Were there to be a feminine literary house of commons, Felicia Hemans might very worthily be called to fill the chair as the speaker—a representative of the whole body, as distinguished from the other estates of the intellectual realm. If she wrote, or rather published prose, for write it we know she does very charmingly,² it would be characterised by the same qualities that mark her poetry, and by some that in poetry cannot well appear:—wit, for instance; but then it would be poetical wit, dealing chiefly in fanciful allusion and brilliant remark, but no puns, not even upon ideas. The wit of society is sparkling repartee, intellectual snap-dragon; poetical wit is essentially imaginative—spiritual rather than satiric—and female wit differs as much from a man's, as Cœur de Lion chopping the iron mace by a single blow of his straight ponderous sword, differed from Sultan Saladin severing the down pillow with his thin shining scimitar.³ But to return to Mrs. Hemans. The remark that genius always gives its best first is by no means worthy of invariable credit. Inferior minds may, by throwing all their energies into a first effort, achieve more than they ever do afterwards;— but it is because, in that first effort, they overleaped and exhausted themselves. Genius of a higher order generally developes gradually, passing through a regular gradation of bud, blossom, and fruit. If a first production evidence the sudden maturity of Siberian summer, it is not improbable but the creative power may be as short-lived. The best writers have all been improving writers—so have the best painters. We have at this moment before our eyes a very interesting document in proof of our assertion—a MS. copy of various poems, the composition, and in the handwriting of Felicia Hemans, when thirteen years old. There is not a greater disparity between the text-hand of the child, and the formed, delicate, flowing autograph of the woman, than exists between their compositions. The oak is not in the acorn; and, except remarkable smoothness of versification, these poems contain nothing of the promise that has since been so splendidly fulfilled. The following is one of the prettiest of these juvenile productions:—To the Muse.space between stanzas Goddess of the magic lay, Ever let me own thy sway! Thine the sweet enchanting art, To charm and to correct the heart—To bid the tear of pity flow, Sacred to thy tale of woe; Or raise the lovely smile of pleasureWith sportive animated measure! space between stanzasO Goddess of the magic lay, To thee my early vows I pay! Still let me wander in thy train, And pour the wild romantic strain: Be mine to rove, by thee inspired, In peaceful vales and scenes retired; For in thy path, O heavenly maid! The roses bloom that never fade.⁴ space between stanzas

That the childhood of our poetess was no common thing—that she had, from its dawn, gleams and visitings of the imagination that has since won for her such high fame—that from very early years she walked in the light of her own spirit, is true; but she has yet manifested more progression than any one who has written as much, and whose course we can as faithfully follow. Leaving her childhood wholly out of the question, and examining those works which have at intervals issued from the press during the last fifteen years, even they may be divided into two distinct styles—the classic and the romantic. Within the time specified, Mrs. Hemans had differed as materially from herself as from any other writer; and not in minor points merely, but in very essential ones. Up to the publication of the "Siege of Valencia," her poetry was correct, classical, and highly polished—but it wanted warmth; it partook more of the nature of statuary than of painting. She fettered her mind with facts and authorities, and drew upon her memory when she should have relied upon her imagination:—she did not possess too much knowledge, but she made too much use of it. She was diffident of herself, and to quote her own admission, "loved to repose under the shadow of mighty names:"—Since then she has acquired the courage which leads to simplicity. Those were the days when she translated, and when her own poetry had somewhat the air of translation:—see the "Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy"—the "Tales and Historic Scenes"—"Modern Greece"—"The Greek Songs"—"The Last Constantine"—and "Dartmoor."⁵ But now this is no longer the case. The sun of feeling has risen upon her song—noon has followed morning—the Promethean touch has been given to the statue—the Memnon yields its music. She writes from and to the heart, putting her memory to its fitting use—that of supplying materials for imagination to fashion and build with. It is ridiculous to compare poets who have no points in common—equally vain to settle their priority of rank: each has his own character and his own station without reference to others. There will always be a difference between the poetry of men and women—so let it be; we have two kinds of excellence instead of one; we have also the pleasure of contrast: we discover that power is the element of man's genius—beauty that of woman's;—and occasionally we reciprocate their respective influence, by discerning the beauty of power, and feeling the power of beauty.

Mrs. Hemans has written pieces that combine power and beauty in an equal degree:—"Cœur de Lion at the Bier of his Father"—"England's Dead"—"The Pilgrim Fathers"—"The Lady of Provence"—"The Vaudois Wife"—and numbers of the same stamp, are "lumps of pure gold:"⁶ poems full of heroism, full of strength, and full of spirit; but the most distinctive feature in the mind and poetry of Mrs. Hemans, is their bias towards the supernatural of thought. Most of her later poems breathe of midnight fancies and lone questionings—of a spirit that muses much and mournfully on the grave, not as for ever shrouding beloved objects from the living, but as a shrine whence high unearthly oracles may be won; and all the magnificence of this universal frame, the stars, the mountains, the deep forest, and the ever-sounding sea, are made ministrants to this form of imagination.

"The Address to a Departed Spirit"—"The Message to the Dead"—"The Spirit's Return," are express embodyings of this longing after visible signs of immortality—this turning inward and looking outward for proof that the dead dream in their long sleep, and dream of us; whilst incidental breathings of the same nature continually occur through her volumes.⁷

As poetry, the productions thus characterized are exquisite; but we deeply regret the habit of thought they embody and display. With the dead we have nothing to do: we shall go to them, but they shall not return to us; and to invest anything like a wish for such return—anything like belief in its possibility—with the charms and subtleties of imagination, fancy, or feeling, is neither wise nor safe. The field of human feeling is large and varied; well has Mrs. Hemans availed herself of its resources! "Others," says an American critic, "have had more dramatic power, more eloquence, more manly strength, but no woman had ever so much true poetry in her heart."⁸ This is saying much; but only look in confirmation at the feelings she loves to pourtray—they are the purest, most profound, or, in other words, the most poetic of our nature:—look again at the characters she delights to honour—the wise, the virtuous, the heroic, the self-devoted, the single-hearted; those who have been faithful unto death in a noble cause; those who have triumphed over suffering and led on to holy deeds; those who have lived, and those who have died for others. Passion is a poetical watchword of the day;—unfortunately, it is also something worse—a species of literary Goule that preys upon good sense, good feeling, and good taste. Nothing now is considered to be said strongly that is said simply—every line must produce "effect"—every word must "tell"; in fact, Who peppers the highest is surest to please.⁹ space between stanzas

The human heart is to be treated like Lord Peter's coat, in the Tale of a Tub: authors need "mind nothing, so they do but tear away."¹⁰ Powerful is another watchword, which palms off every delineation that is monstrous and absurd. Thus, language is powerful when epithets succeed each other as fast and heavily as the strokes of a blacksmith's hammer; ideas are powerful when, like Ossian's ghosts, they reveal themselves in mists and shadow; and characters and incidents are powerful when they are worthy of the Newgate Calendar. Those who catered for the nursery in olden times had very correct notions on these points: Jack the Giant-killer is truly " powerful"; Blue Beard is fraught with "passion."¹¹

The admirable taste possessed by Mrs. Hemans has entirely preserved her from these, the besetting sins of our imaginative literature; she always writes like one who feels that the heart is a sacred thing, not rashly to be wounded; whilst she scorns to lower her own intellectual dignity by an ambitious straining after effect. Her matronly delicacy of thought, her chastened style of expression, her hallowed ideas of happiness as connected with home, and home-enjoyments;—to condense all in one emphatic word, her womanliness is to her intellectual qualities as the morning mist to the landscape, or the evening dew to the flower—that which enhances loveliness without diminishing lustre. To speak confidentially to our trusted friend the public, Mrs. Hemans throws herself into her poetry, and the said self is an English gentlewoman. Now this proves the exceeding good sense of Imagination, a faculty that Utilitarians¹² are so apt to libel: Imagination says, that a poetess ought to be ladylike, claiming acquaintance with the Graces no less than with the Muses; and if it were not so, Imagination would conceive he had a right to be sulky. We appeal to any one who is imaginative. If, after sighing away your soul over some poetic effusion of female genius, a personal introduction took place, and you found the fair author a dashing dragoon-kind of woman—one who could with ease rid her house of a couple of robbers—would you not be startled? Or, if she called upon you to listen to a discussion on Petrarch's love in a voice that brayed upon your sense of hearing, would you not feel that nature had made a mistake? Without a doubt you would. Your understanding might in time be converted; you might bow at the very feet, and solicit the very hand, the proportions of which at first inspired terror, but your Imagination, a recreant to the last, would die maintaining that a poetess ought to be feminine. All that we know are so; and Mrs. Hemans especially. Her Italian extraction somewhat accounts for the passion which, even in childhood, she displayed for sculpture and melody; but her taste for the beautiful, so fastidious, so universal, so unsleeping—(we are not discussing how far such a taste contributes to happiness, but in what way it modifies genius,)—is that, to which may mainly be attributed Mrs. Hemans's separation from all other sisters of the lyre. One or two might be named who excel her in some things, but not one who equals her in this point. Beauty of sound, natural spectacle, form and colour, is to her a life and presence—the spirit that deifies existence—the dial that records time in sunbeams.

All who remember "The Voice of Spring"—"Bring Flowers"—"The Death-Song of the Nightingale"—the "Music of Yesterday"—"The Song of Night," and others of this class, will agree, that "the imperfection of language, the embarrassment of versification, all that is material and mechanical, disappears, and the vision floats before us ‘an aery stream.'"¹³ They seem like some of Shelley's—less written than dreamed.

We must adventure a general remark on the subject of poetry as connected or unconnected with moral truth. It is not necessary that every poem should be a homily in verse, or a sermon written for music; but it is necessary that the bias of a poet's own mind should be towards the beneficial. It has been finely said, that the intention of poetry, like that of christianity, is, "to spiritualize our nature;¹⁴ if so, every poet should emulate the birds that ministered to the prophet in the wilderness, and bring us food from heaven. Such a poet may pourtray the passions, the joys, the griefs, and the affections of earth—but he will not rest among them. Like the angel who appeared to the Hebrew chief, he will touch the offerings with his staff, and there will rise from them, a pure, a heavenly, an aspiring flame. Great improvement has taken place in this respect; there is a holier spirit abroad in our poetry of an imaginative nature; and, in common with some other poets, Mrs. Hemans has given us many poems destined, we trust, in better than a human sense, to "shine as the stars for ever:"—"The Hebrew Mother"—the "Cross in the Wilderness"—"The Trumpet"—"The Fountain of Marah"—"The Penitent"—"The Graves of the Martyrs"—&c.¹⁵ We look for yet more like these, and entreat that we may not look in vain. To our minds Mrs. Hemans always succeeds best when her "strain is of a higher" mood; when she sings to us of "melancholy fear subdued by faith"; and, when, through the tender gloom that habitually hangs over her poetry (twilight on a rose-bed) we have glimpses of that future which alone can "make us less forlorn."¹⁶ For this reason the "Forest Sanctuary" is our first favourite. But Time is, our tedious prose should here have ending.¹⁷ space between stanzas

Had Felicia Hemans belonged to antiquity, it is probable that some of her lyrics might have descended to us, and been considered now as perfect specimens of song. That word reminds us that we have not mentioned one branch of composition in which our poetess especially excels, and to which she appears recently to have given particular attention—we mean songwriting. Our musical readers are probably familiar with many so sweetly set to music by her sister. In songs there should be one thought or one feeling flowing out in simple, natural, melodious words. Mrs. Hemans's best, whilst full of melody, are remarkable for their variety of subject; avoiding sentiment, they contrive to embody knowledge, description, affection; and we hope she will continue this species of writing. Good Mr. Printer's black spirit, and worthy Mr. Editor's angelic spirit, be so good as make room for the following one of six, about to be published (if not already published) by Power— The Lyre and Flower. space between stanzasA lyre its plaintive sweetness pouredForth on the wild wind's track, The stormy wanderer jarred the chord, But gave no music back. O child of song, Bear hence to heaven thy fire; What hopest thou from the reckless throng? Be not like that lost lyre, Not like that lyre. space between stanzasA flower its leaves and odour castOn a swift-rolling wave, Th' unheeding torrent darkly passed, And back no treasure gave. O heart of love! Waste not thy precious dower, Turn to thine only home above; Be not like that lost flower, Not like that flower!¹⁸ space between stanzas

Long may Mr. Power's Strand¹⁹ be strewn with such gems! But to conclude at last: Mrs. Hemans often partakes, it is true, of the modern faults of diffuseness, over-ornament, and want of force; but, taken for all in all, and judged by her best productions, she is a permanent accession to the literature of her country; she has strengthened intellectual refinement, and beautified the cause of virtue. The superb creeping-plants of America often fling themselves across the arms of mighty rivers, uniting the opposite banks by a blooming arch: so should every poet do to truth and goodness—so has Felicia Hemans often done, and been, poetically speaking, a Bridge of Flowers.