decided. It was universally read in Scotland, and very generally even in
England, where its humour could less be appreciated. The great demand
soon induced the publishers to print a cheap edition; and, in the native
country of the writer, it was to be seen in the hands of all classes.
Miss Benger relates, that in Stirlingshire a person named Isabel Irvine,
who had been Miss Hamilton's attendant when she was at school there some
thirty or forty years before, and to whom, we suppose, a copy had been
sent by the authoress, made money by lending it out among her
neighbours. It is believed, too, not to have been without effect in
making the peasantry ashamed of the indolence and slovenliness which it
exposed and ridiculed. "Perhaps few books," observes a friend and
countryman of Miss Hamilton's, in a sketch of her character and her
literary and other services to her country, which Miss Benger has
printed, "have been more extensively useful. The peculiar humour of this
work, by irritating our national pride, has produced a wonderful spirit
of improvement. The cheap edition is to be found in every village
library; and Mrs M'Clarty's example has provoked many a Scotch housewife
into cleanliness and good order."
Miss Benger thus describes Miss Hamilton's ordinary mode of life after
she took up her residence in Edinburgh: "The morning, whenever her
infirmities admitted, was devoted to study. At two o'clock she descended
to the drawing-room, where she commonly found some intimate friend ready
to receive her. If no engagement intervened, the interval from seven
till ten was occupied with some interesting book, which, according to
her good Aunt Marshall's rule, was read aloud for the benefit of the
whole party. On Monday, she deviated from the general system, by
admitting visitors all the morning; and such was the esteem for her
character, and such the relish for her society, that this private levee
was attended by the most brilliant persons in Edinburgh, and commonly
protracted till a late hour. But it was in _the heartsome ingle-nook_ by
her _ain fireside_, when the world was shut out, and its cares, and
conflicts, and pretensions consigned to temporary oblivion, that Mrs
Hamilton was most truly known and most perfectly enjoyed. Of anecdote
she was inexhaustible, and in narrative she dramatised with such effect
that she almost personated those whom she described."
"All who had the happiness to know this amiable woman," said Miss
Edgeworth, in a tribute to her memory, which she contributed to an Irish
paper soon after Mrs Hamilton's death, "will with one accord bear
testimony to the truth of that feeling of affection which her
benevolence, kindness, and cheerfulness of temper inspired. She thought
so little of herself, so much of others, that it was impossible she
could--superior as she was--excite envy. She put everybody at ease in
her company, and in good humour and good spirits with themselves. So far
from being a restraint on the young and lively, she encouraged by her
sympathy their openness and gaiety. She never flattered, but she always
formed the most favourable opinion, that truth and good sense would
permit, of every individual who came near her. Instead, therefore, of
fearing and shunning her reputation, all loved and courted her society."
She died on the 23d July 1816, in the sixtieth year of her age.
COUNTESS DE VEMIEIRO.
[1760.]
SISMONDI.
The Academy of Sciences in Portugal having proposed a prize for the best
Portuguese tragedy, on the 13th of May 1788 conferred the laurel-crown
on "Osmia," a tragedy which proved to be the production of a lady, the
Countess de Vemieiro. On opening the sealed envelope accompanying the
piece, which usually conveys the name of the author, there was found
only a direction, in case "Osmia" should prove successful, to devote the
proceeds to the cultivation of olives, a species of fruit from which
Portugal might derive great advantages. It was with some difficulty that
the name of the modest writer of this work, published in 1795, in
quarto, was made known to the world. Bouterwek has erroneously
attributed it to another lady, very justly celebrated in Portugal,
Catharina de Sousa, the same who singly ventured to oppose the violence
of the Marquis de Pombal, whose son she refused in marriage. From the
family of this illustrious lady I learned that the tragedy of "Osmia"
was not really the production of her pen.
In this line of composition, so rarely attempted by female genius, the
Countess de Vemieiro displays a singular purity of taste, an exquisite
delicacy of feeling, and an interest derived rather from passion than
from circumstances,--qualities, indeed, which more particularly
distinguish her sex. In the catastrophe, as well as in the rest of the
piece, the Countess de Vemieiro appears to have studied the laws of the
French theatre; and, in the vivacity of her dialogue, Voltaire, rather
than Corneille or Racine, would seem to have been kept in view. The
whole is composed in iambic verse, free from rhyme; and we are, perhaps,
justified in asserting that this tragedy is the only one which the
Portuguese theatre can properly be said to possess.
JOANNA BAILLIE.
[BORN 1762. DIED 1851.]
PROFESSOR SPALDING.
The daughter of a parish minister in Bothwell in Lanarkshire. Her mother
was sister of John and William Hunter, the famous anatomists. Her life
was spent in domestic privacy, and marked by no events more important
than the appearance of her successive works. Her brother, who became Sir
Matthew Baillie, having settled as physician in London, Miss Baillie
removed thither at an early age. She resided in the metropolis or its
neighbourhood almost constantly, and died at Hampstead in February 1851.
Her first volume of dramas was published in 1798. Their design, as to
which it is not too much to say that the works were good in spite of it,
not by means of it, was indicated in the title, "A Series of Plays, in
which it is Attempted to Delineate the Stronger Passions of the Mind,
each Passion being the Subject of a Tragedy and a Comedy." A second
volume of the "Plays of the Passions" appeared in 1802, and a third in
1812. The tragedies are fine poems, noble in sentiment, and classical
and vigorous in language; but they were not fit for the stage, and "De
Montfort" itself was with difficulty supported for a while by the acting
of John Kemble and Mrs Siddons. The tragedy of "The Family Legend," not
contained in the series, was acted in Edinburgh in 1809, after a visit
the poetess had paid to Sir Walter Scott. In 1836 she published another
series of "Plays of the Passions," of which "Henriquez" and "The
Separation," the former a very striking piece, were attempted on the
stage. Some of Miss Baillie's small pieces were exceedingly good.
JOSEPHINE.
[BORN 1763. DIED 1814.]
ALISON.
Few persons in that elevated rank have undergone such varieties of
fortune as Josephine [first wife of Napoleon], and fewer still have
borne so well the ordeal both of prosperity and adversity. Born in the
middle class of society, she was the wife of a respectable but obscure
officer. The Revolution afterwards threw her into a dungeon, where she
was saved from a scaffold only by the fall of Robespierre. The hand of
Napoleon made her successively the partner of every rank, from the
general's staff to the emperor's throne; and the same connection
consigned her, at the very highest point of her elevation, to
degradation and seclusion--the loss of her consequence, separation from
her husband, the sacrifice of her affections. Stripped of her influence,
cast down from her rank, wounded in her feelings, the divorced empress
found the calamity, felt in any rank, of being childless, the envenomed
dart which pierced her to the heart.
It was no common character which could pass through such marvellous
changes of fortune unmarked by any decided stain, unsullied by any tears
of suffering. If, during the confusion of all moral ideas, consequent on
the first triumphs of the Revolution, her reputation did not escape the
breath of scandal; and if the favourite of Barras occasioned, even when
the wife of Napoleon, some frightful fits of jealousy in her husband;
she maintained an exemplary decorum when seated on the consular and
imperial throne, and communicated a degree of elegance to the court of
the Tuileries which could hardly have been expected after the confusion
of ranks and ruin of the old nobility which had preceded her elevation.
Passionately fond of dress, and often blameably extravagant in that
particular, she occasioned no small embarrassment to the treasury by her
expenditure; but this weakness was forgiven in the recollection of its
necessity to compensate the inequality of their years, in the amiable
use which she made of her possessions, the grace of her manner, and the
alacrity with which she was ever ready to exert her influence with her
husband to plead the cause of suffering, or avert the punishment of
innocence. Though little inclined to yield in general to female
persuasion, Napoleon both loved and felt the sway of this amiable
character, and often in his sternest fits he was weaned from violent
measures by her influence. Her influence over him was evinced in the
most conclusive manner by the ascendant which she maintained after their
separation from each other. The divorce, and marriage of Marie Louise,
produced no estrangement between them; in her retirement at Malmaison
she was frequently visited and consulted by the emperor; they
corresponded to the last moment of her life; and the fidelity by which
she adhered to him in his misfortunes won the esteem of his conquerors,
as it must command the respect of all succeeding ages of the world.
ANNE RADCLIFFE.
[BORN 1764. DIED 1823.]
EDINBURGH REVIEW.
Born in 1764, died in 1823, this lady was as truly an inventor, a great
and original writer in the department she had struck out for
herself--whether that department was of the highest kind or not--as the
Richardsons, Fieldings, or Smolletts whom she succeeded, and for a time
threw into the shade; or the Ariosto of the North, before whom her own
star has paled its ineffectual fires. The passion of fear, "the latent
sense of supernatural awe and curiosity concerning whatever is hidden
and mysterious"--these were themes and sources of interest which, prior
to the appearance of her tales, could scarcely be said to have been
touched upon. The "Castle of Otranto" was too obviously a mere caprice
of imagination; its gigantic helmets, its pictures descending from their
frames, its spectral figures dilating themselves in the moonlight to the
height of the castle battlements,--if they did not border on the
ludicrous, no more impressed the mind with any feeling of awe than the
enchantments and talismans, the genii and peris, of the "Arabian
Nights."
A nearer approach to the proper tone of feeling was made in the "Old
English Baron;" but while it must be admitted that Mrs Radcliffe's
principle of composition was to a certain degree anticipated in that
clever production, nothing can illustrate more strongly the superiority
of her powers, the more poetical character of her mind, than a
comparison of the way in which in her different works the principle is
wrought out; the comparative boldness and rudeness of Clara Reeves' mode
of exciting superstitious emotions as contrasted with the profound art,
the multiplied resources, the dexterous display and concealment, the
careful study of that class of emotions on which she was to operate,
which Mrs Radcliffe displays in her supernatural machinery. Certainly
never before or since did any one more accurately perceive the point to
which imagination might be wrought up by a series of hints, glimpses, or
half-heard sounds, consistently at the same time with pleasurable
emotion, and with the continuance of that very state of curiosity and
awe which had been thus excited. The clang of a distant door, a footfall
on the stair, a half-effaced stain of blood, a stream of music floating
over a wood or round some decaying chateau--nay, a very "rat behind the
arras,"--become, in her hands, invested with a mysterious dignity; so
finely has the mind been attuned to sympathise with the terrors of the
sufferer by a train of minute details and artful contrasts, in which all
sights and sounds combine to awaken and render the feeling more intense.
Yet her art is more visible in what she conceals than in what she
displays. "One shade the more, one ray the less," would have left the
picture in darkness; but to have let in any farther the garish light of
day upon her mysteries, would have shown at once the hollowness and
meanness of the puppet which alarmed us, and have broken the spell
beyond the power of reclasping it. Hence, up to the moment when she
chooses to do so herself by those fatal explanations, for which no
reader will ever forgive her, she never loses her hold on the mind. The
very economy with which she avails herself of the talisman of terror
preserves its power to the last undiminished, if not increased. She
merely hints at some fearful thought, and leaves the excited fancy
surrounded by night and silence to give it colour and form.
Of all the passions, that of fear is the only one which Mrs Radcliffe
can be properly said to have painted. More wearisome beings than her
heroines, and anything "more tolerable and not to be endured" than her
love tales, Calprenede or Scuderi never invented. As little have the
sterner passions of jealousy or hatred, or the dark shades of envious
and malignant feeling, formed the subjects of her analysis. Within the
circle of these passions, indeed, she did not feel that she could walk
with security; but her quick perception showed where there was still an
opening in a region of obscurity and twilight as yet all but untrodden.
To that, as to the sphere pointed out to her by nature, she at once
addressed herself; from that, as from a central point, she surveyed the
provinces of passion and imagination, and was content if, without
venturing into their labyrinths, she could render their leading and more
palpable features available to set off and to brighten, by their
variety, the solemnity and gloom of the department which she had chosen.
MISS EDGEWORTH.
[BORN 1767. DIED 1849.]
JEFFREY.
Miss Edgeworth is the great modern mistress in the useful school of true
philosophy, and has eclipsed, we think, the fame of all her
predecessors. By her many excellent tracts on education, she has
conferred a benefit on the whole mass of the population, and discharged,
with exemplary patience as well as extraordinary judgment, a task which
superficial spirits may perhaps mistake for an humble and easy one. By
her popular tales, she has rendered an invaluable service to the
middling and lower classes of the people; and, by her novels, has made a
great and meritorious effort to promote the happiness and respectability
of the higher classes.
There are two great sources of unhappiness to those whom fortune and
nature seem to have placed above the reach of ordinary miseries. The one
is _ennui_, that stagnation of life and feeling which results from the
absence of all motives to exertion, and by which the justice of
Providence has so fully compensated the partiality of fortune, that it
may be fairly doubted whether upon the whole the race of beggars is not
happier than the race of lords, and whether those vulgar wants that are
sometimes so importunate are not in this world the chief ministers of
enjoyment. This is a plague that infects all indolent persons that can
live on in the rank in which they were born, without the necessity of
working; but in a free country it rarely occurs in any great degree of
virulence, except among those who are already at the summit of human
felicity. Below this there is room for ambition, and envy, and
emulation, and all the feverish movements of aspiring vanity and
unresisting selfishness, which act as prophylactics against this more
dark and deadly distemper. It is the canker which corrodes the
full-blown flower of human felicity--the pestilence which smites at the
bright hour of noon.
The other curse of the happy has a range more wide and indiscriminate.
It, too, tortures only the comparatively rich and fortunate, but is most
active among the least distinguished, and abates in malignity as we
ascend to the lofty regions of pure _ennui_. This is the desire of being
fashionable, the restless and insatiable passion to pass for creatures a
little more distinguished than we really are, with the mortification of
frequent failure, and the humiliating consciousness of being perpetually
exposed to it. Among those who are secure of "meat, clothes, and fire,"
and are thus above the chief evils of existence, we do believe that this
is a more prolific source of unhappiness than guilt, disease, or wounded
affection; and that more positive misery is created, and more true
enjoyment excluded, by the eternal fretting and straining of this
pitiful ambition, than by all the ravages of passion, the desolations of
war, or the accidents of mortality. This may appear a strong statement,
but we make it deliberately, and are deeply convinced of its truth. The
wretchedness which it produces may not be so intense, but it is of much
longer duration, and spreads over a far wider circle. It is quite
dreadful indeed to think what a sweep this pest has taken among the
comforts of our prosperous population. To be thought fashionable--that
is, to be thought more opulent and tasteful, and on a footing of
intimacy with a greater number of distinguished persons than they really
are,--is the great and laborious pursuit of four families out of five,
the members of which are exempted from the necessity of daily industry.
These are the giant curses of fashionable life; and Miss Edgeworth has
accordingly dedicated her two best tales to the delineation of their
symptoms. The history of Lord Glenthorn is a fine picture of _ennui_;
that of Almeria, an instructive representation of the miseries of
aspirations after fashion. The moral use of these narratives, therefore,
must consist in warning us against the first approaches of evils which
can never afterwards be resisted. To some readers her tales may seem to
want the fairy colouring of high fancy and romantic tenderness; and it
is very true that they are not poetical love tales, any more than they
are anecdotes of scandal. We have great respect for the admirers of
Rousseau and Petrarca, and we have no doubt that Miss Edgeworth has
great respect for them; but _the world_, both high and low, which she is
labouring to mend, have no sympathy with this respect. They laugh at
these things, and do not understand them; and, therefore, the solid
sense which she possesses presses perhaps rather too closely upon them,
and, though it permits of relief from wit and direct pathos, really
could not be combined with the more luxuriant ornaments of an ardent and
tender imagination.
CHARLOTTE CORDAY.
[BORN 1768. DIED 1793.]
CARLYLE.
Amid which dim ferment of Caen and the world, history specially notices
one thing. In the lobby of the Mansion de l'Intendance, where busy
deputies are coming and going, a young lady, with an aged valet, taking
grave, graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She is of stately Norman
figure, in her twenty-fifth year, of beautiful still countenance; her
name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled D'Armans, while nobility
still was. Barbaroux has given her a note to Deputy Duperret, him who
once drew his sword in the effervescence. Apparently, she will to Paris
on some errand. "She was a republican before the Revolution, and never
wanted energy." A completeness, a decision is in this fair figure: "by
energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself
for his country." What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had emerged
from her secluded stillness suddenly like a star; to gleam for a moment,
and in a moment to be extinguished; to be held in memory, so bright
complete was she, through long centuries! Quitting Cimmerian coalitions
without, and the dim-simmering twenty-five millions within, history will
look fixedly at this one fair apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will
note whither Charlotte moves, how the little life burns forth so
radiant, then vanishes, swallowed of the night.
With Barbaroux's note of introduction, and slight stock of luggage, we
see Charlotte on Tuesday, the 9th of July, seated in the Caen diligence,
with a place for Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her good
journey; her father will find a line left, signifying that she is gone
to England, that he must pardon her and forget her. The drowsy diligence
lumbers along, amid drowsy talk of politics and praise of the Mountain,
in which she mingles not; all night, all day, and again all night. On
Thursday, not long before noon, we are at the bridge of Neuilly. Here is
Paris, with her thousand black domes--the goal and purpose of thy
journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence, in the Rue des Vieux
Augustins, Charlotte demands a room, hastens to bed, sleeps all
afternoon and night, till the morrow morning.
On the morrow morning she delivers her note to Duperret. It relates to
certain family papers which are in the Minister of the Interior's hands,
which a nun at Caen, an old convent-friend of Charlotte's, has need of,
which Duperret shall assist her in getting: this, then, was Charlotte's
errand to Paris? She has finished this in the course of Friday, yet says
nothing of returning. She has seen and silently investigated several
things. The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the
Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not see; he
is sick at present, and confined to home.
About eight o'clock on the Saturday morning she purchases a large
sheath-knife in the Palais-Royal; then straightway, in the Place de
Victoires, takes a hackney-coach. "To the Rue de l'Ecole de Medicine,
No. 44." It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat! The Citoyen Marat is
ill, and cannot be seen, which seems to disappoint her much. Her
business is with Marat, then? Hapless, beautiful Charlotte--hapless,
squalid Marat! From Caen in the utmost west, from Neuchatel in the
utmost east, they two are drawing nigh each other; they two have, very
strangely, business together. Charlotte returning to her inn, despatches
a short note to Marat, signifying that she is from Caen; that she
desires earnestly to see him, and "will put it in his power to do France
a great service." No answer. Charlotte writes another note, still more
pressing; sets out with it by coach, about seven in the evening,
herself.
It is yellow July evening, we say, the 13th of the month. Marat sits,
about half-past seven of the clock, stewing in slipper-bath, sore,
afflicted, ill of Revolution fever--of what other malady this history
had rather not name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man; with precisely
elevenpence-half-penny in paper; with slipper-bath, strong three-footed
stool for writing on the while, and a squalid--washerwoman, one may call
her; that is his civic establishment in Medical-School Street; thither
and not elsewhither has his road led him. Not to the reign of
brotherhood and perfect felicity; yet surely on the way towards that.
Hark! a rap again! A musical woman's voice, refusing to be rejected: it
is the citoyenne who would do France a service. Marat, recognising from
within, cries--Admit her. Charlotte Corday is admitted.
"Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen, the seat of rebellion, and wished to
speak with you." "Be seated, _mon enfant_. Now what are the traitors
doing at Caen--what deputies are at Caen?" Charlotte names some
deputies. "Their heads shall fall within a fortnight," croaks the eager
people's friend, clutching his tablets to write: _Barbaroux, Petion_,
writes he, with bare, shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath; _Petion_
and _Louvet_, and--Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath;
plunges it, with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart. "_A moi,
chere amie_--Help, dear!" no more could the death-choked say or shriek.
The helpful washerwoman running in--there is no friend of the people or
friend of the washerwoman left; but his life with a groan gushes out,
indignant, to the shades below.
On Wednesday evening, about half-past seven o'clock, from the gate of
the Conciergerie, to a city all on tiptoe, the fatal cart issues; seated
on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of murderess; so
beautiful, serene, so full of life; journeying towards death--alone amid
the world. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she resists,
thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation, she submits
with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take
the neckerchief from her neck; a blush of maidenly shame overspreads
that fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it when the
executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to the people. "It is
most true," says Forster, "that he struck the cheek insultingly, for I
saw it with my eyes."