Born at Boston, June 18, 1811: died at Hingham, Mass., May 12, 1850. An American poet. Among her works is “A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England” (1838). She contributed to a number of English and American periodicals, and was editor of “The Ladies’ Companion” for some time. She also wrote a play, “The Happy Release, or the Triumphs of Love.”
Personal
In character she is ardent, sensitive, impulsive—the very soul of truth and honor; a worshipper of the beautiful, with a heart so radically artless as to seem abundant in art; universally admired, respected, and beloved. In person, she is about the medium height, slender even to fragility, graceful whether in action or repose; complexion usually pale; hair black and glossy; eyes a clear, luminous gray, large, and with singular capacity for expression.
The delicacy of her organization was such that she had always the quick sensibility of childhood. The magnetism of life was round about her, and her astonishingly impressible faculties were vital in every part, with a polarity toward beauty, all the various and changing rays of which entered into her consciousness, and were refracted in her conversation and action…. Probably there was never a woman of whom it might be said more truly that to her own sex she was an object almost of worship. She was looked upon for her simplicity, purity, and childlike want of worldly tact or feeling, with involuntary affection; listened to, for her freshness, grace, and brilliancy, with admiration; and remembered, for her unselfishness, quick sympathy, devotedness, capacity of suffering, and high aspirations, with a sentiment approaching reverence.
Of a rare gracefulness and delicacy, Mrs. Osgood lived a truly poetic life. Her unaffected and lively manners, with her ready tact in conversation, combined with an unusual facility in writing verses, charmed a large circle of friends, as her winning lines in the periodicals of the day engaged the attention of the public.
No human face was ever more perfectly chiseled than hers—due regard having been had, meanwhile, to the fact that a woman, and not a statue, was being formed. That calm, pleasant face, those soft and kindly brown eyes, and that wealth of waved dark hair drawn low over her fair, white forehead, in the fashion of the time (since called the “Agnes Robertson”), won many hearts, the homage of which was kept by the always kindly and tender words flowing from the faultless lips seldom opened but to emit a sparkle.
General
There is scarcely a form of poetical composition in which she has not made experiment; and there is none in which she has not very happily succeeded. Her defects are chiefly negative and by no means numerous. Her versification is sometimes exceedingly good, but more frequently feeble through the use of harsh consonants, and such words as “thou’dst” for “thou wouldst,” with other unnecessary contractions, inversions, and obsolete expressions. Her imagery is often mixed;—indeed, it is rarely otherwise. The epigrammatism of her conclusions gives to her poems, as wholes, the air of being more skilfully constructed than they really are. On the other hand, we look in vain throughout her works for an offence against the finer taste, or against decorum—for a low thought or a platitude. A happy refinement—an instinct of the pure and delicate—is one of her most noticeable excellences. She may be properly commended, too, for originality of poetic invention, whether in the conception of a theme or in the manner of treating it. Consequences of this trait are her point and piquancy. Fancy and naïveté appear in all she writes. Regarding the loftier merits, I am forced to speak of her in more measured terms.
She has done much in prose; but all her compositions of this class are instinct with the poetical spirit. She is at times forcible and original, and is frequently picturesque; but throughout all appears the poet, and the affectionate and enthusiastic woman. Of none of our writers has the excellence been more steadily progressive. Every month her powers have seemed to expand and her sympathies to deepen. With an ear delicately susceptible to the harmonies of language, and a light and pleasing fancy, she always wrote musically and often with elegance; but her later poems are marked by freedom of style, a tenderness of feeling, and a wisdom of apprehension, and are informed with a grace, so undefinable, but so pervading and attractive, that the consideration to which she is entitled is altogether different in kind, as well as in degree, from that which was awarded to the playful, piquant, and capricious improvisatrice of former years.
It is very seldom that a woman of any real genius has so great a facility of throwing her fancies into shape as Mrs. Osgood. Had her utterance been more difficult she would have written better…. Mrs. Osgood is somewhat too profuse of her “ah’s” and “oh’s;” they mar the harmony and repose of some of her finest verses…. She has a lively fancy, but little imagination; and her fancy is sometimes displayed so artificially as to induce the reader to put it down altogether to the score of mere prettiness of thought and conceit of expression. Still, there are a feminine power, pathos, and tenderness about the writings of Mrs. Osgood, which will always render her one of the most pleasing poets of the New World.
Her poetical faculty was an endowment of nature, not an acquired art; nor in our research through the annals of female genius have we found another instance, among the Anglo-Saxon race, of the true improvisatrice.
The feminine counterpart of N. P. Willis.
Frances Sargent Osgood was the first woman to write good poetry in this country…. She is especially successful with short poems of a character ardent, arch, and dreamy, such as “A Dancing Girl,” “Calumny,” and “He may go—if he can.”
