1. Mrs. Hitchcock was fitted for college, accomplished in the fine
arts and the exact sciences, sympathized in her husband's tastes and
understood his pursuits so thoroughly as to be able to render him
essential assistance in his professional duties.
2. Note the use and connections of the word _kindness_. She relieved
him of the cares of a numerous family, and so gave him leisure for his
scientific researches. Does that invalidate what I have before said
regarding paternal duties? On the contrary, it strengthens my words.
Dr. Hitchcock, in the fulness of his beautiful fame, in the ripeness
of his years, confirms the truth of my principles. He knew--the
great-hearted gentleman, the beloved disciple--that these cares
belonged to him by right, and that it was of grace and not of law that
his wife assumed them. So impressed is he with her kindness, so filled
with gratitude is his magnanimous heart, that he even ventures to run
the risk of wounding her delicacy by offering thanks in this public
manner; shielding her, however, from every breath of offence by
skilfully declaring her freedom from all participation in the
publicity. _He_ uses the word kindness properly. It was a kindness,
indeed, for her to step out of her own sphere and assume the burdens
of his; but her husband's love was her impelling motive, and his
gratitude her exceeding great reward. Not strictly her duty, it became
undoubtedly her delight. For love is lavish. Love counts no sacrifice,
knows of none. For a husband who loved and recognized her, a wife
would bear Atlas on her shoulders. Only when it is coldly reckoned
upon as a right, coldly received as a due, does service become
servitude.
Read now the dedication of that royal book "On Liberty," by John
Stuart Mill, "one of the most powerful and original thinkers of the
nineteenth century," a man of culture so thorough that his has been
said to be the most cultivated mind of the age:--
"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and
in part the author, of all that is best in my writings,--the friend
and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest
incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward,--I dedicate
this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs
as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very
insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some
of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful
re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I
but capable of interpreting to the world one half the great thoughts
and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the
medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from
anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but
unrivalled wisdom."
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, we are told by encyclopedists, was
educated in a masculine range of studies, and with a masculine
strictness of intellectual discipline. The poets and philosophers of
Greece were the companions of her mind. In imaginative power and
originality of intellectual construction she is said to be entitled to
the very first place among the later English poets. She had considered
carefully, and was capable of treating wisely, the deepest social
problems which have engaged the attention of the most sagacious and
practical minds. Society in the aggregate, and the self-consciousness
of the solitary individual, were held in her grasp with equal ease,
and observed with equal accuracy. She had a statesman's comprehension
of the social and political problems which perplex the well-wishers of
Italy, and discussed them with the spirit of a statesman. This is not
my pronunciamento nor my language, but those of Hon. George S.
Hillard.
With a word fitly spoken this eminently strong-minded woman drew to
her side a poet of poets, and he in turn drew her to his heart.
When ten years of marriage had made him so well acquainted with his
wife as to give weight to his testimony, he wrote, at the close of a
volume of poems called "Men and Women," "One word more,"--surely the
seemliest word that ever poet uttered. He sang of the one sonnet that
Rafael wrote, of the one picture that Dante painted,--
"Once, and only once, and for one only,
(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient,"--
and somewhat sadly adds:--
"I shall never, in the years remaining,
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues,
Make you music that should all-express me;
So it seems: I stand on my attainment.
This of verse alone, one life allows me;
Other heights in other lives, God willing--
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love.
"Yet a semblance of resource avails us--
Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it.
Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
Lines I write the first time and the last time.
* * * * *
He who writes may write for once, as I do.
"Love, you saw me gather men and women,
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy.
* * * * *