Acutely sensitive to the beautiful, and with a rare capacity for enthusiasms, Ellen Clerke was first of all a poet. But she was much besides. She was an accomplished linguist; and the years she spent in Italy were devoted to such study of Italian literature as enabled her later to do excellent original work in connection with it. An admirable article by her in the Dublin Review for October 1879, on “The Age of Dante in the Florentine Chronicles,” well deserves remembrance, so full is it of the illumination of wide reading and of careful thinking. Alas! only too many articles by her have passed into magazine oblivion. Some of these were written in foreign tongues—a sure proof of mastery of them. For instance, in 1869 she published a pamphlet in German with the title Das Judenthum in der Musik; while, besides many articles and reviews in Italian in the Florentine periodicals, she published in one of these a serial story in Italian, called Sotto le Sette Stelle. She had also a knowledge of Arabic by no means inconsiderable.
Her interest in geographical science was not generally known; but she was a valued member of the Manchester Geographical Society, and contributed to its Journal.
As regards Astronomy, she has left useful evidence of her warm interest in the subject in two excellent popular monographs, and in various articles.
A list of Ellen Clerke’s works is given at the end of this sketch, but special mention must be made of her work as a journalist. Her friends might regret—as I did for one—that so much of her time was thus spent; but, after all, journalism is what the journalist makes it; and it cannot be denied that it is a great and increasing power in our midst.
Assuredly Ellen Clerke always used her opportunities as a journalist for noble ends. For the last twenty years of her life she wrote a weekly leader for the Tablet,—usually on subjects connected with the Church abroad; and on several occasions during the temporary absence of the Editor she filled his place at his request.
Many of her literary articles contributed to various periodicals were critical, and that she was a generous and encouraging as well as a capable critic the following facts pleasingly illustrate.
In the Westminster Review for October 1878 she had an article on “The later Novels of Berthold Auerbach.” It met the eye of the novelist, and he directed to be sent to her a copy of his Landolin von Reutershöfen, inscribed: “To the Author of the article in the Westminster Review, October 1878, with kind regards of Berthold Auerbach. Berlin, Nov. 14, 1878.”
It is singular that the poems of Ellen Clerke, published in 1881, should not have attracted more attention. The volume is now, I believe, almost, if not entirely, out of print; and partly on this account, partly because of its subject and of its beauty, I give here one of the poems.
NIGHT’S SOLILOQUY
Who calls me dark? for do I not display