Miss Ponsonby, somewhat taller than her friend, is neither slender nor otherwise, but very graceful. Easy, elegant, yet pensive, is her address and manner :

"Her voice, like lovers watch'd, is kind and low."

A face rather long than round, a complexion clear, but without bloom, with a countenance which, from its soft melancholy, has peculiar interest. If her features are not beautiful, they are very sweet and feminine. Though the pensive spirit within permits not her lovely dimples to give mirth to her smile, they increase its sweetmess, and consequently, her power of engaging the affections. We see, through their veil of shading reserve, that all the talents and ac complishments which enrich the mind of Lady Eleanor, exist with equal powers, in this her charming friend.

Such are these extraordinary women, who, in the bosom of their deep retirement, are sought by the first characters of the age, both as to rank and talents. To preserve that retirement from too fre quent invasion, they are obliged to be somewhat coy as to acces sibility.

• When we consider their intellectual resources, their energy and industry, we are not surprised to hear them asserting, that, though they have not once forsaken their vale, for thirty hours successively, since they entered it seventeen years ago; yet neither the long summer's day, nor winter's night, nor weeks of imprisoning snows, ever inspired one weary sensation, one wish of returning to that world, first abandoned in the bloom of youth, and which they are yet so perfectly qualified to adorn.'

Many letters to these ladies occur in the work, and the correspondence appears to have been acceptable to both parties. English literature is the subject on which Miss Seward delights to dwell, and her remarks on books are extremely amusing. Without reserve, she offers her opinion of the productions of an author when writing to that author. For example, her remarks on Mr. Hayley's Life of Cowper are delivered to Mr. Hayley without the least hesitation, in letter 12, vol. vi. and they prove the truth of what this lady says of herself: I am an ingenuous creature, and speak as I feel' but if Mr. Hayley could pardon her plain speaking on the score of his life of Cowper*, he must

be

Of this, as of the former collection of his letters, I can say with truth, that I think every well-educated person, of talents not above the common level, every day produces letters as well worth attention as most of Cowper's, especially as to diction.

My dear bard, you become a perfect Sangrado in literature, when you challenge pre-eminence for such insipid epistles. Water is a pure fluid, but it has not the strength of port-wine (Johnson's letters) nor the spirit and fine flavour of champaign (Gray's). Good

be mortified at the manner in which Miss S. expresses herself, in a letter to Mr. Walter Scott, on the asserted decline of her friend Mr. Hayley's poetic genius. She was now courting the friendship of Mr. Scott; and her dear bard,' as she calls Mr. Hayley, seems to have been sacrificed to this new literary attachment: though she indeed complains of his epistolary neglect of her.

In our former article on this work, we referred to Miss Seward's frequent anathemas against Reviews because, evidently, they had not been favourable to some of her poetical works, and to those of authors whom she admired. We alluded, also, to her fancied but curiously mistaken knowlege of writers in the M. R., and the particular instance of it occurs again with ludicrous gravity in Vol. iv. p. 144. and p. 189.-Were Miss S. living, she would be a little ashamed to be told of her gross error, and to hear that the criticisms which she censures were in fact the productions of eminent men whom she elsewhere names and highly praises, without suspecting their critical sins. It is curious also to see her in correspondence with, and flattering, others who were then or have since been known as deeply implicated in her supposed plots and crimes of public criticism. One statement which she makes, with regard to Reviews, needs only to be read to excite laughter at its absurdity:

When I was at Bristol last summer, a lady said to me, My son is of Merchant Taylor's school. He has there a friend and schoolfellow, not yet sixteen, who has been employed by one of the Review-editors to write strictures for his work, on your Memoirs of Dr. Darwin." Such are often the presumptuous deciders on new publications.'

If authors may sometimes complain of severe treatment from Reviewers, we are sure that Reviewers may often complain of unjust conduct from disappointed, interested, ignorant, or storytelling individuals.

water is to be had almost everywhere, and good epistolary water without its having cost the gold of genius to procure it.

Why you should labour to persuade the world that the rectitude, talents, and judgment of that man were all surpassing, is to me incom prehensible, since in so doing you betray your own fair claims to poetic fame. This conclusion inevitably follows your premises. If Cowper was indeed free from all unworthy jealousy of rival reputa tion, and fully able to appreciate the value of poetic compositions, then his total silence respecting his friend Hayley's muse, proves that he did not think her worth attention, however he might love her votary. I, the rebel to Mr. Hayley's Cowperian edicts, but the sincere admirer of much of his poetry, will never subscribe to his illimitable claims for the bard of Weston: but O! I grieve to see him dwindling himself into a dwarf bearing Cowper's armour, and looking up and wondering at the Colossus his stilts had made,'

Our

Our readers will recollect that, during the American war, Miss Seward wrote a monody on the unfortunate Major André, in which she reflected on the conduct of General Washington; and it was reported that the General had written to Miss S. to exonerate himself from the insinuation contained in the monody. Though this was not exactly the fact, something like it oc cured; and in one of these letters the circumstances are clearly stated. To Miss Ponsonby, (August 9, 1798,) she says:

No, dear Madam, I was not, as you suppose, favoured with a letter from General Washington, expressly addressed to myself: but, a few years after peace was signed between this country and America, an officer introduced himself, commissioned from General Washington to call upon me, and to assure me, from the General himself, that no circumstance of his life had been so mortifying as to be censured in the Monody on André, as the pitiless author of his ignominious fate: that he had laboured to save him-that he requested my attention to papers on the subject, which he had sent by this officer for my perusal.

On examining them, I found they entirely acquitted the General, They filled me with contrition for the rash injustice of my censure. With a copy of the proceedings of the court-martial that determined André's condemnation, there was a copy of a letter from General Washington to General Clinton, offering to give up André in exchange for Arnold, who had fled to the British camp, observing the reason there was to believe that the apostate General had exposed that gallant English officer to unnecessary danger to facilitate his own escape: copy of another letter from General Washington to Major André, adjuring him to state to the commander in chief his unavoidable conviction of the selfish perfidy of Arnold, in suggesting that plan of disguise, which exposed André, if taken, to certain condemnation as a spy, when, if he had come openly in his regimentals, and under a flag of truce, to the then unsuspected American General, he would have been perfectly safe: copy of André's high-souled answer, thanking General W. for the interest he took in his destiny; but, observing that, even under conviction of General Arnold's inattention to his safety, he could not suggest to General Clinton any thing which might influence him to save his less important life by such an exchange.

These, Madam, are the circumstances, as faithfully as I can recal them, at such a distance of time, of the interview with General Washington's friend, which I slightly mentioned to yourself and Lady Eleanor, when I had the happiness of being with you last

summer.'

In this anecdote, the lady and the General both appear to advantage.

On the death of Mr. Saville, (Vicar-choral of Lichfield Cathedral,) Miss S. employs the language of the most heart-felt grief. She speaks of his grave as the place where her soul's dearest comforts for ever lie;' (Vol. vi. p.122.) and she says, (p. 175-)

14

(p. 175.) my attachment to him has subjected me to unworthy reflections. It is not for us to investigate the precise meaning of these strong expressions; the purport of which, however, is not new to us but we do not perceive the necessity of giving to the public the letters which contain them.

The last of Miss S.'s correspondents was Mr. Walter Scott; and we shall finish our extracts with her interview with this gentleman. In a letter to the Rev. H. F. Carey, dated Lichfield, May 10, 1807, she thus writes:

Not less astonishing than was Johnson's memory is that of Mr. Scott; like Johnson also, his recitation is too monotonous and violent to do justice, either to his own writings, or that of others. You are almost the only poet I know, whose reading is entirely just to his

muse.

Mr. White and Mr. Simpson breakfasted with us on Saturday morning. One hour only before that which he fixed for his departure, our northern luminary, by repeated and vehement solicitation, was persuaded to shine upon us till ten the next day. Mr. Simpson would have no nay to his request, that the party should dine and sup with him and Mrs. Simpson. The stranger guest, Scott, delighted us all by the unaffected charms of his mind and manners. He had diverged many miles from his intended track of return from our capital, to visit me ere he repassed the Tweed. Such visits are the most high-prized honours which my writings have procured for me.

I shewed Mr. Scott the passage in your Dante which mentions his work, and the Magician it celebrates. He had heard of your translation, but not read it. On looking at a few of the passages, and comparing them with the original, he said there was power and skill in having breathed so much spirit into a translation so nearly literal; but he confessed his inability to find pleasure in that author, even in his own language, which Mr. S. perfectly understands. The plan, he said, appeared to him unhappy, as it was singular, and the personal malignity and strange mode of revenge, presumptuous and uninteresting. However, he promised to examine your English version more largely when he could find leisure.

The muses

Constable, Scott's Edinburgh publisher, dined with me a fortnight ago, and said he had agreed with Mr. Scott to give a thousand guineas for Flodden-Field, a poem now on the anvil. drive a thriving trade for Scott, as once they did for Hayley, and since for Darwin; but, alas! look at their bankrupts, from Spenser's day down to Chatterton, and in the present period. Mr. Scott told me Gray and Mason* have been heard to declare the pecuniary bar.

On mentioning this circumstance to Mr. Scott he expressed his opinion that Miss Seward must have misunderstood him. Gray left his literary property to Mason, as is well known. It is not equally well-known that Mason considered the profits (and Mr. Scott always understood that they were considerable) as a fund for the exercise of the noblest charity, in educating young men of talents, many of whom rose to considerable distinction.-Note by the Editor.'

renness

renness of their deathless laurels. The honours of future times, in evitable indeed, but promissory only, are the sole rewards of Southey's energies, though awakened by all the nine.'

The last letter is dated Nov. 5, 1807. For some time before the conclusion of this correspondence, Miss Seward complains of her declining health, and particularly of a giddiness which rendered both reading and writing very irksome; yet even in those letters which announce the increase of her malady, we perceive no diminution of genius and energy, but her mind appears vivid to the last. Though we have made such numerous quotations, we seem to have transcribed too little to afford the reader an adequate conception of the nature of this col lection but we must plead our old excuse for not being more prolix. It would afford us pleasure to insert several of the writer's judicious remarks, which, if selected, may be exhibited as her thoughts or maxims, or as "the Beauties of Seward:" but this is a gratification in which we must not indulge.-Before, however, we close these volumes, and direct our attention to other matters, we must remark that Miss Seward, adopting the rules given by Dr. Johnson in No. 152 of the Rambler, cautiously abstains from that careless and conversational style which some persons have recommended as the most proper for the letterwriter. She uniformly aims at being rather nervous than easy; and though, in her solicitude to appear as a woman elevated far above the vulgar throng, she at times trenches on affectation, assumes the appropriate terms of science, and selects the sesquipedalia verba in preference to ordinary phraseology, yet she discovers such an extent of reading, and so matured an understanding, that momentary disgust evaporates before the radiance which she displays. If she arrogates superiority, who will dare to dispute her pretensions? If she be vain, is it not the vanity of a highly cultivated mind?

The poetical works of Miss Seward have been lately edited by Mr. Walter Scott, with memoirs of her life; and we propose shortly to make some report of this publication.

ART. II. Supplement to Testacea Britannica, with additional Plates, by George Montagu, F. L.S. & M. W. S. 4to. pp. 199. 11. 168. with coloured, 18s. with plain Plates. White and Cochrane.

TH

HE numerous additions and corrections exhibited in this supplementary volume attest, at once, the unwearied industry and the eminent candour which characterize the researches of its author. Of nearly ninety distinct species, illustrated in the

additional