MEMOIR.
It is in obedience to the dictates of affection, and in compliance with the wishes of those who share that sentiment with me, that I have undertaken to edit the poems contained in this volume. Some of them have already appeared, at various dates, in 'All The Year Round,' 'Once A Week,' and the 'Athenæum,' whilst the first and longest, "The Story of Two Lives," was print in 'Fraser's Magazine' in 1864. I have to acknowledge the courtesy of the proprietors of those periodicals in permitting me to include them in th present collection.
The gifted a virtuous authoress, whose death last winter filled the widest circle of friends I have ever heard of one person possessing, with feelings of the deepest pain, was known to the public rather as a novelist than as a poet; 'The Cost of a Secret,' and 'Agnes Tremorne,' though by no means the first in merit of her stories, having secured on their appearance an exceptional an exceptional amount of attention. But neither the talents nor the tastes of Isa Blagden found their fitting field in the modern novel, which depends for its success either on skilfully-constructed plot, on highly-finished portraitures
