The “Swan of Lichfield,” born in 1747 at Eyam rectory, Derbyshire, lived from seven at Lichfield, where her father, himself a poet, became a canon. He died in 1790, but she lived on in the bishop’s palace, dear to her friends and correspondents, Mrs. Piozzi, Hayley, Southey, Scott, and died 23d March 1809. She published her poetical novel, “Louisa,” in 1782; her “Sonnets” in 1799; her Life of Dr. Darwin in 1804; but bequeathed to Walter Scott the care of the collected edition of her poems (1810). Her … letters fill six volumes (1811–13).

Personal

  The great command of literary anecdotes which Miss Seward possessed, her ready perception both of the serious and ludicrous, and her just observation and original taste, rendered her society delightful. She entered into every topic with the keenness and vivacity of youth, and it was difficult to associate the idea of advanced years either with her countenance or conversation. The possessor of such quick feelings seldom escapes the portion of pain with which all earthly good are alloyed and tempered. With the warmest heart of her friends, and an unbounded enthusiasm in their service, Miss Seward united a sensibility to coldness, or to injuries real or supposed, which she permitted to disturb her more than was consistent with prudence or with happiness. The same tone of mind rendered her jealous of critical authority, when exercised over her own productions, or those of her friends.

  Miss Seward had not the art of making friends, except among the little circle whom she flattered, and who flattered her. I never saw her myself, but judge only from the manner in which she was spoken of. My friend Shaw, whom she noticed, thought her the greatest of poetesses. She both gave offence and provoked ridicule by her affectation, and bad taste, and pompous pretensions.

  Anna Seward,—the most successful of unendowed poetesses,—appears before us, in or about her thirtieth year—still in all the freshness of her beauty. Let us follow her into her father’s library, as she limps along—for she is lame from the fracture of her knee, years ago—yet she is still, though bent, tall, elegant, and even stately. She seats herself before a table, and with the finest and fairest of hands opens a book. We gaze upon her oval face as she upraises it to look at the old man beside her in his easy chair. That face is full of harmony, as it is of expression. The features are small, regular and delicate; there is something very firm, though very sweet, in the mouth. Her eyes, of auburn, are of the same hue and shade precisely as her hair, which is drawn up from her high forehead, and gathered under a knot of pearls. Around her long, fair throat is a string of pearls sewn to a small band of black velvet; over her shoulder she wears a loose bodice, which is edged with sable fur, leaving her bust exposed in the folds of her loose and short-waisted dress. Large white muslin cambric sleeves fall over her delicate arms.

  Johnson could not appreciate the deep, sensitive nature of Miss Seward, and Boswell hated her, and speaks very disparagingly of her, with his usual coarseness. We can hardly forgive Scott for one of his letters, criticising her little weaknesses, after she was dead. No truer heart ever beat in the breast of any woman.

  Her admirers were wont to call her “The Swan of Lichfield,” and she herself seems to have imagined the title not unmerited. Her chief foible, indeed, must have been this poetry. She could never have earned such hearty esteem from men like Sir Walter Scott, and have avoided so successfully the numberless jealousies which writing people have to encounter, had she not in all her private relations shown herself a much more perfect mistress of her conduct than she was of the poet’s pen.

General

  Misses Seward and Williams, and half-a-dozen more of these harmonious virgins, have no imagination, no novelty. Their thoughts and phrases are like their gown, old remnants cut and turned.

  I had the satisfaction of hearing that Miss Seward’s “Louisa” made you weep; I remember the difficulty I had to make you promise to read it; the same repugnance I have had to combat in a dozen other people; all were as unwilling as if it had been a sermon, or something that was to do them good; but when they had read it, all who had any taste for imagery, sentiment, and poetry thanked me for having compelled them to enjoy this pleasure, and I expected you would have had the same gratitude. Miss Seward’s imagination is bright and glowing; she is rich in expression, and admirable at description; but to counterbalance all these excellences, she has one fault, which is of great magnitude, but which may not perhaps be so great an offence in your eyes as I confess it is in mine: what it is I shall not mention, and in case it does not strike you, I am willing you should call me mean and malignant for suggesting it: a little envy is natural, if not pardonable; when I see Mrs. Pepys, I will tell her my objections.

  I am now doing penance for my ill-breeding, by submitting to edit her posthumous poetry, most of which is absolutely execrable. This, however, is the least of my evils, for when she proposed this bequest to me, which I could not in decency refuse, she combined it with a request that I would publish her whole literary correspondence. This I declined on principle, having a particular aversion at perpetuating that sort of gossip; but what availed it? Lo! to ensure the publication, she left it to an Edinburgh bookseller; and I anticipate the horror of seeing myself advertised for a live poet like a wild beast on a painted streamer, for I understand all her friends are depicted therein in body, mind, and manners. So much for the risks of sentimental correspondence.

  Have you seen Miss Seward’s “Letters?” The names of her correspondents are tempting, but, alas! though addressed to all the eminent literati of the last half century, all the epistles bear the signature of Anna Seward. To tell you the truth, I was always a little shocked at the sort of reputation she bore in poetry. Sometimes affected, sometimes fade, sometimes pedantic, and sometimes tinselly, none of her works were ever simple, graceful, or natural; and I never heard her praised but I fancied the commendation would end in, “It is very well—for a woman!” What I have seen of her letters confirms me in this idea. They are affected, sentimental, and lackadaisical to the highest degree; and her taste is even worse than her execution.

  I have returned for entertainment to a book you will not hold in high respect, even Anna Seward’s “Letters” … and now I must apologise to her memory for the disgust with which I was wont to regard her pedantry, quaint, new-coined phrases, violent prejudices, and some small defects of female delicacy. Yet, after all, she amuses me much, now that the country and rainy weather have made me less critical, and more grateful for entertainment. She is so sincere and friendly, so capable of tasting the beauties of nature and of poetry, that I try hard to forget her injustice to Cowper, and preference of Chatterton to Burns…. Her poetry, on which she prided herself, I cannot taste at all; and her Darwin I cannot endure.

  She was endowed with considerable genius, and with an ample portion of that fine enthusiasm which sometimes may be taken for it; but her taste was far from good, and her numerous productions (a few excepted) are disfigured by florid ornament and elaborate magnificence.

  It cannot be denied that she sometimes showed flashes of genius; but never in continuity. She believed that poetry rather lay in the diction than in the thought; and I am not acquainted with any literary letters, which exhibit so much corrupt judgment, and so many false beauties as her’s. Her sentiments are palpably studied, and disguised, and dressed up. Nothing seems to come from the heart, but all to be put on. I understand the André family say, that in the “Monody on Major André,” all about his attachment, and Honora Sneyd, &c., is a nonsensical falsehood, of her own invention. Among her numerous sonnets, there are not above five or six which are good; and I cannot doubt that Dr. Darwin’s hand is in many of her early poems. The inequalities of all her compositions are of the nature of patchwork.

  She was a woman whose talents, if her language had not been distorted by false notions of excellence in composition, might have retained for her the high station among female writers, which in her palmy days it was allowed that she had won. Though not always a judicious critic, she was never unjust or ungenerous in her censures; and if she frequently mistook glittering faults for beauties, no beauty ever escaped her observation.

  In the course of this autumn [1810] appeared the Poetical Works of Miss Seward, in three volumes, with a Prefatory Memoir of her Life by Scott. This edition had, as we have seen, been enjoined by her last will—but his part in it was an ungrateful one, and the book was among the most unfortunate that James Ballantyne printed, and his brother published, in deference to the personal feelings of their partner. He had been, as was natural, pleased and flattered by the attentions of the Lichfield poetess in the days of his early aspirations after literary distinction; but her verses, which he had with his usual readiness praised to herself beyond their worth, appeared when collected a formidable monument of mediocrity. Her Correspondence, published at the same time by Constable, was considered by him with still greater aversion.

  Affected and superfluous.

  Anna Seward, yclept the Swan of Lichfield, was the Sappho of that era of ribbons and gumflowers, and a fitting one for such a Juvenal as Hayley, and such a Lucretius as Darwin. She wrote with fluency, and poured out a cataract of verse.

  Miss Seward’s own poetry, with much more sentimentality and much less sense and substance, belongs with the same school with Darwin’s. Hers is the feeble commonplace of the same labored, tortuous, and essentially unnatural and untrue style out of which he, with his more powerful and original genius, has evolved for himself a distinctive form or dialect.

  If anything could be more absurd than the poems themselves in their form, conception, and execution, it would be Miss Seward’s criticisms of them. Indeed it is scarcely possible to believe that such a work as her “Life of Dr. Darwin” could have been written in the present century; its stilted style, its unnatural verbiage, its pompous solemnity, are so out of keeping with our modern habits of thought, feeling, and expression.

  Miss Seward’s poetry belongs to the school represented by William Hayley and satirised by Gifford in the “Baviad.”… Her work abounds in every sort of affectation…. At times she shows an appreciation of natural scenery, and now and then turns a good line.