(_To the Editor._)
I have just been perusing in No. 16, of Chambers's _Edinburgh Journal_,
a short and incorrect sketch of that highly-gifted and moral poetess,
Mrs. Hemans, "who," the writer says, "first came into public notice
about twelve or fourteen years ago;" whereas, her literary career
commenced as far back as the year 1809, in an elegantly printed quarto
of poems, which were highly spoken of by the present T. Roscoe, Esq. and
were dedicated by permission to his late Majesty, when Prince Regent.
Permit me to say that this accomplished daughter of the Muse is a native
of Denbighshire, North Wales, and was born at the family mansion named
"Grwych," about one and a half mile distant from Abergele; and at the
period of her first appearance as an authoress, she had not, I think,
reached her thirteenth year. I had the pleasure of then being her
neighbour, and our Appenine mansion, the Signal Station, at Cave Hill,
has been more than once enlivened by Lady, then Miss Felicia Dorothea
Browne's society, accompanied by her excellent mother. She has since
married ---- Hemans, Esq., then an Adjutant in the army. A great number
of her pieces have appeared in the _Monthly Magazine_, as well as the
_New Monthly_, and although a pleasing pensiveness and sombre cast of
mind seem to pervade her beautifully mental pictures, she was, I may
say, noted in her youth for the buoyancy and sprightliness of her
conversation and manner, which made her the delight and charm of every
society with which she mixed. She likewise (I think in the same year)
published an animated poem upon the valour of Spain and her patriotic
ally, England. Instead of Mrs. H. residing, as the writer of the above
memoir observes, chiefly in London, she has passed the principal years
of her life since her removal from Grwych, at a pleasant dwelling,
termed "Rose Cottage," near the city of St. Asaph. The Editor of the
_Edinburgh Journal_ is again wrong in saying that her "Songs of the
Affections," and the "Records of Woman," are understood to have had a
very limited circulation, whereas, in the space of two years, they have
reached a third and fourth edition.
_The Author of A Tradesman's Lays._
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