‘And if she mingled with the festive train,
It was but as some melancholy star
Beholds the dance of shepherds on the plain,
In its bright stillness present, though afar.’
“But the entire episode of ‘Queen-like Teresa—radiant Inez,’ is wrought up with a nerve and an impulse which men of renown have failed to reach. The death of the latter, if, perhaps, it be a little too romantic for the stern realities of the scene, is so beautifully told, that it cannot be read without strong feeling, nor carelessly remembered. And most beautiful, too, are the sudden outbursts of thankfulness—of the quick happy consciousness of liberty with which the narrator of this ghastly sacrifice interrupts the tale, to reassure himself, ‘Sport on, my happy child! for thou art free.’ The character of the convert’s wife, Leonor, devotedly clinging to his fortunes, without a reproach or a murmur, while her heart trembles before him as though she were in the presence of a lost spirit, is one of those in which Mrs Hemans’ individual mode of thought and manner of expression are most happily impersonated. As a whole, she was hardly wrong in her own estimate of this poem; and, on recently turning to it, I have been surprised to find how well it bears the tests and trials with which it is only either fit or rational to examine works of the highest order of mind.”—Chorley’s Memorials of Mrs Hemans, p. 126-7.
“If taste and elegance be titles to enduring fame, we might venture securely to promise that rich boon to the author before us, who adds to those great merits a tenderness and loftiness of feeling, and an ethereal purity of sentiment, which could only emanate from the soul of a woman. She must beware of becoming too voluminous, and must not venture again on any thing so long as ‘The Forest Sanctuary.’ But if the next generation inherits our taste for short poems, we are persuaded it will not readily allow her to be forgotten. For we do not hesitate to say that she is, beyond all comparison, the most touching and accomplished writer of occasional verses that our literature has yet to boast of.”—Lord Jeffrey, in Edinburgh Review, October 1829.]
[311] “Letters from Spain by Don Leucadio Doblado.”
LAYS OF MANY LANDS.
[The following pieces may so far be considered a series, as each is intended to be commemorative of some national recollection, popular custom, or tradition. The idea was suggested by Harder’s “Stimmen der Völker in Liedern;” the execution is, however, different, as the poems in his collection are chiefly translations.]