inquiry would 
 have been an insult to Miss Landon), they succeeded in 
 abashing the foremost scandal-mongers. 
 
 But then came further complications. A gentleman, 
 whose name has not been handed down to us by her 
 biographers, had long paid court to " L. E. L.," and had 
 become her affianced lover. His attachment to her had 
 been constant and chivalrous throughout all the course of 
 slander to which she had been subjected. Since this was 
 so, it was surely a mistaken sense of duty which in 1837 
 caused '* L. E. L." to break off from the engagement under 
 the belief that his happiness depended upon his being free 
 from connection with her name. We do not learn precisely 
 what mistaken notion the gentleman may have taken up with 
 regard to the motives which prompted her surrender; we 
 only know that he gave way to her dictation. Having lost her 
 lover, *' L. E. L." too soon became aware that her surrender 
 of him only laid her open to fresh insinuations, and left her 
 more defenceless against them The feelings of her over- 
 sensitive heart must indeed have been terrible at this crisis 
 of her history. 
 
 A Captain Maclean ere long offered his suit to her. 
 From a child she had cherished curious dreams about the 
 beauties of Africa. Captain Maclean had been Governor of 
 Cape Coast Castle, and perhaps it was this connection with 
 a land on which her fancy had dwelt so often that first 
 drew Miss I^andon's favourable attention towards Captain 
 Maclean. The two became engaged. After the engage- 
 ment Captain Maclean either repented of his choice, or 
 took pity upon her. He withdrew himself to Scotland 
 for a year, and on returning to London endeavoured to 
 bring about a rupture of the match by a marked cold- 
 ness and even rudeness of behaviour to " L. E. L." His 
 friends meanwhile endeavoured to dissuade him from 
 
''L.e.l:' ' 221 
 
 marrying her by whispering in his ear about the bygone 
 scandal. In turn " L. E. L." received hints that Captain 
 Maclean was married already. The.se hints, however, were 
 disproved by his frank confession to her that at Cape Coast 
 Castle a woman had for some time been the mistress of his 
 establishment, though she had never become entitled to 
 rank as his w^ife. With friends on either side fearful as to 
 the results of this engagement, the ill-starred couple yet 
 drifted on together until the time for Maclean's return to 
 Africa came. " L. E. L." was called upon either to expose 
 herself further to the world's taunts about her fickleness, 
 or to cling to this man of uncertain temper, who would 
 carry her away from the bright society in which she 
 mingled, to be the only w^hite woman of any position in 
 the governing circle of that deadly district of Africa 
 know^n as " the w^hite man's grave." 
 
 On the yth of June, 1838, Captain Maclean married 
 Letitia Landon at St. Mary's, Bryanston Square. The 
 marriage w^as a private one, and the bride was given 
 away by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer, better known as 
 Lord Lytton. On 5th July following, the Governor of 
 the Cape Coast sailed from Portsmouth with his wife. 
 *' L. E. L." parted cheerfully from her relatives and friends, 
 and was full of literary projects for the future. The 
 voyage was a pleasant one, and during its course " L. E. L." 
 produced an "Address to the Polar Star," which was 
 sent home and appeared in a magazine on ist January, 
 1839. 'i^^ same number of the magazine contained the 
 announcement of her death by poison. 
 
 The sad story of this poisoning has never been cleared 
 up, and never will be cleared up. Captain Maclean became 
 sick and irritable almost as soon as he had returned to that 
 malarial coast While he was able to be about, his wife 
 never saw much of him except early in the morning and 
 late at night. When fever had confined him to his bed she 
 
2 22 ' English Poetesses, 
 
 had to nurse him, and prostrated her own system by her 
 exertions and anxieties ; for four nights she lay awake 
 beside him on the floor. On the morning of October 15, 
 she had risen early to prepare some food for her husband, 
 and after this had been handed him she retired to rest 
 again. After an hour and a half's repose she rose to write 
 some letters for her friends in England. These were to be 
 carried by her maid, E. Baillie, who was to sail for England 
 in the course of the day. This maid received the letters 
 from her mistress, and, returning to her about half-an-hour 
 afterwards upon some errand, discovered her stretched upon 
 the floor with an empty bottle in her hand. The bottle 
 w^as labelled " Acid. Hydrocyanicum Dilutum," — that is to 
 say, it had presumably contained prussic acid. In spite of 
 the somew^hat bungling attendance afforded her by a speedily 
 called physician, Mrs. Maclean died within an hour or two ; 
 and on the following day she was buried within the w^alls of 
 the gloomy, pestilence-haunted Castle. Troops are now 
 drilled over her grave, and her last resting-place is described 
 with a strange prophetic appropriateness in words of her 
 
 own : — 
 
 " Oh, when the grave shall open for me 
 (I care not how soon that time may be), 
 Never a rose shall grow on that tomb — 
 It breathes too much of hope and bloom." 
 
 Three theories were started to account for "L. E. L.'s" 
 sad death. In the first place, there was the theory put forth by 
 her husband, w^ho stated that she had been in the habit of 
 taking small doses of the poison in accordance with her 
 English doctor's directions, and that her death was simply the 
 effect of an over-dose inadvertently administered by herself 
 The second theory was the direct surmise that the native 
 woman, who had formerly been Captain Maclean's mistress 
 in the Castle, had poisoned her English rival from motives 
 of jealousy. The third theory was that "L. E. L.," stung to 
 
'' Z. E, Z.*' 223 
 
 madness by the sick vagaries of her husband, and the 
 depressing influence of the unhealthy spot, had deliberately 
 planned and executed suicide. On reviewing all the 
 accounts of the melancholy event which I have been 
 able to see, I am incHned to suggest a combination of 
 the first theory and the third. It seems not improbable 
 that if " L. E. L." was herself suffering from physical 
 debility as well as mental irritation and prostration, she 
 might have been about to take a small dose of her 
 dangerous remedy, and been tempted in a sudden 
 paroxysm of spiritual madness, to add the few additional 
 drops which brought death to the cup. 
 
 CRESCENTIUS. 
 
 I LOOKED upon his brow — no sign 
 
 Of guilt or fear was there ; 
 He stood as proud by that death-shrine 
 
 As even o'er despair 
 He had a power ; in his eye 
 There was a quenchless energy — 
 
 A spirit that could dare 
 The deadliest form that death could take, 
 And dare it for the daring's sake. 
 
 He stood — the fetters on his hand ; 
 
 He raised them haughtily ; 
 And had that grasp been on the brand, 
 
 It could not wave on high 
 With freer pride than it waved now. 
 Around he looked with changeless brow 
 
 On many a torture nigh, — 
 The rack, the chain, the axe, the wheel, 
 And, worst of all, his own red steel. 
 
 I saw him once before : he rode 
 V Upon a coal-black steed, 
 
 iVnd tens of thousands thronged the road, 
 And Ijadc their warrior speed ; 
 
2 24 English Poetesses. 
 
 His helm, his breastplate were of gold, 
 And graved with many a dent, that told 
 
 Of many a soldier's deed ; 
 The sun shone on his sparkling mail. 
 And danced his snow-plume on the gale. 
 
 But now he stood chain'd and alone, 
 
 The headsman by his side ; 
 The plume, the helm, the charger gone ; 
 
 The sword, which had defied 
 The mightiest, lay broken near. 
 And yet no sign or sound of fear 
 
 Came from that lip of pride ; 
 And never king's or conqueror's brow 
 Wore higher look than his did now. 
 
 He bent beneath the headsman's stroke 
 
 With an uncovered eye ; 
 A wild shout from the numbers broke, 
 
 W^ho throng'd to see him die. 
 It was a people's loud acclaim, 
 The voice of anger and of shame, 
 
 A nation's funeral cry : 
 Rome's wail above her only son, 
 Her patriot, and her latest one. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 My heart is like the failing hearth 
 
 Now by my side ; 
 One by one its bursts of flame 
 
 Have burnt and died 
 There are none to watch the sinkmg blaze, 
 
 And none to care. 
 Or if it kindle into strength. 
 
 Or waste in air. 
 My fate is as yon faded wreath 
 
 Of summer flowers : 
 TheyVe spent their store of fragrant health 
 
 On sunny hours. 
 
" Z. E. Lr 225 
 
 Which reck'd them not, which heeded not 
 
 When they were dead ; 
 Other flowers, unwarn'd by them. 
 
 Will spring instead. 
 And my own heart is as the lute 
 
 I now am waking : 
 Wound to too fine and high a pitch, 
 
 They both are breaking. 
 And of their song what memory 
 
 Will stay behind ? 
 An echo like a passing thought 
 
 Upon the wind. 
 Silence, forgetfulness, and rust, 
 
 Lute, are for thee ; 
 And such my lot : neglect, the grave — 
 
 These are for me I 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Farewell, farewell ! I'll dream no more, 
 
 'Tis misery to be dreaming ; 
 Farewell, farewell I and I will be 
 
 At least like thee in seeming. 
 I will go forth to the green vale 
 
 Where the sweet wild flowers are dwelling, 
 Where the leaves and the birds together sing, 
 
 And the woodland fount is welling. 
 Not there, not there I too much of bloom 
 
 Has Spring flung o'er each blossom ; 
 The tranquil place too much contrasts 
 
 The unrest of my bosom. 
 I will go to the lighted halls. 
 
 Where midnight passes fleetest ; 
 Oh, memory there too much recalls 
 
 Of saddest and of sweetest. 
 - I'll turn me to the gifted page. 
 
 Where the bard his soul is flinging: 
 Too well it echoes mine own heart, 
 
 Breaking e'en while singing. 
 
226 English Poetesses, 
 
 I must have rest ! Oh, heart of mine, 
 
 When wilt thou lose thy sorrow-? 
 Never, till in the quiet grave — 
 
 Would I slept there to-morrow. 
 
 Few acquainted with our literature have any but pleasant 
 
 thoughts of Adelaide Procter, " the golden-haired Adelaide " 
 
 of her father's poems. The reputation of Barry 
 
 Adelaide Cornwall was, and has continued to be, such 
 
 Anne . . . 
 
 Procter. ^^ gained great interest for the affection with 
 
 which he dwelt upon his daughter and her 
 performances. She was very unobtrusive as a literary 
 personage. She did not claim for herself any particular 
 place or mission among her brothers and sisters of the pen. 
 Her poems were not efforts. They were spontaneous 
 productions of a sweet, wholesome nature, designed solely 
 to brighten the lives of ordinary people. If she pleased the 
 many readers of Household IVords, apparently her ambition 
 was largely satisfied. We know, also, that while by nature 
 she was endowed in many artistic ways, and while among 
 her friends she was full of that sunshiny character which 
 endears its possessor more than talent, her real life was 
 not in the higher realms of imagination or in the inter- 
 course of society, but was a secret devotion to piety. To 
 be sure, the fact that this piety led her into the Roman 
 Catholic Church shocked and perhaps prejudiced many who 
 had early admired her writings. Still, there is a nun-like 
 charm about the portrait of her which hearsay has handed 
 down to us. And this peculiar charm hangs about her 
 poetry also. 
 
 In the spring of 1853, Charles Dickens received, as a 
 proferred contribution for Household Words^ a poem signed 
 " Mary Berwick," with a communication dated from a 
 circulating library in the West End. Dickens liked the 
 poem, and wrote for further contributions from this new 
 correspondent. " Miss Berwick," consequently, was encour- 
 
Adelaide Procter. 227 
 
 aged to continue sending in verses, and as regularly as they 
 were forwarded they were printed. It seems that in some 
 unaccountable manner it came to be an understood thing in 
 the Household Words office that this " Miss Berwick " was 
 a governess ; and when poems of hers reached the editor 
 from Italy, it was supposed that she had gone thither with 
 the family in which she was employed. Many a poem from 
 her pen had gratified the readers of Dickens's popular 
 paper, and had been well paid for, before anything more 
 like the truth became known regarding the writer. 
 
 In December of 1854 "The Seven Poor Travellers'' 
 appeared as the Christmas number of Household Words. 
 Dickens, on the day of its publication, put it in his pocket 
 to show to a few friends in whose company he was going 
 to dine. Among these friends were Barry Cornwall and his 
 wife ; and the first thing Dickens said, when he laid his 
 number on the drawing-room table, was a word of praise to 
 a poem in its pages from "Miss Berwick." The next day 
 he was informed that the secret must out : " Miss Berwick " 
 was Adelaide, the daughter of his old and dear friend 
 Procter (" Barry Cornwall "), and the mysterious governess 
 was therefore a young lady whose acquaintance he had long 
 enjoyed. Adelaide had reckoned that partiality or courtesy 
 might have caused Dickens to favour her efforts unduly, had 
 she forwarded them for his consideration under her own 
 name. As " Miss Berwick," therefore, she had determined 
 to test the soundness of her work on its own merits. 
 
 Adelaide Anne Procter was born in Bedford Square, 
 London, on the 30th of October, 1825. At a very early 
 age she used to treasure books of poetry as other children 
 cherish dolls ; but until she had attained the dignity of 
 print not even her father knew that she was herself addicted 
 to the writing of verses. Probably her first published lines 
 were those which she contributed to the " Book of Beauty." 
 She early wrote also for Cornhill^ Good Words, and also for 
 p 2 
 
2 28 English Poetesses. 
 
 an ephemeral booklet called "AChaplet of Verses." But 
 Household Words did for her what Jerdan's Literary 
 Gazette had done for *' L. E. L." The hearty, almost 
 uneditorial sympathy which Dickens bestowed on his 
 contributors had the kindliest effect on Adelaide Procter. 
 It happened that the public addressed through the pages 
 of Household Words was precisely the public best suited to 
 appreciate her gentle qualities as a writer of verse. To say 
 that none of Miss Procter's verse rises above the level 
 of Household Words is not to assign her writings a low 
 place. It is surely a grand aim of a poet to reach the 
 hearts, not of a cultivated few merely, but of the toiling 
 busy thousands who read such things as they run. To 
 comfort and purify and brighten the lives of such, from 
 time to time, with a few musical words, spoken from the 
 heart, this was mission enough to accomi)lish ; and Miss 
 Procter accomplished it. Her poems still accomplish 
 this end. Her " Lyrics and Legends" are still in demand; 
 and wherever her work goes it ^'engentles humanity," 
 to use a lovely phrase coined by the Duchess of New- 
 castle. 
 
 Of the private life of Adelaide Procter there is little to 
 tell. She was an accomplished linguist, a graceful musician, 
 and something of a painter to boot. Always eminently 
 pious by temperament, she was also possessed of abundant 
 spirits. This flow of good humour is not indeed apparent 
 in her slightly sombre poems ; but it appears to have been 
 her most marked characteristic among those who knew her 
 intimately. " Golden-tressed Adelaide " must therefore have 
 been a peculiarly winning young woman, and no doubt ran 
 great risks of being spoiled by the many agreeable people 
 with whom she had the fortune to mix in her father's wide 
 circle of friends. 
 
 Philanthropy, however, was the real life-work Miss 
 Procter had chosen for herself. Perhaps her efforts in this 
 
Adelaide Procter. 229 
 
 direction were a little spasmodic. Now she was interested 
 in night schools ; now in refuges ; now in visiting the sick ; 
 and so on. So eagerly did she plunge into this kind of 
 labour that her friends had cause for serious anxiety regard- 
 ing her health. Too bright an eye, and too persistent a 
 cough, were giving ominous intimations. Something of the 
 martyr-spirit, nevertheless, fired her enthusiastic nature, 
 when these warnings came to her. No persuasion could 
 make her relinquish her arduous toil for the good of 
 others. 
 
 At last the day came when she sank under the strain. 
 Her constitution had completely succumbed under the tasks 
 devolving upon it. On the 2nd of f'ebruary, 1864, con- 
 sumption carried her off in the arms of that Angel of whom 
 she has written in words that have embalmed themselves in 
 many minds : — 
 
 '* Why shouklst ihou fear the beautiful angel, Death, 
 Who waits thee at the portals of the skies, 
 Ready to kiss away thy struggling breath, 
 Ready with gentle hand to close thine eyes ? 
 
 " Oh, what were life, if life were all ? Thine eyes 
 Are blinded by their tears, or thou wouldst see 
 Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies, 
 
 And death, thy friend, will give them all to thee." 
 
 AVhat was the poem Miss Procter contributed to the 
 ' Seven Poor Travellers," I have not the means at hand to 
 ascertain ; but probably it was " The Angel's Story," which 
 begins in the following mellifluous fashion : — 
 
 Through the blue and frosty heavens, 
 Christmas stars were shining bright ; 
 
 C listening lamps throughout the city 
 Almost matched their gleaming; light ; 
 
 While the winter snow was lying. 
 
 And the winter winds were sighing, 
 Long ago, one Christmas night. 
 
230 English Poetesses, 
 
 While, from every tower and steeple, 
 Pealing bells were sounding clear 
 
 (Never with such tones of gladness, 
 Save when Christmas time is near) ; 
 
 Many a one that night was merry 
 That had toiled all through the year. 
 
 That night saw old wrongs forgiven, 
 PViends, long parted, reconciled ; 
 
 Voices all unused to laughter. 
 
 Mournful eyes that rarely smiled ; 
 
 Trembling hearts that feared the morrow, 
 From their anxious thoughts beguiled. 
 
 Rich and poor felt love and blessing 
 From the gracious season fall ; 
 
 Joy and plenty in the cottage, 
 Peace and feasting in the hall ; 
 
 And the voices of the children 
 Ringing clear above it all. 
 
 Yet one house was dim and darkened : 
 Ciloom, and sickness, and despair 
 
 Dwelling in the gilded chambers. 
 Creeping up the marble stair. 
 
 Even stilled the voice of mourning — 
 For a child lay dying there. 
 
 This is a kind of verse that goes straight to the hearts of 
 simple people, and does them good. In Miss Procter's 
 poems there is a great deal about angels, and stars, and 
 churches. The commonplace often forms her theme ; but 
 she is curiously successful, as a rule, in avoiding imitative 
 or commonplace treatment of her subjects. We cannot 
 point to any poet or poetess as her model. In this respect, 
 so far as she goes, she is as original as Longfellow. And, 
 like Longfellow, she gives us word-})ictures and word-music 
 eminently adapted for illustration at the hands of draughtsman 
 or musician ; for her thought is always clearly enough defined. 
 
Adelaide Procter 231 
 
 and never rises into mysticism. " Cleansing Fires," " Shining 
 Stars," " The Lost Chord," — who has not ahuost learnt 
 these poems by heart, through the medium of musical set- 
 tings ? Miss Procter was certainly possessed in no small 
 degree of the refined lyrical ear which distinguishes her 
 father among greater poets. Of her longer efforts, her 
 ** Legends," it is difficult to speak with discrimination ; for 
 some of the traditions the poetess adopts are so beautiful 
 in themselves that with the added graces of Adelaide 
 Procter's gentle style they command the very tenderest 
 admiration. Take the '' Legend of Provence," for ex- 
 ample : — 
 
 The lights extinguished, by the hearth I leant, 
 
 Half weary with a listless discontent. 
 
 The flickering giant shadows, growing near, 
 
 Closed round me with a dim and silent fear : 
 
 All dull, all dark ; save when the leaping flame. 
 
 Glancing, lit up a picture's ancient fram t. 
 
 Above the hearth it hung. Perhaps the night. 
 
 My foolish tremors, or the gleaming light. 
 
 Lent power to that portrait dark and quaint, 
 
 A portrait such as Rembrandt loved to paint. 
 
 The likeness of a nun. I seemed to trace 
 
 A world of sorrow in that patient face. 
 
 In the thin hands folded across her breas!; ; 
 
 Its own and the room's shadow hid the rest. 
 
 I gazed and dreamed, and the dull embers stirred. 
 
 Till an old legend that I once had heard 
 
 Came back to me, linked to the mystic gloom 
 
 Of that dark picture in the ghostly room. 
 
 In the far South, where clustering vines are hung. 
 Where first the old chivalric lays were sung, 
 "Where earliest smiled that gracious child of France, 
 Angel, and knight, and fairy, called Romance, 
 I stood one day. The warm blue June was spread 
 Upon the earth ; blue summer overhead, 
 Without a cloud to fleck its radiant glare, 
 Without a breath to stir its sultry air. 
 
232 English Poetesses. 
 
 All still, all silent, save the sobbing rush 
 
 Of rippling waves, that lapsed in silver hush 
 
 Upon the beach, where, glittering towards the strand, 
 
 The ]-)urple Mediterranean kissed the land. 
 
 All still, all peaceful, when a convent chime 
 Broke on the mid -day silence for a time, 
 Then trembling into quiet seemed to cease, 
 In deeper silence and more utter peace. 
 So as I turned to gaze, where, gleaming white. 
 Half hid by shadowy trees from passers' sight. 
 The Convent lay, one who had dwelt for long 
 In that fair home of ancient tale and song, 
 Who knew the story of each cave and hill. 
 And every haunting fancy lingering still 
 Within the land, spake thus to me, and told 
 The Convent's treasured legend, quaint and old. 
 
 Of all the nuns, no heart was half so light, 
 No eyelids veiling glances half as bright, 
 No step that glided with such noiseless feet. 
 No face that looked so tender or so sweet, 
 No voice that rose in choir so pure, so clear. 
 No heart to all the others half so dear. 
 So surely touched by others' pain or woe 
 (Guessing the grief her young life could not know) 
 No soul in childlike faith so undefiled 
 As Sister Angela's, the " Convent Child." 
 For thus they loved to call her. She had known 
 No love, no home, no kindred, save their own, 
 An orphan to their tender nursing given — 
 Child, plaything, pupil, now the Bride of Heaven. 
 
 And she it was who trimmed the lamj)'s red light 
 That swung before the altar day and night ; 
 Her hands it was whose patient skill could trace 
 The finest 'broidery, weave the costliest lace ; 
 But most of all, her first and dearest care. 
 The office she would never miss or share, 
 Was every day to weave fresh garlands sweet, 
 To place before the shrine at Mary's feet. 
 
Adelaide Procter. 233 
 
 Nature is l)ounteous in that region fair, 
 
 For even Winter has her blossoms there. 
 
 Thus Angela loved to count each feast the best, 
 
 \^y telling with what flowers the shrine was dressed. 
 
 In pomp supreme the countless roses passed, 
 
 Battalion on battalion thronging fast. 
 
 Each with a different banner flaming bright. 
 
 Damask, or striped, or crimson, pink, or white. 
 
 Until they bowed before a new-born queen, 
 
 And the pure virgin Lily rose serene. 
 
 Though Angela always thought the Mother blest 
 
 Must love the time of her own hawthorn best ; 
 
 Each evening through the year, with equal care, 
 
 She placed her flowers, then kneeling down in prayer, 
 
 iVs their faint perfume rose before the shrine, 
 
 So rose her thoughts, — as pure and as divine. 
 
 vShe knelt until the shades grew dim without. 
 
 Till one by one the altar light shone out, 
 
 Till one l)y one the nuns, like shadows dim, 
 
 Gathered around to chant their vesper hymn, 
 
 Her voice then led the music's winged flight. 
 
 And "Ave, Maris Stella" filled the night. 
 
 To the peaceful house where this lovely young acolyte- 
 nun was growing up in the brightness of perfect inno- 
 cence,* there came one night a band of straggling soldiers, 
 who begged for pity on their wounded. So these were 
 received with pious hospitality, and to Angela was 
 assigned the charge of a knight whose wounds were pain- 
 ful, but whose danger was slight. Day after day she 
 hovered by his couch, stilling his groans by the softness 
 of her voice, while she told him stories of her convent 
 and of her saints, that sounded beautiful to him because 
 she was so beautiful. What had he to tell her in return, 
 as he grew towards strength again ? Many an hour she 
 hung over him with widening eyes and eager ears, to 
 liear of all the romance of the chivalrous world which he 
 
 * This novice bears considerable resemblance to the novice in 
 ** Guinivere." 
 
234 English Poetesses. 
 
 could speak of. Instead of the narrow convent's cloistered 
 cell, the field of battle and the tourney ; instead of saintly 
 miracles, the doughty deeds of strong armed men ; and 
 instead of dim, mystical influences of the spirit, — love, the 
 wild ecstasy of human heart leaping to heart. Was all this 
 beautiful brave world lying around the convent, then, and 
 was she never to catch a glimpse of it ? 
 
 Even when she knelt to pray, 
 Some charmed dream kept all her heart away. 
 So days went on, until the convent gate 
 Opened one night. Who durst go forth so late ? 
 Across the moonlit grass, with stealthy tread, 
 Two silent shrouded figures passed and fled. 
 And all was silent, save the moaning seas, 
 That sobbed and pleaded, and a wailing breeze 
 That sighed among the perfumed hawthorn trees. 
 
 \Vhat need to tell of faithless lover, and a lost life, and 
 shame and despair ? At last, crawling away from the city 
 sins which had made up her loathsome existence, she gained 
 her way to the convent door again. 
 
 " Take me in," 
 vShe faltered, " Sister Monica, from sin. 
 And sorrow, and despair that will not cease ; 
 Oh, take me in, and let me die in peace I " 
 With soothing words the Sister bade her wait. 
 Until she brought the key to unbar the gate. 
 The beggar tried to thank her as she lay. 
 And heard the echoing footsteps die away. 
 
 l^ut what soft voice was that which sounded near. 
 And stirred strange trouble in her heart to hear ? 
 She raised her head ; she saw — she seemed to know 
 A face that came from long, long years ago : 
 Herself; yet not as when she fled away, 
 The young and blooming novice, fair and gay ; 
 
Adelaide Procter. 235 
 
 But a grave woman, gentle and serene — 
 
 The outcast knew it — what she might have been. 
 
 But, as she gazed and gazed, a radiance bright 
 
 Filled all the place with strange and sudden light. 
 
 The nun was there no longer ; but instead, 
 
 A figure, with a circle round its head ; 
 
 A ring of glory ; and a face so meek, 
 
 So soft, so tender Angela strove to speak. 
 
 And stretched her hands out, crying, *' Mary mild, 
 
 Mother of mercy, help me ! — help your child ! " 
 
 And Mary answered, " From thy bitter past. 
 
 Welcome, my child ! Oh, welcome home at last ! 
 
 I filled thy place. Thy flight is known to none. 
 
 For all thy daily duties I have done ; 
 
 Gathered thy flowers, and prayed, and sang, and slept. 
 
 Didst thou not know, poor child, thy place was kept'/ 
 
 Kind hearts are here ; yet would the tenderest one 
 
 Have limits to its mercy : God has none. 
 
 And man's forgiveness may be true and sweet, 
 
 15ut yet he stoops to give it. More complete 
 
 Is love that lays forgiveness at thy feet. 
 
 And pleads with thee to raise it. Only Heaven 
 
 Means crowned^ not vanquished^ when it says, Forgiven I " 
 
 Back hurried Sister Monica ; Init where 
 Was the poor beggar she left lying there ? 
 Gone ; and she searched in vain, and sought the place 
 For that wan woman with the piteous face. 
 But only Angela at the gateway stood. 
 Laden with hawthorn blossoms from the wood. 
 And never did a day pass by again. 
 But the old portress, with a sigh of pain, 
 Would sorrow for her loitering ; with a prayer 
 That the poor beggar, in her wild despair. 
 Might not have come to any ill ; and when 
 She added, *' God forgive her !" humbly then 
 Did Angela bow her head and say, *' Amen I " 
 How pitiful her heart was ! all could trace 
 Something that dimmed the brightness of her face 
 After that day, which none had seen before ; 
 Not trouble— but a shadow — nothing more. 
 
236 English Poetesses. 
 
 Years passed away. Then, one dark day of dread 
 
 Saw all the sisters kneeling round a bed 
 
 Where Angela lay dying ; every breath 
 
 Struggling beneath the heavy hand of death. 
 
 But suddenly a flush lit up her cheek, 
 
 She raised her wan right hand, and strove to speak. 
 
 In sorrowing love they listened ; not a sound 
 
 Or sigh disturbed the utter silence round. 
 
 The very taper's flames were scarcely stirred, 
 
 In such hushed awe the sisters knelt and heard. 
 
 And through that silence Angela told her life : 
 
 Her sin, her flight ; the sorrow and the strife. 
 
 And the return ; and that clear, low, and calm, 
 
 *' Praise God for me, my sisters !" and the psalm 
 
 Rang up to heaven, far, and clear, and wide. 
 
 Again, and yet again, then sank and died, 
 
 While her white face had such a smile of peace ; 
 
 They say she never heard the music cease. 
 
 And weeping sisters laid her in her tomb, 
 
 Crowned with a wreath of perfumed hawthorn bloom. 
 
 Who can resist the beauty of such a tale ? Few would 
 care to analyse the whole, and calculate the residuum of 
 poetical grace really due to her who tells the story. In an 
 introduction to a fresh edition of " Legends and Lyrics " 
 (first published in 1858), Charles Dickens says : — 
 
 *' She never by any means held the opinion that she was among the 
 greatest of human beings ; she never suspected the existence of a con- 
 spiracy on the part of mankind against her ; she never recognised in 
 her best friends, her worst enemies ; she never cultivated the luxury of 
 being misunderstood and unappreciated ; she would far rather have 
 died without seeing a line of her composition in print, than that I 
 should have maundered about her as ' the poet ' or ' the jx^etess.' " 
 
 If this is so, let us not criticise too knowingly. The 
 charm of Adelaide Procter's verse is like that of some subtle 
 woman's voice which vibrates in the memory even when 
 the meaning of the words spoken has been but half analysed 
 by the intellect. 
 
Adelaide Procter. 237 
 
 GOD'S GIFTS. 
 
 God gave a gift to earth ; A child, 
 Weak, innocent, and imdefiled. 
 Opened its ignorant eyes and smiled. 
 
 It lay so helpless, so forlorn. 
 Earth took it coldly and in scorn, 
 Cursing the day when it was born. 
 
 She gave it first a tarnished name ; 
 For heritage, a tainted fame. 
 Then cradled it in want and shame. 
 
 All influence of Good or Right, 
 All ray of God's most holy light. 
 She curtained closely from its sight. 
 
 Then turned her heart, her eyes away, 
 Ready to look again the day 
 Its little feet began to stray. 
 
 In dens of guilt the baby played. 
 Where sin, and sin alone, was made 
 The law that all around obeyed. 
 
 With ready and obedient care 
 
 He learnt the tasks they taught him there : 
 
 lilack sin for lesson — oaths for prayer. 
 
 Then Earth arose, and, in her might, 
 To vindicate her injured right, 
 Thrust him in deeper depths of night. 
 
 Branding him with a deeper brand 
 Of shame, he could not understand, 
 The felon outcast of the land. 
 
 (iOD gave a gift to earth : A child, 
 Weak, innocent, and undefiled. 
 Opened its ignorant eyes and smiled. 
 
238 English Poetesses, 
 
 And Earth received the gift, and cried 
 Her joy and triumph far and wide, 
 Till echo answered to her pride. 
 
 She blest the hour when first he came 
 To take the crown of pride and fame. 
 Wreathed through long ages for his name, 
 
 Then bent her utmost art and skill 
 To train the supple mind and will, 
 And guard it from a breath of ill. 
 
 She strewed his morning path with flowers, 
 And Love, in tender dropping showers, 
 Nourished the blue and dawning hours. 
 
 She shed, in rainbow hues of light, 
 A halo round the Good and Right, 
 To tempt and charm the baby's sight. 
 
 And every step, of work or play. 
 Was lit by some such dazzling ray, 
 Till morning brightened into day. 
 
 And then the World arose, and said. 
 Let added honours now be shed 
 On such a noble heart and head ! 
 
 O World, both gifts were pure and bright. 
 Holy and sacred in God's sight ; 
 God will judge them and thee aright ! 
 
 A PARTING. 
 
 Without one bitter feeling let us part ; 
 
 And for the years in which your love has shed 
 A radiance like a glory round my head, 
 
 I thank you — yes, I thank you from my heart. 
 
 I thank you for the cherished hope of years, 
 A starry future, dim and yet divine. 
 Winging its way from Heaven to be mine, 
 
 Laden with joy, and ignorant of tears. 
 
Adelaide Procter. 239 
 
 I thank you — yes, I thank you even more, 
 That my heart learnt not without love to live, 
 But gave and gave, and still had more to gi\ e 
 
 From an abundant and exhaustless store. 
 
 I thank you, and no grief is in these tears ; 
 
 I thank you— not in bitterness, but truth — 
 
 For the fair vision that adorned my youth, 
 And glorified so many happy years. 
 
 Yet how much more I thank you that you tore 
 At length the veil your hand had woven away. 
 That hid the thing I worshipped was of clay. 
 
 And vain and false what I had knelt before. 
 
 I thank you that you taught me the stern truth 
 (None other could have told, and I believed). 
 That vain had been my life, and I deceived, 
 
 And wasted all the purpose of my youth. 
 
 I thank you that your hand dashed down the shrine, 
 
 Wherein my idol worship I had paid ; 
 
 Else had I never known a soul was made 
 To serve and worship only the Divine. 
 
 I thank you that the heart I cast away 
 
 On such as you, though broken, bruised and crushed. 
 
 Now that its fiery throbbing is all hushed. 
 Upon a worthier altar I can lay. 
 
 I thank you for the lesson that such love 
 
 Is a perverting of God's royal right. 
 
 That it is made but for the Infinite, 
 And all too great to live, except above. 
 
 I thank you for a terrible awaking ; 
 
 And if reproach seemed hidden in my pain, 
 
 And sorrow seemed to cry on your disdain, 
 Know that my blessing lay in your forsaking. 
 
 Farewell for ever now ! in peace we part ; 
 
 And should an idle vision of my tears 
 
 Arise before your soul in after years, 
 Remember that I thank you from my heart 
 
240 EyGLiSH Poetesses. 
 
 Those who have read Fanny Kemble's recollections will 
 
 remember that her pages give us several vivid glimpses 
 
 ^ „ of Caroline Norton. At one time she records 
 
 Caroline 
 Norton— Lady that she was present at an evenmg gathermg 
 
 Stirling- where a host of distinguished public and literary 
 
 Maxwell. ^^^^^ y^txQ crowded into a small drawing-room, 
 
 which was literally resplendent with the light of vSheridan 
 
 beauty, male and female : — 
 
 *' Mrs. Sheridan (Miss Callandar), the mother of the Graces, more 
 l)eautiful than anybody but her daughters ; Lady (iraham, their beautiful 
 aunt ; Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Blackwood (Lady Dufferin), Cjcorgiana 
 Sheridan (Duchess of vSomerset and Queen of Beauty by universal 
 consent) ; and Charles Sheridan, their younger brother, a sort of 
 younger brother of the Apollo Belvidere. Certainly I never saw such a 
 bunch of beautiful creatures all growing on one stem. I remarked it to 
 Mrs. Norton, who looked complacently round her tidy drawing-room 
 and said, ' Ves, we arc rather good-looking people.''' 
 
 In another passage the same writer gives us a description 
 of Caroline Norton : 
 
 " She was splendidly handsome, of an English character of beauty, 
 her rather large and heavy features recalling the grandest Grecian and 
 Italian models, to the latter of whom her rich colouring and blue-black 
 braids of hair give her an additional resemblance. Though neither as 
 perfectly lovely as the Duchess of Somerset, or as Lady Dufferin, she 
 produced a far more striking impression than either of them by the com- 
 bination of the poetical genius with which she of the three was gifted, 
 with the brilliant wit and power of repartee which they (especially Lady 
 Dufferin) possessed in common with her, united to the exceptional 
 beauty with which they were all three endowed. Mrs. Norton was 
 extremely epigrammatic. I do not know whether she had any thea- 
 trical talent, though she sang pathetic and humourous songs admir- 
 ably ; and I remember shaking in my shoes when soon after I came 
 out, she told me she envied me, and would give anything to try the 
 stage herself. I thought, as I looked at her wonderfully beautiful face, 
 * Oh, if you did, what would become of me ? ' " 
 
 The enthusiasm here expressed was the enthusiasm of 
 all who then knew her, and even a bishop has recorded that 
 
Caroline Norton. 241 
 
 she seemed to him the connecting-link between a woman 
 and an angel. 
 
 Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, grand-daughter of 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and daughter of the dramatist's 
 son Thomas, was born about 1808. Like her two sisters, 
 she inherited some of the wit of which her grandfather 
 liad so plentiful a supply. Her mother was beautiful, and 
 her grandmother on the father's side was the wonderful 
 Miss Linley of Bath, with whom all the youth of P2ngland 
 was in love when Sheridan ran away with her. ^Vith 
 such prestige, and such endowments of beauty, wit, and 
 artistic talent, who could not have found life a pleasant 
 thing when the world was so easy to be conquered ? It 
 cannot be said, however, that Caroline Norton found life a 
 pleasant thing. The man whom she chose from all her 
 suitors to be her husband did not succeed in making her a 
 contented wife. She was married to the Hon. G. C. Norton, 
 brother of Lord Grantley, in 1827 ; but after some scandal 
 the two were separated — though not divorced — in 1836. 
 Mrs. Norton's relations with one or two prominent men of 
 the world were made the cause of malicious gossip which 
 assumed a most serious form. Lord Melbourne was espe- 
 cially implicated in the charges brought against her. The 
 judgment of to-day upon these charges is decidedly in 
 Mrs. Norton's favour. Her conduct all through life was 
 of such an unguarded character as to lay her open to evil 
 insinuations ; but her husband was a mean roue who had 
 from the day he married her used her as a tool to get him 
 position and money, and it was generally believed that his 
 sole aim in blackening his wife's character was a pecuniary 
 one. Even had she been more culpable, we should doubt- 
 less be chivalrous enough to excuse her. She is a Mary 
 Queen of Scots in the history of our literature. 
 
 In 1875 Mr. Norton died; and a few months before 
 her own death, which took place on the 15th June, 1877, 
 Q 
 
242 English Poetesses. 
 
 the Hon. Mrs. Norton married Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 
 whose labours in archaeological fields are well known. 
 
 Caroline Norton's first effort in literature was a slight 
 sketch, now very scarce, entitled the " Dandies' Rout," with 
 illustrations from her own pencil. There is no copy of this 
 in the British Museum. The little work, it is believed, 
 was produced in Caroline Norton's thirteenth year ; and her 
 sisters had a share in it. In 1829 she brought out "The 
 Sorrows of Rosalie," a poem which dealt with the familiar 
 theme of a young country girl betrayed by a man of 
 rank; and in 1830 came "The Undying One." The 
 next volume attributed to her was published without her 
 consent. It took its name from a . short story forming 
 its earlier pages, "The Coquette," and was entirely com- 
 posed of ephemeral contributions to the Ladies^ Magazine 
 After " The Coquette " came a more serious performance, 
 " The Wife," and " Woman's Reward " (1835). Then came 
 "The Dream," in 1841, a book of poetry which led the 
 Quarterly Review to dub her the female Byron. Macaulay 
 somewhere likens the poetry of Byron to that species of toy- 
 book in which a single face made of india-rubber pierces 
 many pages, and forms the head to a different body on each 
 page. The simile might to a moderate extent be applied to 
 Mrs. Norton's methods of work. In all her poems we are 
 constantly reminded of herself — a very interesting person 
 to be reminded of, and so we do not judge her harshly for 
 the fault. Fault it was, however ; and had she not been so 
 caressed by society, and personally so worthy of the world's 
 admiration, the continual suggestion of her own sufferings 
 and sorrows abounding in her verse would be nothing short 
 of an impertinence. " The Dream " is dedicated to the 
 Duchess of Sutherland, in a set of verses which pointedly 
 refer to the scandals which had arisen in her career and 
 life. These verses are fully as sustained in power as any 
 she ever wrote. It was hardly dignified of the author to 
 
Caroline Norton. 243 
 
 quarrel so pettedly with anonymous maligners whom 
 she could with more effect have silenced by silence 
 itself. 
 
 In 1846 a slight poetical effort, "The Child of the Islands/ 
 was put forth, but added little to Mrs. Norton's reputation. 
 "Aunt Carry's Ballads for Children" (1847), was followed in 
 1863 by the " Lady of La Garaye." : This is reckoned Mrs. 
 Norton's best production in verse. It is a narrative founded 
 on fact, and relates to a misadventure in the life of the 
 Count and the Countess of La Garaye, Dinan. They were a 
 youthful, ardent, and beautiful couple, who never grew tired 
 of hunting and love-making. But one day the chase led 
 them into danger, and the Countess escaped from an 
 accident only with a severely broken body. For weeks her 
 life flickered tremulously in her, but at last she was able to 
 be about again, but robbed of beauty and soundness of body 
 for ever. She would almost have died, rather, for with this 
 beauty she feared her husband's love for her would pass 
 also. His affection for her, however, was only purified and 
 strengthened by the trial, and thenceforth they devoted 
 themselves to good works, turning their ancestral home into 
 a kind of hospital for the poor and needy, and ending their 
 days in the odour of sanctity. 
 
 This theme was slight enough to make a book of verse 
 about, and it really cannot be maintained that Mrs. Norton's 
 treatment of the theme has evolved from it much poetry, or 
 indeed any poetry. Hers is facile, graceful verse, exhibiting 
 refined sympathy, an eye for the picturesque, and an ear for 
 rhythm. She commits few solecisms of style, and she is 
 always easily read. But even with regard to the " Lady 
 of La Garaye," one cannot but conclude that, were it now 
 unearthed from obscurity as the production of some woman 
 unknown to fame for the many personal graces which were 
 Mrs. Norton's attributes, the thing would be dismissed by 
 criticism as little above the commonplace. The extract 
 Q 2 
 
2 44 English Poetesses, 
 
 from " The Dream," given on a subsequent page, shows 
 Mrs. Norton's powers of writing verse at their very highest, 
 but her best literary work lies in her fine novels, " Stuart of 
 Dunleath" (1851), " Lost and Saved" (1863), and ^' Old Sir 
 Douglas " (1868). Her " Tales and Sketches " appeared in 
 1850, and her "English Laws of Custom and Marriage for 
 Women of the Nineteenth Century," in 1854. She wrote 
 ''Letters to the Mob" (i.e., the Chartist Mob) during the 
 Chartist riots; and in 1855 created some stir with a "Letter 
 to the Queen on the Marriage and Divorce Bill." It 
 remains to be added that Mrs. Norton edited the Ladies' 
 Magazine for several years, the Keepsake for one year, and 
 Fisher's Drawing-Roorn Scrap-book for three years. 
 
 The true value of Mrs. Norton's character as an influence 
 in our literature is not that of the poet or the novelist. It 
 lies in the fascination she exerted over other great writers. 
 The intellectual influences on society which should be 
 credited to such a woman as Mrs. Norton, are such as 
 we are too apt to lose sight of altogether. The French 
 estimate such factors in the thought of an age more justly. 
 The most admired woman in a circle which included nearly 
 all the brilliant men of her time in London, she must there 
 have felt herself a greater intellectual power than when, pen 
 in hand, she hung over the sentimental tale, whether in 
 verse or prose. Even the rustic " Shepherd " and his 
 cronies in the " Noctes," far removed from Mrs. Norton's 
 personal sphere as they were, fell down and worshipped her, 
 as readers of these wonderful conversations may remember ; 
 and such a passage in the following, extracted from Crabb 
 Robinson's Diary, shows what sway she held among the men 
 with whom she mixed : — 
 
 "31.S-/ /?/;., 1845. 
 
 '*T dined ihis day uilli KoL^rrs. llic I )i'an of llic puct>. W'c had an 
 interesting jmrty offii^ht. .Mn\nn, llir ]>ii1>li>l)cr, Ktiiii), llic dramatic 
 poet, S]-)cddin;j;. Taisliint^ton. and Alfred 'I\niu ->< m. ihrrc \oiinL; men of 
 
Caroline Norton. 245 
 
 eminent talent belonging to literary Young England, the latter, 
 Tennyson, being by far the most eminent of the young poets. . . . 
 We waited for the eighth — a lady — who, Rogers said, was coming on 
 purpose to see Tennyson, whose work she admired. Me made a 
 mystery of this fair devotee, and would give no name. 
 
 " It was not till dinner was half over that he was called out of 
 the room, and returned with a lady under his arm. A lady neither 
 splendidly dressed nor strikingly beautiful, as it seemed to me, was placed 
 at the table. A whisper ran along the company, which I could not 
 make out. She instantly joined our conversation, with an ease and 
 spirit that showed her quite used to society. She stepped a little too 
 near my prejudices by a harsh sentence about Goethe, which I resented. 
 And we had exchanged a few sentences when she named herself, and I 
 then recognised the much-eulogised and calumniated Honourable Mrs. 
 Norton, who was purged by a jury finding for the defendant in a 
 crim. con. action by her husband against Lord Melbourne. When 
 I knew who she was, I felt that I ought to have distinguished her 
 beauty and grace by my own discernment, and not waited for a 
 formal announcement." 
 
 TWILIGHT. 
 
 O Twilight ! spirit that dost render birth 
 
 To dim enchantments, melting heaven with earth. 
 
 Leaving on craggy hills and running streams 
 
 A softness like the atmosphere of dreams ; 
 
 Thy hour to all is welcome ! Faint and sweet 
 
 I'hy light falls round the peasant's homeward feet. 
 
 Who, slow returning from his task of toil. 
 
 Sees the low sunset gild the cultured soil. 
 
 And, though such radiance round him brightly glows, 
 
 Marks the small spark his cottage window throws. 
 
 Still, as his heart forestalls his weary pace, 
 
 Fondly he dreams of each familiar face, 
 
 Recalls the treasures of his narrow life, 
 
 His rosy children and his sunburnt wife, 
 
 To whom his coming is the chief event 
 
 Of simple days in cheerful labour spent. 
 
 The rich man's chariot hath gone whirling past, 
 
 And these poor cottagers have only cast 
 
 One careless glance on all that show of pride, 
 
 Then to their tasks turned quietly aside ; 
 
246 English Poetesses, 
 
 But hitn they wait for, him they welcome home, 
 Fixed sentinels look forth to see him come ; 
 The faggot sent for when the fire grew dim, 
 The frugal meal prepared, are all for him ; 
 For him the watching of that sturdy boy. 
 For him those smiles of tenderness and joy. 
 For him who plods his sauntering way along, 
 Whistling the fragment of some village song I 
 
 Mrs. Norton's sister Helen, born in 1807, became in 
 1825 the wife of the Honourable Price Blackwood, who was 
 subsequently created Lord Dufferin and Clandeboye. Her 
 husband died in 1841, and in 1862 Lady Dufferin married 
 Lord Gifford under unusual and romantic circumstances. 
 Lady Dufferin had a pleasing faculty of ballad-making that 
 has endeared her very much to many homes, particularly 
 Irish homes. She died on June 13th, 1867. 
 
 Lady Dufferin's " Lispings from Low Latitudes," a book 
 of comic sketches, was very popular at one time. But her 
 reputation chiefly rests upon the song called "Katie's 
 Letter," and the ballad here given : — 
 
 THE LAMENT OF THE IRISH EMIGRANT. 
 
 I'm sittin' on the stile, Mary, 
 
 Where we sat side by side, 
 On a bright May mornin', long ago. 
 
 When first you were my bride ; 
 The corn was springin' fresh and green. 
 
 And the lark sang loud and high — 
 And the red was on your lip, Mary, 
 
 And the love-light in your eye. 
 
 The place is little changed, Mary, 
 
 The day is bright as then. 
 The lark's loud song is in my ear. 
 
 And the corn is green again ; 
 But I miss the soft clasp of your hand. 
 
 And your breath, warm on my cheek ; 
 And I still keep list'nin' for the words 
 
 You never more will speak. 
 
Lady Dufferin, 
 
 'Tis but a step down yonder lane, 
 
 And the little church stands near — 
 The church where we were wed, Mary, 
 
 I see the spire from here. 
 But the graveyard lies between, Mary, 
 
 And my step might break your rest - 
 For I've laid you, darling, down to sleeji, 
 
 With your baby on your breast. 
 
 I'm very lonely now, Mary, 
 
 For the poor make no new friends 
 But, oh ! they love the better still 
 
 The few our Father sends ! 
 And you were all I had, Mary, 
 
 My blessin' and my pride I 
 There's nothin' left to care for now. 
 
 Since my poor Mary died. 
 
 Yours was the good, brave heart, Mary, 
 
 That still kept hoping on. 
 When the trust in God had left my soul. 
 
 And my arm's young strength was gone ; 
 There was comfort even on your lip, 
 
 And the kind look on your brow- 
 I bless you, Mary, for that same, 
 
 Though you cannot hear me now. 
 
 I thank you for the patient smile 
 
 When your heart was fit to break. 
 When the hunger pain was gnawin' there, 
 
 And you hid it for my sake ; 
 I bless you for the pleasant word 
 
 When your heart was sad and sore — 
 Oh, I'm thankful you are gone, Mary, 
 
 Where grief can't reach you more ! 
 
 I'm biddin' you a long farewell. 
 
 My Mary — kind and true ! 
 But I'll not forget you, darling. 
 
 In the land I'm goin' to ; 
 
 247 
 
248 English Poetesses, 
 
 They say there's bread and work for all, 
 
 And the sun shines always there — 
 But I'll not forget Old Ireland, 
 
 Were it fifty times as fair ! 
 
 And often in those grand old woods 
 
 I'll sit and shut my eyes, 
 And my heart will travel back again 
 
 To the place where Mary lies ; 
 And I'll think I see the little stile 
 
 Where we sat side by side, 
 And the springin' corn, and the bright May morn, 
 
 When first you were my bride. 
 
 It is sufficiently astonishing to most of us, in this 
 
 generation, that Robert Southey's contemporaries took him 
 
 for a great poet : but it is still more astonishing that they 
 
 took Miss Bowles, who became his second wife, for a great 
 
 poetess. " Delta'' represented the opinions of many when 
 
 « « .^ he declared that she equalled Mrs. Hemans ; 
 Mrs. Southey. , . ^ . 7 r/ • hi ..1 
 
 and the Quarterly Revieiv calls her "the 
 
 Cowper of Poetesses." She was no poetess at all. Cer- 
 tainly it cannot be said of her, as it was said of Shadwell, 
 that she " never deviates into sense." Her verse is full of 
 sense, but it never deviates into poetry. 
 
 Caroline Bowles (no relation of the poet Bowles), the 
 daughter of Captain Charles Bowles, was born (probably in 
 Hants) on December 6th, 1786. She early distinguished 
 herself by facility in the use of pen and pencil ; but it was 
 not till she had approached middle life that she began to 
 take seriously to literature. The partial failure of her 
 inherited income caused her to apprehend that the time 
 might come w^hen she would have to work for her bread. 
 Consequently she resolved to consult Southey on her 
 literary prospects. She sent him, anonymously, a poem 
 called " Ellen Fitzarthur," and Southey recommended its 
 publication. This narrative — a very sluggish, pointless 
 
Mrs, Southev. 249 
 
 affair — appeared in 1 8 2 o. The acquaintance formed between 
 Southey and Miss Bowles, through the medium of " Ellen 
 Fitzarthur," ripened into affectionate intimacy ; and when 
 his first wife, after long mental affliction, was carried off 
 from him, Southey soon persuaded his old friend to become 
 his second spouse. They looked forward to a serene 
 evening of life together ; but this was not to be. Hardly 
 had Southey entered into the estate of matrimony again than 
 his mind began to give way, and his new wife had only to 
 play the part of nurse to him, through three or four years, 
 until he died. The " Life of Southey" by his son barely 
 mentions Miss Bowles ; and when it was brought out she 
 would not read it. Apparently she was not on good terms 
 with her step-children. Mrs. Southey, after her husband's 
 death, returned to the scenes of her infancy in Hants, and 
 she died at Buckland, Lymington, on the 20th of July, 
 1854. 
 
 In one of her longest poems — " The Birthday " — Mrs. 
 Southey gives us many glimpses of her childhood. This 
 poem has been greatly admired and praised. The following 
 is a fair sample of its quality : — 
 
 Those happy evenings, when, on seat high raised, 
 By ponderous folio, placed on cushioned chair 
 Close to the table drawn, with candles snuffed, 
 And outspread paper, and long pencil, shaved 
 To finest point — to my unpractised hand 
 Not trusted yet the sharply dangerous knife, 
 Like all forbidden things, most coveted — 
 Oh, blissful hour ! when thus installed on high. 
 In fulness of enjoyment, shapes uncouth, 
 Chaotic groups, I traced. The first attempt. 
 Two crooked strokes, that, nodding inward, prop 
 A fellow pair — a transverse parallel. 
 The House thus roofed, behold from either end 
 Tall chimneys twain sprout up like asses' ears, 
 From which, as from a fiery forge beneath, 
 Ascend huge volumed smoke-wreaths to the sky. 
 
250 English Poetesses, 
 
 Next in the stately front, strokes — one — two — three ; 
 
 There gaps the door, as wide as half the house, 
 
 And thick on every hand come cross-barred squares, 
 
 High windows, that for number would tire out 
 
 The patience of that keenly praying wight, 
 
 The tax collector ; while from one, be sure. 
 
 Looks out some favourite form of absent friend, 
 
 Whose house that goodly fabric represents. 
 
 Close on each side, two poles, surmounted high 
 
 By full round wigs, assume the name of trees ; 
 
 And up the road, that widens farthest off, 
 
 In brave contempt of stiff perspective rule. 
 
 Comes coach and six, containing — who but mc^ 
 
 And all my friends, to visit that fine house ? 
 
 Then follow man and horse — a gallant steed. 
 
 With legs, and mane, and tale, and all complete, — 
 
 The rider so secure upon his back, 
 
 He need but stretch his legs and touch the ground. 
 
 Thick flies the dust ; out flies the brandished whip — 
 
 On, on they go ; and if they reach the house. 
 
 That horseman tall may take it on his palm. 
 
 As erst Glumdalclitch handled Gulliver. 
 
 And now a five-barred gate, and sundry pales. 
 
 And up aloft a flight of birds, so huge 
 
 They must be cranes at least, migrating hence ; 
 
 Some cocks and hens before the door convened — 
 
 A dog and cat, and pig with curly tail. 
 
 And lo ! the landscape in all parts complete ! 
 
 This curious childishness of style seem like a womanish 
 affectation of the new Lake School methods of work ; but 
 yet it seems quite natural to the author, and is never 
 abandoned. Here is another extract from the same poem 
 descriptive of a visit to a working jeweller : — 
 
 " You care for flowers," I said ; "and that fair thing, 
 The beautiful orchis, seems to flourish well 
 With little light and air." 
 
 " It won't for long," 
 The man made answer with a mournful smile, 
 Eyeing the plant ; *' I took it up, poor thing ! 
 But Sunday evening last, from the rich mea<low 
 
Mrs, Sou they. 251 
 
 Where thousands bloom so gay, and brought it here, 
 To smell of the green fields for a few days 
 Till Sunday comes again, and rest mine eyes on, 
 When I look up fatigued from these dead gems 
 And yellow glittering gold." 
 
 With patient courtesy, 
 Well spoken churl (no ignorant churl was he), 
 That poor artificer explained the process 
 Of his ingenious art. I looked and listened, 
 But with an aching heart, that loathed the sight 
 Of those bright pebbles and that glittering ore ; 
 And when I turned to go — not unexpressed 
 My feelings of good-will and thankfulness — 
 He put into my hand a small square packet 
 Containing powder, that would quite restore, 
 He told me, to dull gems and clouded pearls 
 Their pristine lustre. I received, well pleased. 
 Proffering payment ; but he shook his head, 
 Motioning back my hand, and stooping down, 
 Resumed his task, in a low, deep-toned voice 
 Saying, " You're kindly welcome." 
 
 Messrs. Blackwood had the temerity to collect Mrs. 
 Southey's verse, and publish it so late as 1867, but there 
 was hardly any demand for the- book. This author also 
 contributed to Blackwood's Magazine a series of " Chapters 
 on Churchyards," collected in 1829. These are good, and 
 still command readers, for Mrs. Southey's prose reads much 
 better when it is not snipped up into lengths and called poetry. 
 
 In order to avoid any charge of treating Mrs. Southey's 
 memory unjustly, I append a complete and once-admired 
 specimen of her work. One of the Coleridges — Henry Nelson, 
 I believe — characterises it in the Quarterly as " beautifully 
 spirited." 
 
 MARINER'S HYMN. 
 
 Launch thy bark, Mariner ! 
 
 Christian, God speed thee ! 
 Let loose the rudder-bands — 
 
 Good angels lead thee ! 
 
252 English Poetesses, 
 
 Set thy sails warily, 
 Tempests will come ; 
 
 Steer thy course steadily, 
 Christian, steer home ! 
 
 Look to the weather-bow, 
 
 Breakers are round thee ; 
 Let fall the plummet now. 
 
 Shallows may ground thee. 
 Reef in the foresail, there ! 
 
 Hold the helm fast ; 
 So — let the vessel wear — 
 
 There swept the blast. 
 
 What of the night, watchman ? 
 
 What of the night ? 
 Cloudy — all quiet — 
 
 No land yet — all's right. 
 ]^e wakeful, be vigilant — 
 
 Danger may be 
 At an hour when all seemeth 
 
 Securest to thee. 
 
 Mow ! gains the leak so fast ? 
 
 Clean out the hold — 
 Heave out thy merchandise, 
 
 Heave out thy gold ; — 
 There — let the ingots go — 
 
 Now the ship rights. 
 Hurrah ! the harbour's near — 
 
 Lo, the red lights ! 
 
 Slacken not sail yet 
 
 At inlet or island ; 
 Straight for the beacon steer, 
 
 Straight for the high land ; 
 Crowd all thy canvas on, 
 
 Cut through the foam. 
 Christian, cast anchor now — 
 
 Heaven is thy home ! 
 
Mary MfTFORD. 253 
 
 Mary Russell Mitford, the daughter of a dissolute phy- 
 sician, was born at Alresford, Hampshire, December i6th, 
 1787. Before she was twenty the Quarterly had reprimanded 
 her for publishing three volumes of verse. Her first and 
 greatest success was " Our Village," a charming collection 
 of papers, originally contributed to the Lady's Magazine^ 
 and published in five volumes between 1824 and 1832. 
 Miss Mitford also wrote " Atherton "" (1824) ; *' Belford 
 Regis" (1835); "Stories of Country Life" (1850); and 
 among other attempts of the kind, three successful tragedies 
 —"Julian" (1823), "Foscari" (1826), " Rienzi " (1828). 
 Her " Poems on the Female Character " had meanwhile 
 appeared in 181 2. Miss Mitford died near Reading on 
 January loth, 1855. L'Estrange edited her letters into a 
 Life in 1869; Henry Chorley edited a second series in 
 1872; and her own Recollections appeared in 185 1 (new 
 edition). The " Friendships of Mary Mitford " appeared 
 in 1882. A delicate descriptive style marks all Miss Mit- 
 ford's prose with a peculiar grace. Her tragedies are now 
 utterly forgotten ; and her poems, with the exception of the 
 following sonnet, are equally consigned to obscurity. 
 
 TO MY MOTHER SLEEPING. 
 
 Sleep on, my mother ! sweet and innocent dreams 
 
 Attend thee, best and dearest ! Dreams that gild 
 
 Life's clouds like setting suns, with pleasures filled, 
 
 And saintly joy, such as thy mind beseems, — 
 
 Thy mind where never stormy passion gleams, 
 
 Where their soft nest the dovelike virtues build ; 
 
 And calmest thoughts, like violets distill'd. 
 
 Their fragrance mingle with bright wisdom's beams. 
 
 Sleep on, my mother ! not the lily's bell 
 
 So sweet ; not the enamour'd west- wind's sighs 
 
 That shake the dew-drop from her snowy cell 
 
 So gentle ; not that dew-drop ere it flies 
 
 So jmrc. E'en slumber loves with thee to (1\nc11. 
 
 Oh model most beloved of good and wise. 
 
254 English Poetesses, 
 
 Sarah Flower Adams, a highly endowed and pious 
 woman, whose life extended from 1805 to 1848, published 
 a quantity of devotional song, and " Vivia Perpetua" (1841), 
 a drama. Her best verses are to be found in the well- 
 known hymn, "Nearer my God, to Thee." 
 
 Sara Coleridge (1803-185 2) — inheriting not merely some 
 of her great father's fancy, but a poetical gift that was to a 
 smaller extent her iiiother's also — wrote a few pleasant songs 
 in her fairy-tale entitled '* Phantasmion " (1837). 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MRS. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 
 
 CRITICALLY to approach the work of Elizabeth Barrett 
 Browning is to test once for all the question whether, 
 throughout the literature of the whole world, there is any 
 evidence to show that woman can equal man in the sustained 
 expression of poetical ideas. With regard to the inferior 
 verse-writers of her sex, the world has indeed been chivalrous 
 enough to discount their failures and enhance their achieve- 
 ments by gallantries of criticism which often said simply, 
 " This is very good," when in reality a mental reservation 
 lurked in the judgment : " This is very good — for a woman." 
 The talents exhibited by Mrs. Barrett Browning demanded 
 the employment of a sterner criticism. When her poems 
 first began to be talked of, she had already acquired a vague 
 reputation as a student of the Greek dramatists, and one 
 versed in Hebrew as well as Patristic lore. Ere much of 
 her writing had been commented upon, she gave the world 
 to understand that she fully believed in her own powers, 
 and had resolved to dedicate herself as a missionary of the 
 Muses, for whom, as for Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Keats, 
 and Tennyson, the business of life would be the teaching 
 of beautiful thoughts in beautiful words. There was no 
 amateurish modesty or feminine affectation evinced in 
 her claims to notice. Her conviction of inspiration was 
 deep. That this conviction was \\Tongly founded, she was 
 
256 English Poetesses. 
 
 willing to be taught if need be, but the conviction itself she 
 did not conceal. 
 
 It is a perilous thing to proclaim of one's self that one 
 is going to be a poet ; it is proclaiming that one is a genius. 
 And when the critics learnt that these bold tones came from 
 a fragile woman, nursing faint life within herself on a bed 
 of sickness where any moment might be her last, the 
 earnestness of this woman's soul proved itself such as must 
 have commanded admiration even had her productions 
 been less remarkable. From the period of her middle life 
 until lately, the majority of voices has yielded to her 
 claims completely, giving her a place among the few great 
 writers possessed of that consummate genius which has 
 been declared to be without sex. Coleridge, as has 
 been remarked already on another page, asserted that in 
 the face of every man of genius you can detect some- 
 thing of the woman ; so it might be said that in the 
 work of Mrs. Browning, with its universality of sympa- 
 thies, its political passions, its sense of social wrongs and 
 its dramatic vigour, there was much of the man. In order 
 that she might be allowed to rank herself with the first half- 
 dozen male poets of our literature, it would be by no means 
 necessary that she should show herself in all things as 
 masculine as they are. It is surely conceivable that there 
 are high subjects of which a woman could make more than 
 a man. It is the conceivableness of this fact that has made 
 the dearth of great poetry among the female writers so often 
 remarked upon. That in this and that poem Mrs. Browning 
 has shown herself 
 
 - *' As j^entle as a woman, and as manly as a man," 
 
 may at once be admitted. But it remains for us to inquire 
 whether in attempting the highest subjects and the highest 
 forms, she has placed herself abreast of the masculine minds 
 with which alone her own mind felt community She 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 257 
 
 attempted Miltonic subjects. How does she compare with 
 Milton ? She attempted themes distinctly suggesting com- 
 petition with Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson. Has she 
 matched the work of these ? 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born at Hope End, 
 a few miles from Miilvern, in 1809. Details of her life 
 have never been vouchsafed to us by her friends, but we 
 know that, like most literary women, she was early a writer 
 of verses. One of her own letters records that these poetical 
 exercises were begun before she was eight years old, and 
 that at that premature age poetry had become a distinct 
 object in her life. The Greeks were even then her best 
 friends, and haunted her out of Pope's '* Homer " until 
 she " dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses, the 
 black pony." At the age of eleven she wrote an epic in four 
 books called " The Battle of Marathon," of which her 
 indulgent father had fifty copies printed. Next to Pope 
 and the Greek dramatists, she brought herself up upon 
 Byron and Coleridge, not forgetting to apprentice herself to 
 the teaching of nature among the beautiful Malvern hills. 
 In her seventeenth year she published "- An Essay on Mind, 
 with Other Poems." There is a passage in " Aurora Leigh " 
 which evidently bears an autobiographical reference to this 
 and other juvenile efforts : — 
 
 " And so like most young poets, in the flush 
 Of individual life, I poured myself 
 Along the veins of others, and achieved 
 Mere lifeless imitations of live verse, 
 And made a living answer for the dead, 
 Profaning nature." 
 
 The Barrett family removed from the Malvern district 
 to Sidmouth for two years, and there the poetess produced 
 "Prometheus Bound, and Miscellaneous Poems (1833)." 
 Of the " Prometheus " (in its present form, partly re-written) 
 
 R 
 
258 English Poetesses. 
 
 the translator herself was wont afterwards to speak with some 
 derision. There are undoubtedly fine passages in it, but 
 the principles of translation little bind her in the task 
 she set herself Many and many a line occurs in this 
 translation for which the Greek poet is not in the least 
 responsible. 
 
 The next removal was to London, and at 74, (jloucester 
 Place, the delicate girl began to enter into that strange 
 valley of death in which philosophy and song were almost 
 all that preserved her being to her. " The world does with 
 \ poets," says Jean Paul, " as we do with birds : it darkens 
 ^ their cages until they have learnt what they are to 
 sing." 
 [ Up to this time Miss Barrett had apparently had no 
 
 intellectual companionship of any sort save that of her 
 family, and one old friend, blind Mr. Boyd. It was Mr. 
 Boyd who drilled her through the Greek dramatists and the 
 early fathers. When he had taught her Greek he had 
 taught her all he knew. One cannot help suspecting, from 
 what one learns about him, that he was somewhat of a 
 pedant, who would have narrowed and even disgusted a 
 less earnest mind than that which he found in his marvellous 
 pupil. He seems to have been more like an Alexandrian 
 scholiast than an interpreter of Greek poetry. However, to 
 Miss Barrett he was the one source of inspiration besides 
 her own imagination ; and in her " Wine of Cyprus " she 
 draws such a picture of their intercourse as one cannot 
 forget : — 
 
 And I think of those long mornings 
 
 Which my thought goes far to seek, 
 When, between the folio's turnings, 
 
 Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek : 
 Past the pane the mountain spreading, 
 
 Swept the sheep's-bell's tinkling noise, 
 While a girlish voice was reading, 
 . Somewhat low for ois and ois. 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 259 
 
 Then, vvhal gulden hours were for us I 
 
 While we sate together there, 
 Mow the white vests of the chorus 
 
 Seemed to wave up a live air ! 
 How the cothurns trod majestic 
 
 Down the deep iambic lines. 
 And the rolling anapcestic 
 
 Curled like vapour over shrines ! 
 
 Do you mind that deed of Ate 
 
 Which you bound me to so fast, — 
 Reading " De Virginitate," 
 
 From the first line to the last ? 
 How I said at ending, solemn 
 
 As I turned and looked at you, 
 That St. Simeon on the column 
 
 Had had somewhat less to do ? 
 
 For we sometimes gently wrangled, 
 
 ^^ery gently, be it said, 
 Since our thoughts were disentangled 
 
 By no breaking of the thread ! 
 And I charged you with extortions 
 
 On the nobler fames of old — 
 Ay, and sometimes thought your Porsons 
 
 Stained the purple they would fold. 
 
 A visionary fragile girl, and a blind scholar with silver 
 hair, wandering hand in hand through the fateful sublimities 
 of the Greek tragic poets, and the mystic wilderness of the 
 early fathers — these t\Vo led such a life together as rivals 
 in picturesc^ue effect the memory of sightless Milton sur- 
 rounded by his daughters. But it was the subservient 
 girl who was here the poet, and good Mr. Boyd with all his 
 scholarship possibly recognised his companion's romantic 
 genius as little as old George Dyer could enter into the 
 spirit of his friend Charles Lamb. Whether Elizabeth 
 Barrett's brothers or sisters were capable of intellectually 
 
 R 2 
 
26o English Poetesses, 
 
 solacing her, we do not know. They have not left any sign 
 of talent. H^r father, a worthy merchant, encouraged her 
 in a faint indiscriminating manner, but did nothing to - 
 mould her life. If Heine's belief was a true one, the some- 
 what desolate spiritual circumstances in which this con- 
 sumptive girl reared herself were about the best that could 
 have been found to foster her genius, for he remarks that 
 " all the great ones of the earth have passed their youth in 
 solitude." 
 
 The London air nearly made an end of Miss Barrett, 
 who broke a blood-vessel in 1837, and the doctors ordered 
 her away to Torquay ; but before this removal she had 
 published " The Seraphim " — " the only work I care to 
 acknowledge," she writes to Mr. Hengist Home, in 1843. 
 This "Seraphim," put before the world in 1838, may be 
 said to take up the subject of Milton's " Paradise Re- 
 gained." A subsequent poem of hers, published in 1844 — 
 "The Drama of Exile" — takes up the theme of the Fall, 
 and it may be convenient to treat of this first. 
 
 " The Drama of Exile " begins with stage directions 
 which all the imagination in the world could not accept : 
 " Scene — The outer side of the gate of Eden shut fast unth 
 cloudy from the depth of which revolves a s7uord of fire self 
 moved. Adam and Eve are seen in the distance flying abng 
 the glared In the front of this scene which nobody could 
 see, stands Lucifer, who utters an impassioned speech of 
 exultation upon the downfall of Adam, and the consequent 
 power which comes to him (Lucifer) through his conquest 
 of our first parents. Suddenly there is an apparition of 
 innumerable angels, from the midst of whom, the archangel 
 Gabriel, formerly a close intimate of Lucifer's, descends. 
 There ensues a long colloquy between the pair; Gabriel 
 yearning over his abandoned friend, and Lucifer, on the 
 other hand, outboasting himself in defiance of the great 
 God, and prognostication of his own coming power : — 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 261 
 
 No more, thou Gabriel ! What if I stand up 
 And strike my brow against the crystalline * 
 Roofing the creatures — shall I say, for that, 
 My stature is too high for me to stand — 
 Hence forward I must sit ? Sit thoti ! 
 
 Cab. I kneel. 
 
 /.I If. A heavenly answer. Get thee to thy heaven, 
 
 And leave my earth to me ! 
 
 1^ Enough spoken. As the pine 
 
 In Norland forest, drops its weight of snows 
 By a night's growth, so, growing towards my ends 
 I drop thy counsels. P'arewell Gabriel ! 
 Watch out thy service ; I achieve my will, 
 And peradventure in the after years. 
 When thoughtful men shall bend their spacious brows 
 Upon the storm and strife seen everywhere 
 To ruffle their smooth manhood and break up 
 With lurid lights of intermittent hope 
 Their human fear and wrong — they may discern 
 The heart of a lost angel in the earth. 
 
 A chorus of Eden spirits then begin chanting from Paradise, 
 while Adam and Eve fly across the blaze caused by the 
 flaming sword. The voices are those of the spirits of 
 trees, and rivers, and birds, and flowers. Later in life Mrs. 
 Browning might have been able to make much of these 
 spirit-songs, but here they are dreary and often unmeaning. 
 Throughout the whole of them there are few fine lines. 
 When the voices have merged into silence, Adam and Eve 
 are still discovered flying on, and they halt upon the ex- 
 
 * Is this expression a reminiscence or a coincidence ? Ben Jonson 
 (Sejanus) : — 
 
 " My roof receives me not ; 'tis air I tread : 
 And at each step I feel my advanced head 
 Knock out a star in heaven." 
 
 And Cyril Tourneur (Revenger's Tragedy) : — 
 
 " O 'tis able 
 To make a man spring up and knock his forehead 
 Against yon silver ceiling." 
 
262 English Poetesses. 
 
 tremity of the "sword-glare," before they pass on to the 
 desert of the earth. 
 
 Then comes a scene in which the humanity of the 
 heaven-banished husband and wife pours itself forth in 
 mutual compassion and affection. Eve falters, and her 
 body heaves under the golden floodings of her hair. She 
 adjures Adam by her very self, whom she knows he loves 
 so well, to put her straight away and think no more of her— 
 his death and his undoer. She adjures him to curse her as 
 Cxod had cursed them both. But Adam with a chivalry 
 which scarcely Gabriel or Lucifer could fairly understand, 
 lifts her up to be the sweetener of his life upon the earth, 
 declaring that he who had not virtue to stand straight 
 among the hills of Eden, dare not assume to amend the 
 justice of the perfect God by piling up a curse upon His 
 curse. 
 
 Eve, Is it thy voice ? 
 
 Or some saluting angel's — calling home 
 My feet into the garden ? 
 
 Adam. O my God ! 
 
 I, standing here between the glory and dark — 
 The glory of thy wrath projected forth 
 From Eden's wall, the dark of our distress 
 Which settles a step off in that drear world — 
 Lift up to Thee the hands from whence hath fallen 
 Only creation's sceptre — thanking Thee 
 That rather Thou hast cast me out with her 
 Than left me lorn of her in Paradise, 
 With angel looks and angel songs around 
 To show the absence of her eyes and voice, 
 And make society full desertness 
 Without her use in comfort ! 
 
 Eve. Where is loss ? 
 
 Am I in Eden ? Can another speak 
 Mine own love's tongue ? 
 
 Adam. Because with //</-, I stand 
 
 Upright, as far as can be in this fall, 
 And look away from heaven which tlolh accuse, 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 263 
 
 And look away from earth which cloth convict, 
 Into her face, and crown my discrowned brow 
 Out of her love, and put the thought of her 
 Around me, for an Eden full of birds. 
 And lift her body up — thus — to my heart. 
 And with my lips upon her lips — thus, thus — 
 Do quicken and sublimate my mortal breath, 
 Which cannot climb against the grave's steep sides, 
 But over-tops this grief ! 
 
 Eve. I am renewed. 
 
 My eyes grow with the light which is in thine ; 
 The silence of my heart is full of sound. 
 Hold me up — so ! Because I comprehend 
 This human love, I shall not be*afraid 
 Of any human death ; and yet because 
 I know this strength of love, I seem to know 
 Death's strength by that same sign. Kiss on my lips. 
 To shut the door close on my rising soul — 
 Lest it pass outwards in astonishment, 
 And leave thee lonely ! 
 
 So on they talk to the end of a truly fine passage. It is 
 this love-making between Adam and P2ve which redeems the 
 drama. In a preface to the American edition of her poems, 
 Mrs. Browning explains that the object of this study was 
 " A new and strange experience of the fallen humanity as 
 it went forth from Paradise into the wilderness, with a 
 peculiar reference to Eve's allotted grief, which, considering 
 that self-sacrifice belonged to her womanhood, and the 
 consciousness of being the origin of her offence, appeared 
 to me imperfectly apprehended hitherto, and more ex- 
 pressible by a woman than by a man." Treated in the light 
 of this explanation, the subject is certainly a profitable one 
 for a woman of genius to write upon, and there was no reason 
 inherent in the theme to prevent a poem closely dramatic 
 in structure from being formed out of it. 
 
 At the end of the passage in which Adam and Eve 
 prepare themselves to go out into the wilderness with hand«i 
 
264 English Poetesses. 
 
 linked together for love and work, a chorus of invisible 
 angels speeds them on with a blessing. As the chant ends, 
 Lucifer appears. *' Adam ! hold my right hand strongly ! " 
 cries Eve. "It is Lucifer — and we have love to lose." 
 Lucifer thereupon approaches them with a sort of kindly 
 scorn — he and his victims debating fate among them darkly, 
 until at the mention of love the demon fades away, while 
 low music sounds, and the Morning Star sings of her old 
 passion for Lucifer. 
 
 Then we have Adam and Eve walking through the 
 wild open country under the shades of approaching night. 
 The gloom of earth at sunset is strange to them, and leaves 
 on their spirits a fearful sense of coming darkness filled 
 with the curse of God. They seem to see instead of the 
 stars the zodiacal signs, Adam's eyes resting on Aquarius and 
 Sagittarius^ types of man ; while the womanhood of Eve 
 falters with a faint instinct of motherhood at the sight of 
 Gemini. Two spirits of organic and inorganic nature arise 
 from the ground and address them, each ending its strophe 
 with the words " Yet I wail ! " The outpourings of these 
 sorrows to Adam and Eve have a very unpleasant effect. 
 When Lucifer approaches once more, each of these earth- 
 spirits cries " I wail, I wail ! " whereupon Lucifer rejoins, 
 " And certes, that is true." Eve herself begins to cry "I 
 wail ! " until the effect is really ludicrous. But a bleak wind 
 spins round the earth, and after this, too, has " wailed off 
 into the east," Eve falls upon her face, and Adam remarks, 
 presumably with a sigh of relief, 
 
 '* So, verily, 
 The last departs." 
 
 Next we have a chorus of infant voices passing in the winds, 
 
 and it is very tender music that they make, though the 
 
 burden of their song is a sad prophecy regarding the future 
 
 woes of humanity : .. ,. , 
 
 ^ " Rock us softly, 
 
 Lest it be all in vain." 
 
Mrs, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 265 
 
 The wailing earth-spirits again present themselves, and 
 mock the discrowned regent of Paradise ; but upon an 
 appeal to God from the lips of Adam and Eve a vision of 
 Christ appears in the midst of the Zodiac : the spirits of the 
 earth are rebuked ; Adam is exhorted to bless the woman, 
 and does so in language of sustained power. While the two 
 praise each other, the Christ is gradually transformed into a 
 personification of human suffering, and the rest of the poem, 
 filled with choruses and semi-choruses of scarcely any 
 interest, deals in prophetic style with the coming of Christ. 
 The stage directions for the conclusion of this drama 
 are as unfortunate as those which open it : " The stars 
 shine on brightly while Ada^n and Eve pursue their way 
 into the far wilderness. There is a sound through the silence 
 as of the falling tears of an angel. " So much for the *' Drama 
 of Exile." 
 
 " The Seraphim " deals with the crucifixion time. The 
 angels of heaven have winged their way downwards to 
 earth, except two seraphim, Ador, the Strong, and Zerah, the 
 Bright One. These converse together before the gate ot 
 heaven, which is shut behind them. Of dramatic move- 
 ment, there is nothing in this poem. It is simply a dialogue 
 in which the seraphim discuss things that their purity 
 scarcely can fathom — death, suffering, the end of creation, 
 the mystery of the incarnation, the shameful crucifixion, and 
 the seeming emptiness of heaven while He is moving about 
 the earth. In the second part of the poem Ador and Zerah 
 hover in mid-air about Judea, and see 
 
 Beyond the city, crosses three 
 
 And mortals three that hang thereon 
 
 'Ghast and silent to the sun ; 
 
 Round them blacken and welter and press 
 
 Staring multitudes, whose father 
 
 Adam was, whose brows are dark 
 
 With his Cain's corroded mark— 
 
 Who curse with looks. . . . 
 
266 English Poetesses. 
 
 Zerah, One 
 
 Is as a man who has sinned, and still 
 Doth wear the wicked will, 
 The hard malign life-energy, 
 Tossed outward, in the parting soul's disdain, 
 On brow and lip that cannot change again. 
 Ado?'. And one — 
 
 Zcra/i. Has also sinned. 
 
 And yet (O marvel !) doth the Spirit-wind 
 Blow white those waters ? — Death upon his face 
 Is rather shine than shade, 
 A tender shine by looks beloved made. 
 He seemeth dying in a quiet place, 
 And less by iron wounds in hands and feet 
 Than heart-broke by new joy, too sudden and too sweet. 
 
 And then comes the moment when Christ dies — 
 
 A dor. The light is riven 
 
 Above, around. 
 And down in lurid fragments flung. 
 That catch the mountain-peak and stream 
 
 With momentary gleam, 
 Then perish in the water and the ground. 
 River and waterfall, 
 Forest and wilderness. 
 Mountain and city, are together wrung 
 Into one shape, and that is shapelessness ; 
 The darkness stands for all. 
 Zcra/i. The pathos hath the day undone : 
 The death-look of his eyes 
 Hath overcome the sun 
 And made it stricken in its narrow skies. 
 Ador. Is it to death ? He dieth. 
 Zcrah. Through the dark 
 
 He still, He only, is discernible — 
 The naked hands and feet transfixed stark, 
 The countenance of patient anguish white, 
 
 Do make themselves a light 
 More dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell, 
 And therein do they shine. 
 
 Ador. God! Father-Clod I 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 267 
 
 The piercing cry of Christ rises up from the earth as life 
 passes out of Him — 
 
 " His breath, as living God, createth ; 
 His breath, as dying man, completeth." 
 
 And the poem ends, save for a short epilogue, with a 
 passage in which we have more of the wailing spirits. But 
 the jarring effect of this is remedied by the last two lines, in 
 the first of which Eve cries — 
 
 *' Hear the wail of the spirits ! Hear ! " 
 
 while Zerah replies — 
 
 *' I hear alone the memory of His words." 
 
 Such passages as have here been quoted from these 
 two poems are the most favourable specimens that could 
 be chosen. Compared with her other achievements, these 
 productions of Mrs. Browning's genius must, as a whole, be 
 pronounced failures. They are her most ambitious efforts. 
 In them her aspiration rises higher than it ever afterwards 
 did — as high, indeed, as human aspiration could rise ; but 
 her methods of dealing with the themes were failures. 
 Shelley and the great dramatists were too much on her 
 mind. She attempted to gain the needful dramatic force 
 from destiny rather than from passion, but the destiny is 
 unnatural. Save for a few isolated strong lines, chiefly 
 descriptive of nature, the only portions of this bipartite 
 tragedy which wake the emotion are those which deal with 
 the saddened love which binds Adam and Eve together. 
 Although it was apparently Mrs. Browning's chief intention 
 in writing " The Drama of Exile " to expose Milton's under- 
 estimate of woman's character, the poetess has curiously 
 neglected or avoided the abundant opportunities for the 
 writing of passionate poetry which the situation of Adam 
 and Eve outside of Paradise holds out to the imagination. 
 The effect of " The Drama in Exile " as a whole, is that of 
 
2 68 English Poetesses, 
 
 a crude adaptation from some heathen play ; and the dis- 
 appointment with which one reaches the end of the story — 
 if story it can be called — brings up before one's mind the bull 
 with which, as Edgar Allan Poe has pointed out, the whole 
 opens ; for the outside of Eden's gate, which the poetess is 
 supposed to show us, is indeed " shut fast with a cloud," so 
 that w^e can see none of it ; and the elemental choruses 
 which support the voices of Adam, Eve, and Lucifer are as 
 indistinct, dramatically, as the winds. Lucifer is unlike the 
 three celebrated devils, but he does not make a fourth. He 
 is a cynical fine gentleman — not such a being as has an echo 
 in his soul great enough to give back the thunders of God. 
 In comparing the features of this particular creation with 
 the finished portraiture of Milton's princely Satan, one feels 
 at once that the challenge thrown out by Mrs. Browning in 
 attempting this poem was most disastrous for herself. x\s 
 her Lucifer falls below the level of Milton's Satan, so does 
 her whole performance fall below the level of Milton's. 
 Milton enshrouded the Deity with a fateful serenity that 
 is more appalling than any storm. Mrs. Browning only 
 suggests to us, instead of the Creator, an unfilled throne, 
 about which the elements of creation move restlessly. 
 Milton gives us a rebellious angel fit to colonize the uni- 
 verse with spirits like himself — a fiend "who had the 
 genius to be loved ; " Mrs. Browning gives us an angel who 
 has fallen, he scarcely knows for what — one who has no fol- 
 lowing, at whose command no miracles are seen to take 
 place, and whose influence over Adam and Eve is not 
 explained by any subtle psychological analysis. And then, 
 instead of the dank, misty atmosphere which forms the sole 
 scenery of Mrs. Browning's poem, we have richly concrete 
 scenes of Milton, which are yet so highly conceived that 
 they are rarely made mean by too much likeness to the 
 ordinary surroundings of human existence. Through all his 
 descrii)tions and meditations, Milton's diapson affords such 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 269 
 
 varied music, that Mrs. Browning's strophes and antistrophes 
 have scarcely any tune left in them by comparison. 
 
 As for the " Seraphim," it is almost incomprehensible 
 that Mrs. Browning, writing in 1843, could really have 
 declared that it was on this poem she based her chief claim 
 to notice. It has a few beauties, but is one long fault. Two 
 such beings as Ador, the Strong, and Zerah, the Bright One, 
 could scarcely conceivably hover in mid-air in such a dis- 
 passionate, helpless style, apart from the assistant host sent 
 down to minister to the dying Saviour. Their standpoint, if 
 the term may be used, is the weakest, dramatically, which 
 could be chosen ; and the interchange of their comments on 
 what they see could hardly, in any hands, become much 
 more interesting than it did in the unsuccessful hands of 
 Mrs. Browning, for the reader cannot but feel from the outset 
 how far their curiosity shows that they have no notion of the 
 elements of the tragedy which is being enacted beneath them. 
 
 At Torquay Miss Barrett hung on to life by such a 
 slender thread that scarcely any of her friends, save 
 intimate relatives, were allowed to disturb her. During 
 many weeks at a time, she passed the days as well as the 
 nights in almost total darkness, and while in this extremely 
 delicate state of health she w^as further prostrated by a 
 sudden calamity. Within her sight her favourite brother 
 was drowned. Amid all the dejection which combined 
 sorrow and sickness must have produced on a mental tem- 
 perament so exceedingly sensitive, the bravery with which 
 Miss Barrett clung to her mission as a singer, cannot be too 
 much admired. Within a year from the day at which the 
 "Seraphim" was published, she presented the world with 
 "The Romaunt of The Page."* The Greek dramatists 
 
 • So all the biographers say, under the impression that the poem 
 was then published in a voUmie. It does not appear in the British Museum 
 Catalogue, however, and I cannot find it in any book earlier than the 
 1844 " Poems," a collection of pieces which, with the exception of 
 
770 English Poet ess ks. 
 
 have happily no influence here. It is a beautiful ballad of 
 woman's love disguised and slighted ; with a subject not en- 
 tirely new, but worked out in a completely dramatic manner. 
 
 A knight of gallant deeds 
 
 And a young page at his side, 
 From the holy war in Palestine 
 
 Did slow and thoughtful ride, 
 As each was a palmer and told for beads 
 
 The dews of the eventide. 
 
 The knight and the page talk of deeds that were done 
 in the East, and with pride recall each other's feats of 
 daring. At length the knight talks of his wife — of her to 
 whom he is wending his way home — and speaks of the 
 welcome she will accord to his gallant young companion. 
 The page asks if he loves his lady well, and he is answered 
 that his master had an old friend. Earl Walter, who de- 
 fended his dead father from the lies of a slanderer, but at 
 the cost of his life ; over the dead body of Earl Walter he 
 was made to swear that he would take his friend's young 
 daughter for a wife. A forced marriage like this was not 
 after his heart, of course, but the priest was brought, the 
 ring was put on the girl's hand, she was married and left to 
 rule in the Castle of Nyde, but as soon as the ceremony 
 was complete, her knight rode off to the crusades. 
 
 In the dark chambere, if the bride was fair, 
 
 Ye wis, I could not see, 
 15ut the steed thrice neighed, and the priest fast prayed. 
 
 And wedded fast were we. 
 Her mother smiled upon her bed 
 As at its side we knelt to wed, 
 
 And the bride rose from her knee 
 And kissed the smile of her mother dead, 
 
 Or ever she kissed me. 
 
 a few contributions to English or American periodicals, are printed for 
 the first time. The poem, therefore, was probably contributed to some 
 magazine. Wherever it ai^i)eared, it did not reach the pages of the 
 NiTiU Monthly which printed Mrs. ]3rowning*s " Romaunt of Margaret." 
 
Mks. Eliaabetit Barrett BrowNii^c. 271 
 
 Here the page weeps at the recital and excuses himself; 
 his own sister was in this lady's case. He tells how his 
 sister, left like this by her lord, followed him in the dis- 
 guise of a servitor, praying in his tent when no one else 
 was awake, fighting in the thick of the fight, all for his sake, 
 her little white hands covered with blood and tears. The 
 page hints at sacrifice after sacrifice which his sister made 
 for her lord ; but he cannot win his master's sympathy for 
 her — not such a wife would he have chosen. 
 
 — " But what if she mistook thy mind 
 
 And followed thee to strife, 
 Then kneeling did entreat thy love 
 
 As Paynims ask for life ? " 
 — ** I would forgive, and evermore 
 Would love her as my servitor, 
 
 But little as my wife. 
 
 Look up — there is a small bright cloud 
 
 Alone amid the skies ! 
 So high, so pure, and so apart, 
 
 A woman's honour lies." 
 The page looked up^ — the cloud was sheen — 
 A sadder cloud did rush, I ween. 
 
 Betwixt it and his eyes. 
 
 While his master speaks, the page observes some Saracens 
 are upon them. His resolution is taken. He urges his 
 master to press on ; he himself has to attend to the girths 
 of his harness, and will follow speedily. His master's words 
 ring in his ears. There is but one ending to such despair 
 as they have caused— that must be death. His master rides 
 on — there is the tramp of hoof with the flash of steel. 
 
 P'alse page, but truthful woman I 
 She stands amid them all unmoved : 
 A heart once broken by the loved 
 
 Is strong to meet the foeman. 
 
 I'he servitor dies, and the homeward-riding baron has lost 
 the devoted wife about whose love he was so careless. The 
 
2 'J 2 English Poetesses, 
 
 story is told as with one rapid breath ; scarcely a word is 
 wasted. Scott, steeped in chivalry as he was, could not 
 have told the main story better; and there are countless 
 touches of imagination in it far above his capacity. The 
 clear, strong handling of this " Romaunt of the Page " was 
 of itself enough to announce Miss Barrett as the greatest 
 poetess of modern times. 
 
 In 1842, Miss Barrett contributed to the Athenceum 
 a series of articles upon *'The Greek Tragic Poets." Two 
 years later appeared two volumes of " Poems " which con- 
 tained*^ The Drama of Exile," together with many shorter 
 pieces, which well redeemed the promise held out by the 
 few detached poems bound up with " The Seraphim." What 
 a treasury of poetical work had now been laid at the critic's 
 feet ! The " Lament for Adonis," from Bion, is an excel- 
 lent translation, full of the honey of Hymettus — " A Vision 
 of Poets," albeit exhibiting curious parallels with Tennyson 
 - — has strong beauties of its own. It opens with sustained 
 melody such as no woman had ever attempted before : — 
 
 A poet could not sleep aright, 
 
 For his soul kept up too much light 
 
 Under his eyelids for the night. 
 
 And thus he rose disquieted 
 
 With sweet rhymes ringing through his head, 
 
 And in the forest wandered, 
 
 Where, sloping up the darkest glades, 
 The moon had drawn long colonnades 
 Upon whose floor the verdure fades 
 
 To a faint silver, pavement fair 
 
 The anticjue wood-nymphs scarce woukl dare 
 
 To foot-print o'er, had such been there. 
 
 And rather sit by breathlessly, 
 With fear in their large eyes, to see 
 The consecrated sight. But 11 1-: 
 
Mrs. Elizadetii Barrf.tt /^/cf^jiw/jvc. 273 
 
 The poet who, with spirit-kiss 
 P'amiliar, had long claimed for his 
 Whatever earthly beauty is, 
 
 Who also in his spirit bore 
 
 A beauty passing the earth's store, 
 
 Walked calmly onward evermore. 
 
 His aimless thoughts in metre went, 
 Like a babe's hand without intent 
 Drawn down a seven-stringed instrument. 
 
 The music of this passage is Keatsean. Then we have " The 
 Poet's Vow," opening with another passage of beauty, as 
 like the style of Wordsworth as the beginning of the last- 
 named poem is like Keats : — 
 
 ,*.- Eve is a twofold mystery ; 
 
 The stillness Earth doth keep, 
 The motion wherewith human hearts 
 
 Do each to either leap 
 As if all souls between the poles *~y 
 
 Felt " Parting comes in sleep." f 
 
 The rowers lift their oars to view 
 
 Each other in the sea ; 
 The landsmen watch the rocking boats 
 
 In a pleasant company ; 
 While up the hill go gladlier still 
 
 Dear friends by two and three. 
 
 The peasant's wife hath looked without 
 
 Her cottage door and smiled. 
 For there the peasant drops his spade 
 
 To clasp his youngest child 
 Which hath no speech, but its hand can reach 
 
 And stroke his forehead mild. 
 
 A poet sat that eventide 
 
 Within his hall alone, 
 As silent as its ancient lords 
 
 In the coffined place of stone, 
 When the bat hath shrunk from the praying monk, 
 
 And the praying monk is gone. 
 
2 74 English Poetesses. 
 
 This poem, which deals with the selfish seclusion to which 
 a poet weds himself, to the loss of all human love, exhibits 
 great advance of balanced expression. There are passages 
 in it which haunt the memory as simply perfect melodies, 
 and the story itself, although it utterly abandons even the 
 probabilities of fiction, is strongly romantic. This poem 
 also must rank as one of Mrs. Browning's masterpieces. 
 
 In " Isobel's Child " we are introduced to the Lady 
 Isobel nursing her sick babe while a storm reigns outside. 
 She prays constantly for its recovery, but the babe wakes 
 with a heavenly look in its eyes, and supernaturally endowed 
 with speech for the moment, begs of its own mother that it 
 may be released from the pain of mortal being. 
 
 A solemn thing it is to me 
 
 To look upon a babe that sleeps, 
 
 Wearing in its spirit-deeps 
 The undeveloped mystery 
 
 Of our Adam's taint and woe, 
 Which, when they developed be. 
 
 Will not let it slumber so ; 
 Lying new in life beneath 
 The shadow of the coming death, 
 With that soft, low, quiet breath. 
 
 As if it felt the sun ; 
 Knowing all things by their blooms, 
 Not their roots, yea, sun and sky 
 Only by the warmth that comes 
 Out of each, earth only by 
 
 The pleasant hues that o'er it run. 
 And human love by drops of sweet 
 
 White nourishment still hanging round 
 
 The little mouth so slumber-bound : 
 All which broken sentiency 
 And conclusion incomplete, 
 
 Will gather and unite and climb 
 To an immortality 
 
 Good or evil, each sublime, 
 Through life and death to life again. 
 
Mks. Eliza nr: Til Barrett Browning. 275 
 
 O little lids, now folded fast, 
 Must ye learn to drop at last 
 
 Our large and burning tears? 
 O warm quick body, must thou lie, 
 When the time comes round to die, 
 
 Still from all the whirl of years. 
 Bare of all the joy and pain ? 
 O small frail being, wilt thou stand 
 At (iod's right hand, 
 Lifting up those sleeping eyes 
 Dilated by great destinies, 
 To an endless waking ? thrones and seraphim. 
 Through the long ranks of their solemnities, . 
 Sunning thee with calm looks of Heaven's surprise, 
 
 But thine alone on Him? 
 Or else, self-willed, to tread the Godless place, 
 (God keep thy will !) feel thine own energies 
 Cold, strong, objectless, like a dead man's clasp. 
 The sleepless deathless life within thee grasp, — 
 While myriad faces, like one changeless face, 
 With woe not love's^ shall glass thee everywhere 
 And overcome thee with thine own despair ? 
 
 This is the manner in which the poem concludes : — 
 
 And a sense of tune, 
 A satisfied love meanwhile 
 Which nothing earthly could despoil, 
 Sang on within her soul. 
 
 Oh you, 
 Earth's tender and impassioned few, 
 Take courage to entrust your love 
 To him so named who guards above 
 
 Its ends and shall fulfil ! 
 Breaking the narrow prayers that may 
 Befit your narrow hearts, away 
 
 In His broad, loving will. 
 
 But the finest of all Mrs. Browning's ballads is the " Lay 
 of the Brown Rosary." It strikes a note new in our 
 literature, save that Coleridge may have dimly suggested it. 
 s 2 
 
276 ENCLISFf Piy'/PFSSKS. 
 
 Several later poetesses have repeated it, and it is even likely 
 that one or two masterpieces of male writers in our own 
 days were inspired by its example. Its theme is the love of 
 woman so passionate that in heaven there will be no happi- 
 ness without the beloved one. Onora, the heroine, to bring 
 her lover back to her, concerts at night with the nun of the 
 Brown Rosary, and when at evening she stoops to kiss her 
 young brother, he sees within her bosom the fatal Brown 
 Rosary upon which her soul has been sworn away. " Did 
 none pray for her ? " says one angel bending over her bed as 
 she sleeps. " Aye," says a second angel, " her brother," 
 
 A child,— 
 Who never, praying, wept before : 
 While, in a mother undefiled, 
 Prayer goeth on in sleep, as true 
 And pauseless as the pulses do. 
 
 The lover comes back — the horror-stricken little brother 
 calls out upon his sister, as she goes to the altar, but he is 
 silenced again and again. Onora turns almost to marble as 
 the service proceeds ; the priest cannot read aright in her 
 presence whenever the Great Name occurs. His voice 
 sinks to silence — it cannot be said. Her lips do not move 
 in prayer — she has no soul of her own to pray with. But 
 the marriage word is said. The deed is complete. Her 
 lover turns to her. " My own wife," says he, and falls stark 
 at her feet. So her soul has been bartered, and her lover 
 has come to her, and she has married him, and there is an 
 end to the bargain with the " Nun of the Brown Rosary." 
 
 "The Rhyme of the Duchess May" is another 
 triumph of ballad -making. Duchess May is engaged by 
 her guardian to his evil-minded son, but scorns him. 
 Lord of Leigh though he is. She weds Sir Guy of 
 Linteged at midnight, and rides with him through the 
 stormy gloom to his castle, whither, after Sir Guy and she 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 277 
 
 have had three months happiness, the Lord of Leigh comes 
 with three hundred archers to re-capture the Duchess May. 
 There is no hope for Sir Guy and his garrison. He 
 purposes to sacrifice himself that his followers and his wife 
 may be spared ; and the sequel of the poem tells in burn- 
 ing words of the wifely devotion with which the Duchess 
 May compels her lover to let her share the fate he has 
 appointed for himself. 
 
 Of the other poems in these early volumes the "Ro- 
 mance of the Ganges," — a subject apparently taken from 
 " L. E. L,''— " Bertha in the Lane," " Crowned and Wedded " 
 — one of the most spontaneous and noble poems upon our 
 Queen — "Crowned and Buried," — an equally noble ode upon 
 Napoleon — " The lost Bower " — evidently aiitobiograpical — 
 " Wine of Cyprus " — autobiographical also — and several 
 other efforts, we perhaps need not speak of here. The 
 volume of 1844, however, contains "The Cry of the 
 Children," one of Mrs. Browning's most successful poems. 
 It is founded upon a Blue Book report regarding factory 
 children, written by her friend, Mr. Hengist Home. The 
 subject is good. Here, as in " The Cry of the Human," 
 sympathy for suffering goes straight to the reader's heart ; 
 yet one cannot help the conclusion, that generous and 
 noble as its main sentiment is, " The Cry of the Children " 
 has gained a reputation far in excess of its deservings. 
 " The Cry of the Human " indeed, though less talked of, 
 contains stronger work than its companion poem : — 
 
 '* There is no God," the foolish saith, 
 But none, "There is no sorrow," 
 And nature oft the cry of faith, 
 
 In bitter need will borrow : 
 Eyes, which the preacher could not school, 
 
 By wayside graves are raised, 
 And lips say, " God be pitiful," 
 
 Who ne'er said, "God be praised." 
 
 Be pitiful, O God ! 
 
278 English Poetesses. 
 
 The tempest stretches from the steep 
 
 The shadow of its coming, 
 The beasts grow tame and near us creep, 
 
 As help were in the human ; 
 Yet, while the cloud-wheels roll and grind, 
 
 We spirits tremble under — 
 The hills have echoes, but we find 
 
 No answer for the thunder. 
 
 Be pitiful, O God ! 
 
 The battle hurtles on the plains. 
 
 Earth feels new scythes upon her ; 
 We reap our brothers for the wains. 
 
 And call the harvest — honour : 
 Draw face to face, front line to line. 
 
 One image all inherit, — 
 Then kill, curse on, by that same sign, 
 
 Clay — clay, and spirit — spirit. 
 
 Be pitiful, O God ! 
 
 In these volumes, too, we have "The Mask" with its 
 sad Rossetti-like philosophy ; we have " The Lady's Yes " 
 and " A Man's Love." Added to these we have " A 
 AVoman's Shortcomings " and "A Man's Requirements." 
 These four poems go through the heart of society like 
 four rapiers. 
 
 And then we have Mrs. Browning's challenge of 
 Tennyson's success in " Lady Geraldine's Courtship": * — 
 
 Dear my friend and fellow-student, I would lean my spirit o'er you ! 
 
 Down the purple of this chamber tears should scarcely run at will. 
 I am humbled who was humble. Friend, I bow my head before you : 
 
 You should lead me to my peasants, but their faces are too still. 
 
 There's a lady, an earl's daughter, — she is proud and she is noble, 
 And she treads the crimson carpet and she breathes the perfumed air, 
 
 And a kingly blood sends glances up, her princely eye to trouble. 
 And the shadow of a monarch's crown is softened in her hair. 
 
 This and " Locksley Hall " are the the two noblest dramatic 
 outbursts of song in our time. There is scarcely need to 
 
 * Said to have been written in twelve hours. 
 
jVJks. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 279 
 
 tell the story of Lady Geraldine's courtship. At her table 
 in London, Bertram, the peasant-born poet, is welcomed 
 among titled and graceful guests. Seeing him somewhat 
 slighted by her equals in standing, she asks him to honour 
 her by visiting her country home, and there he intoxicates 
 himself with her presence, while he forms one of a large 
 party entertained by Lady Geraldine. Lovers she has 
 plenty, but she keeps them gravely at a distance, putting 
 discussions of high themes between her and them. The 
 eagerest voice in these discussions is always Bertram's, and 
 he is unaware how much he may be betraying himself. At last, 
 while sitting solitary indoors, he hears the Lady Geraldine's 
 voice mingling with that of a noble guest, who is pressing 
 his suit upon her ; and this is the end of the reply which 
 the poet is compelled to hear — 
 
 *' Whom I marry, shall be noble, 
 Ay, and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he was born." 
 
 Then stung by selt-reproach at his own hidden love, and 
 mad with a new despair, the poet seeks an opportunity to 
 heap wild words upon his hostess, speaking out his own 
 love, letting her know how little he feels he must appear in 
 the eyes of such as she ; but yet with a studied fierceness 
 proclaiming himself, though peasant born, as much a noble 
 as any in the land, by the law of God's nobility. Drunk 
 with passion, he reels through a long tirade against her and 
 her class, and ends by hurling at her words like these — 
 
 " Have you any answer, madam ? If my spirit were less earthly, 
 If its instrument were gifted with a better silver string, 
 I would kneel down where I stand, and say — Behold me ! I am worthy 
 Of thy loving, for I love thee. I am worthy as a king. 
 
 "As it is — your ermined pride, I swear, shall feel this stain upon her, 
 That /, poor, weak, tost with passion, scorned by me and you again, 
 Love you, madam, dare to love you, to my grief and your dishonour, 
 To my endless desolation, and your impotent disdain ! " 
 
28o English Poetesses, 
 
 More mad words like these — mere madness ! friend, I need nut write 
 
 them fuller, 
 For I hear my hot soul dropping on the lines in showers of tears. 
 Oh, a woman ! friend, a woman ! why, a beast had scarce been duller 
 Than roar bestial loud complaints against the shining of the spheres. 
 
 But at last there came a pause. I stood all vibrating with thunder 
 Which my soul had used. The silence drew her face up like a call. 
 Could you guess what word she uttered ? vShe looked up, as if in 
 
 wonder. 
 With tears l)eaded on her lashes, and said — " Bertram ! " it was all. 
 
 What the denouement is, can of course be guessed. 
 
 This poem, " Lady Geraldine's Courtship," attracted 
 such widespread interest as is rarely bestowed on high 
 poetry. Some read it because of its social teaching, some 
 read it because of its imaginative power, and many more, 
 with little taste for social philosophy or for high thinking, 
 took it up as the best novelette of the season. But " Lady 
 ( xcraldine's Courtship " did more for its writer than all this. 
 It introduced her to a new Hfe and a new hope. Robert 
 Browning corresponded with her as poet writing to poet, 
 and erelong the two wrote as lover writing to lover ; and in 
 spite of her great delicacy, and sustained opposition on her 
 father's part, Elizabeth Barrett became Browning's wife in 
 1846. She was then in her thirty-seventh year. Her fra- 
 gility had taken from her the power of being a blooming 
 bride, but all her ways were charming and dainty. She 
 was affable to all, and devoted to the interests of her rela- 
 tives. It must have been a very hard trial for her, dependent 
 as she had been through so many years on the assiduous 
 attentions of her own family, to rise from her sick-bed and 
 face their opposition, to take the hand of the man she loved 
 and go out into the world with him. Not only was the 
 ordeal trying, but the result of the step was very proble- 
 matical. In effect, the result was happily all that could have 
 been desired. 
 
Mrs. Eli/.ai>i: ni n.iRRETT Browning. 281 
 
 Immediately on her marriage, Mrs. Browning accom- 
 panied her husband to Italy, where through some sunny 
 years they enjoyed the exquisite sympathy of spirit which 
 each could give the other. The only child of the union, born 
 in his mother's fortieth year, is now Mr. Barrett Browning, 
 who has made his mark in art. It has been wondered that 
 since Mrs. Browning's death, her husband has not given to 
 the world a biography of her whose life he cherished. The 
 truth is probably that there is little to tell. Throughout his 
 ow^n poems there are several fine allusions to Mrs. Browning, 
 not the least beautiful being the opening verses of " Joce- 
 seria." But the world has to thank both Mr. and Mrs. 
 Brow^ning for so far withdrawing the veil from their married 
 life as to have allow^ed the publication of the " Sonnets 
 from the Portuguese." These " Sonnets from the Portu- 
 guese," as everybody knows, are the sonnets into which 
 Miss Barrett poured her soul when she was wooed by 
 Robert Browning. Grateful as we must feel that we are 
 permitted to read such poems, we are almost astounded 
 that the privilege should have been afforded us. No woman's 
 heart was ever laid barer to the critical public than Mrs. 
 Browning's has been in the " Sonnets from the Portuguese.'^ 
 No man who ever loved has draw^n forth such exquisite 
 music from a woman's heart. These sonnets almost seem 
 too sacred to handle and analyse, yet assuredly if the ex- 
 pression of love at its noblest is a thing by which the world 
 can be instructed and bettered, the poet and his wife did a 
 generous and wise thing in delivering up their secret. No 
 woman's heart indeed was ever laid barer to us, but no 
 heart could have laid itself bare more purely. It is the 
 heart of a priestess. ^ 
 
 There is no mannerism to be found in these sonnets, no ( 
 extravagance of phrase, no seeking after antique fashion, no 
 striving after half-felt sublimities. In the opening sonnets 
 of the series, there is a solemn, awed expression of wonder- 
 
282 Engusji Poetesses. 
 
 ment at the revelatipn of a word which had ahiiost been 
 forgotten in her life, if it had not been undreamt of. 
 Then we have the self-abandonment, the utter ravishment 
 which only the gurest — woman's .heart can feel when 
 she realises that the moment has come when love must 
 be all in all to her, or life be thereafter failure alone. 
 We have here also the natural jealousy of love ; it must 
 be for her inmost, worthiest self — a self he must have 
 divined rather than realised by knowledge — that her lover 
 must love her. Then we have the exquisite bliss of soul- 
 contentedness, and even the almost painful inly-stirring, 
 yearning joy, like that of the bud that grows and bursts 
 its very heart for gladness. And then we have an in- 
 troductory hymn of affection, enough by itself — a single 
 
 ^ poem of fourteen lines — to give the writer rank as the 
 
 Vmost exalted poet of her sex : — 
 
 How do I love thee ? Let me count the ways. 
 
 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 
 
 My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight 
 
 For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. 
 
 I love thee to the level of everyday's 
 
 Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. 
 
 I love thee freely, as men strive for Right ; 
 
 I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. 
 
 I love thee with the passion put to use 
 
 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith 
 
 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose 
 
 With my lost saints — I love thee with the breath, 
 
 Smiles, tears, of all my life ! — and, if God choose, 
 
 I shall but love thee better after death. 
 
 Such lines as these fill one with a sense of the wondrous 
 stillness characteristic of the force displayed in the mightiest 
 things. There is a holy quiet in the tone of this sonnet. 
 The love surges in the woman's breast as simply, fully, 
 irresistibly, silently as the moon rises, or a great star falls, 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 283 
 
 or the tide heaves. Shakespeare himself has not taught us 
 love as ideal as this. This was the work that Mrs. Browning 
 was born into the world to do best — better than any man 
 could do — to read to the full God's meaning when He made 
 woman's heart. And, as if her missionary spirit had bc^ 
 favoured with that special fulness of the time which has 
 wrung out the cry of every greatest soul, this woman-poet, 
 lying alone, shadowed by sickness, and thinking out her life 
 in a world which had little to do with the every-day lives and 
 loves of ordinary people, had brought to her almost the one 
 man in the universe, one might say, who could wuth any 
 adequate nobility have graced such love as hers by accept- 
 ing and understanding it. 
 
 The influence of Brow^ning upon his wife's life seems ^ 
 to have been altogether conducive to her happiness. His 
 influence, however, upon the forms of her thought was, for 
 a time at least, unfortunate ; and the new circumstances 
 into which she was cast forced upon her themes which 
 excited without inspiring. The Brownings took up their 
 residence in an undistinguished-looking Palazzo in the Via 
 Maggio at Florence. The street is an uninviting one, but 
 conveniently situated near the Pitti Palace and the Boboli 
 Gardens. These were the days in which Italy tossed in her 
 , sleep, and tried to throw off" the cords that bound her. 
 Every poet once in his or her life throws out the arms of 
 sympathy to struggling liberty, even when it fights against 
 order. As Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge echoed 
 the huzzas of Parisian revolutionary mobs, so Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, looking from the windows of Casa Guidi upon the 
 Florentine people as they trooped to greet the Grand Duke 
 at the Pitti, to thank him for some concessions to their 
 demands, dreamt that this was the beginning of a new free 
 Government for Italy, and made herself the prophetess 
 of her beloved populace of Florence. But " of all forms 
 of mistake," says George Eliot, " prophecy is the most 
 
284 iLyC/JSH POKTKSSKS. 
 
 gratuitous." So Mrs. Browning found. In the second 
 part of "Casa Guidi Windows" her prophetic faith bites 
 
 the dust. 
 
 For me, I do repent me in this dust 
 Of towns and temples which makes Italy, — 
 
 I sigh amid the sighs which breathe a gust 
 Of dying century to century 
 
 Around us on the uneven crater-crust 
 Of these old worlds, — I bow my soul and knee. 
 
 Absolve me, patriots, of my woman's fault 
 That ever I believed the man was true ! 
 
 The Grand Duke Leopold had been as false as the falsest 
 Hapsburger could be. ' ' Casa Guidi Windows " is clearer 
 in expression than Mrs. Browning's other political poems. 
 It commences with a subject fitted for a sonnet ; and, 
 indeed, it would almost appear as if this opening had been 
 adapted from some irregular sonnet form : — 
 
 I heard last night a little child go singing 
 
 'Neath Casa Guidi windows, by the church, 
 O hella liherta^ O bclla I — stringing 
 
 The same words still on notes he went in search 
 So high for, you concluded the upspringing 
 
 Of such a nimble bird to sky from perch 
 Must leave the whole bush in a tremble green. 
 
 And that the heart of Italy must beat, 
 While such a voice had leave to rise serene 
 
 'Twixt church and palace of a Florence street : 
 A little child, too, who not long had been 
 
 By mother's finger steadied on his feet, 
 And still O bclla libertci he sang. 
 
 The poem echoes many a thought from the time of 
 Dante, Petrarch, the great Angelo, Machiavelli — looking over 
 all the world with the glance of the gamester, — and Savon- 
 arola looking on tlie same with the tears in his eyes ; and 
 yet the poetess will have her Italians believe that, as Saint 
 Simon said, *''l'he golden age is before us, not behind us." 
 
Mrs. Eijz [BETH Bakrf.tt Browning. 285 
 
 We do not serve the dead — the past is past. 
 God lives, and lifts His glorious mornings up 
 
 Before the eyes of men awake at last, 
 Who put away the meats they used to sup. 
 
 And down upon the dust of earth outcast 
 The dregs remaining of the ancient cup, 
 
 Then turn to wakeful prayer and worthy act. 
 
 Mrs. Browning's hope is that among the self-liberated 
 masses the force at work will be not popular passion, but 
 popular conscientiousness, surging up to the very thrones 
 of arch-dukes and kings. Should it overturn these, what 
 then, would the people be worse ? Conscientiousness is 
 better than any arch-duke. But if arch-duke, king, or 
 Pope should accept the signs of the times, the people would 
 get its own, and yet its rulers be little disturbed. 
 
 Or ere we loved Love's self even, — let us give 
 The blessing of our souls, (and wish them strong 
 
 To bear it to the height where prayers arrive, 
 When faithful spirits pray against a wrong, ) 
 
 To this great cause of southern men who strive 
 
 In God's name for man's rights, and shall not fail ! 
 
 Heroic daring is the true success, 
 
 The eucharistic breed requires no leaven ; 
 And though your ends were hopeless, we should bless 
 
 Your cause as holy. Strive — and, having striven, 
 Take, for God's recompense, that righteousness ! 
 
 But the Arch-Duke Leopold ere long came back to 
 Florence, with Austrian swords and bayonets-- 
 
 From Casa Guidi windows gazing, then, 
 I saw and witness how the Duke came back. 
 
 The regular tramp of horse and tread of men 
 Did smite the silence like an anvil black 
 
 And sparkless. With her wide eyes at full strain, 
 Our Tuscan nurse exclaimed, " Alack, alack, 
 
2^6 English Poetess E<i. 
 
 Signora ! these shall be the Austrians." " Nay, 
 Be still," I answered, ** do not wake the child ! " 
 
 — For so, my two-months' baby sleeping lay 
 In milky dreams upon the bed and smiled, 
 
 And I thought, "he shall sleep on, while he may, 
 Through the world's baseness : not being yet defiled. 
 
 Why should he be disturbed by what is done ? " 
 
 and then the would-be prophetess cries for the arm of the 
 strong man against the tyrant : — 
 
 I love no peace which is not fellowship 
 
 And which includes not mercy. I would have 
 Rather the raking of the guns across 
 
 The world, and shrieks against Heaven's architrave ; 
 Rather the struggle in the slippery fosse 
 
 Of dying men and horses, and the wave 
 Blood-bubbling. . . . Enough said !— by Christ's own cross, 
 
 And by this faint heart of my womanhood, 
 Such things are better than a Peace that sits 
 
 Beside a hearth in self-commended mood, 
 And takes no thought how wind and rain by fits 
 
 Are howling out of doors against the good 
 Of the poor wanderer. 
 
 Mazzini is appealed to, the shade of Carl Alberto is invoked, 
 and smiling in the face of impending horrors the prophetess 
 thus concludes her rhapsody . — 
 
 ^ Howe'er the uneasy world is vexed and wroth. 
 Young children, lifted high on parent souls. 
 
 Look round them with a smile upon the mouth, 
 And take for music every bell that tolls ; 
 
 (Who said we should be better if like these?) 
 But 7oe sit murmuring for the future though 
 
 Posterity is smiling on our knees. 
 Convicting us of folly. Let us go — 
 
 We will trust God. The blank interstices 
 Men take for ruins. He will build into 
 
 With pillared marbles rare, or knit across 
 With generous arches, till the fane's complete. 
 
Mrs. EfjZAnr.Tii Barrett Brouwing. 2^7 
 
 This world has no perdition, if some loss. 
 Such cheer I gather from thy smiling, Sweet ! 
 
 The self-same cherub-faces which emboss 
 The Vail, lean inward to the Mercy-seat. 
 
 The poem entitled " Casa Guidi Windows ' appeared in 
 185 1. In i860 it was followed by " Poems before Congress," 
 the Congress being that of Villafranca, the shameful 
 occasion on which Napoleon III. betrayed the hopes of 
 patriots who had other aims than power. Napoleon III. 
 never had warmer paean offered to him than in the first 
 of these " Poems before Congress." 
 
 But now. Napoleon, now 
 That, leaving far behind the purple throng 
 
 Of vulgar monarchs, thou 
 
 Tread 'st higher in thy deed 
 
 Than stair of throne can lead, 
 To help in the hour of wrong 
 The broken hearts of nations to be strong,-— 
 
 Now, lifted as thou art 
 
 To the level of pure song. 
 We stand to meet thee on these Alpine snows ! 
 
 And while the palpitating peaks break out 
 Ecstatic from somnambular repose 
 
 With answers to the presence and the shout,- 
 We, poets of the people, who take part 
 
 With elemental justice, natural right, 
 Join in our echoes also, nor refrain. 
 
 We meet thee, O Napoleon, at this height 
 At last, and find thee great enough to praise. 
 Receive the poet's chrism, which smells beyond 
 
 The priest's, and pass thy ways ; — 
 An English poet warns thee to maintain 
 God's word, not England's : — let His truth be true 
 And all men liars ! with his truth respond 
 To all men's lie. Exalt the sword and smite 
 On that long anvil of the Apennine 
 Where Austria forged the Italian chain in view 
 Of seven consenting nations, sparks of fine 
 
 Admonitory light, 
 
288 English Poet ess fs. 
 
 Till men's eyes wink before convictions new. 
 Flash in God's justice to the world's amaze, 
 Sublime Deliverer ! — after many days 
 Found worthy of the deed thou art come to do — 
 
 Emperor 
 
 Evermore. 
 
 The series of these poems which began in such a strain 
 of exultation, ends with a dismal wild " Curse " of exagger- 
 ated emotion — one of the most unpleasant pieces of writing 
 to be found in the whole of Mrs. Browning's volumes. 
 Happily in the following year Mrs. Browning returned to 
 truer inspiration in " Last Poems." Among these poems 
 there is nothing so strong as some of the writer's earlier 
 efforts, but yet several of them are such as any one less 
 than Mrs. Browning would have made a reputation upon. 
 *' Bianca among the Nightingales " has an Italian woman's 
 passion in it. " My Heart and I," if it does not read as a 
 spontaneous outburst, is at any rate a note of variety in Mrs. 
 Browning's music, and a true note. A few lines entitled 
 " The Best Thing in the World," are very pathetic in their 
 simplicity ; and " Lord Walter's Wife " is a successful 
 return to the treatment of dramatic incident in modern 
 society.* These things are good, but they are only an 
 after-crop compared to the full growth of poetry Mrs. 
 Browning produced before her marriage. The great work 
 of her married life is " Aurora Leigh," which appeared in 
 1856. 
 
 *' Aurora Leigh " begins with this line — 
 
 *' Of writing many books there is no end ; " 
 
 and forthwith Mrs. Browning proceeds to write a poem in 
 nine books, longer on the whole than "Paradise Lost." 
 
 * Several of Mrs. Browning's later poems were originally contri- 
 buted to an American newspaper. 
 
ATrs. Ei.iZAnETii BARKiyi'T Browninc. 289 
 
 AVriting to her relative Kenyon, the author declares that 
 into this prolonged effort of her maturity her highest convic- 
 tions upon life and art are entered. Anyone who wishes to 
 l)roduce dull and prosaic pages from the works of Mrs. 
 Browning may find them here. But from this poem also 
 may be culled the most far-seeing criticisms upon humanity 
 which Mrs. Browning ever penned, and some of her very 
 loftiest imaginative work is contained in it. The artistic 
 methods employed in the production of '* Aurora Leigh " 
 are startling and unique. "Aurora Leigh" might be said to 
 he a sensational novel versified in something like an epic 
 style. Ruskin deems it above " In Memoriam," or any other 
 lengthy poem of our time ; but then it is he who speaks of 
 Scott as the greatest philosopher of our age. Whether the 
 finest or not, " Aurora Leigh " is one of the most popular 
 })oems written in this century ; and for one reader who has 
 read Robert Browning's " lAiria," there are twenty who 
 have read his wife's masterpiece. 
 
 ** Aurora Leigh," the daughter of an Englishman who had 
 married a Tuscan girl, lost her mother at the age of four, 
 and was brought up among the Italian valleys under the 
 austere guardianship of her remaining parent, a man who, 
 except for the one impulse which had made him marry his 
 southern wife, was wrapt up in questions no more attractive 
 to ordinary minds than law and taxes and parish govern- 
 ment. He educated his daughter until she was thirteen, and 
 then left her in the world alone, his last words to her coming 
 strangely from such lips — '' Love, my child I love, love ! " 
 
 " 'Ere I answered he was gone, 
 xVnd none was left to love in all the world." 
 
 The child of the sunny South was now called away to 
 
 the charge of her father's sister in England, who received 
 
 her with a proud, searching glance — striving to read her 
 
 Italian parent in her face — that seemed an insult to her 
 
 T 
 
290 English Poetesses. 
 
 mother's memory. Aurora instinctively armed herself 
 against the relatives among whom her lot was to be cast 
 in the cold grey country of her aristocratic father. Her 
 aunt had led a harmless, so-called virtuous, life, which was 
 not life at all, among people who bowed down to the vicar 
 and the squire — 
 
 The lord -lieutenant looking clown sometimes 
 From the empyrean to assure their souls 
 Against chance- vulgarisms, and, in the abyss 
 The apothecary, looked -on once a year. 
 To prove their soundness of humility. 
 
 Young Aurora had to leave off her sweet Tuscan tongue, to 
 learn collects and catechism and creeds, and hear the tracts 
 " Agaiiist the Times ; " smatter in French and German ; 
 study the internal laws of the Burmese Empire, and make 
 sure by how many feet Mount Chimborago out-soars 
 Teneriffe. Above all, she was taught to trim herself into 
 the virginal proprieties, for this model aunt 
 
 . . . liked a woman to be womanly, 
 And English women, she thanked God and sighed, 
 (Some people always sigh in thanking God) 
 Were models to the universe. 
 
 Aurora, however, w^as patient, read the books that were 
 put into her hand, was civil to her cousin Romney Leigh, 
 gave heed to the vicar, made tea for the visitors, and 
 blushed with a secret joy when they whispered that for all 
 her blue eyes and quiet ways she was growing paler every 
 day, and would not live in England ; she would die. Wit- 
 nessing the blush, young Romney would blush too, with 
 sudden anger, and say, 
 
 " You are wicked now ? 
 You wish tc die and leave the world a-dusk 
 For others with your naughty light blown out 
 
Mrs. Elizahe'iii Barrett Broi^n/xc. 291 
 
 How Romney and Aurora were left by their aunt to 
 twine each round the other if the gods would, can well 
 be imagined. The touch of his hand, however, made her 
 tremble more and more with conflicting instincts : with 
 memories of Italy, and the solace of books, she strove to , 
 shut her hated surroundings out of her mind And Rom- 
 ney, did she hate him, or already love him ? Or did she 
 hate him for the very reason that she w^as learning to love 
 him ? He was growing up to be early a thinker, one who 
 dwelt among social problems with philanthropic aims — 
 something after the fashion of Aurora's father; and she 
 with her passionate nature was developing in her inner soul 
 the impetuous thoughts of a poet. 
 
 At length she stood upon the brink of twenty years, 
 upon a glad June day, and had to meet the first distinct 
 avowal of her cousin's affection. He explained to her 
 something of his views about life, and, in what we must 
 confess to be a sufficiently prosaic manner, hinted that 
 she could do no better than become his helper in working 
 for others. He did not think that she need strive to be a 
 great poet ; women are not of such stuff. They make 
 doting mothers and perfect wives, and that is w^hat they 
 were created to be. And when he asked her to be his 
 ^' perfect wife," she answers — 
 
 " Sir, you were married long ago. 
 You have a wife already whom you love, 
 Your social theory. Bless you both, I say. 
 For my part, 1 am scarcely meek enough 
 To be the handmaid of a lawful spouse. 
 Do I look a Hagar, think you ? " 
 
 " So you jest." 
 
 " Nay, so I speak in earnest," I replied. 
 " You treat of marriage too much like, at least, 
 A chief apostle : you would bear with you 
 A wife . . a sister . . shall we speak it out ? 
 A sister of charity." 
 T 2 
 
292 English Port ess fs. 
 
 So she sent him away, to her aunt's consternation. 
 After this first crisis in her English life, she could not but 
 ponder much upon the result of her speech with her cousin. 
 Still, her judgment confirmed the action impulse had 
 caused her to take. 
 
 The next week passed in silence, and the next, and 
 several after. Romney had not returned, but on the 
 sixth week there came a new and terrible fact in her life. 
 A single ghastly shriek ran through the house one night, 
 and the household rushed to the aunt's room, to find her 
 dying, clenching a letter in her hand — and soon she was 
 dead. 
 
 The heir came over on the funeral clay, 
 
 And we two cousins met before the dead, 
 
 With two pale faces. Was it death or life 
 
 That moved us ? When the will was read and done, 
 
 The official guests and witnesses withdrawn, 
 
 We rose up in a silence almost hard 
 
 And looked at one another. Then I said, 
 
 " Farewell, my cousin." 
 
 But he touched, just touched 
 My hatstrings tied for going, (at the door 
 The carriage stood to take me) and said low, 
 His voice a little unsteady through his smile, 
 " Siste, viator." 
 
 But she would not stay. Romney subtly endeavoured to 
 make her believe herself really the heir to her aunt's estate. 
 He had entered into an agreement with his aunt to provide 
 for Aurora; but Aurora would have none of the Leighs' 
 money, and broke away to i^ondon. For three years she lived 
 almost unknown and unfriended in rooms at Kensington, 
 making her bread by the labours of her pen. People read 
 what she wrote, but she herself read it also with some scorn. 
 She "ript her verses up, but found no blood upon the 
 rapier's point. The heart in them was just an embryo's 
 
Afh\s, Klizju/'It// Barreii' Browning. 293 
 
 heart." vShe was si)caking with the dust of ashes in her 
 mouth. 
 
 One day, an elegant woman of the world rustled up the 
 stairs to knock at her poor door — Lady Waldemar — and 
 after various compliments to the muse who dwelt so high, 
 the visitor's eyes rivetted themselves with a grave, loving 
 look, and she said, " I think you have a cousin Romney 
 I .eigh ; I bring you word about him— but first, jw/ do not love 
 him, do you ? " and Aurora replied, " You are frank at least 
 in putting questions. I love my cousin, cousinly, no more." 
 A\ hereupon Lady Waldemar declared, '' It is / love Romney 
 Leigh," and unbosomed herself in strong w^ords like these — 
 
 " Of a truth, Miss Leigh, 
 I have not, without struggle, come to this. 
 I took a master in the C^erman tongue, 
 I gamed a little, went to Paris twice ; 
 But, after all, this love ! . . . you eat of love, 
 And do as vile a thing as if you ate 
 Of garlic— which, whatever else you eat, 
 Tastes uniformly acrid, till your peach 
 Reminds you of your onion. Am I coarse ? 
 Well, love's coarse, nature's coarse — ah, there's the rub I 
 We fair fine ladies, who park out our lives 
 From common sheep-paths, cannot help the crows 
 From flying over, — we 're as natural still 
 As Blowsalinda. Drape us perfectly 
 In Lyons' velvet, — we are not, for that, 
 Lay figures, look you : we have hearts within, 
 Warm, live, improvident, indecent hearts. 
 As ready for outrageous ends and acts 
 As any distressed sempstress of them all 
 That Romney groans and toils for. We catch love 
 And other fevers, in the vulgar way : 
 Love will not be outwitted by our wit, 
 Nor outrun by our equipages : — mine 
 Persisted, spite of efforts. All my cards 
 Turned up but Romney Leigh ; my German stopped 
 At germane Wertherism ; my Paris rounds 
 Returned me from the Champs Elysecs just 
 
294 English Poetesses. 
 
 A ghost, and sighing like Dido's. I came home 
 Uncured, — convicted rather to myself 
 Of being in love ... in love I That's coarse you'll say, 
 I'm talking garlic." 
 
 The reason of this strange fine lady's visit was still stranger 
 than herself. She came to tell that Romney, in a freak of 
 mad-cap philanthropic self-sacrifice, had engaged himself to 
 marry a girl dwelling in a pestilent slum. Would Aurora help 
 her — Lady Waldemar — to rescue him from the degradation 
 before him ? Aurora declared that to save Romney's life 
 she could not, and to save her own she would not break 
 this marriage. But two hours after the fine lady had been 
 dismissed, the young poetess reached St. Margaret's Court, 
 cowered under a volley of ribald indecency from the first 
 slut she met, but still persevered upon her way until she 
 stood in the presence of Romney's betrothed. 
 
 No wise l)eaiitiful 
 Was Marian Erie. She was not white nor brown, 
 But could look either, like a mist that changed 
 According to being shone on more or less : 
 The hair, too, ran its opulence of curls 
 In doubt 'twixt dark and bright, nor left you clear 
 To name the colour. Too much hair perhaps 
 (I'll name a fault here) for so small a head, 
 Which seemed to droop on that side ai^d on this, 
 As a full-blown rose uneasy with its weight 
 Though not a wind should trouble it. Again, 
 The dimple in the cheek had better gone 
 With redder, fuller rounds ; and somewhat large 
 The mouth was, though the milky little teeth 
 Dissolved it to so infantine a smile. 
 For soon it smiled at mc ; the eyes smiled too, 
 But 'twas as if rcnicnil)cring they had wept. 
 And knowing they should, some day, weep again. 
 
 Marian Erie was born among the Malvern Hills. Her 
 father was a labourer, sometimes assisting the Welsh 
 drovers, sometimes keeping swine, or i)icking hops, and 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 295 
 
 drinking himself drunk as often as he could. Her mother 
 was scarcely better. Strange that they should have a child 
 in whom there was anything flower-like ! The girl's looks 
 attracted the Squire of the neighbourhood, and when one day 
 the mother hastily ran indoors and snatched the comb from 
 her daughter's head, and let her wealth of tresses fall about 
 her and drew her out — to sell her to this squire — the child 
 sprang away, and hearing them pursue, hardly took breath 
 until the hills were left behind her. And then as she felt the 
 life swoon out of her, "I am dead and safe," said Marian 
 Erie to herself, and sank upon the ground. Thus she lay 
 through the darkness of night, and awaking with the sound of 
 rumblings and creakings in her ear, she became aware that a 
 waggoner had spied her lying in the ditch under the cold 
 moon of the morning, and had picked her up, and brought 
 her to the hospital of the next town on his road. There 
 she was left, and while others fought for her life, she herself 
 was almost afraid that life might return to her. But it did 
 return, and when at last she was well enough to mix among 
 the convalescents, there came the day when she must be 
 pushed out into the world — and whither now through that 
 dreary world was she to fly from her father and her mother, 
 and the brute passion of the squire ? While she hovered 
 upon the steps of the hospital, there came a visitor. Per- 
 haps, when he spoke, he sang. Marian Erie could scarcely 
 tell. But this was Romney Leigh ; and when he turned 
 to her to say, "And you — you are going — where?" she 
 answered, " None asked me till this moment. Can I say 
 where I go, when it has not seemed worth while to God 
 Himself to think of me and fix where I may go?" " Poor 
 child," said he, when he had heard her tale, " it is natural 
 that betrayal by a mother's love should bring despair of 
 (lod's love too." But she was thenceforth not unfriended. 
 Romney Leigh sent her up to a great seamstress's house in 
 London, and thus they parted. 
 
296 English Poetesses, 
 
 She kepi sight of Heaven, 
 But not of Romney. He had good to do 
 To others : through the days and through the nights 
 She sewed and sewed and sewed. She drooped sometimes, 
 And wondered, while along the tawny light 
 vShe stuck the new thread into her needle's eye. 
 How people without mothers on the hills 
 Could choose the town to live in I — then she (lrc\N 
 The stitch, and mused how Romney's face would look. 
 And if 'twere likely he 'd remember hers 
 When they two had their meeting after death. 
 
 They met sooner than this. A companion of the work- 
 room, Lucy (iraham — a bright little thing who toiled for 
 a grumbling grandmother, wasting her very life to make 
 bread for both — lay sorely sick. She had dropped sud- 
 denly in the street, going home one night, and Marian gave 
 up her own work to stay by Lucy's bed and nurse her from 
 sleep to sleep, until she stole aw^ay from this work-a-day 
 world. 
 
 A gentleman came in to visit the chamber of the dead, 
 and then a voice said, " Marian Erie," and Marian scarcely 
 wondered to see Romney Leigh. It seemed the hour and 
 the i)lace for him ; and after the sad offices had been done 
 for the over-worked sewing girl, an access of some divine pity 
 ( ame to Romney's heart, and looking into the noble eyes of 
 Marian, he told her what his life's work was, and that he 
 realised what powers of suffering and helpful labour were 
 hers ; and so he asked her to be his helpmate. And she, 
 what could she say ? Standing before him as if in the pre- 
 sence of her angel, she accepted his question as a com- 
 mand. She would be his fellow-worker and his wife. 
 
 Such was the story told to Aurora Leigh in the depths 
 of that den of misery, and scarcely had the tale ended 
 when someone opened the door ; and this was Romney 
 Leigh. ^' You here, Aurora ? " "Even so, dear Romney. 
 1 -ady VValdemar sent me in haste to fmd a cousin of mine — 
 
. I/a" .v. fu. I/A ni: Til Ji A A' A' i: r r A' av ) WNim:. 
 
 297 
 
 who should be.'' Roniney convoyed Aurora through the 
 streets to her home. They had strange melancholy talk of 
 by-gone time, but scarce a word of the future, and when the 
 last "good-night" came — 
 
 ilow sliani;;!.' liis i^ool-iUL^lit souiKlcd, -like good night 
 
 Reside a deathl)C(l, where tlie morrow's sun 
 
 Is sure to come too lale for more good-chiys. 
 
 And all that night I thought . . *' (iood-night,*' said he. 
 
 A month passed, and then half St. (riles in frieze was 
 bidden to meet St. James's in cloth of gold. The poor 
 among whom Marian Erie had lived were to feast upon 
 Hampstead Heath after attending the marriage to Romney 
 Leigh in a West End church. The rabble rushed into the 
 church, and pressed upon many a gay lady like Lady 
 Waldemar, and many a fine gentleman to match her. 
 Society was there to smirk at the outrageous union, and 
 the rabble was there to flout at Society. Romney waited 
 for his bride. His friends began to titter expectantly, her 
 friends whispered and then clamoured as the time passed 
 on. What had he done with her ? They would mob him. 
 He must have had her made away with — put out of sight 
 at least- -to save himself from the bargain he had made ! 
 And the whole church was filled with uproar. 
 
 As best he could, Romney dismissed silks and tatters 
 alike. The West-End had its bellyful of gossip for one 
 evening at least, and three people who had been at the 
 church that morning greatly marvelled what had become of 
 Marian Erie. These were Lady Waldemar, Aurora, and 
 Romney Leigh. But their reasons for speculation were 
 very different. Romney sifted the town for Marian, but 
 found her not. Many days had passed ; nothing could be 
 heard of her. Lady Waldemar stayed aloof, and Aurora, 
 almost beside herself with anxietv, set out towards the land 
 
298 English Poetesses. 
 
 of her birth, to escape from further complications which 
 she feared would occur in the history of her cousin. 
 
 In Paris Aurora Leigh halted for a brief sojourn, and 
 even there her eyes would often search among the faces in 
 the street crowds, half expecting that they might meet the 
 glance of Marian Erie ; and as she wandered aimlessly 
 about one afternoon, thinking of many a thing that somehow 
 would resolve itself into a part of Romney— what face was 
 that flashed past, and was gone ? 
 
 It was as if a meditative man 
 Were dreaming out a summer afternoon 
 And watching gnats a-prick upon a pond, 
 When something floats up suddenly, out there, 
 Turns over . . a dead face, known once alive . . 
 So old, so new ! it would be dreadful now 
 To lose the sight and keep the doubt of this : 
 He plunges —ha ! he has lost it in the splash. 
 
 Was it then Marian's ? What was it that woman, with 
 Marian's face, had wTapped beneath her shawl? Was it 
 not a child ? 
 
 Long weeks passed; many a day of tramping through 
 the streets had Aurora Leigh, peering vainly in the faces of 
 French humanity for the blue eyes of Marian Erie. Rising 
 feverishly one morning, she stepped out into the early air to 
 enjoy the fragrance of the Flower Market. At a certain 
 stall was a woman cheapening a bunch of mountain grass. 
 " Would it be so much ? Ah, then she must go without it 
 that morning," and so she turned — Marian Erie — to meet 
 Aurora Leigh. There was a long pause. '' Let me pass," 
 said Marian, at last. " I will not," replied Aurora. " I lost 
 my sister Marian many days, and sought her in my walks 
 and prayers. Do we throw away the bread we work and 
 pray for ? Do we crumble it and drop it ? And shall I do 
 even so, that see Marian, whom I have hungered after more 
 than bread ? " " You are sad," said Aurora, suddenly ; " you 
 
M/cs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 299 
 
 are tired." " There is one at home," said Marian, smiling 
 faintly, *' who has need of me ; I must not let him wait 
 longer." *' Not even to hear of Romney Leigh? " " Not 
 even to hear of Mister Leigh." But Aurora would go home 
 with her, and found that he who expected her friend Marian, 
 was Marian's babe. 
 
 Self-forgot, cast out of self, 
 And drowning in the transport of the sight, 
 Her whole pale passionate face, mouth, forehead, eyes, 
 One gaze, she stood : then, slowly as he smiled 
 She smiled too, slowly, smiling unaware, 
 And drawing from his countenance to hers 
 A fainter red, as if she watched a flame 
 And stood in it a-glow. " How beautiful," 
 Said she. 
 
 I aaswered, trying to l)e cold.- 
 (.\rust sin have compensations, was my thought, 
 As if it were a holy thing like grief? 
 \\\(\ is a woman to be fooled aside 
 From putting vice down, with that woman's toy 
 A baby ? ) — " Ay ! the child is well enough," 
 I answered. " If his mother's palms are clean 
 They need be glad of course in clasping such ; 
 But if not, I would rather lay my hand. 
 Were I she, on God's brazen altar-bars 
 Red-hot with burning sacrificial lambs, 
 Than touch the sacred curls of such a child." 
 
 She plunged her fingers in his clustering locks, 
 
 As one who would not be afraid of fire ; 
 
 And then, with indrawn steady utterance said, 
 
 '* My lamb, my lamb ! although, through such as thou, 
 
 The most unclean got courage and approach 
 
 To God, once — now they cannot, even with men, 
 
 Find grace enough for pity and gentle words." 
 
 " My Marian," I made answer, grave and sad, 
 *'The priest who stole a lamb to offer him. 
 Was still a thief. And if a woman steals 
 (Through God's own barrier-hedges of true love, 
 
^;oo Engijsii Poi: ri:ssi:s. 
 
 ^\■hicll fence out licencx' in securing love) 
 
 A child like this, that smiles so in her face, 
 
 She is no mother but a kidnapper, 
 
 And he's a dismal orphan, not a son. 
 
 Whom all her kisses cannot feed so full ; 
 
 lie will not miss hereafter a juire home 
 
 To live in, a pure heart to lean against, 
 
 A jnire good mother's name and memory 
 
 To hoj^e by, wlun t!u' world throws thick and bad. 
 
 And he feels oul for virtue." 
 
 " Oh," she smiled 
 With bitter patience, " the child takes his chance : 
 Not much worse off in being fatherless 
 Than I was, fathered." 
 
 Aye, the child was fatherless. The worst must be told. 
 Not even Marian knew who the father was. Long had 
 Marian's love for Romney Leigh enshrined itself within her 
 bosom without her being aware how much of a sacrifice 
 she might be demanding of him, even in begging that she 
 might be constantly with him as his handmaid. It was 
 what seemed the worldly-wise prudence of Lady Waldemar 
 that first showed her such a danger glooming in the future. 
 A little word, even a look now and again, was sufficient 
 from such an accomplished woman to put countless 
 suggestions into the simple mind of Marian Erie. Every 
 time she came she l)rought more light, and every new light 
 made sorrow clearer; and every time the lady came she 
 looked more beautiful, speaking " like the flute among the 
 trees ; " and when at last Marian Erie, at the sound of that 
 musical voice, burst into sobs, and asked her : " Will you 
 set me straight, and teach me what to do ? " Lady Waldemar's 
 arms were round her, "and for the time," said Marian Erie, 
 "I dreamt how it feels to have a real mother, like some 
 Kirls." 
 
 How clearly it all came out through the delicate 
 diplomacy of Lady Waldemar's sympathetic .speech I There 
 
Mrs. EiJ/.AJiKTu Garret r J > row n inc. 301 
 
 arc ( ertain bloods that never could mix. Romney Leigh 
 would be lost to himself and to the world with a wife so 
 far below his level. And so when Marian's resolve was 
 taken, her dainty visitor approved her self-sacrificing project 
 of leaving England at once, and promised her a comfortable 
 passage to the colonies, and indeed bestowed upon her the 
 assistance of one who had been her own maid, and who 
 knew^ well how to move about the great world. For all 
 these benefits Romney Leigh's betrothed thanked Lady 
 Waldemar faintly but gratefully, as a dying man might thank 
 the hand that puts his pillow^ straight. A letter of renuncia- 
 tion Marian sent to her Romney Leigh, and then she and 
 her new companion were off. What happened after that, to 
 Marian's mind was but a half-remembered dream of hell. 
 All she cared for when the ship left English shore was that 
 it was taking her away from the possibility of her weakness 
 still embarrassing Romney Leigh. But there are fiends in 
 woman's shape ; such was this w^oman who was given to 
 her for a companion ; and if Lady Waldemar knew what 
 her companion was, was she not the more delicate but 
 subtle devil of the tw^o? There was a sw^ooning sickness 
 and a dismal sea — a foreign shore — a shameful house — a 
 drugged cup, and the morrow's waking as in a grave. She 
 was beside herself for many weeks, until at last, tired out 
 with her mad vehemence, they let her escape. And up and 
 down the poplar-lined roads she wandered, at every crossing 
 shuddering at the image of crucified Christ, who seemed to 
 lift his finger at her, and almost follow her, crying "Take the 
 girl ; she is none of mine from henceforth." Thus week by 
 week Marian resumed the old tramp life of her childhood, 
 in a strange country. It w^as France. But the blue of 
 heaven is larger than the cloud, and pity was found at the 
 last. Someone at Clichy took compassion upon her, and 
 ])rocured her a situation as serving-maid in Paris. There 
 she submitted herself as patiently as the beaten ass to all the 
 
302 English Poetesses, 
 
 caprice of a dainty young French woman, no better than she 
 should be ; but my lady had cause one day to open her eyes 
 very wide at her domestic, and hinted at sudden revelation 
 of a coming scandal. With less pity for her sister-woman 
 than the angel with the flaming sword might have had, the 
 mistress turned Marian into the streets forthwith ; but an 
 employer of seamstresses was found who judged young girls 
 in Paris with less severity ; and from her she had work until 
 her babe was born, and after it was born. This was Marian's 
 tale. 
 
 She smiled l^eyond the sun and ended so, 
 And all my soid rose up to take her part 
 Against the world's successes, virtues, fames. 
 " Come with me, sweetest sister," I returned, 
 " And sit within my house and do me good 
 From henceforth, thou and thine ! ye are my own 
 From henceforth. I am lonely in the world. 
 And thou art lonely, and the child is half 
 An, orphan. Come, — and henceforth thou and I 
 Being still together will not miss a friend, 
 Nor he a father, since two mothers shall 
 Make that up to him. I am journeying south, 
 And in my Tuscan home I'll find a niche 
 And set thee there, my saint, the child and thee 
 And burn the lights of love before thy face, 
 And ever at thy sweet look cross myself 
 From mixing with the world's prosperities ; 
 That so, in gravity and holy calm. 
 We two may live on toward the truer life." 
 
 She looked me in the face and answered not, 
 
 Nor signed she was unworthy, nor gave thanks, 
 
 But took the sleeping child and held it out 
 
 To meet my kiss, as if requiting me 
 
 And trusting me at once. And thus, at once, 
 
 I carried him and her to where I live ; 
 
 She's there now, in that little room, asleep. 
 
 I hear the soft child-breathing through the door, 
 
 iVnd all three of us, at to-morrow's break, 
 
J/a'.v. Erj/ABETii Bar R 111' I- Browning. 303 
 
 Pass onward, homeward, to our Italy. 
 
 Oh, Romney Leigh, I have your debts to pay, 
 
 And I'll be just and pay them I 
 
 To a friend of Romney 's — Lord Howe — Aurora wrote 
 of Marian Erie ; and to Lady Waldemar she wrote too, 
 half with the fear that that subtle woman had already be- 
 come Romney^s wife, and charging her only that if this were 
 so, she should be to him as good a wife as she could, upon 
 pain of summary exposure. And then the trio, Aurora and 
 Marian and the child, started for Italy, and settled down 
 among the olive-clad hills of Aurora's native Tuscany. 
 There daily the dews of God's peace fell upon them, and 
 something like content began to dawn in the hearts of the 
 two women. They were much to each other — more to each 
 other than ever, because each had sacrificed herself after 
 her own fashion for Romney Leigh. Perhaps there lay in Lady 
 Waldemar, after all, the powers that could make Romney 
 happy ; and so looking down, somewhat as spirits passed 
 through death might look, upon a world they have left, 
 they breathed hopes for the future of the man they love. 
 Rumours of old friends to whom new happiness had come 
 reached Aurora occasionally, and once or twice it chanced 
 that such rumours touched Romney and gave her strange 
 surmises about him. No message came to her from him, 
 however, nor had she or Marian sent any to him. 
 
 One evening Aurora sat alone upon the terrace of her 
 tower, a book upon her knee, while Marian knelt by the 
 fountain, in the garden below, toying with her child. The 
 mother's laugh joined with her infant. The strange sound 
 mixed itself with the sweet music of the Duomo bell as it 
 struck ten. Twenty other church bells took up the echoes 
 in their different notes, and then, as if he had waited for 
 such a prelude to herald him, Romney Leigh stood beside 
 Aurora. He had come, then, to tell her of his marriage ! 
 
304 EXGLISir PoF/rKSSFS. 
 
 There was an interrhange of sharp, short ([uestions ; 
 Aurora wishing that he should tell all, yet asking every- 
 thing but the one great question ; he with a burden on his 
 soul to deliver to her, and yet afraid to begin the task. 
 Abruptly the question came, "Marian — Marian's well?" It 
 was hard to speak of her to Lady Waldemar's new hus- 
 band. " Yes, she is well." " Is she here ? " " Yes." " That 
 shall be presently. But now a few words to you first." 
 Then he tells her how he has read her new book of poems, 
 and how through it he has twice as deei)ly interested himseU' 
 in her, and how he has now to confess that his scheme of 
 life has failed where hers would have conquered. 
 
 At which Aurora makes confession too ; she does not 
 feel herself so strong a woman, so subtle a thinker, that she 
 can now believe in the help she once imagined he spurned 
 at her hands. Thus sadly they look back upon their erring 
 lives, with not a hint as yet at any hope to come. At length 
 Romney has to tell of an adventure of which no newspaper 
 or letter had brought the news to Aurora. The poor folk 
 for whose benefit he had turned the hall into a hospital 
 had not understood him, and the peasantry around had 
 thought him a subverter of all decency. They set .upon 
 him and burnt him out of house and home. After the fire, 
 he was very ill and hoped that he might die ; but he had 
 recovered so far as to remember duty again, and he was 
 here to offer Marian Erie protection and tenderness such 
 as he still might give her as a husband. 
 
 But still it seemed so strange — " Husband ? " is he not 
 Lady Waldemar's ? 
 
 " Not married to her ! yet you said " . . 
 
 " Again ? 
 " Nay, read ihe lines" (he held a leUer out) 
 " She sent you through nie." 
 
 hy the moonlight there 
 I tore the meaning out with passionate haste 
 Much rather than I read it. 
 
Mrs. El iza be t//T^AA A A I tBrownixc, 305 
 
 \\'cll, what the letter was, matters noi so imu h. Ladx 
 W'aldemar could not express repentance without ending 
 with tlie curse of hate to Aurora. 
 
 *' Ah, then, not married!" was Aurora's first comment 
 when the letter had been read. " You mistake," said 
 he ; '^ I am married. Is not Marian Erie my wife ? 
 As God sees things, I have a wife and child, and 1 
 am here to claim them." And Marian was there too. 
 Her child had been laid to rest when the sound of 
 voices had attracted her. Ere she broke in upon them with 
 her voice, she had realised the whole. With calm words 
 she tried him. He knew what she was ; was he prepared to 
 be husband to her and father to the child ? Yes. Did 
 Aurora counsel her to be Romney's wife ? Y'es ; Aurora, 
 by her own pure life and by the honour of the Leighs, took 
 Heaven to witness that Romney would be honoured by 
 such a wife. Having then drawn the two thus far, Marian 
 entered on her renunciation of him. She was very proud. 
 There needed but these last words of Romney to com- 
 ])lete her pride. She did not spurn herself; she was as 
 (iod made her — not as man had made her. But she 
 had solemnly made a pact with God that she and Romney 
 would never, never clasj) hands again. Hers had been 
 a worship for him ; it had not really been woman's love. 
 He had always been beyond the reach of her woman's 
 arms, and now she could swear she did not love him. He 
 would still be to her what he had been — her angel Romney ; 
 her love was all for her strangely-given babe. And with these 
 words, Marian was gone. 
 
 And then, amid the strange conversation that ensued 
 l)etween Romney and Aurora, it came out that Romney 
 had been struck blind amid the ruins of his burning home. 
 He had come here to go through his last heroic act, and it was 
 almost disappointment to him that it was not to be possible 
 for him. It was almost disa[)pointment to him -though she 
 u 
 
3o6 English Port ess ks. 
 
 whom he really loved remained by his side. But the Fates 
 had always stood between him and her. He would not 
 accept her pity. 
 
 " Rut I love you sir," at last burst out Aurora — 
 
 " And when a woman says she loves a man, 
 The man must hear her, though he loves her not." 
 
 And the setjuel is here in Aurora's words — 
 
 But oh, the night ! oh, hitter-sweet ! oh, sweet I 
 
 dark, O moon and stars, O ecstasy 
 Of darkness ! O great mystery of love. 
 
 In which absorbed, loss, anguish, treason's self 
 
 Enlarges rapture, — as a pebble dropt 
 
 In some full wine-cup over-brims the wine ! 
 
 While we two sate together, leaned that night 
 
 So close my very garments crept and thrilled 
 
 With strange electric life, and both my cheeks 
 
 Cirew red, then pale, with touches from my hair 
 
 In which his breath was, — while the golden moon 
 
 Was hung l)efore our faces as the badge 
 
 Of some sublime inherited despair, 
 
 Since ever to be seen by only one, — 
 
 \ voice said, low and rapid as a sigh, 
 
 Vet breaking, I felt conscious, from a smile, 
 
 *' Thank God, who made me blind, to make me see ! 
 
 Shine on, Aurora, dearest light of souls, 
 
 Which rul'st for evermore both day and night I 
 
 1 am happy. " 
 
 1 thing closer to his breast, 
 .\> ^woid tlial, after battle, flings to sheath ; 
 And, in that hurtle of united souls. 
 The mystic motions, which in common moods 
 Are shut beyond our sense, broke in on us. 
 And, as we sate, we felt the old earth spin. 
 And all the starry turbulence of worlds 
 Swing round us in their audient circles, till, 
 If that same golden moon were overhead 
 Or if beneath our feet, we did not know. 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 307 
 
 And then calm, equal, smooth with weights of joy. 
 His voice rose, as some chief musician's song 
 Amid the old Jewish temple's Selah-pause, 
 .\nd bade me mark how we two met at last 
 Upon this moon-bathed promontory of earth. 
 To give up much on each side, then take all. 
 " Beloved," it sang, " we must be here to work ; 
 And men who work can only work for men, 
 And, not to work in vain, must comprehend 
 Humanity and so work humanly, 
 And raise men's bodies still by raising souls. 
 As God did first." 
 
 No one could doubt that in such passages as this last, 
 a broader, stronger style of poetical expression is used than 
 that which any other English poetess has reached. Every 
 here and there throughout the poem there comes a burst 
 of magnificent feeling like this— like a wild pulse-beat 
 — and exhibits the most genuine emotions of human 
 nature. 
 
 " Aurora Leigh " will long continue to be a favourite work 
 in our literature. Judged simply as poetry, its faults are 
 principally two. In the first place, it is not sustained, and 
 occasionally falls below the level of mediocrity in its work- 
 manship. Secondly, its theme is a novelist's theme, not 
 a poet's. But, on the other hand, it remains one of Mrs. 
 Browning's chiefest triumphs that she took a story of life as 
 it is lived in our own day by flesh and blood like ourselves, 
 and cast it into blank verse, and yet did not render herself 
 or her characters ridiculous in so doing. In one or two 
 passages, such as the description of Lucy's grandmother 
 cowering by the side of the dead body, there is a ghastly, 
 but minutely tragic power employed which no writer of our 
 century, either in prose or in poetry, has excelled. Dickens 
 or Thackeray never described more vividly than in the pas- 
 sage to which allusion has been made. Towards the end of 
 the whole poem there is a fulness, a sustained eflfect, and a 
 u 2 
 
^'^oS English Pojltkssfs, 
 
 naturalness, moreover, which takes away much of the jarring 
 sentiment too prominent in early portions of the story. 
 
 It may be presumed, however, that Mrs. Browning, in 
 deliberately choosing our own every-day world as the scene 
 for this romance, aimed at a distinctly new method in poetry. 
 She appears to have desired to be at once poetical and 
 realistic. In this attempt she failed to a considerable degree. 
 Helmholtz, while pursuing his acoustical experiments, con- 
 structed a number of globes, each of which resounded in 
 sympathy with one musical note only. Connecting such an 
 instrument with his ear by means of a tube, he was accus- 
 tomed to analyse the noise of the street crowds outside by 
 its help, and could discriminate throughout any hubbub 
 the quantity of sound in it corresponding to that particular 
 note. Miss Barrett lying on her sick-bed might have been 
 compared to Helmholtz with his instrument. She specu- 
 lated regarding the big world outside of her darkened room, 
 and strove to analyse it ; but the mingled voices were all 
 transmuted to her through the medium of the poetic sense, 
 or rather, only such of its voices reached her as appealed to 
 that sense. The comparatively short married life which she 
 enjoyed in the ideal company of a great poet, in the land of 
 ])oetry, was hardly likely to rectify her notions of the English 
 world in which she dwelt while she was not of it. Conse- 
 (juently, as a story of English society, '^Aurora Eeigh " is a 
 travesty. As Aurora herself is not pure English, but an 
 uncertain mixture of southern rjid northern blood, her 
 ( haracter and her doings may pass without too close a 
 scrutiny, though it may be doubted whether a young woman 
 dowered with a great poetical instinct such as Mrs. Browning 
 assigns to her would behave in such a pert and petted manner 
 for years together as that which characterised her heroine. 
 Romney Leigh, however, could hardly be accepted as a fair 
 study from real life. He is made up of contradictories. His 
 youth, we are given to understand, was devoted to political 
 
Mi^s. ErjzABETii Barrett Browning, 309 
 
 economy and such cut-and-dry subjects, and in later life we 
 are made to believe that he fills the role of a practical phil- 
 anthropist, doing his hospital-visiting and other duties of 
 the kind almost in the perfunctory manner of an inspector ; 
 while he turns up at the interesting points of the story with 
 the unfailing punctuality of a Deus ex mac/iind or a detec- 
 tive of the melodramas. But with all this business-like air, 
 he is in reality a weak creature, unable to guide himself 
 through society as well as the average nobody could guide 
 himself. He is very helpless before the woman whom he 
 early learnt to love — Aurora Leigh ; he lets her escape from 
 his influence too easily. The Quixotic way in which he 
 afterwards entangles himself with Marian Erie might have 
 more probability on the face of it, if we were given to under- 
 stand that it was an act of reckless despair consequent on 
 his rejection by Aurora. His betrothal to Marian Erie, 
 however, is not so much a result of such rejection as it is a 
 deliberate defiance of public opinion, in favour of some wild 
 humanitarian whim. But once granting that any sensible 
 man of wealth and noble blood and refined education and 
 great aims could imagine that he was furthering the highest 
 purjioses of his life by such a connection, we are still tempted 
 to incjuire why Romney's treatment of Marian Erie, after his 
 engagement to her, was of so singular a kind. Finding her 
 a convalescent in a hospital, was he doing the best thing for 
 a beautiful girl in sending her up to London, to brave its 
 temptations as a half-starved seamstress ? Having sent her 
 to London, why did he not follow her up, and look after her 
 welfare ? Having found her again by chance, and having 
 there and then proposed that she should become his wife, 
 why did he leave her a denizen of the filthy, reeking court 
 in which she had been living, among human beings whom 
 Mrs. Browning endeavours to depict as blacker than even 
 a ])olice magistrate's sad experience could realise ? Mrs. 
 Browning's whole treatment of the poor in this poem ev 
 
3IO English Poetesses. 
 
 hibits a fundamental ignorance of their condition. It may 
 safely be assumed that, bad as London is, there is no such 
 den of foul-mouthed sluts as St. Margaret's Court ; or if 
 there is, no decent seamstress need live in it. The rabble 
 that attends the church on the occasion of the projected 
 marriage is equally overdrawn, and the free-and-easy gossip 
 which goes on within the same church among the society 
 folks who are come to witness the ceremony, is not like 
 reality in any degree. Lady Waldemar also is such a cha- 
 racter as few are willing to accept as a picture from real life. 
 At times she is too cunning ; at times she is too simple in 
 showing her hand. It is hinted that she is diabolically 
 wicked, and yet she is aiming at gaining the pure love of 
 Romney Leigh, and devoting herself to such pursuits as his 
 are ; and the hideous cruelty of which she and her maid are 
 guilty towards Marian Erie almost outrages the common 
 sense of the most worldly reader, while as a dramatic neces- 
 sity it is emphasised to an extent too painful. The unmoved 
 self-confidence which Marian Erie exhibits after the crisis 
 which Lady Waldemar's machinations have brought about 
 might be a psychological possibility, and at any rate forms a 
 means of sustaining the story to a greater length, but it gives 
 to Marian an air of unreality still greater than that which 
 her philosophic judgments and her scholarly vocabulary give 
 her in the earlier phases of her career. 
 
 It is surely not hypercritical to judge this poem thus, 
 in what may be called the broad daylight of common- 
 sense, for the only excuse which a writer might have for 
 treating an every-day phase of society by means of poetry, 
 would be the proof that there is plenty of poetry to be 
 found in the reality around us ; but if the picture of reality 
 presented to us is a distorted one, our own observing 
 powers are roused in protest, and the experiment which has 
 been made upon our interest so far fails. Clearly, Marian 
 Erie and Romney must give way before the criticism of 
 
Mrs, Euzabrtii Barrett Browning. 311 
 
 reason as imaginary beings for the like of whom we might 
 search London of to-day in vain. Similarly, indeed, it is 
 unlikely that we could ever come across a woman so little 
 trammelled by the rules of ordinary society as Lady Geral- 
 dine, and if we did come across her, we should be very 
 apt to make well-founded comments upon the taste she 
 displayed in so boldly wooing Bertram the poet to visit 
 her and become her lover. Consequently, neither of Mrs. 
 Browning's two longer poems will stand the test of ordinary 
 society logic. 
 
 But having said as much, we need cavil no more. 
 However imperfect the stories are, they contain richer 
 imaginative work than any other modern woman has 
 achieved. 
 
 The most fatal defect in Mrs. Browning's poems, as a 
 whole, is the astonishing want of ear which usually charac 
 terises her style of verse-writing, even although she exhibits 
 such a wide command of language. It is needless to give 
 in detail the charges that have been brought against her in 
 this regard. With respect to her system of assonant rhym 
 ing, she would not confess herself in the wrong ; and the 
 defence which she wrote to Mr. Home * may be cited here 
 as showing how earnest she was about the matter — 
 
 "Know that my rhymes are really meant for rhymes — and that I 
 take them to be actual rhymes — as good rhymes as any used by rhymer, 
 and that in no spirit of carelessness or easy writing, or desire to escape 
 
 * Mr. Home, in 1877, published the many brilliant letters he re- 
 ceived from Mrs. Browning. In the two volumes containing these truly 
 admirable examples of epistolary style, will be found Mr. Home's 
 account of a dramatic poem he and Mrs. Browning had projected be- 
 tween them, which was to be called " Psyche Apocalypte." It should 
 further be noted here that Mrs. Browning contributed to the essays on 
 ( ontemporary writers collected by Mr. Home in two volumes, under 
 thf title of "The New Spirit of the Ai]je," and likewise helped in the 
 pro.liu-lion of a "Chaucer Modn ni^cd." 
 
3T3 
 
 English Poetesses, 
 
 difficulties, have I run into them, — Init chosen them, selected them, on 
 principle, and with the determinate purpose of doing my best, in and 
 out of this poem, to have them received ! If I fail ultimately before 
 the public — that is, before the people — for an ephemeral popularity 
 does not appear to me worth trying for — it will not l)e because I have 
 shrunk from the amount of la])our — where labour could do anything. 
 I have worked at poetry — it has not been with me reverie, but art.* 
 
 It will suffice to append to such a vindicatory statement 
 a list of what may be considered, according to ordinary rule, 
 the very bad rhymes that occur in one of her poems — 
 "Lady (ieraldine's Courtship": — 
 
 presence — peasants ; 
 door-ways — poor was ; 
 palace- chalice ; 
 nature satire ; 
 spirit — confer ; 
 woman — gloaming ; 
 invited — freighted ; 
 terrace — heiress ; 
 symbol — humble ; 
 islands — silence ; 
 murmur — warmer ; 
 poems — interflowings ; 
 idyl — middle 
 making — speaking ; 
 l)ranch — grange ; 
 shadow — meadow ; 
 simples — temples ; 
 admiring — iron ; 
 resources — horses ; 
 certes — virtues ; 
 suitors — futures ; 
 
 chamber — remember ; 
 men — distrain ; 
 too — flow ; 
 trouble — noble ; 
 fever — never ; 
 body — ruddy ; 
 inspiration — passion ; 
 coming — woman ; 
 verdant — ardent ; 
 l)osom — closing ; 
 learning — scorning ; 
 revile them — assoil them ; 
 earthly — worthy ; 
 passion — demonstration ; 
 wisely — nicely ; 
 occasioned — impassioned ; 
 weakness- -blackness ; 
 burden — pardon ; 
 ever — quiver ; 
 mercies — curses. 
 
 * Here is Miss Mitford's amusing theory regarding these faulty 
 rhymes:— "Our dear friend, you are aware, never sees anybody but 
 the members of her own family, and one or two others. vShe has a 
 
 liigh opinion of the skill in reading, as well as the fine taste, of Mr. 
 
 [Kenyon ?J, and she gets him to read her new poems aloud to her, and 
 so tries them upon him (as well as herself), something after the manner 
 of Molierc with regard to a far less elegant authority. So Mr. • 
 
Mrs. El //. i ni:rif B i a-r /■: tt Browning. 3 1 3 
 
 Nobody has been found to defend Mrs. Browning's 
 laxity with regard to rhyme, and none of the peculiar words 
 which she coined for her own use have been adopted into 
 our language. 
 
 The chief excellence of all Mrs. Browning's poems, 
 except her earliest ones, is the directness of their utter- 
 ance. They are not j)rimarily works of art ; they are 
 spontaneous expressions of strong feeling. Art does not 
 elaborate them ; it only trims them. However faulty her 
 knowledge of humanity was, her sympathies with humanity 
 were very noble and vigorous. There was in her works an 
 abundance of every kind of j^ure sympathy — ^even the animal 
 world is studied tenderly again and again in her poems. 
 Nature is reverenced by her. No sort of dogmatic theo- 
 logy pervades her Christianity ; but the life of toiling man 
 is as grand to her as it was sad to Carlyle. Perhaps after 
 her love-poetry, the note of singing which most endears her 
 to the English-speaking people is the beautiful sympathy 
 with child-life which so constantly makes itself felt through- 
 out, and one cannot but think that there may have come 
 to her, in her last moments, such a thought as came to 
 another distinguished woman of letters, whose dying e\- 
 jjression was, " I hear such beautiful voices, but the 
 children's are the loudest." 
 
 Mrs. Browning died in Casa (kiidi, Floren(e, June 29, 
 t86i, half-an-hour after daybreak. 
 
 siaiuls upon the hearth-rug, and uplifts the MS., and his voice, while 
 our dear friend lies folded up in Indian shawls upon her sofa, with her 
 long black tresses streaming over her bent-down head, all attention. 
 Now, dear Mr. — — has lost a front tooth — not quite a front one, but 
 a side front one — and this, you see, causes a defective utterance. It 
 does not induce a lisp, or a hissing kind of whistle, as with low people 
 similarly circumstanced, but an amiable indistinctness, a vague soften- 
 ing of syllables into each other, — so that suaucc and ilance would really 
 sound very like one another, and ->(• would cJiildrni :\W(\ /h'ici/drin 
 hacchantes and grant-es^ donl \«)u set- ? " 
 
314 English Poetesses, 
 
 NIGHT AND THE MERRY MAN.* 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 'Neath my moon what doest thou, 
 
 With a somewhat paler brow 
 
 Than she giveth to the ocean ? 
 
 He, without a pulse or motion, 
 
 Muttering low before her stands, 
 
 Lifting his invoking hands 
 
 Like a seer before a sprite. 
 
 To catch her oracles of light. 
 
 But thy soul out-trembles now 
 
 Many pulses on thy brow I 
 
 Where be all thy laughters clear, 
 
 Others laughed but to hear ? 
 
 Where thy quaint jests, said for fames? 
 
 Where thy dances, mixed with games ? 
 
 W^here thy festive companies. 
 
 Mooned o'er with ladies' eyes 
 
 All more bright for thee, I trow ? ' 
 
 'Neath my moon what doest thou ? 
 
 THE MERRY MAN. 
 
 I AM digging my warm heart 
 Till I find its coldest part. 
 I am digging wide and low. 
 Further than a spade will go : 
 Till that, when the pit is shaped 
 Large enow, there shall be heaped 
 Therein present pain and past 
 Joys, dead things that look aghast 
 By the daylight : now 'tis done. 
 Throw them in, by one and one ! 
 I must laugh, at rising sun. 
 
 Memories — of fancies golden 
 Treasures which my hands have holden, 
 Till their chillness made them ache ; 
 Of childhood's hopes that used to wake 
 If birds were in a singing strain, 
 
 ♦ The following poems by Mrs. Browning are here presented in their origin.i 
 form, as first printed. The critical reader may find it interesting to compare this 
 te.\t with that of the latest edition of Mrs. Browning's Works, 
 
Mrs. Elizabeth B.\RRi:rr Browning, 315 
 
 And for less cause, sleep again ; 
 Of the moss-seat in the wood 
 Where I trysted solitude ; 
 Of the hill-top where the wind 
 Used to follow me behind, 
 Then in sudden rush to blind 
 Both my glad eyes with my hair, 
 Made the gladder in the snare ; 
 Of the cawing of the rooks, 
 Of the dreaming 'neath the oaks 
 Which retain beneath them now 
 Only — shadow of the bough ; 
 Of the lying on the grass 
 While the clouds did overpass, 
 Only they, so lightly driven. 
 Seeming between me and Heaven ; 
 Of the little prayers serene. 
 Murmuring of earth and sin ; 
 Of large-leaved philosophy 
 Leaning from my childish knee ; 
 Of poetic book sublime. 
 Soul-kissed for the first dear time, 
 Greek or English, ere I knew 
 Life was not a poem too : — 
 Throw them in, by one and one ! 
 I must laugh, at rising sun. 
 
 — Of the glorious ambitions 
 
 Yet unquenched by their fruitions ; 
 
 Of the labouring at nights ; 
 
 Sweet as slumber's lost delights ; 
 
 Of achievements, less descried 
 
 By a dear few than magnified ; 
 
 Of praises from the many earned. 
 
 When praise from love was undiscerned ; 
 
 Of the sweet reflecting gladness 
 
 Softened by itself to sadness : — 
 
 Throw them in, by one and one ! 
 
 I must laugh, at rising sun. 
 
 What are these ? more, more than these I 
 Throw in dearer memories I- - 
 Of voices whereof but to speak 
 
31 6 Encltsii Poetesses. 
 
 Makes mine own all sunk and weak ; 
 
 Of smiles the thought of which is sweeping 
 
 All my soul to floods of weeping ; 
 
 Of looks whose absence fain would weigh 
 
 My own looks to the ground for aye ; 
 
 Of clasping hands — ah me, I wring 
 
 Mine, and in a trembling fling 
 
 Downward, every passioned paining I 
 
 Partings with the sting remaining. 
 
 Meetings with a deeper throe 
 
 Since the joy is altered so. 
 
 Changes with a fiery burning, 
 
 (Shadows upon all the turning,) 
 
 Thoughts of . . with a storm they came, 
 
 Thou I have not breath to name : 
 
 Downward, downward be they cast 
 
 In the pit I and now at last 
 
 My work beneath the moon is done, 
 
 And I shall laugh, at rising sun. 
 
 But let me pause or ere I cover 
 
 All my treasures darkly over : 
 
 I will speak not in thine ears, 
 
 Only tell my beaded tears 
 
 Silently, most silently. 
 
 When the last is calmly told, 
 
 Let that same moist rosary 
 
 With the rest sepidchred be. 
 
 Finished ! The darksome mould 
 
 Sealelh up the darksome pit. 
 
 1 will lay no stone on it. 
 
 Orasses I will sow instead, 
 
 Fit for Queen Titania's tread ; 
 
 Flowers, encoloured with the sun. 
 
 And 0.1 ai written upon none ; 
 
 Thus, whenever saileth by 
 
 The Ladye World of dainty eye, 
 
 Not a grief shall here remain. 
 
 Silken shoon to damp or stain ; 
 
 And while she lisps, " I have not seen 
 
 Any jilace more smooth and clean," 
 
 Here she cometh I — Ha, ha ! -who 
 
 Laughelh U)ud as I can do? 
 
Mrs. EuzAnr/ni Barrktt Brown inc. 317 
 
 r()\VI»KR*S CKAN 1:. 
 
 I'l is a placi' w licit.' jxicN crowiK-d may feel the heart's decaying ; 
 1 1 is a place where hapj^y saints may weep amid their praying : 
 Net Icl the grief and huml)leness as low as silence languish : 
 I'arth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish. 
 
 O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing I 
 
 Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging I 
 () men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, 
 (iroaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling ? 
 
 And now, what time ye all may read through dimming tears his story, 
 
 1 Tow discord on the music fell and darkness on the glory, 
 
 And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights de- 
 parted, 
 I lo wore no less a loving face because so l)roken-hearted — 
 
 1 ic shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation, 
 
 And l)ow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration ; 
 
 Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken ; 
 
 Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken. 
 
 \\ ith sadness that is calm, not gloom, I learn to think upon him. 
 With meekness that is gratefulness, on God whose heaven hath won him. 
 Who suffered once the madness-cloud toward His love to l)lind him. 
 Hut gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him ; 
 
 And wrought within his shattered brain such cjuick jioetic senses 
 As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influences : 
 The jiulse of dew upon the grass his own did calmly number, 
 And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a sluml)cr. 
 
 I Ik very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's chills rcmo\-ing. 
 Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving. 
 \\ ild timid hares were drawn from wocmIs to share his home-carobses, 
 Uplooking lo his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses. 
 
 And while, in blindness, he remained unconscious of the guiding, 
 And things provided came without the sv\ L'et sense of providing 
 Me testified this solenm truth, though phrenzy desolated, 
 Nor man nor nature satisfies whom only God created. 
 
3 1 8 English Poetesses, 
 
 Like a sick chikl llial knoweth not his mother while she blesses 
 And droppeth on his burning brow the coolness of her kisses, — 
 That turns his fevered eyes around — "My mother ! where's my mother?" 
 As if such tender words and deeds could come from any other I— 
 
 The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees her bending o'er him. 
 Her face all pale from watchful love, th' unweary love she bore him I 
 Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him, 
 Ikneath those deep pathetic Eyes which closed in death to save him. 
 
 Thus ? oh, not thus ! no type of earth could image that awaking. 
 Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round him breaking, 
 Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from l)ody parted, 
 But felt those eyes alone, and knew, — " My Saviour ! tiot deserted ! " 
 
 Deserted ! Who hath dreamt that when the cross in darkness rested. 
 Upon the Victim's hidden face no love was manifested ? 
 What frantic hands outstretched have e'er th' atoning drops averted ? 
 \\'hat tears have washed them from the soul, that ojte should be de- 
 serted ? 
 
 Deserted ! God could separate from His own essence rather ; 
 And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous vSon and Father : 
 \'ea, once, Immanuel's orphaned cry His universe hath shaken — 
 It went up single, echoless, " My God, I am forsaken !" 
 
 It went up from the Holy's lips amid His lost creation, 
 That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation I 
 That earth's worst phrenzies, marring hope, should mar not hoi)e's frui- 
 tion ; 
 And I, on Cowper's grave, should see his rapture, in a vision ! 
 
 CONSOLATION. 
 
 Am- are not taken ! there are left behind 
 
 Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring 
 
 And make the daylight still a blessed thing, 
 
 And tender voices, to make soft the wind : 
 
 But if it were not so — if I could find 
 
 No love in all the world to answer me, 
 
 Nor any pathway but rang hollowly 
 
 Where '*dust to dust " the love from life disjoinc 
 
M/<s. Ei.i/.AnETii Bakriitt Browning. 319 
 
 .\n<l if, with i)archc(l lii)s, as in a dearth 
 
 Of water-springs the very deserts claim, 
 
 I uttered to those sepulchres unmoving 
 
 The bitter cry, *' Where are ye, O my loving ? — " 
 
 I know a Voice would sound, " Daughter, I am. 
 
 Can I suffice for Heaven and not for earth ? " 
 
 THE SLEEP. 
 " He giveth His beloved sleep."— /Va//// cxxvii. 2. 
 
 Ok all the thoughts of God that are 
 Borne inward unto souls afar. 
 Along the Psalmist's music deep. 
 Now tell me if that any is, 
 For gift or grace, surpassing this — 
 " He giveth His beloved, sleep "? 
 
 What would we give to our beloved ? 
 
 The hero's heart to be unmoved. 
 
 The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep, 
 
 The senate's shout to patriot vows, 
 
 The monarch's crown to light the brows ? — 
 
 He giveth His beloved, sleep. 
 
 What do we give to our beloved ? 
 
 A little faith all undisproved, 
 
 A little dust to overweep. 
 
 And bitter memories to make 
 
 The whole earth blasted for our sake : 
 
 He giveth His beloved, sleep. 
 
 *' Sleep soft, beloved ! " we sometimes say. 
 
 Who have no tune to charm away 
 
 Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep : 
 
 But never doleful dream again 
 
 Shall break the happy slumber when 
 
 He giveth His beloved, sleep. 
 
 C) earth, so full of dreary noises ! 
 O men, with wailing in your voices I 
 O delved gold, tlic wallers hcaj) ! 
 
English Poetesses, 
 
 () strife, O curse, lh.it o'er it fall ! 
 (io(i makes a silence through you all, 
 And giveth His beloved, sleep. 
 
 His dews drop mutely on the hill, 
 His cloud above it saileth still. 
 Though on its slope men sow and reaj) : 
 More softly than the dew is shed. 
 Or rloud is floated overhead, 
 1 le giveth His beloved, sleep. 
 
 ^'ea, men may wonder while they scan 
 A living, thinking, feeling man 
 In such a rest his heart to keep ; 
 But angels say, and through the word 
 I ween their blessed smile is heard — 
 " He giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
 i'or me, my heart that erst did go 
 >rost like a tired child at a show, 
 That sees through tears the jugglers leaj), 
 Would now its wearied vision close, 
 \\'()ul(l childlike on His love repose. 
 Who giveth His beloved, sleep. 
 
 And friends, dear friends, when it shall be 
 That this low breath is gone from me, 
 And round my l)ier ye come to weep, 
 Let One, most loving of you all, 
 Say, " Not a tear must o'er her fall I " — 
 " He giveth His beloved, sleep." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EMILY BRONTE — GEORGE ELIOT — MENELLA BUTE 
 SMEDLEY. 
 
 THE bleakly-situated parsonage of Haworth, among the 
 Yorkshire Moors, will long be associated with some of 
 the most heroic literary work ever accomplished; heroic, not 
 by reason of the matter turned out, but heroic because of 
 the stress of suffering and repression under which it was 
 accomplished. There, in the early part of the century, 
 lived the Rev. Patrick Bronte, a morose Irishman of violent 
 will and few sympathies. His consumptive wife bore him 
 a numerous family, and wasted away of a cancer, partly, 
 and partly of heart-break. When Mr. Bronte's sister-in- 
 law came to manage his home for him, she found that his 
 whole household consisted of five daughters and one son, 
 all delicate, and all peculiar. Two of these girls died soon 
 thereafter, at a miserable school whither Emily and her 
 sisters had been sent to gain a scanty education. This was 
 an establishment for clergymen's daughters at Cowan's 
 Bridge: its horrors have been described in "Jane Eyre." 
 The remaining three sisters differed in their talents and in 
 their dispositions. Anne was the gentlest, the most senti- 
 mental, and the least able to withstand the hardships of 
 life. Her chief contribution to literature is the novel called 
 "Agnes Grey." Charlotte, compact in mind and body, was 
 the most business-like, the most versatile, the most reason- 
 able. In any situation she could find certain amenities. 
 
 V 
 
32 2 English Poetesses. 
 
 Emily, who made the nearest approach to beauty, had the 
 dauntless will of her father. With narrower capacities than 
 her sister Charlotte had — but these intensified to an extra- 
 ordinary degree — she passed through a world of awful trial 
 with but one purpose in her heart — never to flinch from 
 pain. If ever a literary woman had heroic stuff in her, 
 that woman was Emily Bronte. " She should have been a 
 man !" said a little Belgian professor who taught her French 
 at Brussels, " She should have been a man, a navigator ! " 
 
 Emily Bronte was born at Hartshead-cum-Clifton, near 
 Leeds, in 1 8 1 8, a year before the Bronte family established 
 itself at Haworth. After her return from Cowan's Bridge 
 she was again sent to school under happier circumstances, 
 but the strange girl, who hardly made a friend in her life, 
 yearned so for communion with nature on the lonely moor- 
 lands where she had been bred, that her sister Charlotte 
 sent her home again lest she should die. Once more she 
 essayed to make a struggle in the outer world, and took 
 the post of a teacher at Halifax ; but there her health really 
 gave way, and she was compelled to resign herself to home 
 duties, while her sisters earned their living, and a little 
 money over and above, as school-mistresses. The secret 
 hopes of all three girls centred in their brother Branwell, 
 a youth of an emotional nature which was taken to be of 
 great artistic promise. His character was devoid of all 
 firmness, and at the period of Emily's final return to home, 
 he had already compromised himself unmistakably by 
 vicious tendencies. However, his sisters, and even his 
 stern father, gave him licence to develop himself as he 
 pleased ; and the three devoted girls held before themselves 
 as their supreme attainment, the establishment of a ladies' 
 school at Haworth, the profits of which might send their 
 young genius to make his name in London. The prospect 
 which chance held out to them of obtaining a school else- 
 where, induced Charlotte and Emily, to borrow a little 
 
Emily Bronte. 323 
 
 money with which to pursue a short course of study at 
 Brussels. The principal result of Charlotte's experience 
 there was " Villette." At the Brussels school Emily was 
 peevish and home-sick. There remains, however, a fine 
 poem written by the girl at this time. It expresses her 
 dreary longings for familiar things, and contains the follow- 
 ing tender lines upon the home scenery : — 
 
 A little and a lone green lane 
 
 That opened on a common wide ; 
 A distant, dreary, dim blue chain 
 
 Of mountains circling every side. 
 
 A heaven so dear, an earth so calm. 
 So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air ; 
 
 And, deepening still the dream-like charm — 
 Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere. 
 
 On her return to home Emily had to devote herself to 
 household duty more than ever, as her aunt w^as now dead. 
 Branwell was a drunkard, and her father was partially blind 
 and held himself much aloof even from his own children. 
 She worked like a servant in the house, and one or two 
 village girls who occasionally came to help her noticed 
 that whilst she w^as baking, or performing any other drud- 
 gery of the kind, she would now and then pull a pencil from 
 her pocket and hastily make a jotting or two upon paper. 
 By and by Charlotte discovered a whole manuscript 
 volume filled with poems, each in Emily's cramped but clear 
 handwriting. When she had overcome the strong resent- 
 ment which Emily displayed at having her secret solace found 
 out, she urged her to agree that these poems sho.uld be 
 launched upon the world of publishers. Seeing that 
 Charlotte thought so much of Emily's poems, Anne timidly 
 produced similar specimens from her own store. The re- 
 sult was that the three collected their choicest efforts into 
 a manuscript volume, which they entitled "Poems by Currer 
 v 2 
 
324 English Poetesses, 
 
 Ellis and Acton Bell," and sent from publisher to pub- 
 lisher. These nowhere found any encouragement, until 
 at last Messrs. Aylott and Jones, of Paternoster Row, 
 wrote that they would produce the volume upon payment 
 of thirty guineas. The thirty guineas were scraped together; 
 the volume was published and fell utterly dead, except for 
 a slight acknowledgment from the AthencBut7i, And yet, 
 while Charlotte's verses contained much skilful description, 
 and Anne's were at least no feebler than many metrical 
 contributions to magazines of the day, some of Emily's 
 poems in this book are full of such original and intense — 
 though hardly attractive — writing as gives her quite a unique 
 and lofty position among our poets. The note of these 
 poems comes very near despair, but such is the strength of 
 Emily's character that it is rather a desperate courage. Self- 
 dependent in every act and thought of her life, she will 
 recognise nothing in the universe but the beauty of the ex- 
 ternal world and the strength of her own intellectual being. 
 She expresses no hope in the future or in a God other ' 
 than a vague pantheistic hope; she throws abroad small 
 sympathy for her fellow-beings. The history of the world 
 does not entice her to be its prophetess ; she breathes into 
 her poetry only her individual self, but expresses that self 
 so nobly that we find in some of her verses the elements 
 of such a character as in different circumstances might have 
 turned her into a Maid of Orleans, or a Madam Roland. 
 The soul of Emily Bronte was ever 
 
 ** Struggling fierce toward Heaven's free wilderness " 
 
 with strong wungs, and with the loneliness of wings. 
 
 The history of all the shame which Branwell Bronte 
 brought upon his family before he ended his miserable 
 existence does not concern us here, further than this fact, 
 that Emily was the only sister who never gave over loving 
 
Emily Bront^, 325 
 
 him, although in her novel, " Wuthering Heights," (1847), 
 she has partly analysed his depraved nature. While her 
 sister Charlotte was moving on triumphantly to fame as a 
 novelist, and even Anne was gaining popularity with her 
 comparatively feeble " Agnes Grey," Emily had to brave neg- 
 lect, and even the few readers who had taken up her weird 
 romance were more shocked than interested by it. How- 
 ever, she was preparing to write another novel when disease 
 arrested her hand, and carried her away on the 19th of 
 December, 1848. 
 
 REMEMBRANCE. 
 
 Cold in the earth — and the deep snow piled above thee, 
 Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave ! 
 Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, 
 Severed at last by Time's all -severing wave? 
 
 Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover 
 Over the mountains, on that northern shore, 
 Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover 
 Thy noble heart for ever, ever more ? 
 
 Cold in the earth — and fifteen wild Decembers, 
 From those brown hills, have melted into spring : 
 Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers 
 After such years of change and suffering ! 
 
 Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee, 
 While the world's tide is bearing me along ; 
 Other desires and other hopes beset me, 
 Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong ! 
 
 No later light has lightened up my heaven. 
 No second morn has ever shone for me ; 
 All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given, 
 All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee. 
 
326 English Poetesses, 
 
 But, when the days of golden dreams had perished, 
 And even Despair was powerless to destroy ; 
 Then did I learn how existence could be cherished, 
 Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy. 
 
 Then did I check the tears of useless passion — 
 Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine : 
 Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten 
 Down to that tomb already more than mine. 
 
 And, even yet, I dare not let it languish. 
 Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain ; 
 Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish. 
 How could I seek the empty world again ? 
 
 THE OLD STOIC. 
 
 Riches I hold in light esteem, 
 And Love I laugh to scorn ; 
 
 And lust of fame was but a dream. 
 That vanished with the morn : 
 
 And if I pray, the only prayer 
 That moves my lips for me 
 
 Is, ' Leave the heart that now I bear. 
 And give me liberty ! ' 
 
 Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 
 
 *Tis all that I implore ; 
 In life and death, a chainless soul. 
 
 With courage to endure. 
 
 LAST LINES. 
 
 No coward soul is mine. 
 No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere : 
 
 I see Heaven's glories shine. 
 And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. 
 
George Eliot, 327 
 
 O God within my breast, 
 Almighty, ever-present Deity ! 
 
 Life — that in me has rest. 
 As I — undying Life — have power in thee ! 
 
 Vain are the thousand creeds 
 That move men's hearts : unutterably vain ; 
 
 Worthless as withered weeds, 
 Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, 
 
 To waken doubt in one 
 Holding so fast by thine infinity ; 
 
 So surely anchored on 
 The stedfast rock of immortality. 
 
 With wide-embracing love 
 Thy spirit animates eternal years, 
 
 Pervades and broods above, 
 Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. 
 
 Though earth and man were gone. 
 And suns and universes ceased to be. 
 
 And Thou were left alone. 
 Every existence would exist in Thee. 
 
 There is not room for Death, 
 Nor atom that his might could render void : 
 
 Thou — Thou art Being and Breath, 
 And what Thou art may never be destroyed. 
 
 Those who are acquainted with George Eliot's poetry 
 
 must remember vividly the yearning lines which close her 
 
 latest volume of verse : " O May I Join the ^ ^, ^ 
 
 "^ George Eliot. 
 
 Choir Invisible" is their title. Sadly noble 
 
 verses they are, although they use the word " invisible " to 
 
 mean, not simply *' out of mortal sight," but *' out of all 
 
 sight:" 
 
 O may I join the choir invisible 
 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 
 In minds made better by their presence, live 
 
 In pulses stirred to generosity, 
 
328 English Poetesses, 
 
 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
 
 For miserable aims that end with self, 
 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars. 
 
 And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
 
 To vaster issues. 
 
 So to live is heaven : 
 To make undying music in the world. 
 
 To US whom the great novelist has taught to so refining 
 a purpose, it may well seem that for many a year at any 
 rate, George Eliot's spirit will live in minds made better by 
 its presence. Among all the writers of the age, she takes 
 her place as the positivist of the affections. Inner tender- 
 ness and pure high-mindedness — these are for her the only 
 gods to preach to the world, and these form the chief inspi- 
 ration of her poems as well as of her prose. A clever 
 Frenchman — Montegut — comparing three great literary 
 women of modern times, assigns to our novelist her exact 
 rank thus : " Madame de Stael's power was enthusiasm ; 
 George Sand's, passion; George Eliot's, sympathy.'' 
 
 Being part of contemporary history, the life of George 
 Eliot, so far as it needs to be told at all, is known pretty 
 well to most people ; the more so that there was a grain 
 of scandal lurking in it to make society specially curious. 
 Marian Evans came into the world at South Farm, Colton, 
 Warwickshire, on the 22 nd of November, 1819. She received 
 her early education at Coventry, whither her father had re- 
 tired from labours connected with the office of a land 
 steward. The girl was plain, and to ordinary people unin- 
 teresting. Moreover, early beginning to think in strange 
 ways for herself, she felt compelled to abandon many ortho- 
 dox views of life, though not before passing through a phase 
 of intense evangelicalism. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray of 
 Coventry were almost the only people who helped her in 
 her difficulties. This remarkable couple were like Marian 
 Evans in choosing their own ways of thinking upon all sub- 
 
George Eliot, 329 
 
 jects, and their influence on their friend was like the breeze 
 that fills the sails of a boat and carries it out to sea. It 
 carried her so far away that during a certain period of George 
 Eliot's life they could not continue intimate with her. 
 
 Marian Evans's earliest literary undertakings of any 
 magnitude were translations of Strauss's " Life of Jesus " 
 (1846) and Feuerbach's "Essence of Christianity" (1854). 
 She likewise began a translation of Spinoza's " Ethics"; and 
 the one ambition of her life became the desire to " reconcile 
 the philosophies of Locke and Kant." But the older she 
 grew, the less able did George Eliot find herself to formulate 
 any philosophy of life at all. 
 
 In 185 1 Marian Evans went to London to join the staff 
 of the Westminster Review. One of the chief writers for 
 this quarterly was George Lewes, with whom she soon linked 
 her life, although circumstances on his side prevented their 
 marrying. They spent more than a year at Geneva together, 
 and then returned to London, George Lewes to write books, 
 and his companion to sub-edit the West??iinster, Ere long, 
 however, Marian Evans's life-work was found. George 
 Lewes had put it into her head to try story- writing. One 
 afternoon, as he went off to dine with some friends, Mrs. 
 Lewes (so she was always called at that time) said, " Do not 
 disturb me when you return : I shall be busy." And ere he 
 had returned, the first chapter or two of " Scenes of Clerical 
 Life" had been written. Lewes sent the completed M.S. to 
 Blackwood, who was given to understand that it was the 
 work of a " George Eliot." The sequel was a business con- 
 nection in which Mr. Blackwood got the length of corres- 
 ponding with ''My dear George" before the sex of the writer 
 was discovered. Dickens was one of the first to suspect it. 
 
 George Eliot's intellect was now ripe for the best results. 
 She fastened upon the English middle classes and the English 
 poor, and turned social studies of them into novels which it 
 is an education to read. The list of these wonderful books 
 
330 English Poetesses, 
 
 is short : " Scenes of Clerical Life " (1858) ; " Adam Bede " 
 (1859); *'The Mill on the Floss ^^ (i860) ; "Silas Marner'' 
 (1861); "Romola"(i863); "Felix Holt" (1866) ; " Middle - 
 march" (1871-72); "Daniel Deronda" (1876); "Impres- 
 sions of Theophrastus Such" (1879). Throughout these 
 works there may be found searching powers of character- 
 reading, fine wit, varied sympathies, learning, and dramatic 
 instincts, which, all combined, form the solidest style any 
 English novelist of our age has achieved. Thackeray was 
 a wittier commentator on life, but he did not ponder the 
 meanings of life so deeply. Goethe said of himself that he 
 knew man pretty well, but very little of men : Thackeray 
 knew men better than George Eliot, but man not so well. 
 Dickens draws far more humour out of humanity than George 
 Eliot, but George Eliot never indulges in his phantasmagoric 
 caricatures of humanity. Ceding to these two magnificent 
 writers in certain points, she yet far excelled them both in 
 learning : and in all the qualities of a great novelist George 
 Eliot ranks above the many other good story-writers of the 
 day. 
 
 Before her death, which took place on December 22nd, 
 1880, George Eliot had published two volumes of verse — 
 "The Spanish Gypsy" (1868), and " Jubal, and other 
 Poems" (1870). George Henry Lewes had died in 1878, 
 and much to the surprise of the world, the novelist gave her 
 hand in comparative old age to Mr. Cross, who became her 
 husband on the 6th of May, 1880, and who is understood 
 to be her future biographer. Miss Blind contributes an 
 interesting monograph on George Eliot to the "Eminent 
 Women" series. 
 
 " The Spanish Gypsy," a poem in five books, was written 
 after a^visit to Spain in 1867. It tells in blank verse the 
 story of a foundling Zincala, named Fedalma, educated by a 
 Spanish duchess. On arriving at womanhood, she plights 
 her troth to Don Silva, the son of her benefactress, but ere 
 
George Eliot. 331 
 
 the marriage can take place, her Zincala father appears and 
 tempts her away to be a kind of queenly priestess to the 
 tribe of her forefathers. Thereupon, Silva turns gypsy too, 
 but political complications cause him to kill Fedalma's father 
 in a moment of passion ; and so he and his love part — he 
 towards Rome, to seek absolution for his crime ; she, to take 
 upon herself irrevocably the mission given her by her father, 
 Zarca. 
 
 The poem, as a whole, fails to make a lasting impression 
 on any one who reads it. Its dramatic situations are not 
 well marked enough : its chief characters are a little wanting 
 in outline. Its beauty lies in the subtlety of what may be 
 called its psychological passages. A single study of this 
 kind will show what is good in the poem : it is the analysis 
 of Don Silva's character : — 
 
 A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious 
 
 In his acceptance, dreading all delight 
 
 That speedy dies and turns to carrion ; 
 
 His senses much exacting, deep instilled 
 
 With keen imagination's difficult needs ; 
 
 Like strong-limbed monsters studded o'er with eyes, 
 
 Their hunger checked by overwhelming vision, 
 
 Or that fierce lion in symbolic dream 
 
 Snatched from the ground by wings and new-endowed 
 
 With a man's thought-propelled relenting heart. 
 
 Silva was both the lion and the man ; 
 
 Plrst hesitating shrank, then fiercely sprang, 
 
 Or, having sprung, turned pallid at his deed 
 
 And loosed the prize, paying his blood for nought. 
 
 A nature half transformed with qualities 
 
 That oft betrayed each other, elements 
 
 Not blent, but struggling, breeding strange effects, 
 
 Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. 
 
 Haughty and generous, grave and passionate ; 
 
 With tidal moments of devoutest awe, 
 
 Sinking anon to farthest ebb of doubt ; 
 
 Deliberating ever, till the sting 
 
 Of a recurrent ardour made him rush 
 
332 English Poetesses. . 
 
 Right against reasons that himself had drilled 
 And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed 
 Too proudly special for obedience, 
 Too subtly pondering for mastery : 
 Born of a goddess with a mortal sire, 
 Heir of flesh-fettered, weak divinity, 
 Doom-gifted with long resonant consciousness 
 And perilous heightening of the sentient soul. 
 But look less curiously : life itself 
 May not express us all, may leave the worst 
 And the best too, like tunes in mechanism 
 Never awaked. In various catalogues 
 Objects stand variously. 
 
 George Eliot's second volume of verse was, on the whole, 
 much better received,* although the poem from which it 
 takes its title is not the best poem in it. The " Legend of 
 Jubal" tells, in sustained language, the story of the lyre 
 and its inventor, and the fate he met at the hands of those 
 who loved his music. But the same volume contains four 
 dramatic scenes — entitled "Armgart" — presenting phases 
 in the life of a passionate proud singer who loses her exqui- 
 site voice ; and these scenes are fuller of real poetry, albeit, 
 as tragic sketches, they are not compact enough in the group- 
 ing of the figures. The artistic exultation of the singer in 
 the earlier scenes is conveyed to us in a wondrously full 
 manner. Here, and in a subsequent poem, " Stradivarius," 
 the deep musician-nature of the poetess reveals itself almost 
 uncontrollably. In " Stradivarius " we have a sombre-toned 
 picture of the steady conscientious violin-maker pursuing his 
 loved occupation with as great a sense of responsibility as if 
 he had been ordained to the work by the direct command 
 of heaven. The character is drawn in simple strong 
 lines. 
 
 But the verses that most genuinely reveal such distinctly 
 poetic faculty as George Eliot possessed are those entitled 
 " Brother and Sister/' This short series of sonnets on child- 
 
George Eliot, 333 
 
 life is autobiographical, and, even more emphatically than 
 the description of Maggie Tulliver's girlhood, shows how 
 keenly the novelist had lived as a child, and how lasting her 
 impressions of her early existence were. Probably George 
 Eliot never excelled, in prose, the extraordinary studies of 
 child-life (boy-life as w^ell as girl-life) in " The Mill on the 
 Floss." It is the same life that reappears in the following 
 sonnets : and the sonnets as such must rank as very fine 
 specimens of their class : — 
 
 I cannot choose but think upon the time 
 
 When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss 
 
 At lightest thrill from the bee's swinging chime, 
 
 Because the one so near the other is. 
 
 He was the elder, and a little man 
 
 Of forty inches, bound to show no dread, 
 
 And I the girl that, puppy-like, now ran. 
 
 Now lagged behind my brother's larger tread. 
 
 I held him wise, and when he talked to me 
 
 Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the best, 
 
 I thought his knowledge marked the boundary 
 
 Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest. 
 
 If he said " Hush ! " I tried to hold my breath ; 
 
 Whenever he said " Come !" I stepped in faith. 
 
 School parted us ; we never found again 
 
 That childish world where our two spirits mingled 
 
 Like scents from varying roses that remain 
 
 One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled ; 
 
 Yet the twin habit of that early time 
 
 Lingered for long about the heart and tongue : 
 
 We had been natives of one happy clime 
 
 And its dear accent to our utterance clung : 
 
 Till the dire years whose awful name is Change 
 
 Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce 
 
 And, pitiless, shaped them into two forms that range, 
 
 Two elements which sever their life's course. 
 
 But were another childhood world my share, 
 
 I would be born a little sister there. 
 
334 English Poetesses. 
 
 Poetry like this, true to real life, and beautiful in its truth, 
 may not be the highest kind of imaginative work, even 
 though imagination supplies the forms, at least, of expres- 
 sion ; but at any rate it produces a most abiding effect on 
 the mind. There is here a distinctness of vision into the 
 innocent realms of childhood — "little people whose world is 
 three feet high " — that startles with its fidelity. And when 
 through the whole series of the poems on " Brother and 
 Sister " we see what a zestful, sunny, lovable, loving girlhood 
 lay under the impassive, lukewarm, and stolid features of 
 Marian Evans, we learn part of the secret which gave her 
 all through life 
 
 The pathos exquisite of lovely minds 
 Hid in harsh forms. 
 
 George Eliot, then, may be said to be poetical by virtue 
 of sympathy rather than by any high imagination, or by any 
 distinct faculty for lyric expression. Occasionally her ex- 
 pression is indeed most musical, as in that unforgetable line 
 about the Mediterranean — 
 
 The mid sea that moans with memories. 
 
 Yet even here the expression is gained by sympathy — a 
 catholic sympathy that includes dumb nature in its yearn- 
 ings. In her best verses, George Eliot reveals most her own 
 nature and its history. It is said that in addition to musical 
 skill she had a delicately sweet voice, and favoured a very 
 few, at rare intervals, by singing to them. She must then 
 have assumed an appearance different from that in which she 
 ordinarily appeared to society at large. Something of this 
 quieter self is similarly conveyed to the readers of her best 
 poems ; and in these there can be detected a tone that is 
 almost wistful. 
 
 Menella Bute Smedley, who attained some notice as 
 
Men EL LA Bute Smedlev, 
 
 335 
 
 a prose writer with "The Maiden Aunt" (1849), "Twice 
 Lost, and Other Tales" (1863); "Linnet's Trial" 
 (1864) ; " A Mere Story " (1869) ; and " Other ^g^^^gy""*® 
 Folks' Lives" (1869), also earned her due re- 
 ward of praise for " Lays and Ballads from English History " 
 (1858); "Poems" (1868), and "Two Dramatic Poems" 
 (1874). She was also the writer of "The Child World" 
 (1869), and such verses in "Poems written for a Child" 
 (1868) as are signed "B." Miss Smedley's dramatic style 
 — particularly in " Lady Grace " — exhibits wit and pathos, 
 and genuine, if not intense dramatic instinct. Her shorter 
 poems, however, are what her reputation as a poetess chiefly 
 rests upon. Throughout these a very noble tone of thought 
 runs ; the language is well managed ; the forms of verse are 
 treated delicately. Miss Smedley's poems have come from 
 a thoughtful and disciplined mind. Her ballad of " Harold 
 the Hero" has a genuine effect of bold Saxon simplicity 
 about it. "A Character" and "A Contrast" are finely 
 sustained pieces of psychological analysis. The lyric, "Wind 
 me a Summer Crown," like " The Little Fair Soul," has be- 
 come a general favourite. 
 
 THE LITTLE FAIR SOUL. 
 
 A LITTLE fair soul that knew no sin 
 
 Looked over the edge of Paradise, 
 And saw one striving to come in, 
 
 With fear and tumult in his eyes. 
 
 ** Oh, brother, is it you ? " he cried ; 
 
 Your face is like a breath from home ; 
 Why do you stay so long outside ? 
 
 I am athirst for you to come ! 
 
 *' Tell me first how our mother fares. 
 And has she wept too much for me ? " 
 
 ** White are her cheeks and white her hairs, 
 But not from gentle tears for thee." 
 
33^ English Poetesses, 
 
 **Tell me, where are our sisters gone?" 
 *' Alas, I left them weary and wan." 
 
 " And tell me, is the baby grown ? " 
 " Alas ! he is almost a man." 
 
 " Cannot you break the gathering days, 
 And let the light of death come through. 
 
 Ere his feet stumble in the maze 
 Crossed safely by so few, so few ? 
 
 " For like a crowd upon the sea 
 That darkens till you find no shore. 
 
 So was the face of life to me, 
 Until I sank for evermore. 
 
 " And like an army in the snow 
 My days went by, a treacherous train, 
 
 Each smiling as he struck his blow, 
 Until I lay among them — slain. " 
 
 " Oh, brother, there was a path so clear ! " 
 " There might be, but I never sought." 
 
 " Oh, brother, there was a sword so near ! " 
 " There might be, but I never fought ! " 
 
 *' Yet sweep this needless gloom aside, 
 P^or you are come to the gate at last ! " 
 
 Then in despair that soul replied, 
 
 *' The gate is fast ! the gate is fast ! " 
 
 " I cannot move this mighty weight, 
 I cannot find this golden key ; 
 
 But hosts of heaven around us wait, 
 And none has ever said ' no ' to me. 
 
 *' wSweet Saint, put by thy palm and scroll, 
 And come undo the door for me ! " 
 
 " Rest thee still, thou little fair soul, 
 It is not mine to keep the key." 
 
 *' Kind Angel, strike these doors apart ! 
 The air without is dark and cold." 
 
Menella Bute Smedley, 
 
 ** Rest thee still, thou little pure heart, 
 Not for my word will they unfold." 
 
 Up all the shining heights he prayed 
 For that poor Shadow in the cold ! 
 
 Still came the word, "Not ours to aid : 
 We cannot make the doors unfold." 
 
 But that poor Shadow, still outside. 
 Wrung all the sacred air with pain ; 
 
 And all the souls went up and cried, 
 Where never cry was heard in vain. 
 
 No eye beheld the pitying Face, 
 
 The answer none might understand, 
 
 But dimly through the silent space 
 Was seen the stretching of a Hand. 
 
 337 
 
 w 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI — EMILY PFEIFFER — AUGUSTA WEBSTER 
 
 — ALICE MEYNELL JEAN INGELOW — HARRIET 
 
 HAMILTON KING — MATHILDE BLIND — MARY ROBINSON — 
 OTHER WRITERS. 
 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI, sister of Dante Rossetti, 
 and daughter of Gabriele Rossetti, the commentator 
 on Dante, was born on the 5th December, 1830. Hers has 
 been a life led apart from the world, almost as much as was 
 
 that of her brother the painter. Of Gabriele 
 ^To?seUi.^* Rossetti's gifted family, Dante had the eldest 
 
 son's inheritance of genius. He was as much 
 an anachronism in the history of art and letters as if 
 the Campo Santo of Pisa should suddenly begin to spring 
 up in Cheapside. Quite ignorant of science, compa- 
 ratively ignorant of even the names of modern books, 
 careless as a heathen god about our politics, he busied 
 himself about nothing except thinking as he might have 
 thought hundreds of years ago, without any aid from the 
 numerous boasted advancements of knowledge that our 
 present civilisation has brought us. Almost without con- 
 sciousness that his position in art or letters was such an 
 incongruity, he was outwardly a nineteenth-century Eng- 
 lish householder, and inwardly an Italian cinque-centist. 
 With this difference : cradled in such an age as ours, he 
 could not possibly help being influenced by its tone to 
 some extent. Ours is a critical age, and a critical age is 
 
Christina Rossetti, 
 
 339 
 
 never a joyful age. The early masters felt as much pleasure 
 in existing as new-born blades of grass might be fancied to 
 feel in springing through the ground. They were filled 
 with an unquestioning belief in religion, and painted with a 
 holy joy. Rossetti grew up with an inner sadness; he 
 could not believe in the " eternal verities " as they believed : 
 he could not, though he tried ; but yet, though their early 
 religion was to him but a ghostly thing, the art that was the 
 outcome of their genius and their belief became to him of 
 itself a sort of religion. He relished at any rate the flowery 
 intricacy of their symbolism, their gentle mysticism, their 
 freedom of aspiration, and their innocence of all vulgarity 
 of theme. These charms he could appreciate, and these 
 moulded his own inspiration into art. Even where he was 
 a thorough sceptic, his artistic sympathies made him admire 
 the piety of these predecessors. 
 
 It is remarkable that in another sphere of imaginative 
 creation, a great man of our time, himself sceptical by con- 
 viction, has drawn his inspiration from the piety of those 
 who went before him. Hawthorne's creed was little con- 
 formable to any articles of Church dogma which carry 
 weight with Christian communities. But the ancient tradi- 
 tions of the stern Puritans who founded Salem were in his 
 soul, as that Puritan blood was in his veins ; and these fil- 
 tered themselves through his " miasmatic imagination " into 
 the gloomy romance which formed the basis of his genius. 
 As Hawthorne was sceptic and Puritan in one, so Rossetti 
 mingled within himself the freely speculative man of our 
 century, with the devout mystic of the middle ages ; and 
 the American teller of tales was no less directly the in- 
 heritor of the stern Calvinistic blood of Salem than Rossetti 
 was by nationality and temperament descendant of the 
 monkish painters who preached in pigments in days when 
 there was but one Christian church in Europe. 
 
 These few words upon Rossetti seem necessary here, 
 
 W 2 
 
340 English Poetesses. 
 
 inasmuch as the poet exhibits, in fuller development, certain 
 of the influences which have made his sister a poetess. 
 Several of Miss Rossetti's more ambitious pieces of verse 
 unmistakably betray a southern cast of imagination, and the 
 pictorial element in her poems is so strong, and of such a 
 kind, that Dante Rossetti could have found twenty or thirty 
 congenial themes in them for his pencil. But while, of the 
 spiritual and artistic elements in his nature, Rossetti gave 
 most freedom to the latter element, in Miss Rossetti the spiri- 
 tual predominates. And anyone who has happened to see 
 Rossetti's portrait of his sister and mother, can easily inter- 
 pret the poetess's face by her works, and discern how much 
 of her corresponds, in form and fibre, to an Italian type 
 that is centuries old. The minds of brother and sister seem 
 to have been made out of some specially wistful *' divine 
 dream-element." 
 
 Miss Rossetti's verse has appeared in the form of three 
 volumes — "Goblin Market, and other Poems," (1862), 
 "The Prince's Progress, and other Poems," (1866), and 
 "A Pageant, and other Poems" (1881). The list of this 
 wTiter's works also includes " Sing-Song," a Nursery Rhyme- 
 book, (1872); "Commonplace," and other short stories, 
 (1870) ; "Speaking Likenesses," (1874) ; "Annus Domini,'' 
 a Prayer for every day in the Year, (1874) ; " Called to be 
 Saints" (1881) ; and Letter and Spirit" (1883). 
 
 The two lengthy poems which give the titles to the first 
 named of these volumes are far from being the strongest 
 Miss Rossetti has conceived. They are odd, and therefore 
 original ; but they are hardly pleasant, and the word-paint- 
 ing employed in them is often stifBy affected. The interest 
 of these poems chiefly lies in the sensuous characteristics of 
 their style ; for in them Miss Rossetti's qualities of imagina- 
 tion approach more nearly to the out-of-the-way dreamings 
 of her brother Dante than anywhere else. That this is so 
 may be partly gathered from the fact that the painter-poet 
 
Christina Rossetti, 341 
 
 has drawTi four wonderful illustrations for these poems 
 which do what' book illustrations very rarely do ; they far 
 transcend the text in their mysterious beauty, and give to the 
 poems a richness no reader would otherwise find in them. 
 
 " Goblin Market " deals in an allegorical way with the 
 temptations held out to the two maidens by goblin fruit 
 sellers. In one fatal twilight Laura sells them a golden curl 
 for some of their wondrous wares. 
 
 She dropped a tear more rare than pearl, 
 Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red : 
 Sweeter than honey from the rock, 
 Stronger than man-rejoicing wine. 
 Clearer than water flowed that juice ; 
 She never tasted such before. 
 How should it cloy with length of use ? 
 She sucked and sucked and sucked the more 
 Fruits which that unknown orchard bore ; 
 She sucked until her lips were sore ; 
 Then flung the emptied rinds away 
 But gathered up one kernel stone. 
 And knew not was it night or day 
 As she turned home alone. 
 
 Night after night she longs to meet the alluring goblin 
 merchants again ; but she can never find them. She is 
 pining away in her thirst for their fruit ; her sister Lizzie 
 will brave the goblins for her sake. Lizzie, yet unfallen, can 
 nightly hear the voices of the merchants, so goes to meet 
 them, and offers to buy their fruit, offering a silver penny. 
 But when she tries to turn from them with the fruit, not 
 tasting of it herself, they will not let her do this, and at last 
 press their fruits upon her lips till her face is covered with 
 the juice. Then she gaily runs home, and her sister drinks 
 the juice from her face, and sinks in a dream. In the 
 morning both girls awake sane and well again : Lizzie's 
 spirit and strength has saved them both. I do not think 
 this is a pleasant story. 
 
342 English Poetesses. 
 
 ** The Prince's Progress," which may also be taken as an 
 allegory, relates the tale of a dilatory prince betrothed to a 
 fair princess. He day by day, and year by year, puts off his 
 wedding journey to her, and when at last he has set out, he 
 is hindered by other maidens on the way, and an alchemist 
 searching for an elixir likewise detains him long. He 
 arrives at his princess's palace just too late ; her attendants 
 are bearing her away, feet foremost, and dead. Throughout 
 this poem there is a somewhat sweeter tone than there is 
 in "Goblin Market," and the conclusion is pathetic. The 
 highly artificial w^orkmanship of both poems, however, is in 
 striking contrast to the earnest though somewhat sombre 
 philosophy of nearly all Miss Rossetti's other poems. One 
 could almost hazard the guess that these two, together with 
 the " Maiden Song " had been efforts of the poetess's 
 mind to get rid of some deeper thoughts — 
 
 * Sleep,' they say, ' we've muffled the chime,' 
 Better dream than weep.' 
 
 In the poetry of familiar life, Christina Rossetti is no 
 unsuccessful experimenter, as " A Farm Walk " and 
 " Maggie a Lady " prove. Themes more abstract, how- 
 ever, are her favourites ; and though " experience makes her 
 sad," the great problems of life — Love, Death, Futurity, are 
 studied in tender and beautiful w^ays by this accomplished 
 woman. Her ballad of " Maude Clare " is a noble, perfect 
 poem, w^orthy to be ranked with Tennyson's ballads. 
 Shorter lyrics like " Love from the North," '' Noble Sisters," 
 " The Poor Ghost," " Somewhere or Other," and " Beauty 
 is Vain," are fine examples of thought and melody com- 
 bined. But the full perfection of Miss Rossetti's poetical 
 powders lies in her management of the sonnet form. In 
 contained expression of intense passion, some of Mrs. 
 Brow^ning's sonnets rise higher than any of the living 
 
Christina Rossetti, 343 
 
 poetess's, but in the careful balancing of a calmly noble 
 thought in sonnet form, scarcely Mrs. Browning has ex- 
 celled Miss Rossetti. Her sonnets, like those of her brother's, 
 seem to have been written after long thought ; there is a 
 meditative measured step echoed in them. Nearly all this 
 writer's sonnets are beautiful and mature in execution, 
 although, I believe, the second sonnet, of " A Portrait," and 
 " Vanity of Vanities " are really the work of the author's 
 extreme youth. 
 
 DREAM LAND. 
 
 Where sunless rivers weep 
 Their waves into the deep, 
 She sleeps a charmed sleep : 
 
 Awake her not. 
 Led by a single star, 
 She came from very far 
 To seek where shadows are 
 
 Her pleasant lot. 
 
 She left the rosy morn, 
 She left the fields of corn, 
 For twilight cold and lorn 
 
 And water springs. 
 Through sleep, as through a veil. 
 She sees the sky look pale. 
 And hears the nightingale 
 
 That sadly sings. 
 
 Rest, rest, a perfect rest 
 Shed over brow and breast ; 
 Her face is toward the west 
 
 The purple land. 
 She cannot see the grain 
 Ripening on hill and plain ; 
 She cannot feel the rain 
 
 Upon her hand. 
 
 Rest, rest, for ever more 
 Upon a mossy shore ; 
 
344 English Poetesses. 
 
 Rest, rest at the heart's core 
 Till time shall cease : 
 
 Sleep that no pain shall wake ; 
 
 Night that no morn shall break 
 
 Till joy shall overtake 
 Her perfect peace. 
 
 A FARM WALK. 
 
 The year stood at its equinox 
 
 And bluff the North was blowing, 
 
 A bleat of lambs came from the flocks. 
 Green hardy things were growing ; 
 
 I met a maid with shining locks 
 Where milky kine were lowing. 
 
 She wore a kerchief on her neck. 
 Her bare arm showed its dimple, 
 
 Her apron spread without a speck, 
 Her air was frank and simple. 
 
 She milked into a wooden pail 
 
 And sang a country ditty : 
 An innocent fond lovers' tale. 
 
 That was not wise nor witty, 
 Pathetically rustical. 
 
 Too pointless for the city. 
 
 She kept in time without a beat 
 As true as church-bell ringers, 
 
 Unless she tapped time with her feel. 
 Or squeezed it with her fingers ; 
 
 Her clear unstudied notes were sweet 
 As many a practised singer's. 
 
 I stood a minute out of sight. 
 
 Stood silent for a minute 
 To eye the pail, and creamy white 
 
 The frothing milk within it ; 
 
 To eye the comely milking maid 
 Herself so fresh and creamy : 
 
Christina Rossetti, 345 
 
 " Good day to you," at last I said ; 
 
 She turned her head to see me : 
 *' Good day," she said with lifted head ; 
 
 Her eyes were soft and dreamy. 
 
 And all the while she milked and milked 
 
 The grave cow heavy-laden : 
 I've seen grand ladies plumed and silked, 
 
 But not a sweeter maiden ; 
 
 But not a sweeter fresher maid 
 
 Than this in homely cotton, 
 Whose pleasant face and silky braid 
 
 I have not yet forgotten. 
 
 Seven springs have passed since then, as I 
 
 Count with a sober sorrow ; 
 Seven springs have come and passed me by, 
 
 And spring sets in to-morrow. 
 
 I've half a mind to shake myself 
 
 Free just for once from London, 
 To set my work upon the shelf 
 
 And leave it done or undone ; 
 
 To run down by the early train, 
 
 "Whirl down with shriek and whistle. 
 And feel the bluff North blow again. 
 
 And mark the sprouting thistle ' 
 
 Set up on waste patch of the lane 
 
 Its green and tender bristle, 
 
 And spy the scarce-blown violet banks. 
 
 Crisp primrose leaves and others. 
 And watch the lambs leap at their pranks 
 
 And butt their patient mothers. 
 
 Alas, one point in all my plan 
 
 My serious thoughts demur to : 
 Seven years have passed for maid and man, 
 
 Seven years have passed for her too ; 
 
34^ English Poetesses. 
 
 Perhaps my rose is overblown, 
 
 Not rosy or too rosy ; 
 Perhaps in farmhouse of her own 
 
 Some husband keeps her cosy, 
 Where I should show a face unknown. 
 
 Good-bye, my wayside posy. 
 
 REMEMBER. 
 
 Remember me when I am gone away, 
 Gone far away into the silent land ; 
 When you can no more hold me by the hand. 
 
 Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay. 
 
 Remember me when no more day by day 
 You tell me of our future that you planned : 
 Only remember me ; you understand 
 
 It will be late to counsel then or pray. 
 
 Yet if you should forget me for a while 
 And afterwards remember, do not grieve : 
 For if the darkness and corruption leave 
 A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, 
 
 Better by far you should forget and smile 
 Than that you should remember and be sad. 
 
 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept 
 And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may 
 Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay. 
 
 Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept. 
 
 He leaned above me, thinking that I slept 
 
 And could not hear him ; but I heard him say : 
 *' Poor child, poor child : " and as he turned away 
 
 Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept. 
 
 He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold 
 That hid my face, or take my hand in his. 
 Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head : 
 He did not love me living ; but once dead 
 He pitied me ; and very sweet it is 
 
 To know he still is warm though I am cold. 
 
C//K\rmA ^pssJsTT/, J 347 
 
 REST. 
 
 O EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes ; 
 
 Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth ; 
 
 Lie close around her ; leave no room for mirth 
 With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs. 
 She hath no questions, she hath no replies, 
 
 Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth 
 
 Of all that irked her from the hour of birth ; 
 With stillness that is almost Paradise. 
 Dar'vness more clear than noonday holdeth her, 
 
 Silence more musical than any song ; 
 Even her very heart has ceased to stir : 
 Until the morning of Eternity 
 Her rest shall not begin or end, but be ; 
 
 And when she wakes she will not think it lonq;. 
 
 MAUDE CLARE. 
 
 Out of the church she followed them 
 
 With a lofty step and mien : 
 His bride was like a village maid, 
 
 Maude Clare was like a queen. 
 
 *' Son Thomas," his lady mother said. 
 With smiles, almost with tears : 
 
 " May Nell and you but live as true 
 As we have done for years ; 
 
 *' Your father thirty years ago 
 
 Had just your tale to tell ; 
 But he was not so pale as you. 
 
 Nor I so pale as Nell." 
 
 My lord was pale with inward strife, 
 And Nell was pale with pride ; 
 
 My lord gazed long on pale Maude Clare 
 Or ever he kissed the bride. 
 
 " Lo, I have brought my gift, my lord, 
 Have brought my gift," she said : 
 
 *' To bless the hearth, to bless the board, 
 To bless the marriage-bed. 
 
34^ English Poetesses, 
 
 *' Here's my half of the golden chain 
 
 You wore about your neck, 
 That clay we waded ankle-deep 
 
 For lilies in the beck : 
 
 " Here's my half of the faded leaves 
 We plucked from budding bough, 
 
 With feet amongst the lily leaves, — 
 The lilies are budding now." 
 
 He strove to match her scorn with scorn, 
 
 He faltered in his place : 
 *' Lady," he said, — "Maude Clare," he said,- 
 
 *' Maude Clare*: " — and hid his face. 
 
 She turn'd to Nell : "My Lady Nell, 
 
 I have a gift for you ; 
 Though, were it fruit, the bloom were gone. 
 
 Or, were it flowers, the dew. 
 
 " Take my share of a fickle heart, 
 
 Mine of a paltry love : 
 Take it or leave it as you will, 
 
 I wash my hands thereof." 
 
 " And what you leave," said Nell, " I'll take. 
 And what you spurn I'll wear ; 
 
 P^or he's my lord for better and worse. 
 And him I love, Maude Clare. 
 
 " Yea, though you're taller by the head, 
 More wise, and much more fair ; 
 
 I'll love him till he loves me best. 
 Me best of all, Maude Clare." 
 
 Mrs. Emily Pfeiffer has made more bids for the highest 
 
 place among women-poets of the day than any other, but 
 
 it may be questioned whether she attains to 
 
 Pf^e^ that place. Greater strength of thought marks 
 
 the best poems of Miss Rossetti ; but, on the 
 
 other hand, greater ease of expression and more abundance 
 
Emily Pfeiffer, 349 
 
 of fancy are to be found in Mrs. Pfeiffer's writings. 
 Curiously enough, her long poems are her best, except in 
 the case of her many fine sonnets. Mrs. Pfeiffer can hardly 
 be credited with prominence as a lyric writer : her happiest 
 efforts in the direction of pure song have been translations 
 from Heine. 
 
 Early awake to the fascinations of poetry, Mrs. Pfeiffer had 
 to pass through a long period of prostration and weakness 
 before she was able to face the world with her first conderable 
 poem. This was " Gerard's Monument," published in 1873. 
 The poem deals with the sad story of a beautiful young girl 
 who, in the very unselfishness of her affection for a crippled 
 but clever brother, sacrifices the happiness of herself and 
 her beloved husband, to whom, almost unconsciously, she 
 becomes exacting in a manner that only her sisterly motives 
 can scarcely redeem from the name of selfishness. Des- 
 criptive powers of a very high order mark this poem ; but 
 the descriptions never obscure or delay too much the action 
 of the tale. 
 
 Mrs. Pfeiffer's next volume, simply entitled " Poems " 
 (1876), increased her reputation, chiefly by the strength of 
 the sonnets it contained. Then came " Glan-Alarch : His 
 Silence and Song" (1877), a poem dealing with the old 
 Bardic times of Wales ; then " Quarterman's Grace, and 
 other Poems" (1879); and then, "Under the Aspens" 
 (1882). The prominent poem in this last volume is a study 
 of the old sad theme of the Bridge of Sighs : A girl hangs 
 over the dark Thames, upon whose banks she first met her 
 aristocratic lover, and on the bosom of which she has so 
 often floated with him happily. This poem — " From Out of 
 the Night " — is most genuinely pathetic, from the first verse 
 to the last. The same volume contained "The Pillar of 
 Praise," a legend of Roslin Chapel ; " A Lost Eden " ; and 
 a drama entitled " The Wynnes of Wyntwood." This drama 
 is full of vigour and fancy. The scene in which the hero 
 
35^ ExGLisH Poetesses. 
 
 finds out the heroine's heart's secret while gazing at her in 
 a mirror is very finely conceived. 
 
 Mrs. Pfeiffer's most abiding reputation will rest upon her 
 sonnets, and of these the best deal with two great questions 
 of the day — evolution and woman's sphere. The fluency of 
 the author's pen, in other forms of verse, has almost told 
 against her. One might wish that, possessed as she is of 
 varied powers of expression and fancy, this writer would 
 distil her thought more slowly, and give us something even 
 better. One misses, perhaps, in Mrs. Pfeifter's work the large 
 strong hand that moulds imperishable forms, but to this 
 strength she most nearly approaches in her sonnets. 
 
 BROKEN LIGHT. 
 
 It was cruel of them to part 
 
 Two hearts in the gladsome spring, 
 Two lovers' hearts that had just burst forth 
 
 With each blithe and beautiful thing ; 
 Cruel, but only half — 
 
 Had they known how to do us wrong, 
 They had barred the way of the odorous May, 
 
 They had shut out the wild bird's song. 
 
 Your kisses were so embalmed 
 
 With spices of beech and fir. 
 That they haunt my lips in the dead o' the night, 
 
 If the night-winds do but stir ; 
 When I rise with the rising dawn, 
 
 To let in the dewy south. 
 Like a fountain's spray, or the pride of the day, 
 
 They fall on my thirsty mouth. 
 
 They should never have let our love 
 
 Abroad in the wild free woods. 
 If they meant it to slumber on, cold and tame. 
 
 As the locked-up winter floods ; 
 They should never have let it hide 
 
 'Neath the beeches' lucent shade, 
 
Emily Ffeiffer. 351 
 
 Or the upturned arch of the tender larch 
 That blushed as it heaved and swayed. 
 
 Now the young and passionate year 
 
 Is no longer itself, but you ; 
 Its conniving woods, with their raptures and thrills, 
 
 You have leavened them through and through. 
 The troubadour nightingale 
 
 And the dove that o'erbends the bough, 
 Have both learnt, and teach, the trick of your speech. 
 
 As they echo it vow for vow. 
 
 My heart is heavy with scorn, 
 
 Mine eyes with impatient tears. 
 But the heaven looks blue through the cherry-blooms 
 
 And preaches away my fears ! 
 From the burning bush of the gorse, 
 
 Alive with murmurous sound, 
 I hear a voice, and it says, ' Rejoice ! ' 
 
 I stand as on holy ground. 
 
 O flower of life ! O Love ! 
 
 God's love is at thy root ; 
 They may dim thy glory, but cannot blight 
 
 Or hinder thy golden fruit. 
 Yet all the same, I am mad, 
 
 However the end may fall, 
 That they dare to wring, in the gladsome spring, 
 
 Two hearts that were gladdest of all. 
 
 POSSESSED. 
 
 I SPUR all day from dawn till dark, 
 
 I follow a phantom pale. 
 And often I outrise the lark, 
 
 Out-watch the nightingale ; 
 But whether I lie by a cool sweet sprinj, 
 
 Or ride on a burning quest, 
 A voice in mine ear still murmuring, 
 
 Forbears me of my rest. , 
 
352 English Poetesses, 
 
 She haunts the sunshine, haunts the shade, 
 
 The mountain, and the stream, 
 And I know not whether she be a maid, 
 
 Or only a young man's dream. 
 But my soul grows white in her lovely light. 
 
 And my life so richly blest — 
 God wot if it better becomes a knight 
 
 To possess or be possest. 
 
 ASPIRATION. 
 
 Free Spirit striving in my human breast ! 
 
 I see thine image when above her young 
 
 The parent eagle, hovering, has flung 
 Her shadow 'twixt the sunshine and her nest. 
 I see thee dark, but know thy gleaming crest 
 
 Burns in the daybreak, and I have no tongue 
 
 To speak a joy no heart hath fitly sung, — 
 The awful joy of thy divine unrest. 
 O mighty blades of shadow-spreading wings 
 
 Unfurled above me ! will ye bear me up 
 When I, in mounting with ye t'wards the springs 
 
 Of light, from lack of strength or faith shall drop ? 
 Will ye not leave me till in loftier rings 
 
 Of flight t'wards God I need no earthlier prop ? 
 
 TO NATURE. 
 
 Dread force, in whom of old we loved to see 
 A nursing mother, clothing with her life 
 The seeds of Love divine, with what sore strife 
 
 We hold or yield our thoughts of Love and thee ! 
 
 Thou art not 'calm,' but restless as the ocean. 
 Prilling with aimless toil the endless years — ■ 
 Stumbling on thought, and throwing off the spheres, 
 
 Churning the Universe with mindless motion. 
 
 Dull fount of joy, unhallowed source of tears, 
 Cold motor of our fervid faith and song, 
 
Emily Pfeiffer. 353 
 
 Dead, but engendering life, love, pangs, and fears, 
 
 Thou crownedst thy wild work with foulest wrong 
 When first thou lightedst on a seeming goal, 
 And darkly blundered on man's suffering soul. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF DREAD TIDINGS. 
 
 If that sad creed which honest men and true 
 Are flouting in the cheerful face of Day, 
 Are teaching in the schools, and by the way, — 
 
 Tho' only guesses on a broken clue, — 
 
 If such should in the end quench all the blue 
 Above us, then the saddest souls were they 
 Who knew and loved the most, and could not lay 
 
 The ghost of Plope, and hold the grave in lieu. 
 
 O Christ, Thou highest man ! if it were so, 
 And Thou couldst see it, that great heart of Thine 
 
 Would burn to come amongst us, — not to preach 
 
 Thy law again, or set our loves a-glow. 
 Still less in glory, — but to blot each line. 
 
 Each thought, each word. Thou camest first to teach. 
 
 WOMAN.i 
 
 Peace to the odalisque, whose morning glory 
 Is vanishing, to live alone in story ; 
 Firm in her place, a dull-robed figure stands, 
 With wistful eyes, and earnest, grappling hands : 
 The working-woman, she whose soul and brain— 
 Her tardy right — are bought with honest pain, 
 O woman ! sacrifice may still be thine — 
 More fruitful than the souls ye did resign 
 To sated masters ; from your lives, so real, 
 Will shape itself a pure and high ideal, 
 That ye will seek with sad, wide-open eyes, 
 Till, finding nowhere, baffled love shall rise 
 To higher planes, where passion may look pale, 
 But charity's white light shall never fail. 
 
 ^ In the original this poem has no title. 
 
354 ' English Poetesses, 
 
 Mrs. Augusta Webster is the one poetess who resembles 
 Robert Browning in her style of thought. It w^ould of 
 course be unfair to say that because this writer 
 Webster. Presents points of similarity to the great poet, she 
 therefore copies him. His influence Mrs. Webster 
 cannot escape from; but her powers are distinct and original 
 enough to earn her credit for spontaneity in her creations. 
 The Westminster Review ^^\v\q\\ has always ardently admired 
 what Mrs. Webster writes, has predicted that she will be found 
 to excel by far the poetry of any other woman. Mrs. Webster, 
 however, has been a long time now before the public ; and 
 yet there are few willing to admit that she has eclipsed 
 Mrs. Browning. Mrs. Browning never seriously essayed 
 the drama, and Mrs. Webster has chiefly affected this form 
 for her verse, consequently it is difficult to establish a com- 
 parison between the two authors. A dramatist's w^ork, how- 
 ever, must be made up of such instincts for significance of 
 character and incident as make a novelist, plus refined 
 imagination. Subtracting the former of these elements from 
 Mrs. Webster's plays, we come upon a residuum of work 
 which is graceful, earnest, exalted. Her imagination bodies 
 itself forth in ingenious imagery, always kept within bounds 
 by the best taste. But yet the writer has never produced, 
 amid all her dramatic studies, a new type such as makes 
 itself a standard of illustration ; and about the best of her 
 lyrics there is an air of incompleteness. 
 
 Mrs. Webster is unsatisfactory where verse writers of 
 smaller powers are satisfactory. It is her range of thought 
 that most of all wins respect, but from this we are led to 
 expect greater accomplishments than Mrs. Webster achieves. 
 Her "Prometheus Bound" (1866) may be conceded to be 
 a terser and a more imposing translation from ^Zschylus 
 than Mrs. Browning's ; and her " Medea " from Euripides 
 (1868) is also worthy of all respect. Her " Dramatic 
 Studies" (1866), are remarkable for man-like reserve of 
 
Augusta Webster. 
 
 355 
 
 expression, and sympathy for varied phrases of character. 
 In " A Woman Sold and other Poems " (1867), an advance 
 of delicate expression is evident; and in "Portraits "(1870), 
 probably the author's highest success is reached. Other 
 works from the same pen are " Blanche Lisle, and other 
 Poems" (i860), "Lilian Gray" (1864), "The Auspicious 
 Day" (1872); "Yu-Pe-Ya's Lute" (1874), "Disguises'^ 
 (1879), "A Book of Rhymes" (188 1 ), "In a Day" (1882). 
 In prose Mrs. Webster has written "A Housewife's 
 Opinions" (1879), ^^^ ^ novel called "Lesley's Guardians" 
 (1864), which, like her earlier poems, was produced under 
 the no?fi de phane of Cecil Home. 
 
 Mrs. Webster, who is the daughter of Vice-Admiral 
 George Davies, was born at Poole, Dorsetshire, in 1840, 
 and was married in 1863 to Mr. Thomas Webster, Fellow 
 and Law Lecturer of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 A WEDDING. 
 
 A Bridegroom waits in the green churchyard, 
 Waits and waits, but he speaks no word, 
 
 The smile on his lips is cold and hard, 
 His rigid look turns never aside, 
 
 The folds of his cloak are never stirred. 
 
 A bridegroom waits for his young young bride, 
 
 By a grave in the still churchyard. 
 
 A maiden comes to her wedding plight — 
 
 Roses burn on her white soft cheeks, 
 The gleam of her eyes is clear and bright, 
 
 She looks before with a gaze that reads 
 In her bridegroom's calm the peace she seeks. 
 
 A maiden comes for the rest she needs, 
 And joys in her wedding plight. 
 
 She lays her head on his quiet breast, 
 " My bridegroom is holy and wise, 
 Lap me, sweet death, in thy solemn rest," 
 X 2 
 
356 English Poetesses. 
 
 And looks with a love-look fond and brave, 
 And thrills in his clasp with happy eyes. 
 
 The bridegroom clasps in the silent grave 
 His young young bride to his breast. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 Tell thee truth, sweet ; no. 
 Truth is cross and sad and cold ; 
 
 Lies are pitiful and kind, 
 Honey-soft as Love's own tongue : 
 Let me, love, lie so. 
 Lies are like a summer wind, 
 Wooing flower-buds to unfold. 
 
 Lies will last while men are young. 
 Tell thee truth, love ; no. 
 
 Let me, sweet, lie so. 
 Lies are Hope's light ministers, 
 
 P'ootless birds upon the wing : 
 Truth's a name for plodding care : 
 Tell thee truth, sweet ; no. 
 Truth's the east-wind on the Spring — 
 'Tis the wind, not Springtime, errs. 
 Lies will last while maids are fair. 
 Let me lie, love, so. 
 
 Mrs. Meynell is one of the three or four best English 
 poetesses living. The modest manner in which she has laid 
 her verses before the public may have caused 
 M^^^^ii ^^^^ writer to miss something of that popular 
 applause which less genuinely inspired women- 
 writers of poetry have attained. The beautiful graces of her 
 style are not, perhaps, such as arrest any but the most 
 cultivated readers of poetry. Refined expression and true 
 fancy are to be found in each of the poems Mrs. Meynell 
 has published. She has written comparatively little in the 
 way of verse, and variety of tone is not remarkably hers ; 
 but all that has come from her pen is worthy work. 
 
Alice Meynell. 357 
 
 Alice Meynell published " Preludes " — her only volume 
 of poems — before her marriage, and therefore under her 
 maiden name of Alice Thompson. In a biography of her 
 sister, the painter of "The Roll Call," it is stated that 
 " Mr. Thompson, a gentleman of fortune, cultivation, and 
 leisure, educated his two daughters himself, giving them all 
 advantages possible to wealth and thoughtful care. Until 
 the girls w^ere grown to womanhood the family lived mostly 
 in Italy and France, returning then to England." While 
 the elder sister was making the studies and sketches which 
 resulted in the exhibition of "The Roll Call" in 1874, 
 and its almost unique celebrity. Miss Alice Thompson was 
 accumulating the manuscripts which were published, with 
 illustrations from her sister's pencil, in the following year. 
 To Mr. Ruskin's friendship and fostering praise in the early 
 days of her student life the artist-sister has always held 
 herself to be under deep obligations, and not less indebted 
 was the sister who followed an art which has more difficulty 
 in reaching the public heart. " The last verse of that 
 perfectly heavenly * Letter from the Girl to her own Old 
 Age,' the whole of * San Lorenzo's Mother,' and the end of 
 the sonnet ' To a Daisy,' are the finest things I have yet seen 
 (or felt) in modern verse." So wrote the Professor; and 
 thus encouraged, the young poetess confided her secrets to 
 the public. Possibly, as in Coleridge's case, the secret was 
 faithfully kept by the larger portion of the reading world. 
 But if " Preludes " is not a volume likely to be in demand 
 among general readers, it has had the fortune to find a 
 growing circle among that constantly increasing public which 
 no longer delights in what is obvious and insistent in subject 
 and in workmanship. A writer of " poetical poetry," Mrs. 
 Meynell has had her reward in the consideration of poets. 
 Mr. Hall Caine — in his valuable " Recollections of 
 D. G. Rossetti " — tells us that Rossetti was " vastly taken " 
 with " Preludes." Since her marriage, which occurred in 
 
35 S English Poetesses. 
 
 1877, Mrs. Meynell has almost exclusively devoted herself 
 to the composition of prose. Her labours in the field of 
 art criticism deserve special notice. 
 
 SONG. 
 
 My Fair, no beauty of thine will last, 
 Save in my love's eternity. 
 Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully. 
 Are lost for ever — their moment past — 
 Except the few thou givest to me. 
 
 Thy sweet words vanish day by day, 
 As all breath of mortality ; 
 Thy laughter, done, must cease to be, 
 And all thy dear tones pass away, 
 Except the few that sing to me. 
 
 Hide then within my heart, oh, hide 
 All thou art loth should go from thee. 
 Be kinder to thyself and me. 
 My cupful! from this river's tide 
 Shall never reach the long sad sea. 
 
 A YOUNG CONVERT. 
 
 Who knows what days I answer for to-day ? 
 
 Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow 
 
 This yet unfaded and a faded brow ; 
 
 Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray. 
 
 Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way^ 
 
 Give one repose to pain I know not now, 
 
 One leaven to joy that comes, I guess not how. 
 
 Oh, rash ! (I smile) as one, when Spring is grey, 
 
 Who dedicates a land of hidden wheat, 
 
 I fold to-day at altars far apart 
 
 Hands trembling with what toils ? In their retreat 
 
 I sign my love to come, my folded art. 
 
 I light the tapers at my head and feet, 
 
 And lay the crucifix on this silent heart. 
 
Jean Ingelow. 359 
 
 RENOUNCEMENT. 
 
 I MUST not think of thee ; and, tired yet strong, 
 
 I shun the love that kirks in all delight — 
 
 The love of thee~and in the blue Heaven's height, 
 And in the dearest passage of a song. 
 Oh just beyond the sweetest thoughts that throng 
 
 This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright ; 
 
 But it must never, never come in sight ; 
 I must stop short of thee the whole day long. 
 
 But when sleep comes to close each difficult day, 
 
 When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, 
 
 And all my bonds I needs must loose apart, 
 Must doff my will as raiment laid away, — 
 
 With the first dream that comes with the first sleep 
 
 I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart. 
 
 As a poetess, Jean Ingelow has attained to certain marks 
 of the public's favour which no other English woman has 
 achieved by verse writing. Her poems have 
 become household poems, and their popularity j^g-^J?^ 
 is evinced by the fact that Messrs. Longmans 
 have issued them in an edition de luxe with fine illustrations. 
 To some, the wide acceptance which Miss Ingelow's verses 
 have received may be a matter of surprise. There is 
 nothing truly great about any of her poetry. Her lyric 
 faculty is her best characteristic, and this is very uncer- 
 tain. She has chosen dramatic themes now and again for 
 longish studies, but these have been treated in a manner 
 curiously void of dramatic vigour. In such a case as " The 
 Letter L," a long poem not without skilful readings of cha- 
 racter, there is a certain laziness of execution that lulls the 
 reader's interest somewhat to sleep, and Miss Ingelow's most 
 ambitious poetical effort, " The Story of Doom," tells the 
 story of Noah in a manner which, except at the very close, 
 is scarcely dramatic at all, although as an idyll it is marked 
 by a broad beautiful style. It must be admitted, however, 
 that in selecting the point at which this " Story of Doom " 
 
360 English Poetesses. 
 
 should close, Miss Ingelow exhibits for once a truly dramatic 
 instinct. In the concluding lines of this poem, Noah, with 
 his wife and sons and daughters-in-law, enters the ark, the 
 women-folk babbling about the dreams they have had over 
 night, and the whole family-gathering being in too confused 
 a state to realise the actual gravity of the moment. Amid 
 the hubbub, Niloiya, Noah's wife, turns to her sons and bids 
 them go and look out and tell her the time of day and how 
 things are going. Shem goes up at her bidding, and silence 
 falls upon all while they w^ait for his report. He returns to 
 them with this answer : " The door is shut." Such an end- 
 ing is the fittest conceivable for this story. What countless 
 and varied suggestions are generated in the mind by these 
 few concluding words ! It should be added that the char- 
 acter of Noah's wife, with the musical name already men- 
 tioned, is drawn in a pleasing manner, and there is an air 
 of quiet primeval beauty breathed over all the landscape 
 amid which the " Story of Dcjom " is enacted. 
 
 The secret of Miss Ingelow's success, however, lies in 
 her shorter poems. With one or two exceptions, these deal 
 with homely subjects described in good Saxon language, and 
 her volumes of verses might be best described as poetry of 
 the English people. Homeliness of subject and place are 
 natural to Jean Ingelow, and if, as in " Supper at the Mill,' 
 the simplicity of style seems at times affected, it is still the fact 
 that the quiet phraseology which this poetess usually employs 
 comes as something of a relief after the strained language 
 which culture has engendered among many of her competi- 
 tors. The ballad of " Winstanley " has no startling line or 
 verse in it, but it is a story of a sturdy Englishman, told in 
 sturdy English, and it has therefore made its mark. The same 
 qualities of style have insured the reputation of Miss Inge* 
 low's " High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," although 
 in this case there is the added charm of some archaicisms. 
 One of this writer's best known poems is entitled " Honours," 
 
Jean Ingelow. 361 
 
 and deals with the case of two friends, one of whom has 
 striven for academic distinctions and failed with bitterness — 
 while to the other, achievement of these honours has brought 
 a certain bitterness also. It is somewhat singular that this 
 poem should have become such a favourite, for it suffers 
 grievously from Miss Ingelow's greatest fault — diffuseness. 
 Her " Songs of Seven " — pictures of life at the ages of 
 seven, fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, thirty-five, forty- 
 two, and forty-nine — have all of them been accepted as 
 telling work. " Songs on the Voices of Birds " are likewise 
 original and impressive. The song, " A Raven in a White 
 Chine," is notably good — indeed, the poetess here puts more 
 dramatic intensity into her bird study than she has ever 
 been able to put into any study of humanity. " Songs of the 
 Night Watches " are of varying merit, but the third of these, 
 " The Coming of the Mermaiden," has become a sort of 
 classic ; and of the " Songs wdth Preludes," that entitled 
 "Wedlock" has also the characteristics of a true lyric. A 
 somewhat similar lyric study is also quoted here under the 
 title of " Reflections." 
 
 Miss Jean Ingelow was born about the year 1830. Her 
 first volume of poems came out in 1863, and five years 
 afterwards, *' The Story of Doom " and other poems 
 appeared. Miss Ingelow's other published works have been 
 prose. In 1864 her "Studies for Stories" appeared in 
 volume form. Then came " Stories Told to a Child " and 
 "Mopsa the Fairy." In addition to these books,' this 
 writer has given to the world four deservedly successful 
 novels, entitled, " Off the Skelligs " (1873), "Fated to be 
 Free" (1876), "Sarah de Berenger/' and " Don John." 
 
 REFLECTIONS. 
 
 Looking over a Gate at a Pool in a Field. 
 What change has made the pastures sweet 
 And reached the daisies at my feet, 
 And cloud that wears a goklen hem ? 
 
3^2 English Poetesses. 
 
 This lovely world, the hills, the sward — 
 They all look fresh, as if our Lord 
 But yesterday had finished them. 
 
 And here's the field with light aglow ; 
 How fresh its boundary lime-trees show. 
 
 And how its wet leaves trembling shine ! 
 Between their trunks come through to me 
 The morning sparkles of the sea 
 
 Below the level browsing line. 
 
 I see the pool more clear by half 
 Than pools where other waters laugh 
 
 Up at the breasts of coot and rail. 
 There, as she passed it on her way, 
 I saw reflected yesterday 
 
 A maiden with a milking-pail. 
 
 There, neither slowly nor in haste. 
 One hand upon her slender waist, 
 
 The other lifted to her pail ; 
 She rosy in the morning light. 
 Among the water-daisies white, 
 
 Like some fair sloop, appeared to sail. 
 
 Against her ancles as she trod 
 The lucky buttercup did nod. 
 
 I leaned upon the gate to see : 
 The sweet thing looked but did not speak ; 
 A dimple came in either cheek. 
 
 And all my heart was gone from me. 
 
 Then, as I lingered on the gate. 
 And she came up like coming fate, 
 
 I saw my picture in her eyes — 
 Clear dancing eyes, more black than sloes. 
 Cheeks like the mountain pink, that grows 
 
 Among white-headed majesties. 
 
 I said, ' A tale was made of old 
 That I would fain to thee unfold ; 
 Ah ! let me— let me tell the tale.' 
 
Jean Inge low. 363 
 
 But high she held her comely head ; 
 * I cannot heed it now,' she said, 
 * For carrying of the milking-pail.' 
 
 She laughed. What good to make ado? 
 I held the gate and she came through, 
 
 And took her homeward path anon. 
 From the clear pool her face had fled ; 
 It rested on my heart instead, 
 
 Reflected when the maid was gone. 
 
 With happy youth and work content. 
 So sweet and stately on she went. 
 
 Right careless of the untold tale. 
 Each step she took I loved her more, 
 And followed to her dairy door 
 
 The maiden with the milking-pail. 
 
 II. 
 
 For hearts where wakened love doth lurk. 
 How fine, how blest a thing is work ! 
 
 For work does good when reasons fail. 
 Good, yet the axe at every stroke 
 The echo of a name awoke — 
 
 Her name is Mary Martindale. 
 
 I'm glad that echo was not heard 
 Aright by other men : a bird 
 
 Knows doubtless what his own notes tell 
 And I know not, but I can say 
 I felt as shame-faced all that day 
 
 As if folks heard her name right well. 
 
 And when the west began to glow 
 I went — I could not choose but go 
 
 To that same dairy on the hill ; 
 And while sweet Mary moved about 
 Within, I came to her without, 
 
 And leaned upon the window-sill. 
 
364 English Poetesses, 
 
 The garden border where I stood 
 
 Was sweet with pinks and southernwood. 
 
 I spoke — her answer seemed to fail : 
 I smelt the pinks — I could not see ; 
 The dusk came down and sheltered me, 
 
 And in the dusk she heard my tale. 
 
 And what is left that I should tell ? 
 I begged a kiss, I pleaded well : 
 
 The rosebud lips did long decline ; 
 But yet I think, I think 'tis true. 
 That leaned at last into the dew, 
 
 One little instant they were mine. 
 
 O life ! how dear thou hast become : 
 She laughed at dawn and I was dumb, 
 
 But evening counsels best prevail. 
 Fair shine the blue that o'er her spreads. 
 Green be the pastures where she treads. 
 
 The maiden with the milking-pail ! 
 
 WEDLOCK. 
 
 The racing river leaped, and sang 
 Full blithely in the perfect weather. 
 
 All round the mountain echoes rang. 
 For blue and green were glad together. 
 
 This rained out light from every part. 
 And that with songs of joy was thrilling ; 
 
 But, in the hollow of my heart. 
 
 There ached a place that wanted filling. 
 
 Before the road and river meet. 
 
 And stepping-stones are wet and glisten, 
 
 I heard a sound of laughter sweet. 
 And paused to like it, and to listen. 
 
 I heard the chanting waters flow, 
 
 The cushat's note, the bee's low humming,- 
 Then turned the hedge, and did not know — 
 
 How could I ? — that my time was coming. 
 
Jean Inge low, 365 
 
 A girl upon the nighest stone, 
 
 Half doubtful of the deed, was standing, 
 
 So far the shallow flood had flown 
 Beyond the 'customed leap of landing. 
 
 She knew not any need of me. 
 
 Yet me she waited all unweeting ; ^ 
 
 We thought not I had crossed the sea. 
 
 And half the sphere to give her meeting. 
 
 I waded out, her eyes I met, 
 
 I wished the moments had been hours ; 
 I took her in my arms, and set 
 
 Her dainty feet among the flowers. 
 
 Her fellow maids in copse and lane, 
 
 Ah ! still, methinks, I hear them calling ; 
 
 The wind's soft whisper in the plain, 
 The cushat's coo, the water's falling. 
 
 But now it is a year ago. 
 
 But now possession crowns endeavour ; 
 I took her in my heart, to grow 
 
 And fill the hollow place for ever. 
 
 THE COMING IN OF THE "MERMAIDEN." 
 
 The moon is bleached as white as wool, 
 
 And just dropping under ; 
 Every star is gone but three. 
 
 And they hang far asunder — 
 There's a sea-ghost all in grey, 
 
 A tall shape of wonder ! 
 
 I am not satisfied with sleep, — 
 
 The night is not ended. 
 But look how the sea-ghost comes. 
 
 With wan skirts extended, 
 Stealing up in this weird hour. 
 
 When light and dark are blended. 
 
3^6 English Poetesses, 
 
 A vessel ! To the old pier end 
 Her happy course she's keeping ; 
 
 I heard them name her yesterday : 
 Some were pale with weeping ; 
 
 Some with their heart-hunger sighed, 
 She's in — and they are sleeping. 
 
 O ! now with fancied greetings blest, 
 They comfort their long aching : 
 
 The sea of sleep hath borne to them 
 What would not come with waking, 
 
 And the dreams shall most be true 
 In their blissful breaking. 
 
 The stars are gone, the rose-bloom comes — 
 No blush of maid is sweeter ; 
 
 The red sun, half-way out of bed. 
 Shall be the first to greet her. 
 
 None tell the news, yet sleepers wake, 
 And rise, and run to meet her. 
 
 Their lost they have, they hold ; from pain 
 A keener bliss they borrow. 
 
 How natural is joy, my heart ! 
 How easy after sorrow ! 
 
 For once, the best is come that hope 
 Promised them 'to-morrow.' 
 
 A RAVEN IN A WHITE CHINE. 
 
 I SAW when I looked up, on either hand, 
 
 A pale high chalk-cliff, reared aloft in white ; 
 
 A narrowing rent soon closed toward the land — 
 Toward the sea, an open yawning bight. 
 
 The polished tide, with scarce a hint of l)lue. 
 Washed in the bight ; above with angry moan 
 
 A raven, that was robbed, sat up in view, 
 Croaking and crying on a ledge alone. 
 
 * Stand on thy nest, spread out thy fateful wings. 
 With sullen hungry love bemoan thy brood, 
 
Hamilton King. 367 
 
 For boys have wrung their necks, those imp-like things, 
 Whose beaks dripped crimson daily at their food. 
 
 ' Cry, thou black prophetess ! cry, and despair. 
 
 None love thee, none ! Their father was thy foe, 
 Whose father in his youth did know thy lair, 
 And steal thy little demons Idng ago. 
 
 * Thou madest many childless for their sake, 
 
 And picked out many eyes that loved the light. 
 Cry, thou black prophetess ! sit up, awake. 
 Forebode, and ban them through the desolate night.' 
 
 Lo ! while I spake it, with a crimson hue 
 The dipping sun endowed that silver flood, 
 
 And all the cliffs flushed red, and up she flew, 
 The bird, as mad to bathe in airy blood. 
 
 * Nay, thou mayst cry, the omen is not thine. 
 
 Thou aged priestess of fell doom, and fate. 
 It is not blood : thy gods are making wine. 
 They spilt the must outside their city gate, 
 
 * And stained their azure pavement with the lees. 
 
 They will not listen, though thou cry aloud. 
 Old Chance, thy dame, sits mumbling at her ease, 
 Nor hears ; the^fair hag. Luck, is in her shroud. 
 
 ' * They heed not, they withdraw the sky-hung sign : 
 Thou hast no charm against the favourite race ; 
 Thy gods pour out for it, not blood, but wine : 
 There is no justice in their dwelling-place ! 
 
 * Safe in their father's house the boys shall rest. 
 
 Though thy fell brood doth stark and silent lie ; 
 Their unborn sons may yet despoil thy nest : 
 Cry, thou black prophetess ! lift up ! cry, cry.' 
 
 When a poem goes rapidly through four editions it must 
 be possessed of some merit out of the common ; 
 and when the poem which does this is in blank Harriet 
 verse, and deals — not with homely subjects (as King, 
 did Miss Ingelow's volume, which went through 
 fourteen editions), but with Italian liberty, it may be taken 
 
363 English Poetesses, 
 
 for granted that it has the pulse of a genuine poet beating 
 through it. " The Disciples," a volume of poems first pub- 
 lished in 1873, steadily made its way among lovers of 
 poetry who care for noble thought expressed in pure lan- 
 guage; and to this day the book continues to find new 
 admirers. A portion of it, entitled " Ugo Bassi's Sermon," 
 has even been called for separately, and is circulated as a 
 tract in some of the hospitals. 
 
 ** The Disciples " deals with Mazzini and his followers in 
 their later struggles for Italian emancipation. Its utterances 
 are quite Sybillic in tone. There is a broad freedom of 
 style in it which sweeps away the reader's interest with it ; and 
 it is not easy to lay the volume down till it has been read 
 through. Passionate sympathy for the principles of liberty 
 breathes itself forth on every page. It exhibits an intimate 
 acquaintance with the history of Mazzini's cause, and the 
 direct effect of the whole poem is such that it must appear 
 to any careful student of poetry and of later Italian history 
 a much more spontaneous and truthful exhibition of Italian 
 feelings about the movement for freedom than any of Mrs. 
 Browning's poems exhibit. And this will appear the more 
 surprising when I state that, whereas Mrs. Browning studied 
 Italian politics on the spot, the author of " The Disciples " 
 had never set foot in Italy when her poetical manifesto was 
 written. The poem begins thus : — 
 
 I WRITE of the Disciples, because He 
 Who was their Master, having left on earth 
 The memory of a face that none could paint, 
 The echo of a voice that none could reach, 
 Hath left his own immortal words and works 
 To be a witness for him. Who should dare 
 To add one line or lesson unto these ? 
 And in this year of loss, this first blank year 
 For us whom he held near and dear to him, 
 The heart is far too full to speak of thee, 
 Except through speaking of thy faithful ones, 
 
Harriet Hamilton King. 369 
 
 Joseph Mazzini, Master, first of those 
 The Sons of Men who are the Sons of God ! 
 O Book of mine, which he commanded ! long 
 Waited and worked for, and achieved too late ! 
 Whose first leaves flying over-seas, like flights 
 Of white doves loosened sweeping straight to home, 
 Were carried unto Pisa, and found there 
 Mourning, and at the dead feet were laid low. 
 Instead of in the master's living hand ; — 
 One day too late, and so came short for all, 
 And missed the confirmation of his eyes. 
 
 It is in this transparent but far from shallow style that 
 the current of the poem sweeps along. The thing is a 
 rhapsody, a hymn : it is history ennobled ; and those 
 portions of it which relate to the life and death of Ugo 
 Bassi are written in a narrative style as elevated as any 
 poet's pen has achieved in this century. 
 
 Mrs. Harriet E. Hamilton King, the author of " The Dis- 
 ciples," is the daughter of the late Admiral W. A. B. Hamil- 
 ton and Lady Harriet Hamilton, sister to the Duke of 
 Abercorn. She was born in 1840, and in 1863 married 
 Mr. Henry S. King, the banker and publisher. In her 
 young days Mrs. King had composed some poems which 
 she jealously hid from her friends because of their political 
 tendencies. Among these was a remarkable apology for 
 Felice Orsini. This apology was included in a volume of 
 verse which appeared in 1869 under the title of "Aspro- 
 monte." " Aspromonte " was succeeded by " The Disciples," 
 and in 1883 Mrs. King produced a beautiful " Book of 
 Dreams." The poems in this volume are a species of phan- 
 tasy-paintings, pourtraying feelings rather than thoughts. 
 Three pieces are quoted from the book, it being, unfortu- 
 nately, impossible to detach any extracts from Mrs. King's 
 larger works without doing her injustice. The third extract 
 comes from " A Midsummer Day's Dream," a long poem 
 which contains much varied fancy. 
 
 Y 
 
370 English Poetesses. 
 
 A DREAM MAIDEN. 
 
 My baby is sleeping overhead, 
 
 My husband is in the town ; 
 In my large white bed uncurtained, 
 
 All alone I lay me down. 
 
 And dreamily I have said my prayers. 
 And dreamily closed my eyes, 
 
 And the youth in my blood moves sweetly 
 As my pulses fall and rise. 
 
 I lie so peaceful and lonely, 
 
 A maiden in spirit-land, 
 With the moonbeams in at the window. 
 
 And hand laid close to hand. 
 
 I wander forth in the moonbeams, 
 
 All free of heart alone. 
 Neither awake or dreaming, 
 
 To-night it is all one. 
 
 Light of step across the carpet 
 Of the flower-entangled spring. 
 
 Light of spirit through the haunted 
 Wood pathways murmuring. 
 
 The earth is telling her secrets. 
 
 Never shy or strange to me ; 
 My heart beating only silence, 
 
 One with her mystery. 
 
 All over the beautiful distance 
 
 The air is so fresh and pure. 
 The night is so cool and silvery, 
 
 The calm is so secure. 
 
 And afar, down into the sunrise. 
 The glittering dream-worlds shine ; 
 
 And by this free heart triumphant 
 I pass on to make them mine. 
 
 O elfin maiden, turn homeward. 
 
 And dream not so cold and wild ! — 
 
 Have I not turned a woman ? 
 Have I not husband and child ? 
 
Harriet Hamilton King. 371 
 
 A HAUNTED HOUSE. 
 
 The lawns are bright, the paths are wide, 
 The roses are bursting on every side. 
 
 All around the bowers are green, 
 
 And the shining laurels a folding-screen. 
 
 The large fruit ripens on many a tree. 
 Purple and gold drooping heavily. 
 
 Of health and wealth a hidden spell 
 Is scattered by hands invisible. 
 
 Young, and gladsome, and free they meet — 
 Voices of laughter and running feet. 
 
 Whether the seasons be dark or fair. 
 It is always summer and sunshine there. 
 
 And like a fountain that springs and falls, 
 There flows sweet music between the walls. 
 
 Among the guests one comes and goes 
 Whom no one sees and no one knows. 
 
 A neck more stately, a face more fair 
 Than any that meet and mingle there. 
 
 There is heaped up many a gay sea-stone, 
 One pearl lies among them all alone ; 
 
 With a golden halo all about. 
 
 The full moon's face from the clouds looks out ; 
 
 All cold on the breast of the crimson sky, 
 The star of the evening seems to lie. 
 
 Shining as pale, apart as far 
 
 As the pearl, or the moon, or the evening star, 
 
 That orbed face, with its curvings rare, 
 Floats out from its waves of dusky hair, 
 
 With its eyes of shadow, its arched eyes, 
 Whose lost looks dream upon Paradise. 
 
 y 2 
 
372 English Poetesses. 
 
 Cne only knoweth it in the throng ; 
 
 One knoweth too well, and knoweth too long. 
 
 The others are ever unaware, 
 
 Though it pass and meet them in the air, 
 
 With sighs like the sighs of the summer night, 
 Breathing of love and of lost delight. 
 
 That haunting vision of yearning pain. 
 One moment strikes and then fades again. 
 
 It rises up at the music's sound. 
 
 And sinks before they can look around. 
 
 If they catch one sight of the crowned brow, 
 A sunbeam glances from bough and bough. 
 
 If a low voice thrills in the air along, 
 It is but the dying note of the song. 
 
 Not to sadden, only to share. 
 
 To the feast unbidden that guest comes there. 
 
 Lovely as lilies ungathered, and white, 
 The house is filled with a dream at night. 
 
 From chamber to chamber, from door to door, 
 Not a sound is heard, nor step on the floor ; 
 
 Through the shadowy hush as white wings win ; — 
 Peace be to this house, and to all within ! 
 
 The little children sleep soft and sweet ; — 
 Who stands beside them with soft white feet ? 
 
 The soft white hands pass over their hair ; — 
 Sleep on, dear children, so safe and fair ! 
 
 Till, where two are sleeping side by side, 
 Doth a dream at last between them glide. 
 
 Of all the angels that guard the place, 
 The least is not that forgotten face. 
 
Harriet Hamilton King. 373 
 
 SUNRISE ON MONTE ROSA. 
 
 The glorious mountain stands white as a bride, 
 Alone, above. The lesser mountain lights 
 Stand for a hundred miles from east to west 
 Unkindled yet. Unnumbered shimmering ways, 
 Melting from moonlight into ashen grey, 
 Mark the mysterious kingdom of the snow ; 
 The upper world, with all its territories. 
 Stretches itself in revelation clear 
 At this pale hour. Suddenly quivers up 
 A flame in the East. The white side thrills and heaves 
 In a wave of gold, as if a chord had struck 
 Of a vast music, and we scarce can tell 
 If we see or hear, so fast the glory rolls 
 In the great rush of the angel of the light. 
 Whiter and whiter shine th' immortal fronts 
 Before the coming touch, till all at once 
 The colour and the radiance break on them, 
 And lift them into unapproached heaven. 
 Lying aloft there in their crimson dream ; 
 While sweeping giant shadows to the West 
 In violet darkness go before the fire. 
 
 Slowly it comes — it comes ! The beacon-fires 
 Draw towards the feet of the Mount marvellous, 
 A change begins to flutter over her. 
 The Flower of the World unfolded waits to know 
 The mightier Monarch, and the Master's rod 
 Omnipotent, and all her pride grows pale. 
 Through all the silvery spaces in the highest, 
 Of the supreme and solitary shape, 
 A murmurous movement like a child's asleep 
 Rises and falls, until our own hearts beat. 
 Hush now ! she stirs, — she has felt the wings afar 
 Sweep through the sapphire silence of the skies : 
 The awfulness of a great change comes close. 
 And now one wan swift shudder visibly 
 Runs over her, and leaves her still more white. 
 There is a moment that we dare not see. 
 Then we look up, and lo ! the glory in heaven ! 
 
374 English Poetesses. 
 
 One reddening wave of utter loveliness 
 
 Drowns all her pearly light in overflow ; 
 
 And glowing through the still suspended depths, 
 
 The lamp of roses, the celestial face 
 
 Seems lighted from the passionate heart within ; 
 
 Till all th' intense blue of the heavens beyond 
 
 Seems to burn from her, set a sovereign there, 
 
 With the resurrection kiss upon her brow. 
 
 O Rose of God, fade not, nor float away ! 
 
 Crowned by thy conqueror, rule and reign the lands 
 
 That blossom from the rivers of thy breast ! 
 
 Miss Mathilde Blind, step-daughter of Karl Blind, has 
 made herself known as a highly sympathetic and skilful editor 
 
 and critic of Shelley's works. In 1874 she likewise 
 ^bSJ^® produced a translation of Strauss's " Old Faith and 
 
 the New," and in 1881 a volume entitled *'The 
 Prophecy of St. Oran, and other Poems," which at once 
 proved that Miss Blind is possessed of mature poetical powers. 
 The legend of St. Oran, as modified in the poem, tells how 
 St. Columba, building a church in lona, was disconcerted 
 by a supernatural powder which each night undid all the 
 labour which had occupied his monks during the previous 
 day ; how the cause of this interference was heaven's anger 
 at the love of a youthful monk — Oran — for the daughter of 
 a Pictish chief; how Oran, for his transgression, was con- 
 demned to be buried alive ; how, on the third day after his 
 burial they opened his grave, from which proceeded a voice 
 proclaiming that there is neither God nor devil, heaven 
 nor hell ; and how — 
 
 A grave is dug whence he mayjiever stray, 
 Or come back prophesying from the dead — 
 All shouting, as they stifle him with clay : 
 *' Earth on his mouth — the earth he would adore, 
 That his blaspheming tongue may blab no more." 
 
 The author of this poem was once visiting a lonely farm 
 in the Isle of Skye, when she came upon a book which con- 
 
Mathilde Blind, 375 
 
 tained a summary of the legend. The wild and solitary 
 scenery of Skye suggested some of the descriptive passages 
 in the poem, which was completed after a visit to lona, 
 where the ruins of St. Oran's Chapel are still to be seen. 
 The spray-laden air of these wild western islands breathes 
 freshly through Miss Blind's poem, and the beautiful 
 simpUcity of life and thought which prevailed amidst these 
 early northern missionaries is well preserved. It is a pity 
 that any short extract from this legend would greatly suffer 
 by being here removed from its context. Of the other 
 poems contained in the same volume, one of the most 
 striking is a city piece, entitled "The Street Children's 
 Dance ; " but Miss Blind is at her very best when express- 
 ing her thought through sonnets, such as the following. 
 This author's " Life of George Eliot " (1883) has been already 
 mentioned. 
 
 CHRISTMAS EVE. 
 
 Alone — with one fair star for company, 
 The loveliest star among the hosts of night, 
 While the grey tide ebbs with the ebbing light — 
 I pace along the darkening wintry sea. 
 Now round the yule-log and the glittering tree 
 Twinkling with festive tapers, eyes as bright 
 Sparkle with Christmas joys and young delight, 
 As each one gathers to his family. 
 
 But I — a waif on earth where'er I roam — 
 Uprooted with life's bleeding hopes and fears 
 From that one heart that was my heart's sole home, 
 Feel the old pang pierce through the severing years, 
 And as I think upon the years to come 
 That fair star trembles through my falling tears. 
 
 THE DEAD. 
 
 The dead abide with us ! Though stark and cold 
 Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still : 
 They have forged our chains of being for good or ill ; 
 And their invisible hands these hands yet hold. 
 
37^ -English Poetesses, 
 
 Our perishable bodies are the mould 
 
 In which their strong imperishable will — 
 
 Mortality's deep yearning to fulfil — 
 
 Hath grown incorporate through dim time untold. 
 
 Vibrations infinite of life in death, 
 As a star's travelling light survives its star ! 
 So may we hold our lives, that when we are 
 The fate of those who then will draw this breath. 
 They shall not drag us to their judgment bar, 
 And curse the heritage which we bequeath. 
 
 In 1878, Messrs. Kegan Paul and Co., published a 
 small volume of poems entided " A Handful of Honey- 
 suckle." This unpretending book of verse, by 
 \^^(m' ^ Mary F. Robinson, met with a much hap- 
 pier fate than that which is accorded to most 
 volumes of the kind. 'The critical journals did not give 
 it very strong praise, and indeed the chief literary organ 
 dismissed it with a hasty notice which spoke rather ill 
 of it. This periodical, however, appears to have taken 
 second thoughts about Miss Robinson, for shortly after 
 the publication of her book, verses from her pen began 
 to appear in its columns. Similarly, the cultivated sec- 
 tion of the reading public, which watches contemporary 
 poetry closely, took second thoughts about Miss Robin- 
 son, and the book which had been talked of on its first 
 appearance as " rather good," made its charms so subtly 
 felt that Miss Robinson came to be quite a topic for dis 
 cussion, somewhat as L. E. L. had been in her young 
 days. It got wind that Tennyson and Browning liked this 
 modest little collection of verses ; it was duly appreciated at 
 Oxford ; inquiry led to the understanding that the writer of 
 these verses was quite young, was learned in the classic 
 tongue, and contributed essays to German periodicals. In 
 the Dublin University Magazine, and subsequently in two 
 or three more widely circulated periodicals, detached poems 
 
Mary Robinson. 377 
 
 from her pen appeared from time to time, and when it was 
 announced that Miss Robinson was about to publish "The 
 Crowned Hippolytus," a metrical translation from Euripides, 
 some began to ask whether a second Mrs. Browning was 
 coming. "The Crowned Hippolytus" (1881), with which 
 went a few other poems, is a serious and interesting experi- 
 ment, but it did not materially advance the author's reputa- 
 tion. Since its production, Miss Robinson has done little 
 further work in the way of poetry. To Frazet^s Magazine 
 she contributed a fine prose tale, entitled, " Janet Fisher," 
 a study of Irvingite times, and more recently she has 
 published a novel, entitled "Arden'' (1883), and a care- 
 ful "Life of Emily Bronte" (1883), contributed to the 
 " Eminent Women " series. Meanwhile, Miss Robinson 
 has been winning interest personally in London literary 
 circles, and the favour with which anything she attempts 
 is now received would be a great help towards the 
 formation of her future reputation, while it might conceiv- 
 ably be a danger also. 
 
 This poetess is the daughter of a man of letters who 
 has done useful work. During the Franco-German war he 
 performed signal service as correspondent to one of the 
 leading newspapers, and the particularly interesting letters 
 he sent home during the most exciting crisis in the history of 
 this war, caused him to be known subsequently as "Metz 
 Robinson." 
 
 Miss Mary Robinson was born at Leamington, on 27 th 
 of February, 1857. At that time her father was archidia- 
 conal architect for Coventry, and Miss Robinson's young 
 girlhood was spent in Warwickshire and Lancashire. Her 
 education was pursued in Belgium, Brussels, and Italy, being 
 completed with literary and classical studies at University 
 College, London. I have been told — and perhaps the 
 mention of the fact may be pardoned here — that on reach- 
 ing the age of twenty-one, Miss Robinson was offered the 
 
378 English Poetesses. 
 
 choice between a ball, to be given in her honour, or the 
 publication of some of her poems in volume form. Her 
 decision was promptly made in favour of the poems, and 
 the result justified that decision. 
 
 The little volume entitled "A Handful of Honeysuckle " 
 — the name, by the way, had been already used by an older 
 writer for a book of poems — lays small hold upon the 
 realities of life. It is a collection of out-of-the-way fantasies 
 delicately put into words with a quaint musical ring that 
 brings to the reader's mind the notion of some sweet, 
 quaint instrument like the virginal. One of the poems is 
 entitled " Cockayne Country." The Cockayne Country 
 with Miss Robinson is not the paradise of fools which the 
 early English writers made it. It is rather the land of day- 
 dreams, and the whole of this book contains such day- 
 dreams. The workmanship of each poem is not always 
 mature, and indeed the interest which the volume has excited 
 is one more of promise than of performance. Nevertheless, 
 while the style of the poems, here and there, is unmistakably 
 imitative of well-known models, in choice of theme this 
 writer has originality in her favour. As a sonnet writer, 
 she has done some excellently balanced work; and the 
 lyric touch which is to be found in the first two poems of 
 hers here quoted is unmistakably good. 
 
 PARADISE FANCIES. 
 
 Last night I met mine own true love 
 
 Walking in Paradise, 
 A halo shone above his hair 
 
 A glory in his eyes. 
 
 We sat and sang in alleys green 
 And heard the angels play, 
 
 Believe me, this was true last night. 
 Though it is false to-day. 
 
Mary Robinson: 379 
 
 Through Paradise garden 
 
 A minstrel strays, 
 An old golden viol 
 
 For ever he plays. 
 
 Birds fly to his head, 
 
 Beasts lie at his feet, 
 For none of God's angels 
 
 Make music so sweet. 
 
 And here, far from Zion 
 
 And lonely and mute, 
 I listen and long 
 
 For my heart is the lute. 
 
 DAWN - ANGELS. 
 
 All night I watched awake for morning, 
 At last the East grew all a-flame. 
 
 The birds for welcome sang, or warning, 
 And with their singing morning came. 
 
 Along the gold -green heavens drifted 
 
 Pale wandering souls that shun the light, 
 
 Whose cloudy pinions, torn and rifted. 
 Had beat the bars of Heaven all night. 
 
 These clustered round the moon, but higher 
 
 A troop of shining spirits went. 
 Who were not made of wind or fire. 
 
 But some divine dream-element. 
 
 Some held the Light, while those remaining 
 Shook out their harvest-coloured wings, 
 
 A faint unusual music raining, 
 (Whose sound was Light) on earthly things. 
 
 They sang, and as a mighty river 
 Their voices washed the night away, 
 
 From East to West ran one white shiver, 
 And waxen strong their song was Day. 
 
380 English Poetesses. 
 
 WILL. 
 
 The world is a garment for me to wear 
 
 The days are my glance and the dark my hair. 
 
 Alone in the kingdom of space I stand 
 With Hell and Heaven in either hand. 
 
 Life is the smile, Death the sigh of me, 
 Who was, who am, who ever shall be. 
 
 Men and their gods pass away, but still 
 
 I am maker and end, I am God, I am Will. 
 
 MAIDEN LOVE. 
 
 Oh Love, and hast thou conquered my proud heart 
 
 That did so long deny thy sovereignty ? 
 
 Hast given lordship and command of me 
 
 Even to another lesser than thou art ? 
 
 Whose footfall bids the shameful blood upstart 
 
 To my pale cheeks and beat so clamourously 
 
 About my head, I cannot hear or see 
 
 Whose coming 'tis that makes my life depart. 
 
 Ah me ! my heart is as an instrument 
 
 That answers only one musician's hand, 
 
 A vision one alone may represent, 
 
 A cypher but one sage can understand. 
 
 Yet to this one as purposeless and far 
 
 As such dead things to their possessors are. 
 
 LOVE'S EPIPHANY. 
 
 Tread softly here — for Love has passed this way ! 
 
 Ay, even while I laughed to scorn His name 
 
 And mocked aloud : There is no Love ! Love came. 
 
 The air was glorious with an added day, 
 
 I saw the heavens opened far away. 
 
 And forth with bright blown hair and eyes a-flame. 
 
 With lyre-shaped wings, filled with the wind's acclaim. 
 
 Flew Love and deigned a moment here to stay. 
 
Other Writers. 381 
 
 I fell upon my face and cried in fear, 
 Oh Love ! Love ! Love ! my King and God ! 
 
 But when I look'd He was no longer near. 
 Since then, I watch beside this grass He trod, 
 
 And pray all day, all night, for any pain 
 
 Love can inflict, so He will come again. 
 
 Four names popularly honoured — though chiefly in a 
 bygone age— must here be mentioned. Of these the first 
 three belong to women who have distinguished themselves 
 best by efforts other than poetical : they are Mary Howitt 
 (b. 1800, "Ballads," 1847); Mary Cowden Clarke (b. 1809, 
 " Honey from the Weed," 1881) ; Frances Anne Kemble — 
 Mrs. Butler (b. 181 1, "Poems," 1842). Mrs. Butler's 
 poetical powers are more than respectable. The last of 
 the quartette referred to is Eliza Cook (b. 181 7, "Poems," 
 1840; "New Echoes," 1864). 
 
 The merits of the following writers should also have 
 been discussed, had space permitted : — Isa Craig-Knox 
 (b. 1 83 1, "Duchess Agnes and Other Poems," 1865) ; 
 Mrs. Linnaeus Banks (b. 182 1, "Ivy Leaves," 1843; 
 "Daisies in the Grass," 1863; "Ripples and Breakers," 
 1878); Lady Wilde (Poems by "Speranza," 1864); Lady 
 Charlotte Elliot ("Medusa and Other Poems," 1878); 
 Mrs. Newton Crosland ("The Diamond Wedding and 
 Other Poems," 187 1); The Hon. Mrs. O. N. Knox 
 ("Sonnets and Other Poems," 1872); E. H. Hickey 
 ("A Sculptor and Other Poems," 1881); M. M. Single- 
 ton — known as " Violet Fane " (" From Dawn to Noon," 
 1872 ; " Denzil Place," 1875 \ " Queen of the Fairies and 
 Other Poems," 1874 ; "Anthony Babington," 1877 ; " Col- 
 lected Verses," 1880); L. S. Bevington ("Key Notes," 
 1879; Poems, 1882); Constance C. W. Naden ("Songs 
 and Sonnets of Spring-time," 1881) ; Lady Middleton 
 ("On the North Wind," 1874; "Ballads," 1878). 
 
(>' 
 
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