H. F. CHORLEY.
“Though respect for the memory of the dead, and delicacy towards the living, enjoin us to be brief in alluding to the events of her life, we may speak freely, and at length, of the history of her mind, and the circumstances of her literary career, in the course of which she deserved and acquired a European reputation as the first of our poetesses living, and still before the public. Few have written so much, or written so well, as Mrs Hemans; few have entwined the genuine fresh thoughts and impressions of their own minds so intimately, with their poetical fancies, as she did; few have undergone more arduous and reverential preparation for the service of song—for, from childhood, her thirst for knowledge was extreme, and her reading great and varied. Those who, while admitting the high-toned beauty of her poetry, accused it of monotony of style and subject, (they could not deny to it the praise of originality, seeing that it founded a school of imitators in England, and a yet larger in America,) little knew to what historical research she had applied herself—how far and wide she had sought for food with which to fill her eager mind. It is true that she used only a part of the mass of information which she had collected—(for she never wrote on calculation, but from the strong impulse of the moment; and it was her nature intimately to take home to herself, and appropriate only what was high-hearted, imaginative, and refined;)—but the writer of this notice has seen manuscript collections of extracts made in the course of these youthful studies, sufficient of themselves to justify his assertion, if her poems (like those of every genuine poet) did not contain a still better record of the progress of her mind. Her knowledge of classic literature may be distinctly traced in her ‘Sceptic,’ her ‘Modern Greece,’ and a hundred later lyrics based upon what Bulwer so happily calls ‘the Graceful Superstition.’ Her study and admiration of the works of ancient Greek and Roman art, strengthened into an abiding love of the beautiful, which breathes both in the sentiment and in the structure of every line she wrote, (for there are few of our poets more faultlessly musical in their versification;) and when, subsequently, she opened for herself the treasuries of Spanish and German legend and literature, how thoroughly she had imbued herself with their spirit may be seen in her ‘Siege of Valencia,’ in her glorious and chivalresque ‘Songs of the Cid,’ and in her ‘Lays of Many Lands,’ the idea of which was suggested by Herder’s ‘Stimmen der Völker in Liedern.’
“But though her mind was enriched by her wide acquaintance with the poetical and historical literature of other countries, it possessed a strong and decidedly marked character of its own, which coloured all her productions—a character which, though any thing but feeble or sentimental, was essentially feminine. An eloquent modern critic (Mrs Jameson) has rightly said, ‘that Mrs Hemans’ poems could not have been written by a man;’ their love is without selfishness, their passion without a stain of this world’s coarseness, their high heroism (and to illustrate this assertion we would mention ‘Clotilda,’ ‘the Lady of Provence,’ and the ‘Switzer’s Wife,’) unsullied by any grosser alloy of mean ambition. Her religion, too, is essentially womanly—fervent, clinging to belief, and ‘hoping on, hoping ever,’ in spite of the peculiar trials appointed to her sex, so exquisitely described in the ‘Evening Prayer in a Girls’ School’—
‘Silent tears to weep,
And patient smiles to wear through suffering’s hour,
And sumless riches from affection’s deep!
To pour on broken reeds—a wasted shower!
And to make idols, and to find them clay,
And to bewail that worship.’
“If such was the mind of her works, the manner in which she wrought out her conceptions was equally individual and excellent. Her imagination was rich, chaste, and glowing: those who saw only its published fruits little guessed at the extent of its variety.
“It is difficult to enumerate the titles of her principal works. Her first childish efforts were published when she was only thirteen, and we can speak of her subsequent poems, ‘Wallace,’ ‘Dartmoor,’ ‘The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy,’ and her ‘Dramatic Scenes,’ only from memory. These were probably written in the happiest period of her life, when her mind was rapidly developing itself, and its progress was aided by judicious and intelligent counsellors, among whom may be mentioned Bishop Heber. A favourable notice of one of these poems will be found in Lord Byron’s letters; and the fame of her opening talent had reached Shelley, who addressed a very singular correspondence to her. With respect to the world in general, her name began to be known by the publication of her ‘Welsh Melodies,’ her ‘Siege of Valencia,’ and the scattered lyrics which appeared in the New Monthly Magazine, then under the direction of Campbell. She had previously contributed a series of prose papers, on Foreign Literature, to Constable’s Edinburgh Magazine, which, with little exception, are the only specimens of that style of writing ever attempted by her. To the ‘Siege of Valencia’ succeeded rapidly her ‘Forest Sanctuary,’ her ‘Records of Woman,’ (the most successful of her works,) her ‘Songs of the Affections,’ (containing, perhaps, her finest poem, ‘The Spirit’s Return,’) her ‘National Lyrics and Songs for Music,’ (most of which have been set to music by her sister, and become popular,) and her ‘Scenes and Hymns of Life.’ A few words with respect to the direction of her powers in later days may be worthily extracted from a letter of hers which lies now before us. She had been urged by a friend to undertake a prose work, and a series of ‘Artistic Novels,’ something after the manner of Tieck, and Goethe’s Kunst-Romanen, as likely to be congenial to her own tastes and habits of mind, and to prove most acceptable to the public.
“‘I have now,’ she says, ‘passed through the feverish and somewhat visionary state of mind often connected with the passionate study of art in early life; deep affections and deep sorrows seem to have solemnised my whole being, and I now feel as if bound to higher and holier tasks, which, though I may occasionally lay aside, I could not long wander from without some sense of dereliction. I hope it is no self-delusion, but I cannot help sometimes feeling as if it were my true task to enlarge the sphere of sacred poetry, and extend its influence. When you receive my volume of ‘Scenes and Hymns,’ you will see what I mean by enlarging its sphere, though my plan as yet is very imperfectly developed.’
“Besides the works here enumerated, we should mention her tragedy, ‘The Vespers of Palermo,’ which, though containing many fine thoughts and magnificent bursts of poetry, was hardly fitted for the stage, and the songs which she contributed to Colonel Hodges’ ‘Peninsular Melodies;’ and we cannot but once more call the attention of our readers to her last lyric, ‘Despondency and Aspiration,’ published in Blackwood’s Magazine for May 1835. It is the song of the swan—its sweetest and its last!”[445]—Athenæum, No. 395.
“An elaborate summary of the principal features of Mrs Hemans’ character, or of the general and individual merits of her poems, can hardly be necessary, if the foregoing memorials have fulfilled the design of their editor. The woman and the poetess were in her too inseparably united to admit of their being considered apart from each other. In her private letters, as in her published works, she shows herself high-minded, affectionate, grateful—wayward in her self-neglect, delicate to fastidiousness in her tastes—in her religion fervent without intolerance—eager to acquire knowledge, as eager to impart it to others—earnestly devoted to her art, and in that art to the service of all things beautiful, and noble, and holy. She may have fallen short of some of her predecessors in vigour of mind—of some of her contemporaries in variety of fancy; but she surpassed them all in the use of language, in the employment of a rich, chaste, and glowing imagery, and in the perfect music of her versification. It will be long before the chasm left in our female literature by her death will be worthily filled: she will be long remembered—long spoken of by those who know her works—yet longer by those who knew herself,—
‘Kindly and gently, but as of one
For whom ’tis well to be fled and gone—
As of a bird from a chain unbound,
As of the wanderer whose home is found,
So let it be!’”
Memorials of Mrs Hemans, p. 354-6.
[445] It has already been shown that this was not the case.