stimulated to exertion. The ill-fated and yet | Solitude and sorrow reveal to us its secrets, even gifted being, steeped to the lips in poverty, that as they first revealed themselves to those bitterest closer of the human heart, surrounded by "Who learnt in suffering what they taught in song." the cold and the careless, shrinking from his immediate circle, who neglect and misunderstand him, has yet faith in the far away. Suffering discourses eloquent music, and it believes that such music will find an echo and reply where the music only is known, and the maker loved for its sake.

Fame, which the Greeks idealised so nobly, is but the fulfilment of that desire for sympathy which can never be brought home to the individual. It is the essence of such a nature to ask too much. It expects to be divined where it is too shy to express. Praise, actual personal praise, oftener frets and embarrasses than it encourages. It is too small when too near. There is also the fear of mistaking the false Florimel flattery for the true Florimel praise. Hence hope takes the wings of the morning, and seeks an atmosphere, warm, kindly, and congenial, and where it is not ashamed. Without such timidity, without such irritability, without a proneness to exaggeration, the poetical temperament could not exist. Nor is its reliance on distance and on solitude in vain. We talk, and can never be sure but that our hearers listen as much from kindness as from interest. Their mood may or may not be in unison with our own. If this be the case even in ordinary intercourse, how much more must it be felt where the most shrinking, subtle, and sorrowful ideas are to be expressed. But the poet relies on having his written page opened when the spirit is attuned to its melody. He asks to be read in the long summer mornings, when the green is golden on the trees, when the bird sings on the boughs, and the insect in the grass; and yet when the weight of the past presses heavily upon the present, when

memory makes the sky

I believe that no poet ever made his readers feel unless he had himself felt. The many touching poems which most memories keep as favourites originated in some strong personal sensation. I do not mean to say that the fact is set down, but if any feeling is marked in the writing, that feeling has been keenly and painfully experienced. No indication of its existence would probably be shown in ordinary life: first, because the relief of expression has already been found in poetry, and secondly, from that extreme sensitiveness which shrinks from contact with the actual. Moreover, the habit has so grown up with us, so grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength, that we scarcely know the extraordinary system of dissimulation carried on in our present state of society.

In childhood, the impetus of conversation is curiosity. The child talks to ask questions. But one of its first lessons, as it advances, is that a question is an intrusion, and an answer a deceit. Ridicule parts social life like an invisible paling; and we are all of us afraid of the other. To this may be in great measure attributed the difference that exists between an author's writings and his conversation. The one is often sad and thoughtful, while the other is lively and careless. The fact is, that the real character is shown in the first instance, and the assumed in the second. Besides the impulses of an imaginative temperament are eager and easily excited, and gaiety has its impulses as well as despondency, but it is less shy of showing them. Only those in the habit of seclusion, occupied with their own thoughts, can know what a relief it is sometimes to spring, as it were, out of themselves. The fertile wit, the sunny vivacity, belong to a nature which must be what the French so happily term impressionable to be poetical. The writer of a recent memoir of Mrs. Hemans deems it necessary almost to apologise for her occasional fits of buoyant spirits:"Oh! gentle friend, Blame not her mirth who was sad yesterday, And may be sad to-morrow."

Seem all too joyous for the shrinking eye." In such a mood the voice of passionate complaining is both understood and welcome. There is a well of melancholy poetry in every human bosom. We have all mourned over the destroyed illusion and the betrayed hope. We have quarreled in some embittered moment with an early friend, and when too late, lamented the estrange- The most intense sunshine casts the deepest shament. We have all stood beside the grave, and dow. asked of the long grass and ever-springing wild choly flowers why they should have life, while that of ter. the beloved has long since gone down to the dust. How many have

"laid their youth as in a burial urn,

Where sunshine may not find it."

Such mirth does not disprove the melanwhich belonged to Mrs. Hemans's characShe herself alludes to the times when

'Sudden glee

Bears my quick heart along
On wings that struggle to be free
As bursts of skylark song."

I remember to have read of an Hanoverian Society might make her say—

chorister, who, having lost by an early death the young village girl to whom he was betrothed, rudely carved upon her tomb a rose-bud broken on its stem, with the words beneath, "C'est ainsi

"Thou canst not wake the spirit

That in me slumbering lies,
Thou strik'st not forth the electric fire
Of buried melodies."

qu'elle fût." This might be emblem and inscrip- But it might very well strike the sparkles from tion for all the loveliest emotions of the soul. the surface.

While such recollections remain garnered, poetry I have said that the writer's character is in his will always have its own appointed hour. Its writings: Mrs. Hemans's is strongly impressed haunted words will be to us even as our own. upon hers. The sensitiveness of the poet is deep

Soon feeling that the weight of this world is too like an astrologer whose power fails when the heavy upon it—

fast at last-the light shone from the windows of her home as she approached unto it.

"No tears for thee, though light be from us gone
With thy soul's radiance, bright and restless one-
No tears for thee.

They that have loved an exile must not mourn
To see him parting for his native bourn,
O'er the dark sea."

which, like that of the singing brook, has sprung up of itself. Now, Mrs. Hemans has the most perfect skill in her science; nothing can be more polished than her versification. Every poem is like a piece of music, with its eloquent pauses, its rich combinations, and its swelling chords. Who that has ever heard can forget the exquisite flow of "The Voice of Spring?"

"I come! I come!-ye have call'd me long;

I come o'er the mountains with light and song!
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth,
By the winds that tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass."

It is like the finest order of Italian singing-pure,
high and scientific.

We have noticed this yearning for affectionunsatisfied, but still unsubdued-as one characteristic of Mrs. Hemans's poetry: the rich picturesque was another. Highly accomplished, the varied stores that she possessed were all subservient to one master science. Mistress both of German and Spanish, the latter country appears to have peculiarly captivated her imagination. At that period when the fancy is peculiarly alive I can never sufficiently regret that it was not to impression-when girlhood is so new, that the my good fortune to know Mrs. Hemans personeagerness of childhood is still in its delights-ally; it was an honour I should have estimated Spain was, of all others, the country on which so highly-a happiness that I should have enjoyed public attention was fixed: victory after victory so keenly. I never even met with an acquaintance carried the British flag from the ocean to the of hers but once; that once, however, was much. Pyrenees; but, with that craving for the ideal I knew Miss Jewsbury, the late lamented Mrs. which is so great a feature in her writings, the Fletcher. She delighted in speaking of Mrs. Hepresent was insufficient, and she went back upon mans: she spoke of her with the appreciation of the past;-the romantic history of the Moors was one fine mind comprehending another, and with like a storehouse, with treasures gorgeous like the earnest affection of a woman and a friend. those of its own Alhambra. She described her conversation as singularly fasIt is observable in her minor poems that they cinating-full of poetry, very felicitous in illusturn upon an incident rather than a feeling. Feel-tration by anecdote-happy, too, in quotation, and ings, true and deep, are developed; but one single emotion is never the original subject. Some on The Treasures of the Deep,' would best derich in imagery; "in short, her own poem very graceful or touching anecdote or situation catches scribe it." She mentioned a very striking simile, her attention, and its poetry is developed in a to which a conversation on Mrs. Hemans's own strain of mourning melody, and a vein of gentle poem of "The Sceptic" had led:-"Like Sindmoralising. I always wish, in reading my favour- bad, the sailor, we are often shipwrecked on a ite poets, to know what first suggested my favourstrange shore. We despair; but hope comes ite poems. Few things would be more interesting when least expected. We pass through the than to know under what circumstances they gloomy caverns of doubt into the free air and were composed,-how much of individual senti- blessed sunshine of conviction and belief." I ment there was in each-or how, on some inci- asked her if she thought Mrs. Hemans a happy dent seemingly even opposed, they had contrived person; and she said, "No; her enjoyment is to ingraft their own associations. What a history feverish, and she desponds. She is like a lamp of the heart would such annals reveal! Every whose oil is consumed by the very light which it poem is in itself an impulse.

Besides the ideal and the picturesque, Mrs. Hemans is distinguished by her harmony. I use the word harmony advisedly, in contradistinction to melody. Melody implies something more careless, more simple, than belongs to her style: it is song by snatches; our English ballads are remarkable for it. To quote an instance or two. There is a verse in that of "Yarrow Water:”—

"O wind that wandereth from the south,
Seek where my love repaireth,
And blow a kiss to his dear mouth,
And tell me how he fareth."

Nothing can exceed the tender sweetness of these
lines; but there is no skill. Again, in "Faire
Rosamonde," the verse that describes the cruelty

of Eleanor,

"With that she struck her on the mouth, So dyed double red;

Hard was the heart that gave the blow,

Soft were the lips that bled."

How musical is the alliteration; but it is music
VOL. XXVII. OCTOBER, 1835.-55

*

yields." What a cruel thing is the weakness of memory! How little can its utmost efforts recall of conversation that was once an instruction and a delight!

To the three characteristics of Mrs. Hemans's

poetry which have already been mentioned-viz., the ideal, the picturesque, and the harmonious-a fourth must be added,-the moral. Nothing can be more pure, more feminine and exalted, than the spirit which pervades the whole: it is the intuitive sense of right, elevated and strengthened into a principle. It is a glorious and a beautiful memory to bequeath; but she who left it is little left, legacies from many various hours, and what to be envied. Open the volumes which she has a record of wasted feelings and disappointed hopes may be traced in their sad and sweet complainings! Yet Mrs. Hemans was spared some of the keenest mortifications of a literary career. She knew nothing of it as a profession which has to make its way through poverty, neglect, and

T

*The Sceptic. Murray.

"Day by day,

obstacles: she lived apart in a small, affectionate it surprised me to note how much she desponded circle of friends. The high road of life, with its over them. crowds and contention-its heat, its noise, and its dust that rests on all-was for her happily at a distance; yet even in such green nest, the bird could not fold its wings, and sleep to its own music. There came the aspiring, the uniest, the aching sense of being misunderstood, the consciousness that those a thousand times inferior were yet more beloved. Genius places a woman in an unnatural position; notoriety frightens away affection; and the superiority has for its attendant fear, not love. Its pleasantest emotions are too vivid to be lasting: hope may sometimes,

Raising its bright face,

With a free gush of sunny tears, erase
The characters of anguish ;"

Gliding, like some dark mournful stream away, My silent youth flows from me." Alas! it was the shadow of the early grave that and I believe her correspondence was extensive; rested upon her. Her letters were very brilliant, what a pity that they should not be collected. about him a grand and noble plainness, a digniSpeaking of Wordsworth she said, "There is fied simplicity-a something of high ideal Paganism, that I never saw in any one else. He is not so much a rock covered with flowers, as a rock crowned with a castle. He is a dweller on the heights-he would have made a friend for Phocion. He reminds me of the Druidical oaks, but, like the azure glimpses between thunder-strong and sacred." Again, while discussing the showers, the clouds gather more darkly around intercourse of society,-"You consider society for the passing sunshine. The heart sinks back something like a honeycomb-sweet, but hollow; on its solitary desolation. In every page of Mrs. so do I. But you seemed also to consider it exHemans's writings is this sentiment impressed; pedient for every one by right or courtesy termed what is the conclusion of "Corinne crowned at distinguished' to play truant-laying aside all the Capitol ?" habits of thought or feeling by which such distinction had been acquired. As if the earnestness of genius were less endurable than the heartlessness of the world; nay, as if the polished chainmail of the latter were the only garb fit to be worn by the former. Personally speaking, I should be sorry to go into public with any other disposition than one anxious to give and willing to receive pleasure. Very high or very deep conversation, any thing like communion of heart, would be out of place; but I do not see that we are called upon to pay so costly a compliment to society, as to assume a character diametrically opposed to our real world; to utter sentiments we secretly disbelieve-to be as angry with our better nature for their bursting from restraint, as at other times with our inferior nature for refusing submission. I think that wisdom may wear motley,' and truth, unlike man, be born laughing; and that until we go into society thus determined to seek for more than mere amusement in pleasure, we must not be surprised to find ourselves living in ThaI cast away for thee-for thee-ill fated as thou art." laba's palace of the desert--a creation of clouds. If this be true even of one sex, how much more its origin, the divine mind---to its home, the unGenius ought every where to be true to itself—to true of the other. Ah! Fame to a woman is in- dying spirit---to its power, that of being a blessdeed but a royal mourning in purple for happi-ing--to its reward, that of being remembered. If

"Radiant daughter of the sun!
Now thy living wreath is won.
Crown'd of Rome! Oh, art thou not
Happy in that glorious lot?
Happier, happier far than thou
With the laurel on thy brow,
She that makes the humblest hearth
Lovely but to one on earth."

What is poetry, and what is a poetical career? The first is to have an organisation of extreme sensibility, which the second exposes bareheaded to the rudest weather. The original impulse is irresistible-all professions are engrossing when once began; and acting with perpetual stimulus, nothing takes more complete possession of its follower than literature. But never can success repay its cost. The work appears-it lives in the light of popular applause; but truly might the writer exclaim

"It is my youth-it is my bloom-it is my glad free

ness.

heart,

NOTE. I have alluded to Miss Jewsbury (Mrs. Fletcher), and cannot resist a brief recollection of one who was equally amiable and accomplished. I never met with any woman who possessed her powers of conversation. If her language had a fault, it was its extreme perfection. It was like reading an eloquent book-full of thought and poetry. She died too soon; and what noble aspirings, what generous enthusiasm, what kindly emotions, went down to the grave with her unfulfilled destiny. There is no word that will so thoroughly describe her as "high-minded;" she was such in every sense of the word. There was no envy, no bitterness, about her; and it must be a lofty nature that delights in admiration. Greatly impressed as I was with her powers,

genius be not true to itself, if in reckless sport it
flings around the flowers and tendrils, how are
we ever to look for a fruitage time ?"
of such passages, and her letters were filled with
I need not dwell on the eloquence and beauty
them. Mrs. Fletcher went to India, full of hope
and belief---she thought she might do much good.
These anticipations were fated to disappointment.
The tomb has closed upon her warm and kindly
heart. Better it should be thus.

"Where couldst thou fix on mortal ground
Thy tender thoughts and high?
Now peace the woman's heart hath found,
And joy the poet's eye."

11

L. E. L.

tations are from Mrs. Hemans's own writings.
* It is almost needless to say, that all the poetical quo-

The astronomers of this and other countries are now commencing a vigilant and penetrating scrutiny of that region of the heavens in which Hal-tude and brilliancy. ley's comet is expected to appear, in search of the Its next visits were in the years 1531 (when it first indications of its approach; satisfied, if they appeared of a bright gold colour) and 1607. In succeed, to register the circumstances of its faint- the latter year it pursued nearly the same apparest beam, for the purpose of confirming or correct-ent path through the heavens it is expected to traing the predicted path. Its reappearance (whether dim or brilliant, whether perceived only by the few who possess good telescopes, or traced in its advance to the forehead of our evening sky" by the many) will be welcomed by all, and hailed as another distinguished triumph of astronomical science.