Born, Plattsburg, N. Y.: poet. She began composing verses in secret when only four years old and before she could write, using print letters, and on being discovered burned all her compositions. She learned to write when seven years old, composed her earliest preserved poem, “Epitaph on a Robin,” when nine, and at twelve had read many historical and dramatic works, including Shakespeare and Goldsmith. She was sent to school when sixteen, but soon became a victim to consumption. Her preserved poems, numbering 278, were published under the title of “Amir Khan and Other Poems,” 1829; in conjunction with those of her sister, Margaret Miller D., 1850, and with illustrations, 1871.
Personal
She composed with great rapidity; as fast as most persons usually copy. There are several instances of four or five pieces on different subjects, and containing three or four stanzas each, written on the same day. Her thoughts flowed so rapidly, that she often expressed the wish that she had two pair of hands, that she might employ them to transcribe. When “in the vein,” she would write standing, and be wholly abstracted from the company present and their conversation. But if composing a piece of some length, she wished to be entirely alone; she shut herself into her room, darkened the windows, and in summer placed her Æolian harp in the window…. In those pieces on which she bestowed more than ordinary pains, she was very secret; and if they were, by any accident, discovered in their unfinished state, she seldom completed them and often destroyed them. She cared little for any of her works after they were completed: some, indeed, she preserved with care for future correction, but a great proportion she destroyed: very many that are preserved, were rescued from the flames by her mother. Of a complete poem, in five cantos, called “Rodri,” and composed when she was thirteen years of age, a single canto, and part of another, are all that are saved from a destruction which she supposed had obliterated every vestige of it.
Prodigious as the genius of this young creature was, still marvellous after all the abatements that may be made for precociousness and morbid development, there is something yet more captivating in her moral loveliness. Her modesty was not the infusion of another mind, not the result of cultivation, not the effect of good taste; nor was it a veil, cautiously assumed and gracefully worn; but an innate quality, that made her shrink from incense, even though the censer were sanctified by love. Her mind was like the exquisite mirror, that cannot be stained by human breath.
In person she was exceedingly beautiful. Her forehead was high, open, and fair as infancy—her eyes large, dark, and of that soft beaming expression which shows the soul in the glance—her features were fine and symmetrical, and her complexion brilliant, especially when the least excitement moved her feelings. But the prevailing expression of her face was melancholy. Her beauty, as well as her mental endowments, made her the object of much regard; but she shrunk from observation—any particular attention always seemed to give her pain; so exquisite was her modesty. In truth, her soul was too delicate for this “cold world of storms and clouds.” Her imagination never revelled in the “garishness of joy;”—a pensive, meditative mood was the natural tone of her mind. The adverse circumstances by which she was surrounded, no doubt deepened this seriousness, till it became almost morbid melancholy—but no external advantages of fortune would have given to her disposition buoyant cheerfulness.
General
In our own language, except in the cases of Chatterton and Kirke White, we can call to mind no instance of so early, so ardent, and so fatal a pursuit of intellectual advancement…. In these poems there is enough of originality, enough of aspiration, enough of conscious energy, enough of growing power, to warrant any expectations, however sanguine, which the patron, and the friends, and parents of the deceased could have formed; nor can any person rise from the perusal of such a volume without feeling the vanity of human hopes.
“As the work of a girl of sixteen,” most assuredly we do not think it [“Amir Khan”] “prodigious.” In regard to it we may repeat what we said of “Lenore,”—that we have seen finer poems in every respect, written by children of more immature age. It is a creditable composition; nothing beyond this. And, in so saying, we shall startle none but the brainless, and the adopters of ready-made ideas. We are convinced that we express the unuttered sentiment of every educated individual who has read the poem. Nor, having given the plain facts of the case, do we feel called upon to proffer any apology for our flat refusal to play ditto either to Miss Sedgwick, to Mr. Irving, or to Mr. Southey.
As a poet, Lucretia Davidson possessed a depth of thought, a delicacy of expression, a tenderness of sentiment, and an appreciation of melody rarely to be met. She had a fine fancy, a quick imagination, and quiet and unobtrusive humor, and underlying all a foundation of thorough and unwavering thoughtfulness. Her writings are marked by grace, ease and refinement, and evince not only a catholic but a classical taste. Her heart as well as her mind is apparent in her compositions; and soul, as well as intellect, permeates and gives character to her productions.
The great admiration of the best critics of the time for Lucretia Maria Davidson is explained by the difference between her freshness and pensive sentiment and the affectation of the school who preceded her…. Whose works now seem so very commonplace.
Those precocious girls, the Davidson sisters, who died when scarcely out of childhood, leaving volumes of fluent and monotonous verse, long haunted, as pathetic wraiths, the little American Parnassus.
