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.