How cordially could his wife sympathize with him in this fervent attachment; she, who was, throughout life, so sensitively alive to the claims of relationship, even in the remotest degrees, and whose whole being was devoted with tenderest love to her parents while living, and to their memory when dead! She appears to have been permitted the gratification of her wish to see her husband’s mother, and “I believe (she says) that scarcely any one who knew her would have thought this description of her an exaggerated one.”
CHAPTER VI.
“THE FATHER AND DAUGHTER;” CRITIQUE IN THE EDINBURGH; THREE LETTERS TO MRS. TAYLOR; VOLUME OF “POEMS;” “GO, YOUTH BELOVED;” LETTER FROM SIR J. MACKINTOSH; S. SMITH’S LECTURE.
In the year 1801, Mrs. Opie gave to the world the “Father and Daughter;” her first acknowledged publication. She had, before her marriage, published an anonymous novel, entitled “the Dangers of Coquetry,” which does not appear to have attracted any attention. It will presently be seen that she refers to it in a letter to Mrs. Taylor, and it is included in the list of her works given in Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica, although without date, and placed in order after her earlier publications. The “Father and Daughter,” in the first edition, was accompanied by a poem called “The Maid of Corinth,” and some smaller pieces. It is unnecessary to do more than remind the reader of the warmth of approval with which this tale was received by the public.[[7]] In the preface to it Mrs. Opie modestly confesses her diffidence in appearing as an avowed author at the bar of public opinion, and disclaiming for her little book the ambitious title of a novel, says, “Its highest pretensions are to be a simple moral tale.”
In the first volume of “The Edinburgh,” there is a review of her poems,[[8]] in which the writer thus criticises the “Father and Daughter.”
* * * “Mrs. Opie’s mind is evidently more adapted to seize situation than to combine incidents. It can represent, with powerful expression, the solitary portrait, in every attitude of gentler grief; but it cannot bring together a connected assemblage of figures, and represent each in its most striking situation, so as to give, as it were, to the glance of a moment, the feelings and events of many years. When a series of reflections is to be brought by her to our view, they must all be of that immediate relation which allows them to be introduced at any part of the poem; or we shall probably see before us a multitude, rather than a group. * * * * She has, indeed, written a novel; and it is one which excites a very high interest: but the merit of that novel does not consist in its action, nor in any varied exhibition of character. Agnes, in all the sad changes of fortune, is still the same; and the action, if we except a very few situations of the highest excitement, is the common history of every seduction in romance. Indeed, we are almost tempted to believe that the scene in the wood occurred first to the casual conception of the author; and that, in the design of fully displaying it, all the other events of the novel were afterwards imagined.”
The three following letters to Mrs. Taylor admit us behind the scenes, and allow us to see the palpitations of her heart.
Sunday Evening, 1801.
My dear Friend,
The only paper I can find consists of two half sheets, comme vous voyez. But no matter. I will not, for appearance’ sake, baulk my inclination to write to you.