The Poems of Felicia Hemans
much, or written so well, as Mrs Hemans; few have entwined the genuine
fresh thoughts and impressions of their own minds so intimately,
with their poetical fancies, as she did; few have undergone more
arduous and reverential preparation for the service of song--for, from
childhood, her thirst for knowledge was extreme, and her reading great
and varied. Those who, while admitting the high-toned beauty of her
poetry, accused it of monotony of style and subject, (they could not
deny to it the praise of originality, seeing that it founded a school
of imitators in England, and a yet larger in America,) little knew to
what historical research she had applied herself--how far and wide
she had sought for food with which to fill her eager mind. It is true
that she used only a part of the mass of information which she had
collected--(for she never wrote on calculation, but from the strong
impulse of the moment; and it was her nature intimately to take home
to herself, and appropriate only what was high-hearted, imaginative,
and refined;)--but the writer of this notice has seen manuscript
collections of extracts made in the course of these youthful studies,
sufficient of themselves to justify his assertion, if her poems (like
those of every genuine poet) did not contain a still better record of
the progress of her mind. Her knowledge of classic literature may be
distinctly traced in her ‘Sceptic,’ her ‘Modern Greece,’ and a hundred
later lyrics based upon what Bulwer so happily calls ‘the Graceful
Superstition.’ Her study and admiration of the works of ancient Greek
and Roman art, strengthened into an abiding love of the beautiful,
which breathes both in the sentiment and in the structure of every line
she wrote, (for there are few of our poets more faultlessly musical in
their versification;) and when, subsequently, she opened for herself
the treasuries of Spanish and German legend and literature, how
thoroughly she had imbued herself with their spirit may be seen in her
‘Siege of Valencia,’ in her glorious and chivalresque ‘Songs of the
Cid,’ and in her ‘Lays of Many Lands,’ the idea of which was suggested
by Herder’s ‘Stimmen der Völker in Liedern.’
“But though her mind was enriched by her wide acquaintance with the
poetical and historical literature of other countries, it possessed a
strong and decidedly marked character of its own, which coloured all
her productions--a character which, though any thing but feeble or
sentimental, was essentially feminine. An eloquent modern critic (Mrs
Jameson) has rightly said, ‘that Mrs Hemans’ poems could not have been
written by a man;’ their love is without selfishness, their passion
without a stain of this world’s coarseness, their high heroism (and to
illustrate this assertion we would mention ‘Clotilda,’ ‘the Lady of
Provence,’ and the ‘Switzer’s Wife,’) unsullied by any grosser alloy
of mean ambition. Her religion, too, is essentially womanly--fervent,
clinging to belief, and ‘hoping on, hoping ever,’ in spite of the
peculiar trials appointed to her sex, so exquisitely described in the
‘Evening Prayer in a Girls’ School’--
‘Silent tears to weep,
And patient smiles to wear through suffering’s hour,
And sumless riches from affection’s deep!
To pour on broken reeds--a wasted shower!
And to make idols, and to find them clay,
And to bewail that worship.’
“If such was the _mind_ of her works, the manner in which she wrought
out her conceptions was equally individual and excellent. Her
imagination was rich, chaste, and glowing: those who saw only its
published fruits little guessed at the extent of its variety.
“It is difficult to enumerate the titles of her principal works. Her
first childish efforts were published when she was only thirteen, and
we can speak of her subsequent poems, ‘Wallace,’ ‘Dartmoor,’ ‘The
Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy,’ and her ‘Dramatic Scenes,’
only from memory. These were probably written in the happiest period
of her life, when her mind was rapidly developing itself, and its
progress was aided by judicious and intelligent counsellors, among
whom may be mentioned Bishop Heber. A favourable notice of one of
these poems will be found in Lord Byron’s letters; and the fame of
her opening talent had reached Shelley, who addressed a very singular
correspondence to her. With respect to the world in general, her name
began to be known by the publication of her ‘Welsh Melodies,’ her
‘Siege of Valencia,’ and the scattered lyrics which appeared in the
_New Monthly Magazine_, then under the direction of Campbell. She had
previously contributed a series of prose papers, on Foreign Literature,
to _Constable’s Edinburgh Magazine_, which, with little exception, are
the only specimens of that style of writing ever attempted by her. To
the ‘Siege of Valencia’ succeeded rapidly her ‘Forest Sanctuary,’ her
‘Records of Woman,’ (the most successful of her works,) her ‘Songs of
the Affections,’ (containing, perhaps, her finest poem, ‘The Spirit’s
Return,’) her ‘National Lyrics and Songs for Music,’ (most of which
have been set to music by her sister, and become popular,) and her
‘Scenes and Hymns of Life.’ A few words with respect to the direction
of her powers in later days may be worthily extracted from a letter
of hers which lies now before us. She had been urged by a friend to
undertake a prose work, and a series of ‘Artistic Novels,’ something
after the manner of Tieck, and Goethe’s Kunst-Romanen, as likely to
be congenial to her own tastes and habits of mind, and to prove most
acceptable to the public.
“‘I have now,’ she says, ‘passed through the feverish and somewhat
_visionary_ state of mind often connected with the passionate study
of art in early life; deep affections and deep sorrows seem to have
solemnised my whole being, and I now feel as if bound to higher and
holier tasks, which, though I may occasionally lay aside, I could
not long wander from without some sense of dereliction. I hope it is
no self-delusion, but I cannot help sometimes feeling as if it were
my true task to enlarge the sphere of sacred poetry, and extend its
influence. When you receive my volume of ‘Scenes and Hymns,’ you will
see what I mean by enlarging its sphere, though my plan as yet is very
imperfectly developed.’
“Besides the works here enumerated, we should mention her tragedy, ‘The
Vespers of Palermo,’ which, though containing many fine thoughts and
magnificent bursts of poetry, was hardly fitted for the stage, and the
songs which she contributed to Colonel Hodges’ ‘Peninsular Melodies;’
and we cannot but once more call the attention of our readers to her
last lyric, ‘Despondency and Aspiration,’ published in _Blackwood’s
Magazine_ for May 1835. It is the song of the swan--its sweetest and
its last!”[445]--_Athenæum_, No. 395.
* * * * *
“An elaborate summary of the principal features of Mrs Hemans’
character, or of the general and individual merits of her poems, can
hardly be necessary, if the foregoing memorials have fulfilled the
design of their editor. The woman and the poetess were in her too
inseparably united to admit of their being considered apart from
each other. In her private letters, as in her published works, she
shows herself high-minded, affectionate, grateful--wayward in her
self-neglect, delicate to fastidiousness in her tastes--in her religion
fervent without intolerance--eager to acquire knowledge, as eager to
impart it to others--earnestly devoted to her art, and in that art to
the service of all things beautiful, and noble, and holy. She may have
fallen short of some of her predecessors in vigour of mind--of some of
her contemporaries in variety of fancy; but she surpassed them all in
the use of language, in the employment of a rich, chaste, and glowing
imagery, and in the perfect music of her versification. It will be long
before the chasm left in our female literature by her death will be
worthily filled: she will be long remembered--long spoken of by those
who know her works--yet longer by those who knew herself,--
‘Kindly and gently, but as of one
For whom ’tis well to be fled and gone--
As of a bird from a chain unbound,
As of the wanderer whose home is found,
So let it be!’”
_Memorials of Mrs Hemans_, p. 354-6.
[445] It has already been shown that this was not the case.
ECLECTIC REVIEW.
“Mrs Hemans, if not in all respects the most gifted of the female
writers who form so bright a constellation in the sphere of our
contemporary literature, surpassed them all in those attributes of
genius which characterise the lyric poets. Without possessing the
dramatic conception of Joanna Baillie or Mary Mitford--the masculine
vigour and depth of thought displayed by the late Mrs Fletcher, (better
known as Miss Jewsbury,) or the fertile imagination of others of our
delightful female prose writers--she outshone them all in her peculiar
orbit; and though she wrote too much, and often too carelessly,
to sustain, in all her compositions, the high standard of poetic
excellence to which she often attained, her best productions, in her
own rich and peculiar vein, rival those of the mightiest masters of
English song; while their exquisitely feminine character justify the
remark, that ‘the poetry of Mrs Hemans could have been written only by
a woman.’”--_E. R._, 1836.
PROFESSOR NORTON.
“We have now received the last of the imperishable gifts of Mrs Hemans’
genius. The period of her spirit’s trials and sufferings, and its
glorious course on earth, has been completed. She has left an unclouded
fame; and we may say, in her own words:--
‘No tears for thee!--though light be from us gone
With thy soul’s radiance:...
No tears for thee!
They that have loved an exile must not mourn
To see him parting for his native bourne
O’er the dark sea.’
“As this, therefore, will be the last time that we shall review any
production of Mrs Hemans, we may be permitted to recall, with a
melancholy pleasure, the admiration and delight with which we have
followed the progress of her genius. The feelings with which her works
are now generally regarded have been expressed in no publication
earlier, more frequently, or more warmly, than in our own. Without
repeating what we have already said, we shall now endeavour to point
out some of their features, considered in relation to that moral
culture in which alone such writings can exist.
“Mrs Hemans may be considered as the representative of a new school
of poetry, or, to speak more precisely, her poetry discovers
characteristics of the highest kind, which belong almost exclusively
to that of later times, and have been the result of the gradual
advancement, and especially the moral progress, of mankind. It is only
when man, under the influence of true religion, feels himself connected
with whatever is infinite, that his affections and powers are fully
developed. The poetry of an immortal being must be of a different
character from that of an earthly being. But, in recurring to the
classic poets of antiquity, we find that, in their conceptions, the
element of religious faith was wanting. Their mythology was to them
no object of sober belief; and, had it been so, was adapted not to
produce but to annihilate devotion. They had no thought of regarding
the universe as created, animated, and ruled by God’s all-powerful and
omniscient goodness. To them it was a world of matter,--
‘The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths,’