The like sweet words; and so the twain were one.
It is not often that a liturgy has been translated into metre with less change of its form and substance.
The imbedding of a raw Northern native in this lap of repose and in this transfiguring matrimonial alliance is the grand problem of the poem. What will Lars do, now that he is a man of peace and a Child of Light, with the burden of conscience? In America he is a saint and an apostle. In Europe he is known but as a proscribed murderer. The later scenes, where Lars, accompanied by his true and tender wife, meets his old love, his neighbors, and his rival restored to life, are of a more ambitious character than any that have preceded. The holy principles imbibed on the shores of Delaware are made to triumph, and Lars, dropping the sharp blade from his hand in the thronged arena whither he is forced once more, stands first as a laughing-stock, and then as an apostle, among his old neighbors. It is a position full of moral force, and we find ourselves—suddenly recovering in a degree from the calm view we had taken of the poem as a work of art—asking how we should be so sensible of the grandeur of the situation if the poet by his skill had not brought out its peculiarity.
A Lady of the Last Century. By Dr. Doran. London: Bentley.
This is the life of a lady remarkable in herself and in her surroundings. Of every day in her life she could say, in the words of Horace, "I have lived." "She never had a fool for an acquaintance," says her biographer, "nor an idle hour in the sense of idleness." Her father, Mr. Robinson, who belonged to an eminent family which had been settled about a century at Rokeby, subsequently the seat of Scott's friend Morritt, in Yorkshire, married when a boy of eighteen a rich young lady of very superior quality in every respect, and by her had a large family. His wife's mother married secondly Middleton, the biographer of Cicero, who took a great fancy to her grand-daughter, Elizabeth Robinson, and paid much attention to her intellectual development. In fact, from the cradle to the grave she was thrown amongst the erudite and cultivated in a very uncultivated age. During her girlhood Elizabeth Robinson had every advantage and pleasure which wealthy and devoted parents could give her, and when twenty-two she married Mr. Edward Montagu, a grandson of the first earl of Sandwich, and first cousin of the celebrated Lady Mary's husband.
Mrs. Montagu was far more fortunate in her choice than the brilliant daughter of the duke of Kingston. Her husband was in every way estimable and amiable, and her letters afford ample evidence how thoroughly she appreciated his character. They had only one child, who died in infancy, and when Mr. Montagu died he bequeathed to his widow the whole of his property, which she in turn left to her nephew, who took the name of Montagu and became Lord Rokeby.
A few years after their marriage Mr. Montagu, already affluent, received a great accession of fortune in the shape of colliery property in the north of England. This enabled his wife to entertain very liberally, and, in conjunction with her talents and high connections, gave her a commanding place in society. They took a large house in Hill street, then the extremity of the West End, which became the resort of that class who, being anxious to put an end to eternal card-playing and introduce rather more of the intellectual into social intercourse, received from a chance circumstance the name of "blue-stockings." There were to be seen Burke, Fox, Hannah More, Johnson, Lord Lyttelton, etc. Subsequently, Mrs. Montagu fitted up a room whose walls were hung with feathers, and thence came Cowper's well-known lines and Macaulay's passage: "There were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised and exchanged repartees under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montagu." After her husband's death a great deal of business devolved on her in the management of his estates, and here she showed those qualities which are singularly conspicuous in Englishwomen of rank. She went down to Northumberland, inspected her farms, visited her colliers, and made acquaintance with her tenants. She seems particularly to have appreciated the people in Yorkshire, and her descriptions of them recall in no slight degree some of those of the sisters Bronté. Her principal seat was at Sandleford in Berkshire, where she spent large sums in improvements under the celebrated landscape-gardener "Capability Brown."
She survived her husband twenty-five years, and about twenty years before her death removed to a fine house which she had erected in a then new part of London, Portman Square, and which is still known as Montagu House. But the entertainments there given were, though more splendid, less notable than in the humbler mansion in Hill street, for Mrs. Montagu herself was getting into years, and many of those who had been the brightest ornaments of the Hill street parties were passing away. Mrs. Montagu died in 1800, at the age of seventy. She was of an affectionate disposition, but had somewhat less sensibility perhaps than most men would like to see in a woman; yet, on the whole, she played her part in life extremely well, being wise, generous and true.
The book is particularly interesting for the rich aroma of association around it, and would have been far more so had Dr. Doran taken the trouble to give a few notes, of which there is not a single one in the whole book—a serious drawback, more especially to American readers.