Thinkin’ gin she were a lass
She wad aye be blithe and cheerie,
Lightly as the day wad pass.
“Wives and lassies, young and aged,
Think na on each ither’s state;
Ilka ane it has its crosses,
Mortal joy was ne’er complete.
“Ilka ane it has its blessings;
Peevish dinna pass them by;
Seek them out like bonnie berries,
Tho’ amang the thorns they lie.”
In 1824, “The Scottish Minstrel” was completed in six volumes, royal
octavo, and Mr. Purdie and his editor, Mr. Smith, still believing “B.
B.” to stand for Mrs. Bogan of Bogan, said, “In particular the editors
would have felt happy in being permitted to enumerate the many original
and beautiful verses that adorn their pages, for which they are
indebted to the author of the much admired song, ‘The Land o’ the
Leal;’ but they fear to wound a delicacy which shrinks from all
observation.” “The Land o’ the Leal” well deserved the praise bestowed
upon it. The name alone is a triumph of word-painting. Who that has
heard it sung in a Scotch gloaming to a group of eager listeners will
not confirm our words, that there is no song, not even of Burns, nor of
Moore, nor of Béranger, nor of Heine, which approaches on its own
ground “The Land o’ the Leal”? It was written for relatives of Lady
Nairne’s, who had lost a child; its pathos is most exquisite.
“I’m wearin’ awa, John,
Like snaw-wreaths in thaw, John,
I’m wearin’ awa
To the land o’ the leal.
There’s nae sorrow there, John;
There’s neither cauld nor care, John;
The day’s aye fair
In the land o’ the leal.
“Our bonnie bairn’s there, John,
She was baith good and fair, John;
And, oh! we grudged her sair
To the land o’ the leal.
But sorrow’s sel’ wears past, John,
And joy’s a-comin’ fast, John—
The joy that’s aye to last,
In the land o’ the leal.
“Sae dear’s that joy was bought, John,
Sae free the battle fought, John,
That sinfu’ man ne’er brought
To the land o’ the leal.
Oh, dry your glistening e’e, John!
My soul langs to be free, John;
And angels beckon me
To the land o’ the leal.
“Oh, haud ye leal and true, John!
Your day it’s wearin’ through, John;
And I’ll welcome you
To the land o’ the leal.
Now fare-ye-weel, my ain John,
This warld’s cares are vain, John;
We’ll meet, and we’ll be fain,
In the land o’ the leal.”
The humorous and highly popular song entitled “The Laird o’ Cockpen,”
was composed by Lady Nairne, in room of the older words connected with
the air, “When she cam’ ben, she bobbit.” This is a song which every
member of every Scotch audience has heard crooned or chirped in glee
and waggery. It is matchless alike as respects scene and _dramatis
personæ_, its fine suggestive touches, and its Scotch _wut_. The
present Laird of Cockpen is the Earl of Dalhousie, an elder of the Free
Church of Scotland, and grand-master of the Masonic Lodge of Scotland.
We shall give this song also entire. The different style illustrates
the genius of the authoress.
“The Laird o’ Cockpen he’s proud and he’s great,
His mind is ta’en up with the things o’ the state;
He wanted a wife his braw house to keep,
But favour wi’ wooin’ was fashious to seek.
“Down by the dyke-side a lady did dwell,
At his table-head he thought she’d look well;
M’Clish’s ae daughter o’ Claverse-ha’ Lee,
A penniless lass wi’ a lang pedigree.
“His wig was weel pouthered and as gude as new;
His waistcoat was white, his coat it was blue;
He put on a ring, a sword, and cocked hat;
And wha could refuse the laird wi’ a’ that?
“He took the gray mare, and rade cannily,
And rapped at the yett o’ Claverse-ha’ Lee:
‘Gae tell mistress Jean to come speedily ben,
She’s wanted to speak to the Laird o’ Cockpen.’
“Mistress Jean was makin’ the elder-flower wine:
‘And what brings the laird at sic a like time?’
She put aff her apron, and on her silk gown,
Her mutch wi’ red ribbons, and gaed awa down.
“And when she cam’ ben, he bowèd fu’ low,
And what was his errand he soon let her know:
Amazed was the laird when the lady said ‘Na,’
And wi’ a laigh curtsey she turnèd awa’.
“Dumbfoundered he was—nae sigh did he gie;
He mounted his mare—he rade cannily;
And aften he thought, as he gaed through the glen,
She’s daft to refuse the Laird o’ Cockpen.
“And now that the laird his exit had made,
Mistress Jean she reflected on what she had said:
‘Oh! for ane I’ll get better, its waur I’ll get ten!
I was daft to refuse the Laird o’ Cockpen.’
“Next time the laird and the lady were seen,
They were gauin’ arm-in-arm to the kirk on the green;
Now she sits in the ha’ like a weel-tappit hen—
But as yet there’s nae chickens appeared at Cockpen.”
Her song, “Caller Herrin,” has acquired extensive popularity. The late
John Wilson, the eminent vocalist, sung it in every principal town in
the kingdom. In the touching lines “Rest is not here,” she embodied her
own experience. The beautiful piece entitled “Would you be young
again?” was composed in her seventy-sixth year.
Dr. Rogers has recently done justice to her memory by the publication
of her life and songs. In this elegant book, a new edition of which has
already been called for, there is an excellent portrait of the
Baroness. The songs in the present volume may be confidently accepted
as being certainly composed by the gifted authoress.
_CHARACTER OF BARONESS NAIRNE._
In youth, Lady Nairne was distinguished for her personal charms and her
devotion to the pursuits of the world. So remarkable was the beauty of
her face and the elegance of her shape, that she was called “The Flower
of Strathearn.” In her mature years her countenance wore a somewhat
pensive cast.
She was endowed with gifts many and various. Possessed of a strong
intellect, as well as a beautiful fancy, all learning was easily
acquired. Her delights lay in the cultivation of an elegant
imagination, and in the enjoyment of those pleasures which can only be
tasted by a mind of a refined order. Capable of describing the play of
human passions in a manner which awoke the deepest emotions of the
heart, her songs became the theme of every tongue.
To promote both the spiritual and temporal welfare of her
fellow-creatures, she gave largely of her means. Dr. Chalmers, in an
address delivered at Edinburgh, on the 29th December, 1845, said,—“she
wanted me to enumerate a list of charitable objects, in proportion to
the estimate I had of their value. Accordingly, I furnished her with a
scale of about five or six charitable objects. The highest in the scale
were those institutions which have for their design the Christianizing
of the people at home; and I also mentioned to her what we were doing
in the West Port; and there came to me from her in the course of a day
or two no less a sum than £300. She is now dead; she is now in her
grave, and her works do follow her. When she gave me this noble
benefaction, she laid me under strict injunctions of secrecy, and,
accordingly, I did not mention her name to any person; but after she
was dead, I begged of her nearest heir that I might be allowed to
proclaim it, because I thought that her example, so worthy to be
followed, might influence others in imitating her, and I am happy to
say that I am now at liberty to state that it was Lady Nairne, of
Perthshire.”
_SECTION V.—FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS._
“As a female writer, influencing the female mind, she has undoubtedly
stood, for some by-past years, the very first in the first rank; and
this pre-eminence has been acknowledged, not only in her own land, but
wherever the English tongue is spoken, whether on the banks of the
eastern Ganges or the western Mississippi.”
DAVID MACBETH MOIR. [Δ.]
_LYRIC POETRY._
This species of poetry sets forth the inward occurrences of the
writer’s or speaker’s own mind—concerns itself with the thoughts and
emotions. It is called lyric, because it was originally accompanied by
the music of that instrument. Purely lyrical pieces are from their
nature short, and fall into several divisions, which are again
subdivided into psalms and songs. Passion, genius, a teeming brain, a
palpitating heart, and a soul on fire, are necessary to lyrical
composition. The poetry that lives among the people, must indeed be
simple—but the simplest feelings are the deepest, and when adequately
expressed, are immortal. The song-writer and the psalmist are equally
divine; and the rich and noble melodies which they send abroad from
their resounding lyres, the world claims as an inheritance. True lyrics
themselves may be weak and wandering, but the children of their brains
are strong and immortal. Empires may pass away, but the ecstatic ether
which they breathe on the world, shall remain. That sweet psalm, “The
Lord is my Shepherd,” was drawn by David from the strings of a
well-tuned instrument, and it expresses the feelings of Christians in
the nineteenth century, just as well as it did those of the devout in
the long ages before Christ. The child commits it to memory, and the
dying believer sings it with a heart empty of care and full of
gladness. In “Auld Robin Gray,” Lady Anne Barnard spoke from her
_inmost heart_. It instantly became popular, and has come down to us
entire, as if all things had conspired that such a perfect, tender, and
affecting song of humble life should never perish; but must be sung and
wept over while the earth endureth. The lyric poetry of a country is
characteristic of its manners.
_BIOGRAPHY._
In the year 1786, George Browne, Esq., an eminent Liverpool merchant,
married Miss Wagner, daughter of the Imperial and Tuscan consul. All
the offspring of this marriage were distinguished by superior gifts,
cultivated talents, and refined taste. Felicia Dorothea, the fifth
child, was born in Duke Street, on the 25th of September, 1793, and was
early found to be endowed with the two most coveted of earthly
gifts—beauty and genius.
The first six years of her life, were passed in wealth and ease, but at
the close of the century, in consequence of commercial difficulties,
her father broke up his establishment at Liverpool, and removed to the
sea-coast of Denbighshire, in North Wales, near the little town of
Abergele, and shortly afterwards emigrated to America, where he died.
The education of Felicia Browne thus devolved exclusively on her
mother; and under her judicious instruction, she learned with facility
the elements of general knowledge—evinced peculiar aptness for the
acquisition of languages, drawing, and music—and derived information
with extraordinary ease, quickness, and clearness, from all things
visible, audible, and tangible. The air at Gwrych is salubrious, and
the scenery around beautiful; and often in after-years did the gifted
poetess recall those happy hours spent by the sea-shore, listening to
the cadence of the waves; or passed in the old house, gazing across the
intervening meadows on a range of magnificent mountains; or consumed in
the vale of Clwyd, searching for primroses.
Mountains, the sea, and London, have been pronounced important points
in education. Felicia Browne had long enjoyed the first and the second,
and at the age of eleven completed the mind-enlarging triad, by paying
a visit to the great metropolis. But despite the attractions of music,
the drama, and works of art, the contrast between the hard pavement,
crowded streets, and social constraint of London, and the glory,
freshness, and freedom of her mountain home, made her more anxious to
get away than ever she had been to come. Soon after she appeared in
print, and the harsh animadversions of reviewers probably ignorant of
the years of the authoress, so distressed the sensitive aspirant as to
bring on an illness. In 1809, the family left Gwrych, and went to
reside at Bronwylfa, near St. Asaph, in Flintshire. Here the work of
intellectual development progressed steadily; and Miss Browne, already
mistress of French and Italian, acquired the Spanish and Portuguese,
with the rudiments of German.
In 1812, she was married to Captain Hemans, of the 4th foot, lately
returned from Spanish service; and removed to Daventry with her
husband, who was appointed adjutant to the Northamptonshire militia.
The union was not a happy one. Mrs. Hemans had a splendid imagination,
generous and active feelings, and a fine frank nature, which made her
popular wherever she went. Captain Hemans was a handsome well-bred
soldier, but of a cold methodical constitution, as destitute of the
romantic element as the branches of trees in winter of all the green,
soft luxury of foliage. There never has been a true marriage in this
world without sympathy between the husband and the wife. A man of
Captain Hemans’ temper was incapable of making a woman constituted like
Mrs. Hemans permanently happy. In 1818, after the birth of five
children, all sons, a separation took place, ostensibly because the
captain, whose health was failing, was advised to try the effect of a
warmer climate. He went to Italy, and she remained in England. They
never saw each other afterwards.
Subsequently to a step which virtually amounted to a divorce, Mrs.
Hemans and her children remained under her mother’s roof at Bronwylfa
till the spring of 1825, when Mrs. Browne, with her daughter and
grand-children, removed to Rhyllon, a comfortable house about a quarter
of a mile distant, on the opposite side of the river Clwyd, with
Bronwylfa in full sight. While domiciled at Rhyllon, Miss Jewsbury,
with whom she had previously been in correspondence, frequently visited
her and soothed her perturbed feelings. Mrs. Hemans took great delight
in the company of Miss Jewsbury, and always expressed her sense of
obligation to her for leading her more fully into the spirit of
Wordsworth’s poetry, and for making her acquainted with many of his
compositions. One autumn, on his return from exploring Snowdon, James
Montgomery, like a true poet, came to Rhyllon, to offer honest homage
to Mrs. Hemans.
Her pious and excellent mother died on the 11th of January, 1827, and
soon after Mrs. Hemans removed to Wavertree, near Liverpool. Writing to
a friend concerning the sorrows and conflicts of this period, she
exclaims: “Oh, that I could lift up my heart, and sustain it at that
height where alone the calm sunshine is!” Yet there were many
alleviating circumstances connected with this migration. She was
returning to the great seaport in which she was born, whose streets she
had occasionally trodden, whose spires she had often seen, and which
the inhabitants of Denbighshire and Flintshire had taught her to regard
as a North Welsh metropolis. But the leaving of Wales was a great
trial, and greatly augmented by the affectionate regrets and
enthusiastic blessings of the Welsh peasants, who kissed the very
gate-hinges through which she had passed. In her first letter from
Wavertree to St. Asaph, she writes: “Oh, that Tuesday morning! I
literally covered my face all the way from Bronwylfa, until the boys
told me we had passed the Clwyd range of hills. Then something of the
bitterness was over.” For the first time in her life she now took upon
herself the sole responsibility of household management, became liable
to the harassing cares of practical life, and subject to the formal
restraints belonging to a great commercial town and its suburbs. In
exchanging the ranges of the great hills, for long rows of houses—the
blue seas and fresh breezes, for dirty wharves and dingy
warehouses—familiar and loving faces, for the rude stare of strangers,
and the simper of affected courtesy—her feelings experienced a series
of shocks; and she held back from the gay world, and sought social
pleasure in the company of a few chosen friends.
In 1829, having accepted an invitation to visit Scotland, where her
writings had raised up for her a host of admirers, accompanied by her
two elder sons and her maid, she embarked for the Firth of Forth. On
their arrival in Edinburgh, her name won general homage, and all kinds
of attention were lavished upon her, by the flower of its literature.
Remaining a few days, with a keen but mournful interest, she wandered
through the antique streets, wynds, and closes of the romantic capital;
examined the castle, whose huge battlements command a panorama to which
there are few, if any, parallels on earth; visited the Calton Hill,
broken with cliffs, enamelled with golden furze, feathered with trees,
and studded with monuments for the mighty dead; spent some time at
Holyrood Palace, where the young, brilliant, and beautiful Mary reigned
in queenly splendour; and having become acquainted with the principal
objects of local interest, proceeded to Roxburghshire. At
Abbotsford—that “romance of stone and mortar,” as it has been
termed—Sir Walter Scott received her and her boys, and treated them
with princely hospitality. On leaving Abbotsford, she remarks, “I shall
not forget the kindness of Sir Walter’s farewell, so frank, and simple,
and heartfelt, as he said to me, ‘There are some whom we meet, and
should like ever after to claim as kith and kin; and you are one of
those.’” During this sojourn, she became acquainted with many eminent
persons, and when on the point of leaving, was persuaded to sit for a
bust. The necessary process having been gone through, she returned to
England.
In 1830, longing again for rural quiet, she visited the lakes and Mr.
Wordsworth. In walking and riding, in boating on Windermere, in
sketching woody mountains, in conversing with the meditative poet, and
in writing poetry to absent friends, time glided rapidly away.
At the earnest and repeated solicitations of her northern friends, she
revisited Scotland, and had the severity of the climate not threatened
to be fatal to her, she would have gladly fixed her future home in
Dunedin. She made a voyage to Dublin, to ascertain its suitablility as
a place of residence. From Dublin she crossed the channel to Holyhead,
and travelled through the Island of Anglesea, to her old home
Bronwylfa. Her old Welsh neighbours flocked around her, entreating her
to come back and live among them again. She returned to Wavertree with
agitated spirits, and an exhausted frame.
In 1831, Mrs. Hemans finally quitted Liverpool for Dublin. After
spending several weeks among kind friends, she passed on to the
residence of her second brother and his wife, and then visited all the
remarkable places around Kilkenny. In the spring and summer of 1832,
when cholera was devastating the city, her letters express the solemn
composure of her soul, her childlike dependence upon the care of God,
and her unreserved submission to His will. In the autumn of 1833, the
Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes, the brother-in-law and sister of Mrs. Hemans,
whom she had not seen for five years, came to Dublin. Her sister saw
with pain the worn and altered looks which time, care, and sickness had
wrought. In 1834, referring to the brightening of heart and soul into
the perfect day of Christian excellence, she remarks; “When the weary
struggle with wrong and injustice leads to such results, I then feel
that the fearful mystery of life is solved for me.” Reading one evening
in the gardens of the Dublin Society, a chill fog imperceptibly came
on, and she was seized with a violent fit of shivering. For many weeks
she had periodic attacks of ague. Aware that her time was short, she
sedulously employed her genius and talents for the glory of God.
On Sunday the 10th of May, 1835, she was able, for the last time, to
read to herself the appointed Collect, Epistle, and Gospel. During that
week a heavy languor oppressed her, and sometimes her mind wandered,
but always in sunny scenes. On the evening of Saturday the 16th, at
nine o’clock, while asleep, her happy spirit passed away. Life, and
this admirable woman, had not been long together; she was only in her
forty-second year.
Her remains were interred in St. Anne’s church, Dawson Street, Dublin;
and over her grave were inscribed eight lines from one of her own
dirges:—
“Calm on the bosom of thy God,
Fair spirit, rest thee now!
E’en while with us thy footsteps trod,
His seal was on thy brow.
Dust to its narrow house beneath!
Soul to its place on high!
They that have seen thy look in death,
No more may fear to die.”
The memorial erected by her nearest relations in the cathedral of St.
Asaph, is very expressive, and records that—
“THIS TABLET,
PLACED HERE BY HER BROTHERS,
IS IN MEMORY OF
FELICIA HEMANS;
WHOSE CHARACTER IS BEST PORTRAYED
IN HER WRITINGS.
SHE DIED IN DUBLIN, MAY 16, 1835.
AGED 41.”
_REVIEW OF HER WORKS._
An eminent living critic has said that Mrs. Hemans’ poetry is silent to
all effective utterance of original truth. We do not adopt that
sentiment, but we believe had her mind been directed in youth to the
works of Lord Bacon and Bishop Butler, or even the elementary
propositions of Euclid, it would probably have gained both as to
intellectual and moral strength. Her poetical life divides itself into
four periods. The juvenile, the classic, the romantic, and the mature.
Her mind precociously expanded to a keen sense of the beautiful, and a
warm appreciation of nature and poetry. Some pieces found in her works
date their composition as far back as 1803 and 1804; but it was not
till 1808 that her first volume was ushered into the world. In 1812,
she gave to the press “The Domestic Affections.” In 1819, appeared
“Tales and Historic Scenes.” In 1823, a tragedy entitled “The Vespers
of Palermo.” In 1826, she published “The Forest Sanctuary.” In 1828,
“Records of Woman.” In 1830, she brought out “Songs of the Affections.”
In 1834, appeared her little volume of “Hymns for Childhood,” “National
Lyrics and Songs for Music,” “Scenes and Hymns of Life,” and sonnets,
under the title of “Thoughts during Sickness.”
These are her principal works. She obtained a prize from a patriotic
Scotsman for the best poem on Sir William Wallace, and a prize was also
awarded her by the Royal Society of Literature for the best poem on
Dartmoor. Like all authors who have written much, her poetry is of
various excellence; but for pathos, sentiment, and gorgeous richness of
language, we know no lyrics superior to her little pieces. She was, as
Lord Jeffrey well remarked, an admirable writer of occasional verses.
Mrs. Hemans never left the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland,
but her imagination visited and realized every place of which she read,
or heard, or saw a picture. How minute, eloquent and exciting, are her
descriptions of “The Better Land.”
“‘Is it where the feathery palm-trees rise,
And the date grows ripe under sunny skies?
Or midst the green islands of glittering seas,
Where fragrant forests perfume the breeze,
And strange, bright birds on their starry wings
Bear the rich hues of all glorious things?’
—‘Not there, not there, my child!’
“‘Is it far away, in some region old,
Where the rivers wander o’er sands of gold?—
Where the burning rays of the ruby shine,
And the diamond lights up the secret mine,
And the pearl gleams forth from the coral strand?—
Is it there, sweet mother, that better land?’
—‘Not there, not there, my child!’”
Mrs. Hemans has the most perfect skill in her science; nothing can be
more polished, glowing, and harmonious, than her versification. We give
an illustration, “The Voice of Spring.”
“I come! I come!—Ye have called me long:
I come o’er the mountains with light and song!
Ye may trace my steps o’er the wakening earth,
By the winds that tell of the violet’s birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.”
There is diffused over all her poetry a yearning desire to associate
the name of England with every sentiment and feeling of freedom and
patriotism. “The Homes of England” shows that she knew wherein
consisted the glory and strength of kingdoms.
“The stately homes of England,
How beautiful they stand
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O’er all the pleasant land.
The deer across their greensward bound
Through shade and sunny gleam
And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.”
Her “Graves of a Household” illustrates how well the graphic and
pathetic may be made to set off each other.
“They grew in beauty, side by side,
They filled one home with glee;
Their graves are severed, far and wide,
By mount and stream and sea.”
With what exquisite tenderness and beautiful imagery does she express
in “The Hour of Death” the emotions of every heart.
“Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the north wind’s breath,
And stars to set—but all,
Thou hast _all_ seasons for thine own, O Death!”
Mrs. Hemans’ poetry has four characteristics, viz., the ideal, the
picturesque, the harmonious, and the moral. There may be “too many
flowers for the fruit;” yet a large portion of it possesses perennial
vitality.
The best edition extant of the works of Mrs. Hemans has been published
recently by Messrs. Blackwood. The poems are chronologically arranged,
with illustrative notes and a selection of contemporary criticisms.
Besides an ample table of contents, there is a general index, and an
index of first lines.
_CHARACTER OF MRS. HEMANS._
Her personal appearance was highly attractive. The writer of her memoir
describes her in early womanhood as radiant with beauty. The mantling
bloom of her cheeks was shaded by a profusion of natural ringlets of a
rich golden brown; and the ever-varying expression of her brilliant
eyes gave a changeful play to her countenance, which would have made it
impossible for any painter to do justice to it. She was of middle
stature and slight of figure. Her air was graceful, and her manner
fascinating in its artlessness. From the crown of the head to the sole
of the foot she was touched with elegance.
In dramatic conception, depth of thought, and variety of fancy, we
could name several women who excelled her; but in the use of language,
in the employment of rich, chaste, and glowing imagery, and in the
perfect music of her versification, she stands alone and superior. In
the words of Miss Jewsbury, “The genius with which she was gifted,
combined to inspire a passion for the ethereal, the tender, the
imaginative, the heroic,—in one word, the beautiful. It was in her a
faculty Divine, and yet of daily life, it touched all things; but like
a sunbeam, touched them with a golden finger.”
She was a genuine woman, and therefore imbued with a Christian spirit.
To borrow again from Miss Jewsbury: “Her strength and her weakness
alike lay in her affections: these would sometimes make her weep at a
word, at others imbue her with courage, so that she was alternately a
falcon-hearted dove, and a reed shaken with the wind. Her voice was a
sad melody; her spirits reminded me of an old poet’s description of the
orange-tree with its
‘Golden lamps hid in a night of green,’
or of those Spanish gardens, where the pomegranate grows beside the
cypress. Her gladness was like a burst of sunlight; and if in her
depression she resembled night, it was night wearing her stars.”
_SECTION VI.—ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING._
“It is characteristic of this century, that women play a more important
part in literature than previously. Not only have women of genius
commanded universal homage, but the distinctive characteristics of the
female nature have been exhibited with more exquisite analysis and more
powerful truth than heretofore.”
PETER BAYNE, A.M.
_EPIC POETRY._
The principal of poetical compositions is the epic, otherwise called
the heroic. It gives an imaginative narrative of some signal action or
series of actions and events, usually the achievements of some
distinguished character, and intended to form the morals and affect the
mind with the love of virtue. The longer poems of the epic genus
embrace an extensive series of events, and the actions of numerous
personages. The “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” are the principal Grecian
epics. The “Æneid” is the most distinguished Roman epic. “Jerusalem
Delivered” and the “Divina Comedia” are the most celebrated Italian
epics. “Paradise Lost” is the greatest English epic. These are epic
poems by way of eminence, but there are several species of minor poems
which from their nature most also be ranked as epics. One of these is
the “idyl,” a term applied to what is called pastoral poetry. The
ballad is another species of minor epic. Critics agree that this sort
of poetry is the greatest work human nature is capable of. But attempts
at epic poetry are now rare, the spirit of the age being against this
kind of composition. It is believed that several of our immortal epics
could not have been written in the nineteenth century; because the mind
would never produce that of the truth of which it could not persuade
itself by any illusion of the imagination. In the room of epic poems,
we have now novels, which may be considered as the epics of modern
civil and domestic life. We have, however, minds of both sexes, in our
midst, capable of furnishing us with epics, so far as genius is
concerned.
_BIOGRAPHY._
Elizabeth Barrett was born in London, about the year 1809. Her father
was an opulent country gentleman, and not a West India merchant as
several biographies represent him to have been. She passed her girlhood
at his country-seat in Herefordshire, among the lovely scenery of the
Malvern Hills. At least she says:—
“Green is the land where my daily
Steps in jocund childhood played;
Dimpled close with hill and valley;
Dappled very close with shade:
Summer snow of apple blossom
Running up from glade to glade.”
She seems to have been a very precocious child, and the culture which
she received in her youth was fair, liberal, and sound. Classics,
philosophy, and science were studied with enthusiasm and success. We
welcome gladly the evidence that society is beginning to recognise
woman’s right to be as highly educated as her capacity will allow. She
is to be man’s companion, and what can better enable her to be a fit
companion for him, than a due comprehension of what he comprehends; an
appreciation founded upon knowledge of the difficulties he has
mastered, and power to stand beside him and help him in his
intellectual labours. Without disregarding the fact that all women do
not follow in the footsteps of men, and therefore do not require the
same course of learning, Elizabeth Barrett participated largely in the
education given to her brothers by a very able tutor, Mr. Hugh Stuart
Boyd, the Grecian.
From a very early age her ear was ever attuned to catch the deep and
mysterious and hope-inspiring whisperings of nature. At the age of ten
she began writing in prose and in verse, and at fifteen her talent for
literary composition became known to her friends. She was a most
diligent student, and soon became a contributor to periodical
literature, and a series of articles on the Greek Christian poets not
only indicated how deeply she had entered into the spirit of these old
authors, but proved that she was possessed both of recondite learning
and true poetic genius. If, as some critics aver, her earlier style
resembles that of Tennyson; this arises, not from imitation, but from
similarity of genius and classical taste. Proofs of rare reading and
deep reflection abound in Miss Barrett’s first attempt at authorship,
published in 1826: “An Essay on Mind, and other Poems.” Her next
literary enterprise was a version of one of the greatest and most
difficult masterpieces of classical antiquity; “Prometheus Bound,”
which appeared in 1833; and of which she has since given an improved
translation. In 1838 appeared another volume of original poetry, “The
Seraphim, and other Poems;” the external peculiarity of which was its
endeavour to embody the ideas and sentiments of a Christian mystery in
the artistic form of a Greek tragedy. This was followed in 1839, by a
third work, “The Romaunt of the Page.”
Life’s joys are as inconstant as life itself. Temporal disappointments
often distress us, and God’s providential visitations often cause us to
change our plans.
“How fast treads sorrow on the heels of joy.”
About this time, a melancholy accident occurred which for years clouded
the life of the poetess, and all but irretrievably shattered her
naturally delicate constitution. She burst a blood-vessel in the lungs.
Happily, no symptoms of consumption supervened; but after a
twelvemonth’s confinement at home, she was ordered by her physician to
the mild climate of Devonshire. A house was taken for her at Torquay,
near the foot of the cliffs, close by the sea. She was rapidly
recovering, when one bright summer morning her brother and two young
men, his friends, went out in a small boat for a trip of a few hours.
Just as they crossed the bar, the vessel swamped, and all on board
perished. Even their lifeless bodies were never recovered. They were
sepulchred in the great ocean, which has wrapped its garment of green
round many of the fairest and noblest of the sons of men, and which
rolls its continued requiem of sublimity and sadness over the millions
whom it hath entombed. This sudden and dreadful calamity almost killed
Miss Barrett. During a whole year, she lay in the house incapable of
removal, whilst the sound of the waves rang in her ears as the moans of
the dying. Literature was her only solace. Her physician pleaded with
her to abandon her studies; and to quiet his importunities she had an
edition of Plato bound so as to resemble a novel.
When eventually removed to London and her father’s house in Wimpole
Street, it was in an invalid carriage, and at the slow rate of twenty
miles a day. In a commodious and darkened room, to which only her own
family and a few devoted friends were admitted, she nursed her remnant
of life; reading meanwhile the best books in almost every language, and
giving herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born
to be the priestess. The following beautiful and graphic verses were
written to commemorate the faithful companionship of a young spaniel
(“Flush, my dog”), presented to her by a friend, in those years of
imprisonment and inaction.
“Yet, my little sportive friend,
Little is’t to such an end
That I should praise thy rareness!
Other dogs may be thy peers,
Haply in these drooping ears,
And in this glossy fairness.
“But of _thee_ it shall be said,
This dog watched beside a bed
Day and night unweary;—
Watched within a curtained room,
Where no sunbeam broke the gloom,
Round the sick and weary.
“Roses, gathered for a vase,
In that chamber died apace,
Beam and breeze resigning—
This dog only waited on,
Knowing that when light is gone,
Love remains for shining.
“Other dogs in thymy dew
Tracked the hares, and followed through
Sunny moor or meadow—
This dog only crept and crept
Next a languid cheek that slept,
Sharing in the shadow.
“Other dogs of loyal cheer
Bounded at the whistle clear,
Up the woodside hieing—
This dog only watched in reach
Of a faintly uttered speech,
Or a louder sighing.
“And if one or two quick tears
Dropt upon his glossy ears,
Or a sigh came double,—
Up he sprang in eager haste,
Fawning, fondling, breathing fast,
In a tender trouble.
“And this dog was satisfied
If a pale thin hand would glide
Down his dewlaps sloping—
Which he pushed his nose within,
After—platforming his chin
On the palm left open.”
It was during those six or seven years of seclusion and study that she
composed or completed the most striking of those poems, published in
two volumes in 1844, which first brought her into notice as a poetess
of genius. “Poetry,” said the authoress in her preface, “has been as
serious a thing to me as life itself, and life has been a very serious
thing. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of poetry, nor
leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as work,
not as mere hand and head work apart from the personal being, but as
the completest expression of that being to which I could attain; and as
work I offer it to the public, _feeling its shortcomings more deeply
than any of my readers, because measured from the height of my
aspiration_, but feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with
which the work was done should give it some protection with the
reverent and sincere.”
In 1846, she became the wife of a kindred spirit, Robert Browning, the
poet. Never were man and woman more clearly ordained for each other
than Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. They were imperfect apart;
together they were rounded into one. With marriage came Mrs. Browning’s
welcome restoration to health and strength. The poet-pair started for
Italy, staying first at Pisa, and then settling at Florence. In that
metropolis of one of the most wealthy and powerful of the Italian
States, she witnessed, in 1848-49, the struggle made by the Tuscans for
freedom. Mrs. Browning published her collected works in 1850. In 1851,
she issued her important work, “Casa Guidi Windows,” a semi-political
narrative of actual events and genuine feelings.
Inspirited by what she saw around her, and by a new tie, an only child,
a boy of great intellectual and musical precocity, the genius of Mrs.
Browning had become practical and energetic. “The future of Italy,”
says our authoress, “shall not be disinherited.” Then came, in 1856,
“Aurora Leigh,” a long and elaborate poem or novel in blank verse,
which our poetess considered the most mature of her works, into which
her highest convictions upon life and art were entered. “Poems before
Congress” followed in 1860.
After a brief illness, Mrs. Browning died at Florence on the 29th of
June, 1861. When the sad news reached England, universal regret was
expressed for the loss of the talented lady; the press confessing with
singular unanimity that the world had lost in her the greatest poetess
that had ever appeared.
She was borne to the tomb amidst the lamentations of Tuscany no less
than of her own dear England. Above the door of a decent little house
in Florence is a small square slab, with an inscription in Italian,
which may be thus translated:—“Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, who to the heart of a woman joined the science of a scholar
and the spirit of a teacher, and who made with her golden verse a
nuptial ring between Italy and England. Grateful Florence places this
memorial.”
_PLACE AS A POETESS._
In no languages, save Greek and English, so far as we remember at
present, have poetesses achieved special fame; and we think all
competent judges will unhesitatingly rank Mrs. Browning as the Queen of
song. But we do not wish to judge her by a less elevated standard or
less rigid rules than those we apply to the poets generally. “Good for
a woman,” is the sort of praise she would have rejected with scorn. She
entered fairly into the lists against all the world, and she claims a
place among literary worthies as such. Genius is of no sex. What place
shall we assign her?
It is not necessary for the purposes of criticism that a scale of
genius should be formed, that a list of the orbs of song should be made
out. Shakespeare is the greatest author of mankind; for generations he
has been hailed as the mightiest of mere men. Mrs. Browning is not
Shakespeare; but we do not talk amusingly when we claim her as his
counterpart. Milton was endowed with gifts of the soul which have been
imparted to few of our race. His name is almost identified with
sublimity. He is in fact the sublimest of men. In fitness of
conception, terseness of diction, and loftiness of thought, the
following lines have all that Miltonic genius could impart:—
“Raise the majesties
Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved,
And front with level eyelids the To Come,
And all the dark o’ the world. Rise, woman, rise
To thy peculiar and best attitudes
Of doing good and of enduring ill,—
Of comforting for ill, and teaching good,
And reconciling all that ill and good
Unto the patience of a constant hope,—
Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee,
And by sin, death,—the ransom righteousness,
The heavenly light, and compensative rest,
Shall come by means of thee. If woe by thee
Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth
An angel of the woe thou didst achieve,
Found acceptable to the world, instead
Of others of that name, of whose bright steps
Thy deed stripped bare the hills. Be satisfied;
Something thou hast to bear through womanhood,
Peculiar suffering, answering to the sin;—
Some pang paid down for each new human life,
Some weariness in guarding such a life,
Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust
From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved
Too loyally, some treason; feebleness
Within thy heart, and cruelty without,
And pressures of an alien tyranny
With its dynastic reasons of larger bones
And stronger sinews. But, go to! thy love
Shall chant itself its own beatitudes,
After its own life working. A child’s kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong.
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest.”
In seeking to ascertain the precise position which Mrs. Browning
occupies in relation to other writers, critics of general common sense
will select a class of favourites who have exerted a mighty sway over
the strongly pulsing heart of common humanity. Some will place in this
list Burns, Moore, and Scott. With others, Byron, Wordsworth, and
Tennyson will figure as chiefs. Now, in this selection, we venture to
affirm Mrs. Browning has been often enrolled by men as well as by
women; by some high upon the list, by others, of course, upon a lower
level. There are not many good sonnets in English literature, but in
this most difficult and elaborate form of composition Mrs. Browning was
eminently successful. We could select half a dozen excellent sonnets
from Mrs. Browning with more ease than from Shakespeare, or Milton, or
any other writer save Wordsworth.
Of her mere literary style we care to say but little, and still less of
her faults. She was essentially a self-taught and self-sustained
artist. Her correspondence with Mr. John Kenyon, the poet, did not
commence till she was thirty years of age, and consequently she owed
less to his influences than some of her critics suppose. Her style is
strong and clear, but uneven and abrupt. A sentence or paragraph often
limps a little after the hastening thought, and a degree of stiffness
is sometimes given by a pet word, coined, or obsolete, or picked up in
an old book. It would be absurd to deny that certain characteristics of
her poetry withhold it from the many and confine it to the few. The
true and eternally grateful notes are struck without show of art or
self-conscious ambition. Still, following the rule that she ought to be
judged by her best, it must be admitted that she is the rose, the
consummate crown, the rarer and stronger and more passionate Sappho of
our time.
_CHARACTER OF MRS. BROWNING._
It must have been about 1835 that Miss Mitford first saw Miss Barrett,
and to this period the following portrait in the “Recollections of a
Literary Life” doubtless referred:—“My first acquaintance with
Elizabeth Barrett commenced about fifteen years ago. She was certainly
one of the most interesting persons I had ever seen. Everybody who then
saw her said the same; so it is not merely the impression of my
partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a
shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face,
large tender eyes richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a
sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness, that I had some difficulty in
persuading a friend, in whose carriage we went together to Chiswick,
that the translatress of the “Prometheus” of Æschylus, the authoress of
the “Essay on Mind,” was old enough to be introduced into company; in
technical language—was out.” But although not strikingly fair to look
upon, her nature was so gentle, and her manners so interesting, that
they stood her in the stead of health and beauty.
Mrs. Browning was endowed with the highest imaginative and intellectual
qualities. In her poems are passages which admit of being compared with
those of the few sovereigns of literature; touches which only the
mightiest give. We admire and reverence the breadth and versatility of
her genius; no sameness; no one idea; no type character; a woman of
great acuteness and originality—one of the prime spirits of this
century.
Our poetess laid her splendid powers on the altar of God. Deep
chastened affection, and nobleness of faith glow and sparkle in her
life as well as in her verse, with a rare brilliancy. “She is a
Christian,” to quote the words of a popular writer, “not in the sense
of appreciating, like Carlyle, the loftiness of the Christian type of
character; not in the sense of adopting, like Goethe, a Christian
machinery for artistic self-worship; nor even in the sense of
approaching, like Wordsworth, an august but abstract morality; but in
the sense of finding, like Cowper, the whole hope of humanity bound up
in Christ, and taking all the children of her mind to Him, that He may
lay His hand on them and bless them. It is well that Mrs. Browning is a
Christian. It is difficult, but possible, to bear the reflection that
many great female writers have rejected that gospel which has done more
for woman than any other civilizing agency; but it is well that the
greatest woman of all looks up in faith and love to that eye which fell
on Mary from the cross.”
_SECTION VII.—CHARLOTTE NICHOLLS._
[_CURRER BELL._]
“I turn from the critical unsympathetic, public,—inclined to judge
harshly because they have only seen superficially and not thought
deeply. I appeal to that larger and more solemn public, who know how to
look with tender humility at faults and errors; how to admire
generously extraordinary genius, and how to reverence with warm, full
hearts, all noble virtue.”
E. C. GASKELL.
_WORKS OF FICTION._
There are few things more worthy of notice than those strange mutations
of opinion, and returning circuits of belief, to which the human mind
is subject. The same tastes and habits, the same fashions and follies,
the same delusions and the same doubts, seem to have their periodical
cycles of recurrence. Theories which have been solemnly buried,
suddenly rear their unexpected heads, and are received with all the
more favour because of the contempt and derision which followed them to
the grave. How many things are taken for granted which want thinking
about! The wholesale condemnation of works of fiction is consummate
absurdity. When all are condemned, people are apt to suppose that any
may be read with impunity. Some novelists have sought for their heroes
and heroines among thieves and desperadoes; flagitiously indifferent
alike to fact and morality, they have laboured with pernicious success
to invest these wretched characters with a halo of romantic interest
and dignity: but if on this account we give up the principle, then we
must give up poetry, fable, allegory, and all kinds of imaginative
literature. The society of our highest intellects must be renounced.
Fictitious literature has been condemned on the ground that those
novels which are taken up with a description of the world in its most
vain and frivolous aspects, are the most popular. This is not true. The
works of our modern fictionists are exceedingly popular; and no one
acquainted with them will dare to say they are open to such a charge.
Not a few object to works of fiction because they make them
discontented with real life. It is true the Bible teaches us that it is
wrong to murmur at the allotments of Providence; and the Episcopal
Church beautifully prays every day, “Give us always minds contented
with our present condition.” But it is equally true that the Scriptures
teach us to aim at a higher standard than we have yet attained, and
clergymen inculcate the necessity for progress. We ought to be
dissatisfied with ourselves, and with many things that we see in
others. Let us seek to rise to the lofty ideal presented in good
novels, and if we do not find that our ascending steps lead us into a
purer atmosphere, and into regions where grow perennial fruit—then
complain.
_BIOGRAPHY._
Charlotte Brontë was born at Thornton, in the parish of Bradford, on
the 21st of April, 1816. Her father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë, was a
native of the County Down, in Ireland; and her mother, Maria, was the
third daughter of Mr. Thomas Branwell, Penzance, Cornwall. In 1820, Mr.
Brontë removed to Haworth, a chapelry in the West Riding, and Mrs.
Brontë died the following year. Charlotte in after-years could but
dimly recall the remembrance of her mother. The servants were impressed
with the cleverness of the little Brontës, and often said they had
never seen such a clever child as Charlotte. Mr. Brontë’s account of
his children is exceedingly interesting:—
“As soon as they could read and write, Charlotte and her brother and
sisters used to invent and act little plays of their own, in which the
Duke of Wellington, my daughter Charlotte’s hero, was sure to come off
conqueror; when a dispute would not unfrequently arise amongst them
regarding the comparative merits of him, Buonaparte, Hannibal, and
Cæsar. When the argument got warm, and rose to its height, as their
mother was then dead, I had sometimes to come in as arbitrator, and
settle the dispute according to the best of my judgment. Generally, in
the management of these concerns, I frequently thought that I
discovered signs of rising talent, which I had seldom or never before
seen in any of their age.... A circumstance now occurs to my mind which
I may as well mention. When my children were very young, when, as far
as I can remember, the oldest was about ten years of age, and the
youngest about four, thinking that they knew more than I had yet
discovered, in order to make them speak with less timidity, I deemed
that if they were put under a sort of cover I might gain my end; and
happening to have a mask in the house, I told them all to stand and
speak boldly from under cover of the mask. I began with the youngest
(Anne, afterwards Acton Bell), and asked what a child like her most
wanted; she answered, ‘Age and experience.’ I asked the next (Emily,
afterwards Ellis Bell), what I had best do with her brother Branwell,
who was sometimes a naughty boy; she answered, ‘Reason with him, and
when he won’t listen to reason, whip him.’ I asked Branwell what was
the best way of knowing the difference between the intellects of man
and woman; he answered, ‘By considering the difference between them as
to their bodies.’ I then asked Charlotte what was the best book in the
world; she answered, ‘The Bible.’ What was the next best; she answered,
‘The Book of Nature.’ I then asked the next what was the best mode of
education for a woman; she answered, ‘By laying it out in preparation
for a happy eternity.’ I may not have given precisely their words, but
I have nearly done so, as they made a deep and lasting impression on my
memory.”
Soon after Mrs. Brontë’s death, an elder sister came from Penzance to
superintend her brother-in-law’s household, and look after his six
children. Miss Branwell taught her nieces sewing and the household
arts, in which Charlotte became an adept. In 1823, a school was
established for the daughters of clergymen, at a place called Cowan
Bridge. Mr. Brontë took Maria and Elizabeth to Cowan Bridge, in July,
1824; and in September, he brought Charlotte and Emily to be admitted
as pupils. Maria was untidy, but gentle, and intellectual. Elizabeth
won much upon the esteem of the superintendent of the school by her
exemplary patience. Emily was distinguished for fortitude. Charlotte
was a “bright, clever, little child.” Maria died in May, and Elizabeth
in June, 1825. Charlotte was thus early called upon to bear the
responsibilities of an elder sister in a motherless family; both
Charlotte and Emily returned to the school at the close of the
midsummer holidays in this fatal year. But before the next winter they
left that establishment.
In 1831, she was sent to Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, where her
remarkable talents were duly appreciated by her kind instructress, and
friendships were formed with some of her fellow-pupils that lasted
throughout life. One of these early friends thus graphically describes
the impression she made upon her.
“I first saw her coming out of a covered cart, in very old-fashioned
clothes, and looking very cold and miserable. She was coming to school
at Miss Wooler’s. When she appeared in the schoolroom, her dress was
changed, but just as old. She looked a little old woman, so
short-sighted that she always appeared to be seeking something, and
moving her head from side to side to catch a sight of it. She was very
shy and nervous, and spoke with a strong Irish accent. When a book was
given her, she dropped her head over it till her nose nearly touched
it; and when she was told to hold her head up, up went the book after
it, still closer to her nose, so that it was not possible to help
laughing.”
Towards the end of the year and half that she remained as a pupil at
Roe Head, she received her first bad mark for an imperfect lesson.
Charlotte wept bitterly, and her school-fellows were indignant. Miss
Wooler withdrew the bad mark.
In 1835, she returned to Miss Wooler’s school as a teacher, and Emily
accompanied her as a scholar. Charlotte’s life here was very happy. The
girls were hardly strangers to her, some of them being younger sisters
of those who had been her own playmates; and however trying the duties
were she had to perform, there was always a thoughtful friend watching
over her in the person of good Miss Wooler. But her life was too
sedentary, and she was advised to return to the parsonage. She did so,
and the change at once proved beneficial.
At Haworth she met the person who made the first proposal of marriage
to her. Miss Brontë respected the young man very deeply, but as she did
not really love him, she refused to marry him. Soon after, an Irish
clergyman, fresh from Dublin University, whom she had only met once,
sent her a letter, which proved to be a declaration of love and a
proposal of matrimony. But although she had no hope of another offer,
the witty, lively, and ardent Irishman was summarily rejected. Restored
to health and strength, instead of remaining at Haworth to be a burden
to her father, and to live on there in idleness perhaps for years, she
determined, if everything else failed, to turn housemaid. Soon after,
she became engaged as a governess in a family where she was destined to
find an ungenial residence. The children all loved her, more or less,
according to their different characters. But the mother was proud and
pompous, and Miss Brontë as proud, though not so pompous, as she. In
1839, she left the family of the wealthy Yorkshire manufacturer; and in
1841, found her second and last situation as a governess. This time she
became a member of a kind-hearted and friendly household. But her
salary, after deducting the expense of washing, amounted to only £16;
moreover, the career of a governess was to Miss Brontë a perpetual
attempt to force her faculties into a direction for which her previous
life had unfitted them. So at Christmas she left this situation.
Several attempts to open a school at the parsonage having proved
futile, with the view of better qualifying themselves for the task of
teaching, Miss Brontë and her sister Emily went to Brussels in 1842,
and took up their abode in Madame Héger’s _pensionnat_. Towards the
close of the year, word came from England that her aunt, Miss Branwell,
was very ill. Before they got home, the funeral was over, and Mr.
Brontë and Anne were sitting together in quiet grief for one who had
done her part well in the household for nearly twenty years. About the
end of January, 1843, Miss Brontë returned to Brussels alone for
another six months.
In returning to England, in 1844, Miss Brontë determined to commence a
school, and to facilitate her success in this plan, M. Héger, gave her
a kind of diploma, sealed with the Athenée Royal, of which he was a
professor. But no pupils made their appearance, and consequently the
sisters abandoned the idea of school-keeping, and turned their thoughts
to literature. Their volume of poems was published in 1846; their names
being veiled under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, but it met
with little or no attention. It is possible that the names of Emily and
Anne may not survive the present generation; but certainly Charlotte’s
writings have placed her in the highest rank of lady novelists.
The winter of 1848 was a dark one at Haworth. Her only brother, and the
sister she so intensely loved, and whose genius she ever delighted to
exalt above her own, died within a few weeks of each other. Miss Brontë
was prostrate with fever; and Anne, always delicate, grew rapidly
worse. The two went together to Scarborough the following spring. There
the younger sister died, and the elder was left alone with her aged
father in that dreary deserted home among the graves. In June, 1850,
she visited London, saw her old hero the Duke of Wellington, at the
Chapel Royal, had an interview with Lewes, and dined with Thackeray.
The same summer she went on to Edinburgh to join the friends with whom
she had been staying in town. In a letter to a correspondent, she says:
“Do not think that I blaspheme, when I tell you that your great London,
as compared to Dunedin, ‘mine own romantic town,’ is as prose compared
to poetry; or as a great rumbling, rambling, heavy epic compared to a
lyric, brief, bright, clear, and vital as a flash of lightning. You
have nothing like Scott’s monument; or, if you had that, and all the
glories of architecture assembled together, you have nothing like
Arthur’s seat, and above all, you have not the Scottish national
character; and it is that grand character after all which gives the
land its true charm, its true greatness.”
The three following years pass over. One of the deepest interests of
her life centres round the 29th of June, 1854. On that day many old and
humble friends saw her come out of Haworth church, leaning on the arm
of “one of the best gentlemen in the county,” and looking “like a
snowdrop.” We almost smile as we think of the merciless derider of weak
and insipid suitors finding a lord and a master—of the hand which drew
the three solemn ecclesiastics, Malone, Donne, and Sweeting, locked at
the altar in that of her father’s curate, and learning from
experience,—
“That marriage, rightly understood,
Gives to the tender and the good
A paradise below.”
Mr. Nicholls loved Miss Brontë as his own soul, and she loved him, and
every day her love grew stronger. In the last letter she ever wrote, we
find the following sentence: “No kinder, better husband than mine, it
seems to me, there can be in the world.” Home joys are only dependent,
in a small degree, on external circumstances.
Nine months followed of calm happiness—months of respite and rest.
During the next winter she was confined to a sick bed, from which she
never rose. The doctor assured her that all would soon be right. Martha
tenderly waited on her mistress, and from time to time had tried to
cheer her with the thoughts of the baby that was coming. But she died
on the 31st March, 1855, in the thirty-ninth year of her age, after a
long and weary illness, bravely as she had lived, and left her widowed
husband and childless father sitting desolate and alone in the old grey
parsonage.
One member out of most of the families of the parish was bidden to the
funeral, and those who were excluded from the formal train of mourners
thronged the church and churchyard. Two mourners deserve special
notice. The one was a village girl that had been betrayed, seduced, and
cast away. In Mrs. Nicholls she had found a holy sister, who ministered
to her needs in her time of trial. Bitter was the grief of this young
woman, and sincere her mourning. The other was a blind girl living some
four miles from Haworth, who loved the deceased so dearly that she
implored those about her to lead her along the roads, and over the
moors, that she might listen to the solemn words, “Earth to earth,
ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the
resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
_MERITS AS A NOVELIST._
In the real distinguished from the ideal school of fiction, Mrs.
Nicholls, known to the literary world as Currer Bell, attained
immediate and lasting popularity. We purpose to notice a few of her
leading characteristics, and to define briefly but articulately, the
worth of her teaching. An eminent and genial critic justly remarks:
“Currer Bell professed to be no idle entertainer. She did not, indeed,
tag on a moral to the end of her book—else it had been little worth;
or even blazon it on its surface. But she professed to write truly, to
show living men and women meeting the exigencies, grappling with the
problems, of real existence; to point out how the battle goes, in the
circles of English middle life, between pretension and reality, between
falsehood and truth. If we were content to listen to her as a
historian, she relinquished with a smile the laurel of the romancer.”
Her plots possess the merit of rare interest; her characters, however
eccentric, stand out as unmistakable realities. True, the plot in the
“Professor,” her first prose work, which met with so many refusals, and
was not published till after her death, is of no great interest.
Although she has never surpassed two or three portraits there sketched,
it will not bear comparison with her other works.
The style of Currer Bell is one which will reward study for its own
sake. Its tone may be somewhat too uniform, its balance and cadence too
unvaried. Perhaps, also, there is too much of the abruptness of
passion. It is certainly inferior to many styles, so far as the crimson
and gold of literature are concerned. But there is no writer with whom
we are acquainted, more deserving of praise for clearness, pointedness,
and force. Would that any word of ours could recall the numerous
admirers of morbid magnificence and barbarous dissonance, affected
jargon and fantastic verbiage, laboured antithesis and false
brilliance, and induce them to read night and day the novels of Currer
Bell, for the sake of their style. In “Jane Eyre,” her most powerful
work, published in October, 1847, it must be admitted that female
delicacy is somewhat outraged; but its specimens of picturesque,
resolute, straightforward writing, enable this tale to take a high
place in the field of romantic literature.
Currer Bell’s love of nature was remarkable. A Yorkshire moor is for
the most part wild and grotesque, but her eye brims with a “purple
light,” intense enough to perpetuate the brief flower-flush of August
on the heather, or the rare sunset smile of June. We might quote in
illustration of these remarks, pictures of nature, so detailed,
definite, and fresh, that they give us an assurance as of eyesight.
Take the following bit of woodland painting from “Shirley,” published
in October, 1849: “I know all the pleasantest spots: I know where we
could get nuts in nutting time; I know where wild strawberries abound;
I know certain lonely, quite untrodden glades, carpeted with strange
mosses, some yellow as if gilded, some sober grey, some gem green. I
know groups of trees that ravish the eye with their perfect
picture-like effects: rude oak, delicate birch, glossy beech, clustered
in contrast; and ash trees stately as Saul, standing isolated, and
superannuated wood giants clad in bright shrouds of ivy.” Many similar,
and even superior passages might be cited from this brilliant novel.
Works of fiction belong to the province of imagination; and this
faculty was largely developed in Currer Bell, and has spread the
unmistakable splendour of its embellishment over her pages. There are
passages in her works, not only distinct from their general texture,
but from anything we know in English literature. The personification of
nature in “Shirley” is perhaps the finest. “I saw—I now see—a woman
Titan; her robe of blue air spreads to the outskirts of the heath,
where yonder flock is grazing, a veil, white as an avalanche, sweeps
from her head to her feet, and arabesques of lightning flame on its
borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple like the horizon;
through its blush shines the star of evening. The steady eyes I cannot
picture. They are clear, they are deep as lakes, they are lifted and
full of worship, they tremble with the softness of love and the lustre
of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than
the early moon, risen long before dark gathers; she reclines her bosom
on the ridge of Stillbro’ Moor, her mighty hands are joined beneath it,
so kneeling, face to face she speaks with God.” Apostrophic bursts are
common enough in all our more imaginative prose writers; but the
chiselling of the entire figure from the flameless marble, and the
leaving it for ever in the loveliness of its beauty, is peculiar to the
prose of Currer Bell.
In the delineation of one absorbing and tyrannizing passion, Currer
Bell, is altogether _sui generis_. With a bold and steady hand she
depicts passion in all its stages; we may weep and tremble, but her
nerves do not quiver, neither do her eyes film. “Villette,” commenced
in the autumn of 1850, and brought to a conclusion in November, 1851,
is a tale of the affections. A burning heart glows throughout its
pages, and so true to nature is the delineation, that it is impossible
to doubt that living hearts have actually throbbed with like passion.
The eloquence and graphic description which mark the closing scenes of
this tale, the authoress has not equalled elsewhere.
There is much that is stirring and healthful in the works of Currer
Bell. The idea of Johnson was that marriages might well enough be
arranged by the chancellor! But although the Christian world very
generally seems to be of the same opinion, she taught the sacredness of
the natural affections in the formation of the marriage
relationship—the absolute necessity of love. Poltroonery, pretentious
feebleness, and cowardly falsehood, are crowned with the diadem of
scorn; and all the stalwart virtues are signally honoured.
_CHARACTER OF MRS. NICHOLLS._
The following personal description is from her Life by Mrs. Gaskell.
“In 1831, she was a quiet, thoughtful girl, of nearly fifteen years of
age, very small in figure—‘stunted’ was the word she applied to
herself; but as her limbs and head were in just proportion to the
slight, fragile body, no word in ever so slight a degree suggestive of
deformity could properly be applied to her; with soft, thick, brown
hair, and peculiar eyes, of which I find it difficult to give a
description as they appeared to me in later life. They were large and
well shaped; their colour a reddish brown; but if the iris were closely
examined, it appeared to be composed of a great variety of tints. The
usual expression was of quiet, listening intelligence; but now and
then, on some just occasion for vivid interest or wholesome
indignation, a light would shine out, as if some spiritual lamp had
been kindled, which glowed behind those expressive orbs. I never saw
the like in any other human creature. As for the rest of her features,
they were plain, large, and ill set; but, unless you began to catalogue
them, you were hardly aware of the fact; for the eyes and power of the
countenance overbalanced every physical defect; the crooked mouth and
the large nose were forgotten, and the whole face arrested the
attention and presently attracted all those whom she herself would have
cared to attract. Her hands and feet were the smallest I ever saw; when
one of the former was placed in mine, it was like the soft touch of a
bird in the middle of my palm. The delicate long fingers had a peculiar
fineness of sensation, which was one reason why all her handiwork, of
whatever kind—writing, sewing, knitting—was so clear in its
minuteness. She was remarkably neat in her whole personal attire; but
she was dainty as to the fit of her shoes and gloves.”
There are different classes of great minds. Some are great in
collecting, others in creating. The former is talent, the latter is
genius. Some have the power of absorbing what they see and hear in the
external world: they “gather honey all the day from every opening
flower;” but they add no new thoughts. Others are characterized by
originality of thought; they investigate new subjects, form new worlds,
and spin new creations out of their own minds. Currer Bell belonged to
this class. Some are capable of receiving much knowledge, but are
unable to turn it to any purpose; they have read the standard authors,
and have plenty of facts, but they know not how to use them. Currer
Bell could form a system, she knew how to write a book.
Through the whole of her life she had a sacred regard for the rules of
morality. One of her school-fellows informs us that she could get on
with those who had bumps at the top of their heads. An intelligent old
man living at Haworth, said to her biographer:—“Charlotte would sit
and inquire about our circumstances so kindly and feelingly!... Though
I am a poor working man (which I never felt to be any degradation), I
could talk with her with the utmost freedom. I always felt quite at
home with her. Though I never had any school education, I never felt
the want of it in her company.”