"His son, I am told, even at that early period of life, maintained his opinions, on every subject, with the same sturdy, dogmatical, and arrogant fierceness with which he now overbears all opposition to them in company.

"At present, we can well conceive the probability of his dogmatism being patiently supported by attending admirers, awed by the literary eminence on which he stands. But how great must have been Mr. Walmesley's love of genius; how great his generous respect for its dependent situation, that could so far restrain a naturally impetuous temper, as to induce him to suffer insolent sallies from the son of an indigent bookseller, and on a subject which, so handled by people of his own rank, he would have dashed back in their faces with no small degree of asperity!"

In June 1764, Miss Seward was afflicted by a family loss of the tenderest description. Her only sister suddenly fell a victim to a violent fever, when on the point of marriage with Mr. Porter, whose mother had been married to Johnson. Miss Seward's description of the progress of this disease is to be found in a letter produced by Mr. Scott. On this occasion she returned to Gotham, in Nottinghamshire. Hence she writes:

"Early next week I shall accompany my father to Eyam, his living in Derbyshire. I shall feel a mournful sweetness in returning to the mountain-heights of that village, in whose bosom my sister and myself first saw light, and where we sported away the hours of infancy till I was six, she five years old; and which we have revisited together of late years, passing together some of the summer months in that romantic retreat."

On the occasion of her sister's death, Miss Seward wrote the poem, entitled, "THE VISIONS;" an elegy which now stands the first in the collection. It is not marked either by the faults or by the beauties of her characteristic manner, and possesses no extraordinary merit either of pathos or expression; yet perhaps may be admitted to exhibit a great command of language, considering the age of the writer.

In March 1764, Miss S. had the resolution to renounce a matrimonial engagement with a Mr. T. in consequence of its being disapproved by their mutual parents. In 1765, she appears to have entertained a transient partiality for Cornet Vyse, afterwards a general, whom she has honoured by an elegy, which stands fourth in this co lection.

From this collection it appears, that she continued to write occasional verses, for her own amusement, during the succeeding years, the last of them being dated in 1773. The cause of the chasm in her published correspondence between 1768 and 1784 is not explained.

At length a MONODY ON THE DEATH OF GARRICK, to which the prize was adjudged by Lady Miller's poetical institution at Bath-Easton, attracted so much notice, as to bring Miss Seward fairly before the public in the character of a poet. The monody consists of only forty-eight lines, which are very mellifluous and highly-finished; they possess, however, but little pathos, and are neither distinguished by vigour of thouglit, or novelty of invention.

The praise conferred on this monody, encouraged the author to take a higher flight; and in 1780, THE ELEGY ON CAPTAIN COOK exhibited to the world a specimen of poetical excellence which few have surpassed, and she herself could never afterwards equal. It is nervous in style, without laborious phraseology; gorgeous, without the glitter of false ornament ; rich, without superfluity of epithet; animated, without af fected personification; pathetic, without the cant of sensibility. One remark, however, forcibly occurs on reading the poem,that she appears to have formed her ear and her fancy to the exact model of her early friend and preceptor Dr. Darwin. Witness the following extract:

"From this fair fane, along the silver sands,
Two sister-virgins wave their snowy hands;
First gentle Flora-round her smiling brow
Leaves of new forms, and flow'rs uncultur'd glow;
Thin folds of vegetable silk, behind,

Shade her white neck, and wanton in the wind;

Strange sweets, where'er she turns, perfume the glades,
And fruits unnam'd adorn the bending shades.
-Next Fauna treads, in youthful beauty's pride,
A playful Kangroo bounding by her side;
Around the Nymph her beauteous Pois display
Their varied plumes, and trill the dulcet lay;
A Giant-bat, with leathern wings outspread,
Umbrella light, hangs quiv'ring o'er her head.
As o'er the cliff her graceful steps she bends,
On glitt'ring wing her insect train attends.
With diamond-eye her scaly tribes survey
Their goddess-nymph, and gambol in the spray.
With earnest gaze the still enamour'd crew
Mark the fair forms; and as they pass, pursue;
But round the steepy rocks, and dangerous strand,
Rolls the white surf, and shipwreck guards the land.
So, when of old, Sicilian shores along,

Enchanting Syrens trill'd th' alluring song,

Bound to the mast the charm'd Ulysses hears,
And drinks the sweet tones with insatiate ears;
Strains the strong cords, upbraids the prosp'rous gale,
And sighs, as Wisdom spreads the flying sail."

The next year Miss Seward gave to the world her monody on Major André, which, though perhaps it may be somewhat more pathetic than the elegy on Cook, is very inferior in strength and brilliance. It is too frequently lengthened into languor, and is occasionally prosaic; but it abounds in harmonious, and has many very pleasing, and some very affecting passages.

In 1782 was published the poetical novel, entitled, " LOUISA." The first hundred and fifty-six lines, which are the best, were written when the author was only nineteen years old: viz. in 1762. In this opening there are several passages of beautiful and affecting description, which could only have flowed from a mind dipped in Castalian dew. The success of this poem was doubtful it had its admirers; but we do not believe that it was ever popular. In many respects the story is ill conducted; the verses are often flat; the artifices of poetic composition are too often apparent; and on the whole it is trite and tedious.

Miss Seward had by this time experienced the ills to which authorship is exposed. She had inhaled the incense of applause and flattery; but she had also breathed in the vaporous atmosphere of criticism:-she was not prepared for these vicissitudes. She appears to have possessed a frame of too irritable a texture patiently and tranquilly to weigh the quantity of praise against the quantity of censure, and with modest complacency to balance her compensations.

Her first publications had been received with unqualified commendation; her youth, her sex, and the freshness of her fame, excited an enthusiasm in her favour. These recommendations were of a nature not to last; and every succeeding poem was examined with severer justice and increased impartiality. As her faults were prominent, the censure was pointed, and for some years she was fearful of encountering public criticism by any separate work; the activity of her muse, in the mean time, found occasional exercise in the periodical prints, which afforded her a temporary shelter from the asperity of professed criti

cism.

In 1787, however, appeared her ODE ON GENERAL ELLIOT'S RETURN FROM GIBRALTAR. There is nothing in it, which if coming from one unknown to fame, would have attracted notice.

Among her occasional poems of the next year is one entitled,

"EYAM;" containing several lines of beautiful description, and moral pathos.

She occupied herself at this time by making paraphrases of various odes of Horace, which she communicated to the Gentleman's Magazine-and of these productions she expresses herself to be very proud. They illustrate the common remark, that authors are bad judges of the comparative merit of their own compositions. She did not understand Latin; they were, therefore, founded on the prose versions of some of her friends. They are so paltry that criticism cannot condescend to them. Her faults are never the faults of the original; and though she is ever at variance with her model, she never deviates into excellence. She is tawdry, diffuse, obscure, and laboured; with scarcely any of the prettiness, she has all the pertness of modern poetry.

In 1797, Miss S. again ventured before the world with her LLANGOLLEN VALE, a poem, descriptive of the retreat of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby. It met with severe usage from many of the critics. The poem is unsuccessfully laboured; and betrays, throughout, the struggle of a mind intent upon substituting the artifices of language for the force of nature. It was accompanied by two others, entitled, "WREXHAM,” and "HOYLE LAKE."

The MEMOIRS of the author's friend, DR. DARWIN, which were published in 1804, were not calculated to add to her reputation, or to close her labours with honour. The matter and the manner are equally reprehensible.

Her collection of sonnets must be admitted to contain some very beautiful and affecting specimens. They were intended, it seems, to restore the strict rules of the legitimate sonnet, of which Petrarch was in a manner the real founder. After this effort Miss Seward attempted no considerable poem. Her powers declined as age advanced, and by all her attempts at composition, which were many during her latter years, she was writing herself out of reputation with unconscious alacrity; by consulting the ease of her faculties, she would have consulted the interests of her fame; but to live in unison with time and nature is the happiness of those, only, who have learned to put a sober value on the pleasures of a fugitive being, and to resign with cheerfulness, what if we struggle too long to retain, must at length be forfeited with disgrace.

"For a year or two," says her editor, "preceding 1807, Miss Seward had been, occasionally, engaged in preparing for the press the edition of her poems which is now given to the public. She had reconsidered them individually, and made

such additions and corrections as she conceived necessary. In harvest, 1807, she was assailed by a scorbutic disorder, which proved invincible; and in March, 1809, the editor had the pain of receiving the last farewell of his honoured friend. It was written at intervals, and the hand-writing gradually degenerated from the distinct and beautiful manuscript which Miss Seward used to write, into a scrawl so feebly traced as to be nearly illegible." We are then presented by Mr. Scott with her parting letter to him, written in the intervals of the paroxysms of her disorder. They disclose a powerful ascendancy of her intellectual part, notwithstanding her debility and sufferings of body, which raises our admiration. But we are far, very far indeed, from admiring the turn of thought and feeling which characterized, or the topics which engaged her dying hours. She thus concludes this farewell epistle :

"I am not able to add more than what I think will be my last benediction on you and yours. O! what a blessing is a sudden death! I always pray for it, but am not worthy to have my prayer granted. I thank you for all your kindness, and for the delightful hours your talents have given me,

affectionately your friend,

A. SEWARD."

On Thursday the 23d day of March, 1809, Miss Seward was seized with an universal stupor, which continued till the 25th, at six o'clock in the evening, when she expired.

Mr. Scott then presents us with a posthumous letter to himself, in which Miss Seward bequeathed to him her literary performances, for the publishing of which there was doubtless a sufficient reason, as it shews his warrant as editor; but we are persuaded he must have felt his delicacy distressed in printing the testimony it contains to his own. "illustrious muse."

We have not time or room to enter into the character of Miss Seward. We must confess ourselves, however, to feel very differently on this subject from the editors of the poems and letters. Those who will give themselves the trouble of reading the correspondence of this lady, will be thereby enabled to develop her temper and the tone of her feelings and sentiments without our help. They will find in them, for the most part, decisive marks of a vigorous and excursive mind, but we think it will be very difficult for them to hold her in that high degree of moral estimation, to which her editors appear to think her entitled. Her abuse of Cowper throughout her letters, and in one of her poems, is mean, unjust, and unfeeling. What she could find so unamia