HE daughter of a small farmer in Suffolk, of the name of Simpson. Having lost her father in her infancy, she was left under the care of her mother, who continued to manage the farm; and in the pleasant seclusion of this cottage home, Miss Simpson was presented with abundant opportunities of gratifying her literary propensities. So sensibly had her imagination been wrought upon by the tales of fictitious grief and happiness she had met with in the course of her desultory reading, that she formed the romantic resolution of visiting the metropolis, the scene of many of the stories which had so powerfully excited her sympathies. This intention did not, as may be supposed, meet with the approbation of her friends; but so fixed was her determination to accomplish, à tout prix, the object she had in view, that she seized an opportunity of eloping from her home entirely without the knowledge of her family. Early one morning in February 1772, she left Staningfield for London, and with a few necessary articles of apparel packed in a band-box, walked, or rather ran, a distance of two miles to the place from which the coach set out for the metropolis.
This step, in a girl of sixteen years of age, did not augur very favourably of her future conduct or respectability; but the subsequent tenor of her life affords additional proof that very admirable results will often arise out of indifferent and even reprehensible beginnings. On her arrival at London, she sought a distant relation who lived in the Strand; but on reaching the house, was, to her great mortification, informed that she had retired from business, and was settled in North Wales. It was near ten o'clock at night, and her distress at this disappointment moved the compassion of the people of whom she had made her inquiries, who kindly accommodated her with a lodging. This civility, however, awakened her suspicions. She had read in "Clarissa Harlowe," of various modes of seduction practised in London, and feared that similar intentions were being meditated against her. A short time after her arrival, therefore, observing that she had awakened their curiosity, our young heroine seized her band-box, and, without uttering a single word, rushed out of the house, and left them to their conjectures that she was either a maniac or an impostor.
Her necessities drove her to the stage, where she met with considerable success, and performed principal characters when she was only eighteen years of age. After a residence of four years in Edinburgh with her husband, Mr Inchbald, also an actor of some celebrity, she returned to London, where she acted for several years at Covent Garden. Soon after she became an authoress. Her first piece, the comedy entitled "I'll Tell you What," was at first rejected by Colman of Haymarket, but finally approved and brought out with considerable success in 1785. In 1789 she retired from the stage, and devoted herself from that time entirely to literature. She wrote a number of popular dramatic pieces, and edited a new edition of "The British Theatre," and other dramatic collections; but it is to her two novels, "Nature and Art," and "The Simple Story," that she chiefly owes her reputation. She died at Kensington in 1821.
The mind of this authoress had an original cast, and her literary style was peculiar, terse, pointed, and impressive. By exemplary industry and prudence, she had raised herself into a state of comfortable independence; but she had a liberal heart, and deprived herself of many enjoyments in order to provide for relations who stood in need of her assistance. She was animated, cheerful, and intelligent in conversation, and her remarks were not taken on trust, but were the effects of acute penetration. She was very handsome in youth, and retained much of her beauty and elegance till her death.
ELIZABETH HAMILTON.
[BORN 1758. DIED 1816.]
PROFESSOR CRAIK.
ISS, or as she latterly chose to style herself, Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton, is one of the female writers of what may now be called the last age, whose eruption into literature was about as spontaneous and irregular as well as could be; for there was nothing either in the education she received, or in the circumstances of her position, to give her any peculiar impulse towards such a career; yet she may be said to have registered her name there among the classics of our language. If everything else she produced be forgotten, as may almost be said to be already the case, her "Cottagers of Glenburnie" at least will live, and continue to be read, so long as the Scottish dialect remains intelligible. It is the only work written in that dialect, between the era of the poetry of Burns and that of the prose of Scott, which is now remembered. Of Scottish prose writing, there is no earlier subsisting example, until we go back to the sixteenth century. Here it claims the honour of having been the only modern predecessor of the Waverley Novels, if not that of having been, in some degree, their model. In so far as its interest and humour lie in the use of the popular dialect, it is probably to be accounted the offspring of Miss Edgeworth's "Castle Rackrent," which is the earliest work still surviving, in which the comedy and expressiveness to be found in the peculiarities of the Irish provincial speech were highly taken advantage of.