the authoress of three tragedies and a comedy, all both printed and
acted before she had reached the age of twenty-two, was at any rate no
common phenomenon. And she had also, it seems, already been long a
diligent student of metaphysics, besides having, while as we gather only
in her teens, ventured so far into the maze of theological speculation
and controversy, as to have been induced to leave the Church of England
in which she had been educated, and to profess herself a Roman Catholic.
The first fruit of her philosophical studies appeared in May 1702, when
she published anonymously a defence of "Locke's Essay on the Human
Understanding," in reply to an attack upon it, which was afterwards
known to have proceeded from the learned and eloquent Dr Thomas Burnet
of the Charter House.
About the beginning of 1707 she returned to the Church of England,
having previously changed her name for another. Mr Cockburn is said to
have been a man of learning and talent, but he never was fortunate in
obtaining much preferment; and throughout the remainder of his life she
had both the cares of a family to occupy her time and thoughts, and very
straitened circumstances to struggle with. In 1726 he became minister of
an episcopal congregation at Aberdeen. Her return to England seems to
have been like the recommencement of existence to her, or the awakening
from a state of torpor. In the last stage of her life, notwithstanding
broken health and some sharp sorrow, her intellectual and literary
activity emulated what she had displayed at the outset of her career. In
1739 she boldly set out upon what we may call a voyage round the world
of metaphysics, in "Remarks upon some Writers in the Controversy
concerning the Foundation of Moral Duty and Moral Obligation;
particularly the Translator of Archbishop King's Origin of Moral Evil
[Dr Edmund Law, afterwards Bishop of Carlisle], and the Author of Divine
Legation of Moses [Warburton]; to which are prefixed some Cursory
Thoughts on the Controversies concerning Necessary Existence, the
Reality and Infinity of Space, the Extension and Place of Spirits, and
on Dr Watt's Notion of Substance." It was not printed till the year
1743, when it was given to the world, without the name of the author, in
"The History of the Works of the Learned."
Mrs Cockburn here adopted Dr Clarke's theory of the foundations of
morality, namely, that the distinctions between virtue and vice are not
created by the declarations or even by the will of the Deity, but arise
out of eternal and immutable relations and essential differences of
things. Not long after, her strength was much worn down by frequent
attacks of asthma, to which she had been subject for many years. "I
have," she says, "very little prospect of tolerable health for any
continuance. My cough returned at the beginning of September, and held
me about two months, but is now succeeded by such a difficulty of
breathing that I do not know which is most grievous; but between them I
am reduced to great weakness." Yet she was at this time engaged upon a
new metaphysical work, which proved to be the most elaborate and able of
all her literary performances, her "Remarks upon the Principles and
Reasonings of Dr Rutherford's Essay on the Nature and Obligations of
Virtue, in Vindication of the Contrary Principles and Reasonings
Enforced in the Writings of Dr Samuel Clarke." The Rev. Dr Thomas
Rutherford, whose essay appeared in 1744, had therein maintained the
doctrine that the test and essence of virtue was its tendency to
promote the good properly understood, whether of the agent or others; in
other words, was utility in the largest sense. When her tract was
finished, Mrs Cockburn sent it to Warburton, whose theory on the subject
of it was different both from Rutherford's and her own, and against
whose views one of her previous works, as we have seen, had been in part
directed. Warburton held that the distinction between virtue and vice
was constituted by the arbitrary will of the Deity. Notwithstanding this
difference of opinion, however, he not only admitted the merit of the
present work in the frankest and most cordial terms, styling it, in a
letter to the authoress, _the strongest and clearest piece of
metaphysics that ever was written_, but took upon himself the charge of
finding a publisher for it; and when it appeared in 1747, it was
introduced by a preface from the pen of Warburton, in which he almost
reiterated those strong expressions, declaring it to contain "all the
clearness of expression, the strength of reason, the precision of logic
and attachment to truth which makes books of this nature really useful
to the common cause of virtue and religion."
This work appears to have attracted much more notice than anything that
Mrs Cockburn had previously done. She was subsequently induced by the
advice of her friends to set about the preparation of a complete
collection of her writings, with the view of publishing it by
subscription. But this task she did not live to see accomplished. At
last, in January 1749, she lost her husband, who appears to have been
about a year older than herself; and this stroke probably shortened her
own existence, which terminated on the 11th of May of the same year.
ELIZABETH BERKELEIGH.
[BORN 1750. DIED 1828.]
TEMPLE BAR.
The youngest daughter of Augustus, fourth Earl of Berkeleigh, born in
1750, came into the world two months ere by the laws of nature she was
to be looked for; and this circumstance, which was a fit prelude to an
eccentric life, had nearly led to an abrupt termination of the infant's
earthly career ere its sands of life had run through the boiling of an
egg. A certain ceremonial was observed in those days when ladies of a
certain rank swelled the rolls of the aristocracy; and the first person
who approached the bed of the noble _accouchee_ was the Countess of
Albemarle, her aunt. The infant which had so unexpectedly claimed its
share of the world had doubly disappointed its mother; first, by being a
girl, when a boy had been predicted with assurance, for Lady Berkeleigh
had previously had four girls in succession, three of them, singularly
enough, at one birth; next, the little being, so far from exhibiting any
signs of the future beauty, presented the most miserable half-alive
aspect imaginable; and there being nothing ready to receive it, a piece
of flannel was huddled round it, and it was left on an arm-chair in a
kind of despair, and for some minutes altogether unheeded, till the
visitor already named was on the point of sitting down on foresaid
arm-chair, and, but for the screams of the attendants, would have
driven out, once and for ever, the small instalment of life-breath the
forlorn babe had been strenuously endeavouring to suck in.
Thereupon Lady Albemarle snatched up the child, took it to the light to
examine it, and observing that it there managed to open a pair of very
bright eyes, pronounced its chances of vitality to be far from
desperate. A wet nurse was therefore immediately procured; and, by dint
of great care, the puny little being was preserved to become eventually
the lovely, accomplished, and vivacious subject of this article
[afterwards to become first Lady Craven, and subsequently the Margravine
of Anspach]. Lady Berkeleigh, who is described by the margravine in her
own memoirs as having but little maternal affection, treated her
youngest daughter with even worse than indifference, and reserved all
the indulgence and attention she was disposed to show to her offspring
for her eldest sister, Lady Georgiana, who was regarded as the beauty.
The neglect and severity of the mother stamped a peculiar air of shyness
and modesty on Lady Elizabeth; and as her natural character was
vivacious, and disposed to gaiety and enjoyment, a contrast was thus
created, which, as she herself very unreservedly confesses, greatly
contributed to her fascination.
Lady Elizabeth had already shot up into a tall, lithe figure; and her
countenance developed the budding signs of that lively beauty which
afterwards distinguished her. At this time, however, though she observes
that many opportunities offered themselves of discovering her own
personal charms, she protests herself to have been entirely ignorant of
them; the exclusive admiration that was bestowed by her mother on her
elder sister leading her to imagine herself rather ill-favoured than
otherwise. There was no such blindness to the fascination of her person
in after years, and her memoirs teem with amusing evidences of the high
sense she entertained of her outward attractions. Among others is a
passage in which she criticises the various portraits that have been
painted of her; and though Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose portrait of her at
Petworth seems charming enough, and Romney and Madame Lebrun exerted in
turns, and more than once, their skill to transfer her graces to canvas,
she declares they, none of them, have done justice either to her face or
figure. The same candour, in exposing her thorough self-appreciation as
regards her mental and moral excellences, is observable through the
entertaining sketch of her career, and gives at first the impression
that one is listening to the weakest and vainest woman that ever
breathed. A little further acquaintance, however, removes this notion
almost altogether. When a woman has been sought and admired all her life
for her beauty, grace, sense, wit, and good nature by the highest and
most distinguished personages of her age, it would seem more shocking
than the grossest display of vanity to affect a mincing reserve and
humility in speaking of her own merits.
[Lady Elizabeth was afterwards married to Mr Craven, who came to be Lord
Craven. The marriage, at its outset, seems to have been in its most
essential respects a happy one. The margravine acknowledges that Lord
Craven possessed the highest admiration for the refined character and
many graces and accomplishments of his young wife; and the contests
between them were the amiable ones arising from his unbounded generosity
towards her, and the refusals his offered presents met with from her
discretion and modesty. At length a discovery was made by Lady Craven,
which led to that eventful change in her life and fortunes, but for
which, in all probability, the subject of this sketch would have
attracted as little attention as many other brilliant noblewomen of her
day. Lord Craven had for some time absented himself for long periods
from home, under pretexts which his wife discovered to be false; but all
doubts were removed when Lord Macartney came to the injured wife and
entreated her to prevent Lord Craven from travelling in one of his
coaches with a woman calling herself Lady Craven. This led to the
explosion of a mine of intrigue. Lady Craven then went to France, and
subsequently travelled over all Europe, at the various courts of which
she was honoured and feted. During her stay in Paris she had received
the visits of the Margrave of Anspach, who had known her from childhood,
and had formed a strong attachment to her. He had now invited her to
pass some time at Anspach with himself and the margravine as his adopted
sister. To this she agreed; and, subsequently, by a strange coincidence,
the Margravine and Lord Craven having died about the same time, she
became the wife of the margrave. In 1816 the margrave died, and from
that time the margravine chiefly resided at Naples, where she died in
the seventy-eighth year of her age.]
CAROLINE HERSCHEL.
[BORN 1750. DIED 1848.]
PROFESSOR CRAIK.
Another distinguished name can scarcely be forgotten or omitted here,
although its honoured and venerable possessor still lives [in 1847],
connecting the present with the past age. Caroline Herschel, the sister
of the illustrious Sir William Herschel, was, as is well known, the
associate of her brother, both in the business of observation and in
that of calculation, throughout the whole of his splendid career. Four
comets are enumerated as discovered by her--one on the 1st of August
1786, another on the 21st of December 1788, another on the 7th of
January 1790, another on the 8th of October 1793.
After the death of her brother, on the 23d of August 1822, Miss Herschel
returned to his and her own native country, Hanover, and there proceeded
to employ herself in drawing up a catalogue of twenty-five thousand
nebulae discovered by her brother, which she completed in 1828, and for
which the Astronomical Society of London that year voted her a gold
medal. The newspapers announced that she celebrated the ninety-seventh
anniversary of her birth-day on the 16th of March 1847. "On that
occasion, the king, it is stated on the authority of a letter from
Hanover, sent to compliment her; the prince and princess-royal paid her
a visit, and the latter presented her with a magnificent arm-chair, the
back of which had been embroidered by her royal highness; and the
minister of Prussia, in the name of his sovereign, remitted to her the
gold medal awarded for the extension of the sciences." Notwithstanding
her advanced age and bodily infirmities, Miss Herschel, it has since
been stated by her distinguished nephew, Sir John F. W. Herschel, in a
letter to the _Athenaeum_, is still [1847] in possession of her
faculties.
MADAME D'ARBLAY.
[BORN 1752. DIED 1840.]
MACAULAY.
The daughter of Dr Burney deserves to have the progress of her mind
recorded from her ninth to her twenty-fifth year. When her education had
proceeded no further than her hornbook she lost her mother, and
thenceforward educated herself. Her father appears to have been as bad a
father as a very honest, affectionate, and sweet-tempered man can well
be. He loved his daughter dearly; but it never seems to have occurred to
him that a parent has other duties to perform to children than that of
fondling them. No governess, no teacher of any art or of any language,
was provided for her. But one of her sisters showed her how to write,
and before she was fourteen she began to find pleasure in reading. It
was not, however, by reading that her intellect was formed. Indeed, when
her best novels were produced, her knowledge of books was very small.
When at the height of her fame, she was unacquainted with the most
celebrated writings of Voltaire and Moliere, and, what seems still more
extraordinary, had never heard or seen a line of Churchill, who, when
she was a girl, was the most popular of living poets. It is particularly
deserving of observation, that she appears to have been by no means a
novel-reader. Her father's library was large, and he had admitted into
it so many books which rigid moralists generally exclude, that he felt
uneasy, as he afterwards owned, when Johnson began to examine the
shelves. But in the whole collection there was only a single
novel--Fielding's "Amelia."
But the great book of human nature was turned over before Fanny Burney.
A society, various and brilliant, was sometimes to be found in Dr
Burney's cabin. Johnson and he met frequently, and agreed most
harmoniously. One tie, indeed, was awanting to their mutual attachment.
Burney loved his own art, music, passionately, and Johnson just knew the
bell of St Clement's Church from the organ. They had, however, many
topics in common; and in winter nights their conversations were
sometimes prolonged till the fire had gone out, and the candles had
burned away to the wicks. Burney's admiration of the powers which had
produced "Rasselas" and the "Rambler" bordered on idolatry. Johnson, on
the other hand, condescended to growl out that Burney was an honest
fellow, a man whom it was impossible not to like. Garrick, too, was a
frequent visitor in Poland Street. That wonderful actor loved the
society of children, partly from good nature, and partly from vanity.
The ecstasies of mirth and terror which his gestures and play of
countenance never failed to produce in a nursery, flattered him quite as
much as the applause of pure critics. He often exhibited all his powers
of memory for the amusement of the little Burneys, awed them by
shuddering and crouching as if he saw a ghost, scared them by raving
like a maniac in Saint Luke's, and then at once became an auctioneer, a
chimney-sweeper, or an old woman, and made them laugh till the tears ran
down their cheeks.
Fanny's propensity to novel-writing could not be kept down. She told
her father she had written a novel ["Evelina"]. On so grave an occasion
it was surely his duty to give his best counsel to his daughter, to win
her confidence, to prevent her exposing herself if her book was a bad
one, and if it were a good one to see that the terms which she made with
the publisher were likely to be beneficial to her. Instead of this he
only stared, burst out a-laughing, kissed her, gave her leave to do as
she liked, and never even asked the name of the work. The contract with
Lowndes was speedily concluded. Twenty pounds were given for the
copyright, and were accepted by Fanny with delight. Her father's
inexcusable neglect of his duty happily caused her no worse evil than
the loss of L1200 or L1500. After many delays, "Evelina" appeared in
1778. Poor Fanny was sick with terror, and durst hardly stir out of
doors. Some days passed before anything was heard of the book. Soon,
however, the first accents of praise begin to be heard. The keepers of
the circulating libraries reported that everybody was asking for
"Evelina," and that some person had guessed Anstey to be the author.
Scholars and statesmen, who contemptuously abandoned the crowd of
romances to Miss Lydia Languish and Miss Sukey Saunter, were not ashamed
to own that they could not tear themselves away from "Evelina." After
producing other novels, for one of which, "Camilla," she is said to have
received three thousand guineas, and encountering many strange
vicissitudes, Madame D'Arblay died at the age of eighty-eight.
MADAME ROLAND.
[BORN 1754. DIED 1793.]
CARLYLE.
A far nobler victim follows, one who will claim remembrance from several
centuries--Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, the wife of Roland. Queenly, sublime in
her uncomplaining sorrow, seemed she to Riouffe in her prison.
"Something more than is usually found in the looks of women painted
itself," says he, "in those large black eyes of hers, full of expression
and sweetness. She spoke to me often at the grate; we were all attentive
round her, in a sort of admiration and astonishment. She expressed
herself with a purity, with a harmony and prosody, that made her
language like music, of which the ear could never have enough. Her
conversation was serious, not cold. Coming from the mouth of a beautiful
woman, it was frank and courageous as that of a great man." "And yet her
maid said, 'Before you she collects her strength; but, in her own room,
she will sit three hours sometimes leaning on the window and weeping.'"
She has been in prison,--liberated once, but recaptured the same
hour,--ever since the 1st of June, in agitation and uncertainty, which
has gradually settled down into the last stern certainty--that of death.
In the Abbaye Prison, she occupied Charlotte Corday's apartment. Here,
in the Conciergerie, she speaks with Riouffe; with ex-minister Claviere
calls the beheaded twenty-two "_nos amis_, our friends," whom all are so
soon to follow. During these five months, those Memoirs of hers were
written which all the world still reads.
But now, on the 8th of November, "clad in white," says Riouffe, "with
her long black hair hanging down to her girdle," she is gone to the
judgment-bar. She returned with a quick step; lifted her finger, to
signify to us that she was doomed; her eyes seemed to have been wet.
Fouquier-Tinville's questions had been "brutal;" offended female honour
flung them back on him with scorn, not without tears. And now, short
preparation soon done, she too shall go her last road. There went with
her a certain Lamarche, "director of assignat-printing," whose dejection
she endeavoured to cheer. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked
for pen and paper, "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in
her"--a remarkable request--which was refused. Looking at the statue of
Liberty which stands there, she says, "O Liberty, what things are done
in thy name!" For Lamarche's sake she will die first, to show him how
easy it is to die. "Contrary to the order," says Samson. "Pshaw, you
cannot refuse the last request of a lady;" and Samson yielded.
Noble white vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud eyes,
long black hair flowing down to the girdle, and as brave a heart as ever
beat in woman's bosom! Like a white Grecian statue, serenely complete,
she shines in that black wreck of things, long memorable. Honour to
great Nature who, in Paris city, in the era of Noble-sentiment and
Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Phlipon, and nourish her clear perennial
womanhood, though but on Logics, Encyclopedies, and the Gospel according
to Jean-Jacques! Biography will long remember that trait of asking for a
pen "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." It is as a
little light-beam, shedding softness and a kind of sacredness over all
that preceded; so in her, too, there was an unnameable; she, too, was a
daughter of the Infinite; there were mysteries which Philosophism had
not dreamt of! She left long written counsels to her little girl. She
said her husband would not survive her.
Some days afterwards, Roland, hearing the news of what happened on the
8th, embraces his kind friends at Rouen; leaves their kind house which
had given him refuge; goes forth, with farewell too sad for tears. On
the morrow morning, 16th of the month, "some four leagues from Rouen,
Paris-ward, near Bourg-Baudoin, in M. Normand's avenue," there is seen,
sitting leant against a tree, the figure of a rigorous wrinkled man,
stiff now in the rigour of death, a cane-sword run through his heart,
and at his feet this writing: "Whoever thou art that findest me lying,
respect my remains; they are those of a man who consecrated all his life
to being useful, and who has died, as he lived, virtuous and honest. Not
fear, but indignation, made me quit my retreat, on learning that my wife
had been murdered. I wished not to remain longer on an earth polluted
with crimes."
MARIE ANTOINETTE.
[BORN 1755. DIED 1793.]
CARLYLE.
On Monday, 14th October 1793, a cause is pending in the Palais de
Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as these stone walls never
witnessed--the trial of Marie Antoinette. The once brightest of queens,
now tarnished, defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier-Tinville's
judgment-bar, answering for her life. The indictment was delivered her
last night. To such changes of human fortune, what words are adequate?
Silence alone is adequate.
There are few printed things one meets with of such tragic, almost
ghastly significance, as those bald pages of the _Bulletin du Tribunal
Revolutionnaire_, which bear title, "Trial of the Widow Capet." Dim,
dim, as if in disastrous eclipse, like the pale kingdoms of Dis!
Plutonic judges, Plutonic Tinville; encircled nine times with Styx and
Lethe, with Fire-Phlegethon and Cocytus, named of Lamentation! The very
witnesses summoned are like ghosts; exculpatory, inculpatory, they
themselves are all hovering over death and doom; they are known in our
imagination as the prey of the guillotine. Tall _ci-devant_ Count
d'Estaing, anxious to show himself patriot, cannot escape; nor Bailly,
who, when asked if he knows the accused, answers with a reverent
inclination towards her, "Ah, yes, I know Madame." Ex-patriots are
here, sharply dealt with as Procureur Manuel; ex-ministers, shorn of
their splendour. We have cold aristocratic impassivity, faithful to
itself even in Tartarus; rabid stupidity of patriot corporals, patriot
washerwomen, who have much to say of plots, treasons, August tenth, old
insurrection of women. For all now has become a crime in her who has
lost.