Yet she had little taste for mere pageantry.—An unkind review to which her earliest poems gave occasion so preyed upon her mind as to confine her for several days to bed.—During the latter part of her life a gentleman called upon her and thanked her with great earnestness for the serious benefit he had derived from “the Sceptic,” which he stated to have been instrumental in rescuing him from gross infidelity.—The first noted literary character with whom she became intimately acquainted, was Bishop Heber, to whom she was introduced in her twenty-fifth year. She confided her literary plans to him, and always spoke of him with affection. It was at his instigation she first attempted dramatic composition. He was her adviser in the “Vespers of Palermo.” This play was brought forward at Covent Garden in December 1823, the principal characters being taken by Young, Charles Kemble, Yates, Mrs. Bartley, and Miss Kelly. It was not well received, but the authoress bore her disappointment cheerfully. The drama was afterwards produced with much greater success in Edinburgh. Sir Walter Scott wrote an epilogue for it, and from this circumstance arose the subsequent acquaintance between the “Great Unknown” and Mrs. H——. Of Kean, she said that “seeing him act was like reading Shakspeare by flashes of lightning.”—She possessed a fine feeling for music as well as for drawing.—Of the “Trials of Margaret Lindsay” she thus expresses a just critical opinion: “The book is certainly full of deep feeling and beautiful language, but there are many passages which, I think, would have been better omitted; and although I can bear as much fictitious woe as other people, I really began to feel it an infliction at last.”—She compliments Captain Basil Hall's “temperate style of writing.”—Speaking of the short descriptive recitative which so frequently introduces a lyrical burst of feeling in the minor pieces of our poetess, Mr. Chorley observes: “This form of composition became so especially popular in America, that hardly a poet has arisen since the influence of Mrs. Hemans' genius made itself felt on the other side of the Atlantic, who has not attempted something of a similar subject and construction.”—Among the last strangers who visited her in her illness, were a Jewish gentleman and lady, who entreated admittance to “the author of the ‘Hebrew Mother.’”—“There shall be no more snow,” in the “Tyrolese Evening Hymn,” seems to have been suggested by Schiller's lines in the “Nadowessiche Todtenklage:”
Wohl ihm er ist hingegangen
Wo kein schnee mehr ist!—
The “Lays of Many Lands,” which appeared chiefly in the New Monthly Magazine, were suggested, as she herself owned, by Herder's “Stimmen der Volker in Liedern.” She spoke of the German language as “rich and affectionate, in which I take much delight.”—She considered “The Forest Sanctuary” as the best of her works: the subject was suggested by a passage in one of the letters of Don Leucadio Doblado, and the poem was written for the most part in—a laundry. These verses are pointed out by Chorley as beautiful, which assuredly they are.
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.
He praises also with great justice the entire episode of “Queen-like Teresa—radient Inez!”—She was so much excited by the composition of “Mozart's Requiem,” that her physician forbade her to write for weeks afterwards.—She regarded Professor Norton, who undertook the publication of her works (or rather its superintendence) in this country, as one of her firmest friends. A packet with a letter from this gentleman to the poetess containing offers of service, and a self-introduction was lost upon the Ulverstone sands. They were afterwards discovered drying at an inn fire, and forwarded to their address. With Dr. Channing she frequently corresponded. An offer of a certain and liberal income was made her in the hope of tempting her to take up her residence in Boston and conduct a periodical.—Mr. Chorley draws a fine distinction between Mrs. Hemans and Miss Jewsbury. “The former,” he says, “came through Thought to Poetry, the latter through Poetry to Thought.” He cites a passage in the “Three Histories” of Miss Jewsbury, as descriptive of the personal appearance of Mrs. H. at the period of his first acquaintance with her. It is the portrait of Egeria, and will be remembered by most of our readers. It ends thus: “She was a muse, a grace, a variable child, a dependent woman—the Italy of human beings.”—Retzsch and Flaxman were Mrs. H.'s favorites among modern artists. She was especially pleased with the group in the Outlines to Hamlet—of Laertes and Hamlet struggling over the corpse of Ophelia.—In 1828 she finally established herself at Wavertree. “Her house here,” says our author, “was too small to deserve the name; the third of a cluster or row close to a dusty road, and yet too townish in its appearance and situation to be called a cottage. It was set in a small court, and within doors was gloomy and comfortless, for its two parlors (one with a tiny book-room opening from it) were hardly larger than closets; but with her harp and her books, and the flowers with which she loved to fill her little rooms, they presently assumed a habitable, almost an elegant appearance.”—Some odd examples are given of the ridiculous and hyperbolical compliments paid the poetess, e.g. “I have heard her requested to read aloud that ‘the visitor might carry away an impression of the sweetness of her tones.’” “I have been present when another eccentric guest, upon her characterizing some favorite poem as happily as was her wont, clapped her hands as at a theatre, and exclaimed, ‘O Mrs. Hemans! do say that again, that I may put it down and remember it.’”—Among Spanish authors Mrs. H. admired Herrera, and Luis Ponce de Leon. The lyrics in Gil Polo's Diana were favorites with her. Burger's Leonore (concerning which and Sir Walter Scott see an anecdote in our notice, this month, of Schloss Hainfeld) she was never tired of hearing, “for the sake of its wonderful rhythm and energy.” In the power of producing awe, however, she gave the preference to the Auncient Mariner. She liked the writings of Novalis and Tieck. Possibly she did not love Goethe so well as Schiller. She delighted in Herder's translation of the Cid Romances, and took pleasure in some of the poems of A. W. Schlegel. Grillpazzer and Oehlenschluger were favorites among the minor German tragedians. Shelley's “Ode to the West Wind” pleased her. In her copy of Corinne the following passage was underscored, and the words “C'est moi!” written in the margin. “De toutes mes facultés la plus puissante est la faculté de souffrir. Je suis née pour le bonheur. Mon caractére est confiant, mon imagination est animée; mais la peine excite en moi Je ne sais quelle impetuosité qui peut troubler ma raison, ou me donner de la mort. Je vous le repéte encore, menagez-moi; la gaité, la mobilité ne me servent qu'en apparence: mais il y a dans mon ame des abymes de tristesse dont Je ne pouvais me defendre qu'en me preservant de l'amour.”—In the summer of 1829 Mrs. H. visited Scotland, and became acquainted with Sir Walter Scott. One anecdote told by her of the novelist is highly piquant and characteristic of both. “Well—we had reached a rustic seat in the wood, and were to rest there—but I, out of pure perverseness, chose to establish myself comfortably on a grass bank. ‘Would it not be more prudent for you, Mrs. Hemans,’ said Sir Walter, ‘to take the seat?’ ‘I have no doubt that it would, Sir Walter, but, somehow or other, I always prefer the grass.’ ‘And so do I,’ replied the dear old gentleman, coming to sit there beside me, ‘and I really believe that I do it chiefly out of a wicked wilfulness, because all my good advisers say it will give me the rheumatism.’”—Speaking of Martin's picture of Nineveh Mrs. H. says: “It seems to me that something more of gloomy grandeur might have been thrown about the funeral pyre; that it should have looked more like a thing apart, almost suggesting of itself the idea of an awful sacrifice.” She agrees with Wordsworth, that Burns' “Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled” is “wretched stuff.” She justly despised all allegorical personifications. Among the books which she chiefly admired in her later days, are the Discourses of Bishop Hall, Bishop Leighton, and Jeremy Taylor; the “Natural History of Enthusiasm;” Mrs. Austin's Translations and Criticisms; Mrs. Jameson's “Characteristics of Women;” Bulwer's “Last Days of Pompeii;” Miss Edgeworth's “Helen,” and Miss Mitford's Sketches. The Scriptures were her daily study.—Wordsworth was then her favorite poet. Of Miss Kemble's “Francis” she thus speaks. “Have you not been disappointed in Miss Kemble's Tragedy? To me there seems a coarseness of idea and expression in many parts, which from a woman is absolutely startling. I can scarcely think it has sustaining power to bear itself up at its present height of popularity.”
We take from Volume I, the following passage in regard to Schiller's “Don Carlos,” a comparison of which drama with the “Filippo” of Alfieri, will be found in this number of the Messenger. The words we copy are those of Mrs. Hemans.
The interview between Philip the Second and Posa, is certainly very powerful, but to me its interest is always destroyed by a sense of utter impossibility which haunts me throughout. Not even Schiller's mighty spells can, I think, win the most “unquestioning spirit” to suppose that such a voice of truth and freedom could have been lifted up, and endured, in the presence of the cold, stern, Philip the Second—that he would, even for a moment, have listened to the language thus fearlessly bursting from a noble heart. Three of the most impressive scenes towards the close of the play, might, I think, be linked together, leaving out the intervening ones, with much effect—the one in which Carlos, standing by the body of his friend, forces his father to the contemplation of the dead; the one in which the king comes forward, with his fearful dreamy remorse, alone amidst his court,
Gieb diesen Todten mir heraus, &c.
and the subsequent interview between Philip and the Grand Inquisitor, in which the whole spirit of those fanatic days seems embodied.
In perusing these volumes the reader will not fail to be struck with the evidence they contain of a more than ordinary joyousness of temperament in Mrs. Hemans. He will be astonished also in finding himself able to say that he has at length seen a book, dealing much in strictly personal memoirs, wherein no shadow of vanity or affectation could be discerned in either the Memorialist or his subject. In concluding this notice we must not forget to impress upon our friends that we have been speaking altogether of the work issued by Saunders and Otley, publishers of the highest respectability, who have come among us as strangers, and who, as such, have an undeniable claim upon our courtesy. Their edition is embellished with two fine engravings, one of the poetess's favorite residence in Wales, the other of the poetess herself. We shall beg our friends also to remember that this edition, and this exclusively, is printed for the benefit of the children of Mrs. Hemans. To Southerners, at least, we feel that nothing farther need be said.