Bursledon Lodge, April 1, 1816.
I have just bought Edgeworth’s Readings on Poetry. Professing to explain the popular poetry in daily use, the author devotes thirty-six pages to Parnell’s Pandora[56]—a poem little read, though admirably written. Any person who has frequented society could have told him that half the lovers of poetry know not that this piece exists. In another point of view it was an injudicious choice. It is a bitter satire upon women, full of finesse and talent, but the spirit of it is wholly unintelligible to the young. A boy would not understand it, and on a girl the vulgar exclamation, ‘What a beautiful figure would Pandora make at a masquerade,’ will rather produce the effect of causing her to long for the garland, the veil, and the crown, and perhaps for the masquerade, which had better have been left out, than inspire her with any disgust of the character. I am surprised how to reconcile the choice of this poem, and the remarks on it, with the practical good sense of Edgeworth Town. There is also a bitterness of sarcasm on the females of the present day expressed in some of these remarks (see p. 85), quite unworthy of that mint. I do believe the girls of the present day have not lost the power of blushing; and though I have no grown-up daughters, I enjoy the friendship of some who might be my daughters; in whom the greatest delicacy and modesty are united with perfect ease of manner and habitual intercourse with the great world. Pray do not communicate these remarks in any shape to Edgeworth Town. Your peculiarly gentle and even diffident feelings do not permit you to know how much unsought-for criticism offends.
TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.,
FRANKFORT.
Bursledon Lodge, April, 1816.
I received about the same time your delightful volume and magnificent present. I am absolutely Queen of Pekin and Canton. You have obliged me very much by this affectionate proof of your recollection and of your desire to please. Besides, these beautiful specimens of art will often, often furnish me with an occasion of conversing about my son; and as love is the same in all ages, I shall be able to say, ‘’Tis a present from him,’ with as much pride as Mad. de Sévigné felt when she was dressed in her brocade petticoat, and said, ‘C’est un présent de ma fille.’ I hope the light of your own eyes may soon be turned on your vases and jars, which are placed in great order in the drawing-room, at least as many as the drawing-room can possibly contain. Mr. T., who was as anxious de faire valoir your gift, as if I had not admired it sufficiently myself, assisted me in all the nervous task of unpacking—that is, he assisted me as the coachman in La Fontaine assisted the fly on the wheel. Enfin, voilà nos gens dans la plaine; and very little damage had occurred, none from want of care on your side in the packing. Mr. T. did the honours, and was affronted if there was any light and shade in my admiration, if I did not think every cup, saucer, jar, vase, and grinning magot, equally beautiful.
I know nothing of the Byron separation, but from report, reflected, refracted, and far remote from the fountain-head. We know how he was spoiled by flattery, or rather by just praise, and self-indulgence; and we know she was, unluckily, young, lovely, of great mental endowments and acquirements, an heiress, highly allied, an only child, educated by doting parents, and had as yet received no lessons from the great instructors, time and sorrow. Strike out any of these circumstances, and she might have been more suited to yield to the caprices of temper, and the irritability of genius. I suspect they were a pair of spoiled children, and that each might have been happier with a thousand others.
My Mother often contemplated an English translation of a selection of Mad. de Sévigné’s Letters, her favourite book; I do not, however, find among her papers any letters translated, but only the following.