Let ev’ry heart lift up a fervent pray’r,
That old Elijah’s mantle may be there,
That God from age to age may carry on
The amazing work which Harris hath begun.
In her dedication she disclaims any pretension to be a ‘Seward, Steele, or Moore’. The list is a sign of the times. Well-known poetesses now existed in large numbers, and as the century drew to a close both their fame and the claims to eminence of the best of them steadily increased. There was Helen Maria Williams, whose Ode on the Peace, competently written but now unreadable, was highly praised by Dr. Johnson, and one of whose sonnets was committed to heart by Wordsworth. There was Elizabeth Carter, translator of Epictetus, and a blue-stocking whose learning really commanded respect. There was Charlotte Smith, the sonneteer, in whose writing we can still find the vigour and grace that made her celebrated in her own day. Anna Seward was equally well known. She did not deserve it. Occasionally there is a faint trace of reality in her work, as in the Sonnet on a December morning, 1782:
I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light,
Winter’s pale dawn;—and as warm fires illume
And cheerful tapers shine around the room,
Thro’ misty windows bend my musing sight,
Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansion white