Felicia Hemans in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 38 1835/Obituary
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 38, Pages 96-97
We cannot allow these verses to adorn, with a sad beauty, the pages of this Magazine—more especially as they are the last composed by their distinguished writer, and that only a few days before her death—without at least a passing tribute of regret over an event which has cast a shadow of gloom over the sunshiny fields of cotemporary literature. But two months ago, the beautiful lyric, entitled Despondency and Aspiration, appeared in these pages, and now the sweet fountain of music from which that prophetic strain gushed has ceased to flow. The highly-gifted and accomplished, the patient, the meek, and long-suffering Felicia Hemans is no more. She died on the night of Saturday the 16th May, at Dublin, and met her fate with all the calm resignation of a Christian, conscious that her spirit was winging its flight to another and a better world, where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."
Without disparagement of the living, we scarcely hesitate to say, that in Mrs Hemans our female literature has lost perhaps its brightest ornament. To Joanna Baillie she might be inferior not only in vigour of conception, but in the power of metaphysically analyzing those sentiments and feelings, which constitute the bases of human action; to Mrs Jameson in that critical perception which, from detached fragments of spoken thought, can discriminate the links which bind all into a distinctive character;—to Miss Landon in eloquent facility;—to Caroline Bowles in simple pathos;—and to Mary Mitford in power of thought;—but as a female writer, influencing the female mind, she has undoubtedly stood, for some by-past years, the very first in the first rank; and this pre-eminence has been acknowledged, not only in her own land, but wherever the English tongue is spoken, whether on the banks of the eastern Ganges, or the western Mississippi. Her path was her own ; and shoals of imitators have arisen alike at home, and on the other side of the Atlantic, who, destitute of her animating genius, have mimicked her themes, and parodied her sentiments and language, without being able to reach its height. In her poetry, religious truth, and intellectual beauty meet together; and assuredly it is not the less calculated to refine the taste and exalt the imagination, because it addresses itself almost exclusively to the better feelings of our nature alone. Over all her pictures of humanity are spread the glory and the grace reflected from purity of morals, delicacy of perception and conception, sublimity of religious faith, and warmth of patriotism; and turning from the dark and degraded, whether in subject or sentiment, she seeks out those verdant oases in the desert of human life, on which the affections may most pleasantly rest. Her poetry is intensely and entirely feminine—and, in our estimation, this is the highest praise which could be awarded it—it could have been written by a woman only; for although in the "Records" of her sex we have the female character delineated in all the varied phases of baffled passion and of ill-requitted affection; of heroical self-denial, and of withering hope deferred; of devotedness tried in the furnace of affliction, and of
"Gentle feelings long subdued,
Subdued, and cherished long;"
yet its energy resembles that of the dove, "pecking the hand that hovers o'er its mate," and its exaltation of thought is not of the daring kind, which doubts and derides, or even questions, but which clings to the anchor of hope, and looks forward with faith and reverential fear.
Mrs Hemans has written much, and, as with all authors in like predicament, her strains are of various degrees of excellence. Independently of this, her different works will be differently estimated, as to their relative value, by different minds; but, among the lyrics of the English language which can scarcely die, we hesitate not to assign places to The Hebrew Mother—The Treasures of the Deep—The Spirit's Return—The Homes of England—The Better Land—The Hour of Death—The Trumpet—and The Graves of a Household. In these "gems of purest ray serene," the peculiar genius of Mrs Hemans breathes, and burns, and shines pre-emiment; for her forte lay in depicting whatever tends to beautify and embellish domestic life—the gentle overflowings of love and friendship—"homebred delights and heartfelt happiness"—the associations of local attachment—and the influences of religious feelings over the soul, whether arising from the varied circumstances and situations of man, or from the aspects of external nature. We would only here add, by way of remark, that the writings of Mrs Hemans seem to divide themselves into two pretty distinct portions—the first comprehending her Modern Greece, Wallace, Dartmoor, Sceptic, Historic Scenes, and other productions, up to the publication of the Forest Sanctuary; and the latter comprehending that volume, The Records of Woman, The Scenes and Hymns of Life, and all her subsequent productions. In her earlier works she follows the classic model as contradistinguished from the romantic, and they are inferior in that polish of style and almost gorgeous richness of language, in which her maturer compositions are set. It is evident that new stores of thought were latterly opened up to her, in a more extended acquaintance with the literature of Spain and Germany, as well as by a profounder study of the writings of our great poetical regenerator—Wordsworth.
At this time, and in this place, suffice it to say, regarding the late Mrs Hemans, that she died in her forty-first year. She was born in Liverpool:—her father was a native of Ireland, and, by her mother, a German lady, she was descended from a Venetian family of rank. She married in early life—unhappily;—and left five sons, more than one of whom are of high promise. She passed many years in the quiet seclusion of St Asaph's in North Wales with her mother; three at Wavertree, near Liverpool, after the death of that revered parent; and thence she removed to Dublin, where so recently she breathed her last.
As most erroneous impressions regarding the pecuniary circumstances of the late Mrs Hemans have been recently made on the public mind,—through what channel we know not,—we have much pleasure in saying, that such statements were quite unfounded. Indeed, the exertions of her own fine and fertile genius—appreciated as it was by the world—made such a circumstance sufficiently improbable, and must have rendered her moderately independent, even had she not possessed a regular allowance from her husband, as well as from her brother, Sir Henry Browne. On her younger brother, Major Browne, she had an unlimited credit; and to either of these relatives it would be scarcely a compliment to say, that they would have despised themselves, had they allowed so noble a creature as their sister to have experienced the pressure of that, or of any other distress, which it was in their power to remove. Δ.