Educator and philosopher, born in Cambridge, Mass., 23d May, 1810, lost at sea 15th July, 1850. She received a broad education and early felt a deep interest in social questions. She learned French, German and the classics, and her associates in Cambridge were persons of culture, experience and advanced ideas. In 1833 the family removed to Groton, Mass., where she gave lessons to private classes in languages and other studies. Her father, Timothy Fuller, died of cholera, 26th September, 1835, and his death threw the family upon Margaret for support, and her plans for a trip to Europe were abandoned. In 1836 she went to Boston, where she taught Latin and French in A. Bronson Alcott’s school, and taught private classes of girls in French, German and Italian. In 1837 she became a teacher in a private school in Providence, R. I., which was organized on Mr. Alcott’s plan. She translated many works from the German and other languages. In 1839 she removed to Jamaica Plain, Mass., and took a house on her own responsibility, to make a home for the family. The next year they returned to Cambridge. In 1839 she instituted in Boston her conversational class, which was continued for several years. She did much writing on subjects connected with her educational work. In 1840 she became the editor of “The Dial,” which she managed for two years. Her contributions to that journal were numerous. Several volumes of translations from the German were brought out by her. In 1843 she went on a western tour with James Freeman Clarke and his artist-sister, and her first original work, “Summer on the Lakes,” was the result of that trip. In 1844 she removed to New York City, where for two years she furnished literary criticisms for the “Tribune.” In 1846 she published her volume, “Papers on Literature and Art.” After twenty months of life in New York she went to Europe. She met in Italy, in 1847, Giovani Angelo, Marquis Ossoli, a man younger than she and of less intellectual culture, but a simple and noble man, who had given up his rank and station in the cause of the Roman Republic. They were married in 1847. Their son, Angelo Philip Eugene Ossoli, was born in Rieti, 5th September, 1848. After the fall of the republic it was necessary for them to leave Rome, and Madame Ossoli, desiring to print in America her history of the Italian struggle, suggested their return to the United States. They sailed on the barque “Elizabeth” from Leghorn, 17th May, 1850. The trip was a disastrous one. Capt. Hasty died of the small-pox and was buried off Gibraltar. Mme. Ossoli’s infant son was attacked by the disease on 11th June, but recovered. On 15th July the “Elizabeth” made the New Jersey coast at noon, and during a fog the vessel ran upon Fire Island and was wrecked. Madame Ossoli refused to be separated from her husband, and all three were drowned. The body of their child was found on the beach and was buried in the sand by the sailors, to be afterwards removed to Mount Auburn Cemetery, near Boston. The bodies of Marquis and Madame Ossoli were never found.

Personal

  She is of the medium height; nothing remarkable about the figure; a profusion of lustrous light hair; eyes a bluish gray, full of fire; capacious forehead; the mouth when in repose indicates profound sensibility, capacity for affection, for love—when moved by a slight smile, it becomes even beautiful in the intensity of this expression; but the upper lip, as if impelled by the action of involuntary muscles, habitually uplifts itself, conveying the impression of a sneer. Imagine, now, a person of this description looking you at one moment earnestly in the face, at the next seeming to look only within her own spirit or at the wall; moving nervously every now and then in her chair; speaking in a high key, but musically, deliberately (not hurriedly or loudly), with a delicious distinctness of enunciation.

  Yesternight there came a bevy of Americans from Emerson, one Margaret Fuller, the chief figure of them, a strange, lilting, lean old maid, not nearly such a bore as I expected.

  I still remember the first half hour of Margaret’s conversation. She was then twenty-six years old. She had a face and frame that would indicate fullness and tenacity of life. She was rather under the middle height; her complexion was fair, with strong, fair hair. She was then, as always, carefully and becomingly dressed, and of lady-like self-possession. For the rest, her appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness—a trick of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids—the nasal tone of her voice—all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never get far. It is to be said that Margaret made a disagreeable first impression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her best friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which expressed an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others, and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation for satire, in addition to her great scholarship. The men thought she carried too many guns, and the women did not like one who despised them. I believe I fancied her too much interested in personal history; and her talk was a comedy in which dramatic justice was done to everybody’s foibles. I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked…. She had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes, which were so plain at first, soon swam with fun and drolleries, and the very tides of joy and superabundant life. This rumor was much spread abroad, that she was sneering, scoffing, critical, disdainful of humble people, and of all but the intellectual…. It was a superficial judgment. Her satire was only the pastime and necessity of her salient, the play of superabundant animal spirits…. Her mind presently disclosed many moods and powers, in successive platforms or terraces, each above each, that quite effaced this first impression, in the opulence of the following pictures.

  She was the centre of a group very different from each other, and whose only affinity consisted in their all being polarized by the strong attraction of her mind—all drawn toward herself. Some of her friends were young, gay, and beautiful; some old, sick, or studious. Some were children of the world, others pale scholars. Some were witty, others slightly dull. But all in order to be Margaret’s friends, must be capable of seeking something—capable of some aspiration for the better. And how did she glorify life to all! All that was tame and common vanishing away in the picturesque light thrown over the most familiar things by her rapid fancy, her brilliant wit, her sharp insight, her creative imagination, by the inexhaustible resources of her knowledge, and the copious rhetoric which found words and images always apt and always ready. Even then she displayed almost the same marvelous gift of conversation, which afterwards dazzled all who knew her—with more, perhaps, of freedom, since she floated on the flood of our warm sympathies. Those who know Margaret only by her published writings, know her least; her notes and letters contain more of her mind; but it was only in conversation that she was perfectly free and at home.

  Her temperament was predominantly what the physiologists would call nervous-sanguine; and the gray eye, rich brown hair, and light complexion, with the muscular and well-developed frame, bespoke delicacy balanced by vigor. Here was a sensitive, yet powerful being, fit at once for rapture or sustained effort, intensely active, prompt for adventure, firm for trial. She certainly had not beauty; yet the high arched dome of the head, the changeful expressiveness of every feature, and her whole air of mingled dignity and impulse, gave her a commanding charm. Especially characteristic were two physical traits. The first was a contraction of the eyelids almost to a point—a trick caught from near-sightedness—and then a sudden dilatation, till the iris seemed to emit flashes; an effect, no doubt, dependent on her highly-magnetized condition. The second was a singular pliancy of the vertebræ and muscles of the neck, enabling her by a mere movement to denote each varying emotion; in moments of tenderness, or pensive feeling, its curves were swan-like in grace, but when she was scornful or indignant, it contracted, and made swift turns like that of a bird of prey. Finally, in the animation yet abandon of Margaret’s attitude and look, were rarely blended the fiery force of northern, and the soft langour of southern races.

  Though we were members of the same household, we scarcely met save at breakfast; and my time and thoughts were absorbed in duties and cares, which left me little leisure or inclination for the amenities of social intercourse. Fortune seemed to delight in placing us two in relations of friendly antagonism, or rather, to develop all possible contrasts in our ideas and social habits. She was naturally inclined to luxury and a good appearance before the world. My pride, if I had any, delighted in bare walls and rugged fare. She was addicted to strong tea and coffee, both which I rejected and contemned, even the most homœopathic dilutions; while, my general health being sound, and hers sadly impaired, I could not fail to find in her dietetic habits the causes of her almost habitual illness; and once, while we were still barely acquainted, when she came to the breakfast-table with a very severe headache, I was tempted to attribute it to her strong potations of the Chinese leaf the night before. She told me quite frankly that she “declined being lectured on the food or beverage she saw fit to take,” which was but reasonable in one who had arrived at her maturity of intellect and fixedness of habits. So the subject was henceforth tactly avoided between us; but, though words were suppressed, looks and involuntary gestures could not so well be; and an utter divergency of views on this and kindred themes created a perceptible distance between us.

  From first to last she was a woman of noble aims, and, with all her egotism, unselfish in action. The longer I live, the more presumptuous and futile it seems to me to attempt judgment of character, and Miss Fuller’s was exceptional. Her self-esteem was so inordinate as to be almost insane, but it appears (and it is, I think, so stated) to have been a constitutional and inherited defect, and certainly without moral taint. Her truth was exemplary, and all her conduct after she had left off theorizing and began the action of life in the accustomed channels was admirable, her Italian life beautiful. The close had the solemnity of a fulfilled prophecy, and, with all its apparent horrors, was it not merciful? Had she come safely to our shores, she must have encountered harassing struggles for the mere means of existence, anxiety, and all the petty cares that perplex and obstruct a noble nature, and, worse than all, disappointment!

  While she was living and moving in an ideal world, talking in private and discoursing in public about the most fanciful and shallow conceits which the transcendentalists of Boston took for philosophy, she looked down upon persons who acted instead of talking finely, and devoted their fortunes, their peace, their repose, and their very lives to the preservation of the principles of the republic. While Margaret Fuller and her adult pupils sat “gorgeously dressed,” talking about Mars and Venus, Plato and Göethe, and fancying themselves the elect of the earth in intellect and refinement, the liberties of the republic were running out as fast as they could go, at a breach which another sort of elect persons were devoting themselves to repair: and my complaint against the “gorgeous” pedants was that they regarded their preservers as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and their work as a less vital one than the pedantic orations which were spoiling a set of well-meaning women in a pitiable way.

  She was a person anxious to try all things, and fill up her experience in all directions; she had a strong and coarse nature, which she had done her utmost to refine, with infinite pains; but of course it could only be superficially changed. The solution of the riddle lies in this direction, nor does one’s conscience revolt at the idea of thus solving it, for (at least, this is my own experience) Margaret has not left in the hearts and minds of those who knew her any deep witness of her integrity and purity. She was a great humbug—of course, with much talent and much moral reality, or else she could never have been so great a humbug. But she had stuck herself full of borrowed qualities, which she chose to provide herself with, but which had no root in her…. There never was such a tragedy as her whole story, the sadder and sterner, because so much of the ridiculous was mixed up with it, and because she could bear anything better than to be ridiculous. It was such an awful joke, that she should have resolved—in all sincerity, no doubt—to make herself the greatest, wisest, best woman of the age. And to that end she set to work on her strong, heavy, unpliable, and, in many respects, defective and evil nature, and adorned it with a mosaic of admirable qualities, such as she chose to possess; putting in here a splendid talent and there a moral excellence, and polishing each separate piece, and the whole together, till it seemed to shine afar and dazzle all who saw it. She took credit to herself for having been her own Redeemer, if not her own Creator; and, indeed, she is far more a work of art than any of Mozier’s statues. But she was not working on an inanimate substance, like marble or clay; there was something within her that she could not possibly come at, to re-create or refine it; and, by and by, this rude old potency bestirred itself, and undid all her labor in the twinkling of an eye. On the whole, I do not know but I like her the better for it; because she proved herself a very woman after all.

  Like John Sterling, Charles Pemberton, and others of kindred gifts, the wonder to many who never came within the reach of her personal influence is, how to account for the literary reputation she has achieved, upon a basement of writings so slender and so incomplete. It was the individual influence, the magnetic attraction, which she exercised over the minds within her reach, which accounts for the whole.

  It was a strange history and a strange destiny, that of this brilliant, restless, and unhappy woman—this ardent New Englander, this impassioned Yankee, who occupied so large a place in the thoughts, the lives, the affections, of an intelligent and appreciative society, and yet left behind her nothing but the memory of a memory. Her function, her reputation, were singular, and not altogether reassuring: she was a talker; she was the talker; she was the genius of talk.

  Those who think of this accomplished woman as a mere bas bleu, a pedant, a solemn Minerva, should have heard the peals of laughter which her profuse and racy humor drew from old and young. The Easy Chair remembers stepping into Noah Gerrish’s West Roxbury omnibus one afternoon in Cornhill, in Boston, to drive out the nine miles to Brook Farm. The only other passenger was Miss Fuller, then freshly returned from her “summer on the lakes,” and never was a long, jolting journey more lightened and shortened than by her witty and vivid sketches of life and character. Her quick and shrewd observation is shown in the book, but the book has none of the comedy of the croquis of persons which her sparkling humor threw off, and which she too enjoyed with the utmost hilarity, joining heartily in the laughter, which was only increased by her sympathy with the amusement of her auditor.

  An Oriental priestess sent by some mischance into a prim Puritan abode, where her wild fervor, idealism, imagination, passion, were curbed by an iron hand, and classics and ancient history crammed into an already over-excited brain. A sybil in a straight jacket! Was it a wonder that she raved? Smiles or sneers follow her statement that she was a queen. But queen she proved herself, though uncrowned; more truly fitted to reign than many a woman born to the purple. Her conceit was half frankness, and conceit seems a frequent fault with the truly great.

  On Thursday, July 18th, the “Elizabeth” was off the Jersey coast, in thick weather, the wind blowing east of south…. Here, on Fire Island beach, she struck, at four o’clock on the morning of July 19th…. From their new position, through the spray and rain they could see the shore, some hundreds of yards off. Men were seen on the beach, but there was nothing to indicate that an attempt would be made to save them. At nine o’clock it was thought that some one of the crew might possibly reach the shore by swimming, and, once there, make some effort to send them aid. Two of the sailors succeeded in doing this. Horace Sumner sprang after them, but sank, unable to struggle with the waves. A last device was that a plank, with handles of rope attached, upon which the passengers in turn might seat themselves, while a sailor, swimming behind, should guide their course. Mrs. Hasty, young and resolute, led the way in this experiment, the stout mate helping her, and landing her out of the very jaws of death…. Oh that Margaret had been willing that the same means should be employed to bring her and her’s to land! Again and again, to the very last moment, she was urged to try this way of escape, uncertain, but the only one. It was all in vain. Margaret would not be separated from her dear ones. Doubtless she continued for a time to hope that some assistance would reach them from the shore. The life-boat was even brought to the beach; but no one was willing to man her, and the delusive hope aroused by her appearance was soon extinguished. The day wore on; the tide turned. The wreck would not outlast its return. The commanding officer made one last appeal to Margaret before leaving his post. To stay, he told her, was certain and speedy death, as the ship must soon break up. He promised to take her child with him, and to give Celeste, Ossoli, and herself each the aid of an able seaman. Margaret still refused to be parted from her child or husband. The crew were then told to “save themselves,” and all but four jumped overboard.

  Her life seems to me, on the whole, a triumphant rather than a sad one, in spite of the prolonged struggle with illness, with poverty, with the shortcomings of others and with her own. In later years she had the fulfillment of her dreams; she had what Elizabeth Barrett, writing at the time of her marriage to Robert Browning, named as the three great desiderata of existence, “life and love and Italy.” She shared great deeds, she was the counselor of great men, she had a husband who was a lover, and she had a child. They loved each other in their lives, and in death they were not divided. Was not that enough?

  I had never heard her personal appearance described, and it rather took me by surprise. When I entered the drawing-room, several, but not all, of the expected guests had arrived. The party was not planned to be a large one, and I saw at a glance who was the cynosure of the evening. A lady of medium height and size, and of graceful figure, was leaning back in an easy-chair, and alternately listening with interest, or talking with animation to the group around her, the American twang in her voice betraying her nationality. Her light hair was simply arranged, and her cheeks showed the fading, so often noticed in her country-women when the thirtieth year is passed, yet without exactly ageing the face. The outline of her head was fine, and her blue eyes beamed with candour and intelligence. She wore a dress of lilac silk, enriched with a good deal of black lace drapery. In a few minutes I found myself seated by her side, and very soon any prejudice which I might have entertained against the “strong-minded” woman ebbed away. Though egotistic, certainly, she was wise, genial, and womanly, and when I shook hands with her at parting it was with the hope of seeing her again.

  Opposing forces were constantly at war within her—the intellect and the emotions, the large, unasking sympathies, and the close, hungry, human affections. “Her brain was all heart,” as Frederick Robertson said about her; and so her point of view was always confused and colored with personality. Despite her Puritan conscience and discipline, she, was perhaps, a bacchante, with something lawless, chaotic, and unregulated, over which she herself never had perfect control. For so complex a nature as hers, what was needed was some large, unifying principle that could coördinate all the facts of life, and bring them into harmony and accord; in other words, some deep spiritual conviction, that inner vision and touch of the divine which opens out horizons always luminous, and deeps where there is forever peace. Lacking this, her ideals were always human, her kingdom was of the earth, and she never gained that full mastery and knowledge of the truth which alone can make us free—free of self and the limitations of sense. Nevertheless, her destiny, though incomplete, was a high one, and worthy to be crowned with martyrdom.

  Margaret Fuller, who had always struck me as a very plain woman, was the oracle. She had a very long neck, which Dr. Holmes described “as either being swan-like or suggesting the great ophidian who betrayed our Mother Eve.” She had a habit of craning her head forward as if her hearing were defective; but she had a set of woman-worshippers who said that the flowers faded when she did not appear. She was the Aspasia of this great council. She seemed to have a special relationship to each of the intellectual men about her, discerning and reading them better than they did themselves. Some one said of her that she was a kind of spiritual fortune-teller, and that her eyes were at times visible in the dark. Their devotion to her was akin to fanaticism, and they would talk of the magic play of her voice as the singing of a fountain. She had a very kind way to the colored stage-driver, who was the Mr. Weller of Concord, and he distinguished her by his respect. The “chambermaid would confide to her her homely romance.” The better class of young Cambridge students believed in her as though she had been a learned professor. Her all-seeing eye could shoot through the problems which engaged them. Many distinguished men kept this opinion of her to their deaths.

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

  “Woman of the Nineteenth Century” is a book which few women in the country could have written, and no woman in the country would have published, with the exception of Miss Fuller. In the way of independence, of unmitigated radicalism, it is one of the “Curiosities of American Literature,” and Doctor Griswold should include it in his book.

  Every page is loaded—we had almost said overloaded—with thought, and the subject is one which the writer had so near her heart that it commanded her best powers and warmest sympathies, and cannot fail to instruct and interest the reader even when there is not perfect agreement with the views advanced.

  Was perhaps framed on too large a scale for one who had so little constructive power. It was noble in tone, enlightened in its statements, and full of suggestion; yet after all it was crude and disconnected in its execution.

  In 1840, Margaret Fuller published an essay in the Dial, entitled “The Great Lawsuit, or Man vs. Woman: Woman vs. Man.” In this essay she demanded perfect equality for woman, in education, industry, and politics. It attracted great attention and was afterwards expanded into a work entitled “Woman in the Nineteenth Century.” This, with her parlor conversations, on art, science, religion, politics, philosophy, and social life, gave a new impulse to woman’s education as a thinker.

  Before Margaret Fuller’s day the agitation regarding woman’s career and work in the world was practically unknown here; and all the ideas which have now become incorporated into the platform of the woman’s party found in her their first and perhaps their best exponent. Very little that is new has since been urged upon this question. Her powerful mind seemed to have grasped the whole subject, and to have given it the best expression of which it was capable. She embodied her ideas after a time in her book, “Woman in the Nineteenth Century,” and although the literature of the subject is now voluminous, that book is still read and referred to.

General

  It is for dear New England that I want this review, [The Dial] for my self, if I had wished to write a few pages now and then, there were ways and means enough of disposing of them. But in truth I have not much to say; for since I have had leisure to look at myself, I find that, so far from being an original genius, I have not yet learned to think to any depth, and that the utmost I have done in life has been to form my character to a certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the truth with a little better grace than I did at first. For this the world will not care much, so I shall hazard a few critical remarks only, or an unpretending chalk sketch now and then, till I have learned to do something.

  In spite of these things, however, and of her frequent unjustifiable Carlyleisms (such as that of writing sentences which are no sentences, since, to be parsed, reference must be had to sentences preceding), the style of Miss Fuller is one of the very best with which I am acquainted. In general effect, I know no style which surpasses it. It is singularly piquant, vivid, terse, bold, luminous; leaving details out of sight, it is everything that a style need be.

  Margaret is an excellent soul: in real regard with both of us here. Since she went, I have been reading some of her Papers in a new Book we have got; greatly superior to all I knew before; in fact the undeniable utterances (now first undeniable to me) of a true heroic mind;—altogether unique, so far as I know, among the Writing Women of this generation; rare enough, too, God knows, among the Writing Men. She is very narrow, sometimes; but she is truly high.

  Few can boast so wide a range of literary culture; perhaps none write so well with as much facility; and there is marked individuality in all her productions. As a poet, we have few illustrations of her abilities; but what we have are equal to her reputation.

  An American author of great eminence, some time since, denominated Margaret Fuller the George Sand of America; and, much as we disliked that hackneyed fashion of making the great intellect of one nation a kind of duplicate of another, yet there is more justness in this comparison than generally falls to the lot of that absurd method of getting at facts, or something like them…. She is one of those few authors who have written too little. We hope to read more of her prose, so thoughtful and vigorous; and of her poetry, at once so graceful, yet so strong and simple.

  Those who knew her in early youth, who witnessed her extraordinary intellectual developments, who experienced her wonderful power in conversation, and who cast the horoscope of the woman from the brilliant promise of the girl, predicted for her a distinguished literary career. They saw in her a future D’Arblay or De Staël…. For ourselves, we incline to the belief that in no circumstances, by no favor of fortune, would Margaret have produced a work which should have worthily expressed her genius. With all her mental wealth and race faculty, we doubt whether she possessed the organic power, the concentration and singleness of purpose, necessary for such an undertaking. Her mind was critical, not constructive; impulsive, not laborious. Her strength lay rather in oracular judgments, in felicitous statements and improvisations, than in patient elaboration. True, she has written much and well. Her critical essays, and especially her papers on Goethe, in the Dial, are unsurpassed in their kind. But all that she has written is fragmentary; nothing epic, nothing that possesses formal excellence, no one complete work.

  She was often misled [“Art, Literature and the Drama”] in her first judgment, as in one well-known instance, by the strength of her affection and her sympathy; but let the merit be real, and of a kind which she was glad to recognize, and no one ever did more exquisite justice to thought and to its form. Every word which she ever wrote of Goethe was admirable, and yet what we possess was only her preparation for better work. Nothing was ever more tender and true than her sketch of “The Two Herberts” in this volume. Let the reader dwell also on what she has to say of “American Literature,” and the “Lives of the Great Composers.”

  In her published works there are passages of great power and beauty. Her descriptions of scenery—that of Niagara, for instance—are given with a few bold strokes, that suggest much more than at first meets the eye. She paints, in fact, our inward emotion in presence of the scene, and so gives us the ideal of nature. Her critical articles often show insight, and the power of clear statement; but either she was warped by personal dislikes or she took pleasure in demolishing popular idols. In her view there were but half a dozen people with brains in America. In her way of writing, the editorial we had a royal sound, that would have been offensive if it had not been so often absurd…. It was some time before it was discovered that philosophic diction did not always clothe philosophic thought. Perhaps Margaret Fuller had passed through her destructive stage, and was ready to build. Perhaps if she had lived, she would have justified the opinions of her admirers by the creation of some artistic work. If this were so, the calamity of the shipwreck is the more to be lamented. As in the case of great orators, actors, and singers, who, after charming a generation, die and leave only a tradition of their powers, this extraordinary woman will be a mere name in our literary history. Something of her influence survives. The advocates for the elevation of woman hold her in high regard as a pioneer in their cause. In this, as in everything else in which she took part, she put her own intense personality forward, and did much to win for her sex the right of discussion and the privilege of being heard.

  After all that has been said of Miss Fuller by her many earnest friends, after the zealous and sometimes unseemly criticisms and defences of which she has been the subject, and after the fullest recognition of her merits, faults, and foibles, her personality and the memory of her influence are the things that interest us, not the present value of her printed pages. Her learned girlhood, her solitary ways, and her burning zeal, remind us of Mrs. Browning. As Mrs. Browning’s name is first among women who have contributed to English literature, so the name of Margaret Fuller is practically the first to show the position woman has already begun to take, and must make more and more conspicuous, in the literature of America.

  Margaret Fuller never appeared as a candidate for popular favor. On the polishing of furniture she was absolutely silent; nor, though she professed “high respect for those who ‘cook something good,’ and create and preserve fair order in houses,” did she ever fulfill the understood duty of woman by publishing a cookery book. On the education of daughters she had, however, a vital word to say; demanding for them “a far wider and more generous culture.” Her own education had been of an exceptional character; she was fortunate in its depth and solidity, though unfortunate in the forcing process that had made her a hard student at six years old. Her equipment was superior to that of any American woman who had previously entered the field of literature; and hers was a powerful genius, but, by the irony of fate, a genius not prompt to clothe itself in the written word. As to the inspiration of her speech, all seem to agree; but one who knew her well has spoken of the “singular embarrassment and hesitation induced by the attempt to commit her thoughts to paper.” The reader of the Sibylline leaves she scattered about her in her strange career receives the constant impression of hampered power, of force that has never found its proper outlet…. She accomplished comparatively little that can be shown or reckoned. Her mission was “to free, arouse, dilate.” Those who immediately responded were few; and as the circle of her influence has widened through their lives, the source of the original impulse has been unnamed and forgotten. But if we are disposed to rank a fragmentary greatness above a narrow perfection, to value loftiness of aim more than the complete attainment of an inferior object, we must set Margaret Fuller, despite all errors of judgment, all faults of style very high among the “Writing Women” of America. It is time that, ceasing to discuss her personal traits, we dwelt only upon the permanent and essential, in her whose mind was fixed upon the permanent, the essential. Her place in our literature is her own; it has not been filled, nor does it seem likely to be. The particular kind of force which she exhibited—in so far as it was not individual—stands a chance in our own day of being drawn into the educational field, now that the “wider and more generous culture” which she claimed has been accorded to women.

  Few women, in so short a life, have done so much as she; and the tragic close of her career invests it with a pathetic dignity.

  In many respects Margaret Fuller stands, like Poe, solitary in our literature. Her strong, masculine personality which placed her alone among American women, and her keen, peculiar intellect which made her a powerful influence on the intellectual men of her generation, defy classification. If judged alone by her actual literary product, she would deserve but a passing notice, yet she is ranked with the great builders of American literature. Concerning few American writers, save Poe and Whitman, can one find such extremes of opinion. Some of her contemporaries characterized her as superficially learned, disagreeable, warped by intense personal likes and dislikes, domineering, oracular, inordinately fond of monologue; while others, like Emerson, Carlyle, Channing, and Higginson, declared her a rare genius, a profound thinker and scholar…. She is almost the only American author who, like a great singer or actor, keeps a place in our memories chiefly through the testimony of contemporaries…. The place which Margaret Fuller will ultimately occupy in the history of American letters can only be conjectured. “Her genius was not quick to clothe itself in the written word,” and it seems but fair to judge that any literary fame that rests largely upon tradition must ultimately be lost…. She held frequent “Conversations,” during which her admirers listened with bated breath as to a goddess. She drew about her with scarcely an effort a circle of the purest and most spiritual men and women of New England and she ruled it with singular power. And after her death the noblest and best minds of both hemispheres united to do honor to her memory.

  Margaret Fuller’s literary significance does not chiefly depend upon the actual writings that her busy hand turned off. As the underpaid, overworked editor of the “aëriform” Dial and, later, as stated contributor of critical articles of the New York Tribune, whose famous chief, Horace Greeley, found her “a most fearless and unselfish champion of truth and human good at all hazards,” she accomplished a fair amount of creditable work, suggestive rather than symmetrical, but her inspiring personality counted for more than her best paragraphs.