Born [Felicia Dorothea Browne], in Liverpool, 25 Sept. 1793. Family removed to Gwrych, North Wales, 1800. Educated there. Early precocity; a volume of poems pub., 1808. Married to Capt. Hemans, 1812; separated from him, 1818. Contrib. to “Edinburgh Monthly Mag.,” 1820. Prize Poem, Royal Soc. of Literature, 1821. Tragedy, “The Vespers of Palermo,” produced at Covent Garden, 12 Dec. 1823. Contrib. to “Blackwood’s Mag.,” and “Colburn’s Mag.” Life mainly spent in Wales till 1828; removed to Liverpool, 1828; to Dublin, 1831. Died, in Dublin, 16 May 1835; buried in St. Anne’s Church. Works: “Poems,” 1808; “England and Spain,” 1808; “The Domestic Affections,” 1812; “The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy,” 1816; “Modern Greece” (anon.), 1817; “Translations from Camoens and other poets” (anon.), 1818; “Tales and Historic Scenes,” 1819; “The Meeting of Bruce and Wallace,” 1819; “The Sceptic,” 1820; “Superstition and Error,” 1820; “Stanzas on the Death of the late King,” 1820; “Dartmoor,” 1821; “Welsh Melodies,” 1822; “The Vespers of Palermo” (anon.), 1823; “The Siege of Valencia,” 1823; “Lays of Many Lands,” 1825; “The Forest Sanctuary,” 1825; “Poems” (American edn.), 1825; “Records of Women,” 1828 (2nd edn. same year); “Songs of the Affections,” 1830; “Hymns on the Works of Nature,” 1833; “Hymns for Childhood,” 1834; “National Lyrics and Songs for Music,” 1834; “Scenes and Hymns of Life,” 1834; Collected Works: ed. by Mrs. Hughes (7 vols.), 1839. Life: by Mrs. Hughes, 1839; by W. M. Rossetti, in 1873 edn. of “Works.”

Personal

  She is entirely feminine, and her language has a charm like that of her verse,—the same ease and peculiar grace, with more vivacity. If affliction had not laid a heavy hand upon her, she would be playful: she has not the slightest tinge of affectation, and is so refined, so gentle, that you must both love and respect her.

  Egeria was totally different from any other woman I had ever seen, either in Italy or England. She did not dazzle, she subdued me. Other women might be more commanding, more versatile, more acute: but I never saw one so exquisitely feminine. Her birth, her education, but above all the genius with which she was gifted, combined to inspire a passion for the ethereal, the tender, the imaginative, the heroic—in one word, the beautiful. It was in her a faculty divine, and yet of daily life; it touched all things, but, like a sunbeam, touched them with a “golden finger.” Anything abstract or scientific was unintelligible and distasteful to her. Her knowledge was extensive and various; but true to the first principle of her nature, it was poetry that she sought in history, scenery, character, and religious belief—poetry that guided all her studies, governed all her thoughts, coloured all her conversation. Her nature was at once simple and profound: there was no room in her mind for philosophy, nor in her heart for ambition; the one was filled by imagination, the other engrossed by tenderness. She had a passive temper, but decided tastes; any one might influence, but very few impressed her. Her strength and her weakness alike lay in her affections. These would sometimes make her weep at a word,—at others, imbue her with courage; so that she was alternately a “falcon-hearted dove,” and “a reed shaken with the wind.” Her voice was a sad sweet melody, and her spirits reminded me of an old poet’s description of the orange-tree, with its

“Golden lamps hid in a night of green,”

or of those Spanish gardens where the pomegranate grows beside the cypress. Her gladness was like a burst of sunlight; and, if in her depression she resembled night, it was night bearing her stars. I might describe and describe forever, but I should never succeed in portraying Egeria. She was a Muse, a Grace, a variable child, a dependent woman, the Italy of human beings.

  One loves her as a Christian woman even more than one admires her as a writer.

	Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,
	Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;
	For Her who, ere her summer faded,
	Has sunk into a breathless sleep.

	Nor mourn, O living One, because her part in life was mourning:
	Would she have lost the poet’s fire for anguish of the burning?—
	The minstrel harp, for the strained string? the tripod, for the afflated
	Woe? or the vision, for those tears in which it shone dilated?
	Perhaps she shuddered while the world’s cold hand her brow was wreathing,
	But never wronged that mystic breath which breathed in all her breathing,
	Which drew from rocky earth and man, abstractions high and moving—
	Beauty, if not the beautiful, and love, if not the loving.
	*        *        *        *        *
	Be happy, crowned and living One! and, as thy dust decayeth
	May thine own England say for thee, what now for Her it sayeth—
	“Albeit softly in our ears her silver song was ringing,
	The foot-fall of her parting soul is softer than her singing.”

  She was little understood, even by her friends, and as too blindly admired by some, as she was foolishly and unjustly commented upon by those who would not know her, or could not understand her. Her life was one of misfortune, and false influence on the part of those who had her character in their hands at a time when it might have taken any form; and had they taught her that the imagination gains strength and scope from the reason being cultivated in proportion with it; that nothing is first rate and marked for an enduring fame but something which shall profit the world and expand its sympathies, as well as please its ear and its fancy, she might, I know, have taken a stand in our literature far higher than she did. As it was, she was coming to this calmer and loftier state of mind when she died.

  I have been reading Mrs. Hemans’s “Life,” and am disappointed in her. She seems to me to have belonged to another age of the world—to have been a Sappho or a Corinne—a creature of those times when the elect few had no sympathy with their race, when they were born for music and song, for pas seuls and pas de deux, and not to be linked in with their kind, to lean on the strong and sustain the feeble. She shows how inadequate sentiment is, how feeble the theory of beauty compared with that sense of duty, that perception and love of the image of God, which gives an interest to the meanest of our fellow-creatures, and a dignity to the commonest office of social life. In our practical, working-day world we can scarcely conceive such an existence as Mrs. H’s.

  The mantling bloom of her cheeks was shaded by a profusion of natural ringlets, of a rich golden brown; and the ever-varying expression of her brilliant eyes gave a changeful play to her countenance, which would have made it impossible for any painter to do justice to it…. Some of the happiest days the young poetess ever passed were during the occasional visits to some friends at Conway, where the charms of the scenery, combining all that is most beautiful in wood, water, and ruin, are sufficient to inspire the most prosaic temperament with a certain degree of enthusiasm; and it may therefore well be supposed, how fervently a soul, constituted like hers, would worship Nature at so fitting a shrine. With that happy versatility, which was at all times a leading characteristic of her mind, she would now enter with child-like playfulness into the enjoyments of a mountain scramble, or a picnic water party, the gayest of the merry band, of whom some are now, like herself, laid low, some far away in foreign lands, some changed by sorrow, and all by time; and then, in a graver mood, dream away hours of pensive contemplation amidst the grey ruins of that noblest of Welsh castles, standing, as it then did, in solitary grandeur, unapproached by bridge or causeway, flinging its broad shadow across the tributary waves which washed its regal walls.

  Her remains were interred in a vault beneath St. Ann’s Church [Dublin] but a short distance from her house, on the same side of the street; where, on the wall, under the gallery, on the right hand, as you enter, you observe a tablet, bearing this inscription—“In the vault beneath are deposited the Mortal Remains of Felicia Hemans, who died, May 16, 1835.”

  As a woman she was to a considerable degree a spoilt child of the world. She had been early in life distinguished for talents, and poems of hers were published whilst she was a girl. She had also been handsome in her youth, but her education had been most unfortunate. She was totally ignorant of housewifery, and could as easily have managed the spear of Minerva as her needle…. These notices of Mrs. Hemans would be very unsatisfactory to her intimate friends, as indeed they are to myself, not so much for what is said, but what for brevity’s sake is left unsaid. Let it suffice to add there was much sympathy between us, and if opportunity had been allowed me to see more of her, I should have loved and valued her accordingly. As it is, I remember her with true affection for her amiable qualities, and above all for her delicate and irreproachable conduct during her long separation from an unfeeling husband, whom she had been led to marry from the romantic notions of inexperienced youth. Upon this husband I never heard her cast the least reproach, nor did I ever hear her even name him, though she did not forbear wholly to touch upon her domestic position; but never so as that any fault could be found with her manner of adverting to it.

  Mrs. Hemans in private society was just what you might expect from the impassioned and yet melancholy style of her writings. She was ardent rather than amusing; enthusiastic rather than animated. Her imagination was vivid, her language energetic, her sentiments elevated; but the private sorrow she had experienced had given a sombre cast to her thoughts, which formed as it were a dark setting to the flashes of genius that shone through her conversation.

  An engraved portrait of her by the American artist William E. West, one of the three which he painted in 1827, shows us that Mrs. Hemans, at the age of thirty-four, was eminently pleasing and good-looking, with an air of amiability and sprightly gentleness, and of confiding candour which, while none the less perfectly womanly, might almost be termed childlike in its limpid depth. The features are correct and harmonious; the eyes full; the contour amply and elegantly rounded. In height she was neither tall nor short. A sufficient wealth of naturally clustering hair, golden in early youth, but by this time of a rich auburn, shades the capacious but not over-developed forehead, and the lightly penciled eyebrows. The bust and form have the fullness of a mature period of life; and it would appear that Mrs. Hemans was somewhat short-necked and high-shouldered, partly detracting from delicacy of proportion, and of general aspect or impression on the eye. We would rather judge of her by this portrait (which her sister pronounces a good likeness) than by another engraved in Mr. Chorley’s “Memorials.” This latter was executed in Dublin in 1831 by a young artist named Edward Robinson. It makes Mrs. Hemans look younger than in the earlier portrait by West, and may on that ground alone be surmised unfaithful; and, though younger, it also makes her heavier and less refined.

  Hers has not been a happy life here. In her eighteenth year she married Captain Hemans, an Irish gentleman of good family. A few years after they were wedded he became a permanent resident in Italy, his wife continuing to reside in Wales, rearing and educating five sons who were born to them, working for her own and their honorable independence. The eldest son was George Willoughby Hemans, afterward the distinguished civil engineer. The reasons of their separation remain inexplicable; and surely had now better not be inquired into. But it does not seem that any shadow of blame was attributable to the admirable woman who taught so much, and taught so well, in imperishable verse: no cloud rests upon her memory. That parting is a mystery, and must remain so. Yet there have been few women more calculated to win and retain the love of man; being—as she was—handsome, gracefully formed, her personal charms considerable; while her mind, at once of the highest and finest order, could not have failed to render her a delightful companion and a sympathetic helpmeet. Hers was that beauty that depends mainly on expression. Like her writings, it was thoroughly womanly. Her auburn hair, parted over her brow, fell on either side in luxuriant curls. Her eyes are described as “dove-like,” with a chastened character that appertained to sadness. “A calm repose,” so writes one of her friends, “not unmingled with melancholy, was the characteristic expression of her face.”

  Many years ago some one gave the writer a little miniature of Mrs. Hemans, by the help of which it is still quite possible to conjure up an outward semblance, and to put a shape to one’s impression of the impulsive being who paid so dearly for her happiness, her sensibility, her undoubted powers and beauty, and her charming poetical gifts…. The picture represents a woman of about twenty-eight; she has dark glossy curls, delicately marked features, a high color; her bright, full, sad eyes, her laughing lips, give one an impression of womanly predominance, and melancholy and gayety all at once. She wears a black dress with gigot sleeves and the jewelry of her time—the buckle, the hair chain and locket, and also a golden ornament in her dark hair. There is perhaps (but this is merest guess-work), a certain sense of limitation—shall I call it persistency?—in the general expression of the countenance. It is hard to generalize from so slight a sketch, but perhaps something of this impulsiveness and inadaptability may have been the secret of much of the trouble of her life.

General

  I do not despise Mrs. Hemans; but if she knit blue stockings instead of wearing them, it would be better. You are taken in by that false stilted trashy style, which is a mixture of all the styles of the day, which are all bombastic (I don’t except my own—no one has done more through negligence to corrupt the language); but it is neither English nor poetry.

  I really do not know how I can advise you respecting Mrs. H. It seems a case on which you alone can decide—to wit, whether her contributions are or are not worth the money. My opinion, on the whole, is as follows: She is the best of our female writers of what is called Poetry. Her verses are often beautiful, always melodious, but—I think they should either be all accepted or all declined. For none of them that I have read are unworthy of a place in that department of a Magazine, as verses go—and she is a popular enough writer, entitled, I think, to that right. It would be offensive to her to have them returned; and I scarcely think any of them should be rejected. Are they then worth the money? Confound me if I know! To me they are not. But, I believe, to many readers they give much pleasure. They make an agreeable break, and they are generally pleasant reading. Besides, she was, I presume, flattered by their reception, and perhaps might feel hurt by being cut off, as well as injured by the loss of the coin. I am rather disposed to think you should go on with her; but I will converse with you about it, as it certainly is a point rather perplexing. It is surprising that she is not run out entirely, and dry as a whistle. Poetry is certainly a drug—but hers don’t seem to disgust. I conclude my unsatisfactory epistle.

  Mrs. Hemans is somewhat too poetical for my taste—too many flowers I mean, and too little fruit.

  Mrs. Hemans’s favourable opinion of my little books is worth that of twenty mobs as far as one’s intellectual gratification is concerned, and I am obliged to you for communicating it to me. Next to your own unrivalled Joanna Baillie, Mrs. H. is surely entitled to rank first among all our female writers. Many write with as much feeling, some with taste as refined and as melodious diction, but no other woman that I know of with such loftiness and holiness of thought as Mrs. Hemans, always saving and excepting the gifted Joanna.

  Had her writings been merely harmless, we should not have entered into an analysis of them; but the moral charm which is spread over them is so peculiar, so full of nature and truth and deep feeling, that her productions claim at once the praise of exquisite purity and poetic excellence. She adds the dignity of her sex to a high sense of the duties of a poet; she writes with buoyancy, yet with earnestness; her poems bear the impress of a character worthy of admiration. In the pursuit of literary renown she never forgets what is due to feminine reserve. We perceive a mind, endowed with powers to aspire; and are still further pleased to find no unsatisfied cravings, no passionate pursuit of remote objects, but high endowments, graced by contentment.

  If taste and elegance be titles to enduring fame, we might venture securely to promise that rich boon to the author before us; who adds to those great merits a tenderness and loftiness of feeling, and an ethereal purity of sentiment, which could only emanate from the soul of woman. She must beware, however, of becoming too voluminous; and must not venture again on anything so long as the “Forest Sanctuary.” But, if the next generation inherits our taste for short poems, we are persuaded it will not readily allow her to be forgotten. For we do not hesitate to say, that she is, beyond all comparison, the most touching and accomplished writer of occasional verses that our literature has yet to boast of.

  Thou art quite right about Mrs. Hemans’s poetry, and thou art not by any means peculiar. But it is no stately undertone of German in it that offends thee. She wants true simplicity. Her heart is right, but her taste is rather vitiated. It is just like her dress; it has too much glare and contrast of colour to be in pure taste. I felt this when I saw her.

  Felicia Hemans is the authoress of many a plaintive and mournful strain. She has shown high sentiment and heroic feelings occasionally, but her affections are with the gentle, the meek, and the wounded in spirit.

	Thy song around our daily path
	Flung beauty born of dreams,
	And scattered o’er the actual world
	The spirit’s sunny gleams.
	Mysterious influence, that to earth
	Brings down the heaven above,
	And fills the universal heart
	With universal love.
	Such gifts were thine,—as from the block,
	The unformed and the cold,
	The sculptor calls to breathing life
	Some shape of perfect mould,
	So thou from common thoughts and things
	Didst call a charmed song,
	Which on a sweet and swelling tide
	Bore the full soul along.

  It [“Records of Women”] was, indeed, written from the fulness of her heart; and the execution of most of the sketches which it contains admirably seconds the emotions under the strong influence of which it was undertaken and completed. This has been the most popular of Mrs. Hemans’ works. The last written of its poems are composed with the depressing prospect before her of a dispersion of the home-circle wherein she had always found shelter, and leisure to pursue her engrossing calling undisturbed—which was to send her forth into the world, for the first time—alone, and as innocent of its ways and wisdom as a child.

	Why should we say
	Farewell to thee, since every unborn age
	Shall mix thee with its household charities?
	The hoary sire shall bow his deafen’d ear,
	And greet thy sweet words with his benison;
	The mother shrine thee as a vestal flame
	In the lone temple of her sanctity;
	And the young child who takes thee by the hand,
	Shall travel with a surer step to heaven.

  Her inspiration always pauses at the feminine point. It never “oversteps the modesty of nature,” nor the dignity and decorum of womanhood. She is no Sibyl, tossed to and fro in the tempest of furious excitement, but ever a “deep, majestical, and high-souled woman”—the calm mistress of the highest and stormiest of her emotions. The finest compliment we can pay her—perhaps the finest compliment that it is possible to pay to a woman as a moral being,—is to compare her to “one of Shakspere’s women,” and to say, had Imogen, or Isabella or Cornelia become an authoress, she had so written.

  Showed Shelley some poems to which I had subscribed, by Felicia Browne, whom I had met in North Wales, where she had been on a visit at the house of a connexion of mine. She was then sixteen, and it was impossible not to be struck with the beauty (for beautiful she was), the grace, and charming simplicity and naïveté of this interesting girl; and on my return from Denbighshire I made her and her works frequent subjects of conversation with Shelley. Her juvenile productions, remarkable certainly for her age—and some of those which the volume contained were written when she was a mere child—made a powerful impression on Shelley, ever enthusiastic in his admiration of talent; and with a prophetic spirit he foresaw the coming greatness of that genius which, under the name of Hemans, afterward electrified the world.

  Is the most generally admired of all English female poets, and deservedly so…. She seldom reached the sublime, but her thought was often profound, and her nice analysis of the best affections, her delicate perception of the minute circumstances that awaken and guide the sensibilities, the readiness with which she seized upon the noble, the picturesque, the graceful and the tender, designate her above every English writer but one as the “poet of the heart.”

  Mrs. Hemans’s poetry was of a far higher order. It was deformed by a mannerism of that degree which is fatal to permanence of popularity; and there is not much substance of thought. But the sentiment is commonly as true and natural as the expression of it is otherwise; and of a depth which always insures its freshness. The substantial power of Mrs. Hemans is, perhaps, best shown in the choice of the subjects of her smaller pieces, which is so rich in suggestion, and so full of the keen and sagacious apprehension that belongs to genius, that it is almost a greater treat to look over the table of contents of her minor poems, than to read the poems themselves. Her fame—a genuine and reasonable fame, depending upon her qualities, and not upon any accident of the time—had spread widely over the European and American continents, many years before her death; and there are thousands living to whom the slightest casual recollection of some of her poems will be, to the day of their death, like the singing of a dirge in the recesses of their hearts.

  By far the most popular of our poetesses, alike at home and beyond the Atlantic: nor do I say undeservedly…. In her poetry, religious truth, moral purity, and intellectual beauty ever meet together; and assuredly it is not less calculated to refine the taste and exalt the imagination, because it addresses itself almost exclusively to the better feelings of our nature. Over all her pictures of humanity are spread the glory and the grace reflected from virtuous purity, delicacy of perception and conception, sublimity of religious faith, home-bred delights, and the generous expansive ardour of patriotism; while, 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 my estimation, this is the highest praise which, in one point of view, could be awarded it. It could have been written by a woman only…. Mrs. Hemans, above all female writers, was distinguished for her rich tones—the voice at once sweet and full—that carried them to the heart, awakening the feelings as well as the imagination.

	Gone is she
	Who shrouded Casa-Bianca, she who cast
	The iron mould of Ivan, yet whose song
	Was soft and varied as the nightingale’s,
	And heard above all others.

  I got a little chance to retort, by telling him [Dr. Whewell] that we had outgrown Mrs. Hemans in America, and that we now read Mrs. Browning more. He laughed at it, and said that Mrs. Browning’s poetry was so coarse that he could not tolerate it, and he was amused to hear that any people had got above Mrs. Hemans; and he asked me if we had outgrown Homer.

  Her character as an author is now fixed in public estimation: she is decidedly one of the first lyric poets which England has produced. Without the classic charm of Gray, or the burning thoughts of Campbell, she has produced some pieces which have struck nearly as deep into the national heart as the verses of either of these writers. She is eminently national in her ideas; the most beautiful of her odes are those which—founded on domestic feelings, rekindling the family affections, appealing to the images of the country, the national associations, the patriotic emotions—have touched a chord which is responded to in every generous heart. The great objection to her poems, which has chiefly prevented them hitherto from taking their place beside the most popular British classics, is their number.

  As to the effective utterance of original truth, Mrs. Hemans is silent; but for pathos, sentiment, and gorgeous richness of language, we know no lyrics superior to her little pieces.

  According to the spiritual or emotional condition of those who peruse, it would be found that a poem by this authoress which to one reader would be graceful and tender would to another be touching, and to a third poignantly pathetic. The first we can suppose to be a man, and the third a woman; or the first a critic, the second a “poetical reader,” and the third a sensitive nature attuned to sympathy by suffering.

  I know that it has long been out of fashion to admire Mrs. Hemans, or even to read her poems; and one must admit that it is before a higher literary canon that her writings have declined in value. But there are regions of experience where literary taste blends with memories of past emotion. No criticism can demonstrate out of existence the facts of human nature. I have heard a learned symphony that left me critical, approving, cold; then heard a child singing with reedy voice some little song familiar in early days, which quickened the pulse and started tears to the eyes: green fields were in it, and the sweet playmates, and the long-lost realm of childhood’s sunshine. What can art do better than to raise the happiest emotions? What can I read on the page of Goethe, of Wordsworth, or Tennyson, which can set all these birds and flowers and laden bees around Dove-nest singing the songs that evoke from the shadowy past sweet loving faces of those who sang them to me in life’s rosy morning-time?

  Fifty years ago few poets were more popular than Mrs. Hemans; her verses were familiar to all hearts, and won praise from such fastidious critics as Gifford and Jeffrey, no less than from Wordsworth, Scott and Byron. Yet now they are chiefly forgotten, and without injustice. Her tedious romantic tales, her dramas characterless and without invention, are more frequently below than above the mean of merit. Her lyric poetry is more memorable; yet this, even, is less to be valued for its own sake than as the revelation of a delicate and attractive personality…. Her simplicity was never the result of an inspired clearness of vision, as with Wordsworth or with Blake, but was rather the expression of a nature whose vistas were not wide enough to be indistinct, and whose plan of the globe ignored the unseen side.

  Her poems are like this description of herself. They are always sweet, liquid, and melodious: they mean as much as so soft and beautiful a nature ever requires to mean: “Sweet records, promises as sweet”—the gentle sentiments that lie on the surface, subdued sorrows, chastened happiness.

  It was much that Mrs. Hemans was the first poetess to devote her verse to nature, as Wordsworth was the first poet to do so. But Wordsworth had a healthier way of studying it; he may be said to have gone to nature for teaching, while Mrs. Hemans went to it for sympathy. There is as much difference between the outlook of the poetess and that of the poet upon the external universe, as there is between the way in which Longfellow and the way in which Emerson regarded it.

  Surely the reader is impressed with the way in which a woman’s genius, even if not of the very highest order, may retain its hold after her death, on seeing the late statements of Mr. Routledge, the great publisher of cheap books in England, as to the continued demand for Mrs. Hemans’s poetry. In the last generation the pure and melodious muse of this lady had great reputation; her American editor was Professor Andrews Norton, father of the present Professor Charles Eliot Norton, and one of the most cultivated critics of his day; and it appears from the late memoirs of Garrison that her verses were long the favorite food of that strong and heroic mind. Yet it has been the custom to speak of her popularity as a thing of the past. Now arrives Mr. Routledge, and gives the figures as to his sales of the different poets in a single calendar year. First comes Longfellow, with the extraordinary sale of 6,000 copies; then we drop to Scott, with 3,170; Shakespeare, 2,700; Byron, 2,380; Moore, 2,276; Burns, 2,250. To these succeeds Mrs. Hemans, with a sale of 1,900 copies, Milton falling short of her by 50, and no one else showing much more than half that demand. Hood had 980 purchasers, Cowper, 800, and all others less; Shelley had 500 and Keats but 40. Of course this is hardly even an approximate estimate of the comparative popularity of these poets, since much would depend, for instance, on the multiplicity or value of rival editions; but it proves in a general way that Mrs. Hemans holds her own, in point of readers, fifty years after her death. What other form of influence for man or woman equals this?

  It is usual to couple her [Miss Landon] with Mrs. Hemans; but this, I think, without justice. Mrs. Hemans was unquestionably her superior in poetic energy, variety, and rhythmic power. Although this writer’s poems are weakened by the sentimentality of her epoch, much of her work has true poetic qualities and lyrical impulse. Her wide popularity has not extended to the present generation, and she now runs the risk of being unduly overlooked.

  Her poetry lacks deep thought or subtle emotion, and although it had immense popularity in its day, its sweetness and fluency have long palled upon the taste of thoughtful readers.

  Her verse at its best was spontaneous, simple, and direct. Her descriptions of nature, though, of course, lacking the profound insight and sense of communion which are the chief attributes of Wordsworth’s descriptions, were true to fact and free from any touch of pedantry…. Felicia Hemans has now ceased to be a poet for poets. Her diffuseness alone would prevent her from being this. She not only rarely achieved concentration: she seems rarely to have tried to achieve it. Diffuseness such as hers is fatal to the life of poetry…. No body of verse ever survived that was as diffuse as is much of Felicia Hemans’s poetry. Her name will still be held in honour however because of a few of her poems. For so universal is the human interest of some of her themes that it is difficult to believe a time will come when she will cease to be read by the people.

  Mrs. Hemans is now unduly depreciated, but the difference between the most favourable and the least favourable critic can only be with regard to the degree of weakness charged against her.

  Accomplishment without genius, and amiability without passion, reappear, translated into an atmosphere of lyric exaltation, in the once famous poetry of Mrs. Hemans…. Of all the English Romantic poets, Mrs. Hemans expresses with the richest intensity the more superficial and transient elements of Romanticism. She is at the beck and call of whatever is touched with the pathos of the far away, of the bygone—scenes of reminiscence or farewell, laments of exiles and dirges for the dead. Her imagination floats romantically aloof from actuality, but it quite lacks the creative energy of the great Romantics, and her fabrics are neither real substance nor right dreams. Her expression is spontaneously picturesque and spontaneously melodious; and both qualities captivated her public; but she never learned either to modulate or to subdue her effects. She paints with few colours, all bright. Her pages are a tissue of blue sky, golden corn, flashing swords and waving banners, the murmur of pines, and the voices of children.