“The Dream, and other Poems.” By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. Carey and Hart, Philadelphia: 1841.
Hemans, Baillie, Landon, and loveliest of all, Norton!—what a glorious constellation for one language. France with her gaiety: Italy with her splendid genius: even Greece with her passionate enthusiasm, cannot rival such a galaxy. And this glory too, belongs wholly to the present century, for though the harp of England has often been struck by female hands, it has heretofore only given forth a rare and fitful cadence, instead of the rich, deep, prolonged harmony which now rolls from its chords.
Mrs. Norton is unquestionably,—since the death of Mrs. Hemans, the queen of English song. In many respects she resembles that gifted poetess: in some she is strikingly dissimilar. The same pathos, the same sweetness, the same fancy characterize both; but in all that distinguishes the practised author, rather than the poetess, Mrs. Hemans has the advantage of her successor. Thus, the one is sometimes faulty in the rhythm: the other never. Mrs. Norton will now and then be betrayed into a carelessness of diction; Mrs. Hemans was rarely, if ever, guilty of such solecisms. Such expressions, for instance, as the “harboring” land, the “guiding” hand, the “pausing” heart, the “haunting” shade, and others of like character, taken at random from the volume before us, though not strictly improper, yet, as they are plainly expletive, and weaken, instead of strengthening a sentence, are never to be found in the poems of Mrs. Hemans, or of any one “learned in the craft.”
But, if Mrs. Norton is less correct than Mrs. Hemans, she is, on the other hand, more nervous, more passionate, and at times more lofty. No one can read “The Dream” without being struck by the truth of the remark, that Mrs. Norton is the Byron of our female poets. There are passages in some of her poems of greater power than any passages of like length in Mrs. Hemans’ writings, though at the same time, there are a far greater number of inferior lines in the poetry of Mrs. Norton, than in that of her gifted sister. In short, the one is the more equal, the other is the more daring. One is the more skilful writer: the other shows glimpses of a bolder genius. There is less prettiness, and not so much sameness in Mrs. Norton as in Mrs. Hemans. The former is not yet, perhaps, the equal of the latter, but she possesses the power to be so, if her rich fancy and deep feeling, now scarcely known to herself, should ever be brought so completely under her control as were the talents of Mrs. Hemans.
If Mrs. Norton had written nothing before, this volume would have established her claim to be the first of living poetesses; but who that is familiar with the world of song can forget the many gems—rich, and beautiful, and rare—with which she has spangled beforetime her starry crown? The world has taken more care of her glory than she has herself, and the random pieces she has poured forth so divinely at intervals, and which hitherto she has made no effort to preserve, have found their way into the hearts of all who can be touched by the mournful or the beautiful, until her name is cherished alike in the humble cottage and the princely hall. And now she has come forth in more stately guise, not as a new author among strangers, but as one long tried and known, one endeared to us by old association, one whose melancholy music is, as it were, a part of our very being.
“The Dream” is the longest poem in the volume before us, but, as it makes no pretension to be considered a story, and has really no plot, we shall not judge it by the ordinary rule of criticism. We shall consider it only as a string of pearls, loosely joined together by the simplest contrivance, the idea of a dream, narrated by a daughter to her mother,—and, judging it in this way, we give it unqualified praise. That its merit is unequal, is, in our eyes, no objection to its beauty,—for have not all poets skimmed the ground as well as soared to heaven? Yes! “The Dream” is unequal, but so is Lallah Rookh, so is Marmion, so are all the tales of Byron, and so—to ascend a step higher—is Comus, or Hamlet, or even the Iliad.
But Mrs. Norton, like her gifted sister, possesses one quality which distinguishes her above all other writers, in this or in any tongue—we mean in giving utterance to, what is emphatically, the poetry of woman. In this they resemble no cotemporary, unless it is Miss Landon. Women have written poetry before, but if it had been shewn to a stranger, he could not have told from which sex it sprung. It is not so with the poetry of these two gifted females. Every line betrays the woman—each verse breathes the tender, the melting, the peculiar eloquence of the sex.
Scarcely a page, moreover, occurs in the writings of either, which does not bear testimony to woman’s suffering and worth. Yes! while it is the fashion to sneer at the purity of woman’s heart, and while a pack of literary debauchees are libelling our mothers and our sisters unopposed, from the ranks of that insulted sex have risen up defenders of its innocence, to shame the heartless slanderers to silence. Hear in what eloquent numbers Mrs. Norton vindicates her sex:
“Warriors and statesmen have their meed of praise,
And what they do or suffer men record;