MRS. IIEMANS' WORKS AND LIFE.

Tills elegant collection of the Works of Mrs. Ibisimss will no doubt receive an ample encouragement from that numerous class of readers, who prefer the superficial but pleasing qualities of an uninterrupted flow of harmonious verse, great elegance and variety, if not always exact propriety of illustration, and a fancilid :IA excited sensibi- lity, to the sterner or more homely reflections of truth and nature. Even those who think that poetry is a distillation of life and expe- rience, rather than an outpouring of a day-dreaming fancy, will

deem it necessary to procure the Works, if they wish to enrich their collection with varied specimens of art ; for of the elegantly romantic school, Mrs. HEMANS, if not the founder, is at least the head.

Except occasional juvenile productions, freely intermingled with the Memoirs as biographical illustrations, the poems in the vo- lume before us are only two in number,—" England and Spain," written when the author was fourteen ; and " Wallace's Invocation to Bruce," a prize poem, which carried off fifty pounds from a host of competitors, so numerous as to require a month to read their lucu- brations, one being as long as " Paradise Lost." The main feature of the opening volume is the Life, by the poet's sister; the character of which will be understood when we say that it bears a family likeness to the poems,—graceful, feminine, and full of feeling, with as much impartiality as could be looked for in so near a relation.

In noticing the Memorials of Mrs. Helium, by Mr. ClIORLEY,* (who, " invading the sanctity of private correspondence," published the letters of the deceased to the evident dissatisfaction of her fa- rnily,) we went over the leading events of her life ; consisting of removals from one residence to another, and of one tour in Scot- land and another to WORDSWORTH and the Lakes. To these scanty and uneventful incidents little addition is made in the volume be- fore us; but a somewhat fuller account is given of the unfortu- nate marriage • which seems to have taken place without the ap- proval of the friends on either side; and, as we guess from the dis- satisfhetion of Mrs. HEMANS with the " tame and uninteresting" scenery of Daventry, where her husband's duties took him for a twelvemonth, without much power of domestic adaptation on the part of the lady. The eventual separation is thus narrated.

" In the year 1818, Captain Hemans, whose health had been long impaired by the previous vicissitudes of a military life, determined upon trying the effects of a Southern climate ; and, with this view, repaired to Rome, which he was afterwards induced to fix upon as his place of residence. It has been alleged, and with perfect truth, that the literary pursuits of Mrs. Hemans, and the education of her children, made it more eligible for her to remain under the maternal roof than to accompany her husband to Italy. It is, however, unfortunately but too well known, that such were not the only reasons which led to this divided course. To dwell on this subject would be unnecessarily painful; yet it must be stated, that nothing like a permanent separation was contemplated at the time, nor did it ever amount to more than a tacit conven-

tional arrangement, which offered no obstacle to the frequent interchange of correspondence, nor to a constant reference to their father in all things relating to the disposal of her boys. But years rolled on—seventeen years of absence, and, consequently, alienation ; and from this time to the hour of her death, Mrs. Humans and her husband never met again."

Of the personal characteristics of Mrs. HEmasns, the volume abounds with interesting touches, from which a general idea of her mind and manners may be formed. She seems almost to " have lisp'd in numbers :" at eight years old she wrote a birthday effusion addressed to her mother, and verse seemed to flow from her with greater readiness than commonplace prose from many people; to which fatal facility may perhaps be traced much of the slight and superficial character of her style of poetry. For music she had

also a natural gift; " playing both the harp and piano with much feeling and expression," and possessing " a good voice," till it was weakened by affections of the chest, and her singing was disconti- nued. Her preference, even in her most blithesome days, was for 44 strains of a pensive cast ;" " the most skilful combinations of ab- stract musical science did not interest or please her; what she loved best were national airs, whether martial or melancholy." Late in life, when residing at Wavertree, her taste seems to have turned towards sacred music, and she attempted composition ; but Mr. CHORLEY says, she only reproduced melodies, and fancied she had composed them. She had, moreover, a taste for drawing; but her attention being occupied by many other pursuits, " she seldom attempted any thing beyond slight sketches in pencil or Indian ink." Her eye was correct, and her eyesight long and clear. Her acquirements as a linguist must be pronounced considerable, if we suppose knowledge of a language to be meant by learning it. In early life, she "acquired" French, Italian, Spanish, and Portu- guese, with the power of reading German; which, many years after, she studied so as to " enter with full appreciation into the soul of that beautiful language ;" and she made some progress in Latin. Her reading was much and multifarious. At six years of age she began SHAKSPERE • her taste •for whom amounted to a "passion." The books provided for her, says a friend who was her literary caterer,

" in the days of old were multifarious enough ; in English, French,

German, Italian, and Spanish poetry ; or prose, (not_prosy prose,) grave or gay, lively or severe, history or fiction, (the history chiefly of feudal a„oes,) essay or criticism ; only nothing in the service of science ever found a place in them. At a later period, during her Wavertree residence, I was often struck with the change of her tastes, which then seemed to have retreated from the outer world, and devoted themselves exclusively to the passionate and imaginative. The German poets were always on her table, especially Goethe. Wordsworth was ever growing in her favour, yet I think at that time she oftener quoted Byron, Shelley, and Madame de Stael, than any other. * * * *

"Her eagerness for knowledge of every kind," says her sister on another occasion, was intense ; and her industry may be attested by volumes still ex- isting of extracts and transcriptions almost sufficient to form a library in themselves. The mode of her studies was, to outward appearance, singularly desultory ; as she would be surrounded by books of all sizes in divers languages, and on every variety of topic, and would seem to be ;liming from one to another, like a bee flying from flower to flower ; yet, whatever confusion might reign without, all was clear and well-defined within. In her mind and memory the varied stores were distinctly arranged, ready to be called forth for the happy illustration, the poetic imagery, or the witty comparison."

No doubt, illustrations, or general impressions, might be ac- quired in this manner; but no complete knowledge of a subject,

• Spectator, No. 426; 27th August 1836. and not much solid information. Indeed, her mind seems to ha • been ill-balanced; subject evidently to sudden fits of melanch:lye or of excited joy, and not well adapted to the reception of truth which ran counter to her prejudices. " There was nothing sit disliked more," writes her sister, " than the disturbance of !MY ol associations, or the reasoning away of any ancient belief, endeared to our hearts by the childish recollections with which it is inter. woven."

Her facility in reading, and her memory, were extraordinary-

" She could repeat pages of poetry from her favourite authors, after twin. read them but once over; and a scarcely less wonderful faculty was the rapidity' of her reading, which even in childhood, and still more in after life, was suet; that a bystander would imagine she was only carelessly turning over the leaves' of a book, when, in truth, she was taking in the whole sense as corn p e I I 1 as others would do whilst poring over it with the closest attention.

This faculty of memory was further shown on other occasions.

"The powers of her memory were so extraordinary, as to be sometimes made the subject of a wager, by those who were sceptical as to the possibility of her achieving what she would, in the most undoubting simplicity, undertake to perform. On one of these occasions, to satisfy the incredulity of one of her brothers, she learned by heart, having never read it before, the whole of Ileber's poem of 4 Europe ' in one hour and twenty minutes, and repeated it without a single mistake or a moment's hesitation. 'Ile length of tlds poem is four hun- dred and twenty-four lines.

"A remarkable instance of Mrs. Manaus' powers of memory, is recorded about this time, (1828,) in the fact of her having repeated, and even written down, with extraordinary accuracy, the beautiful stanzas addressed by Lord Byron to his sister, after hearing them only twice read aloud in manuse.ript."

Her death was early if we count her years, (forty-one,) but not if we consider her constant and exciting occupations; many real trou- bles, as her unthrtunate marriage, her young funnily, and her mother's death ; and a good many fancied miseries, which a person of her temperament was perhaps likely to feel as much. Her constitution, moreover, does not seem to have been adapted for longevity. The extraordinary beauty of her youth faded early ; she was subject to palpitations of the heart ; and attacks of a slow kind of fever made successive and growing inroads upon her constitution, aggravated

probably by her own imprudence ; a gratuitous instance of which we quoted from Mr. CHORLEY'S book. Latterly she suffered from

a state of nervousness, which rendered the act of writing a task in itself, followed by distressing symptoms : she sometimes, as she informs a friend, retained "a piece of poetry several weeks in her memory, from actual dread of writing it down ;" and she com- plained as if she "felt, and more particularly heard, every thing with unsheathed nerves." Such an organization, subjected to her excitements, and attacked by various complaints, could not have lasted beyond the ordinary middle age: but the immediate cause of her death was a cold, caught by sitting in the open air reading a book, without observing that an autumnal fog had gathered up, till she felt the chill.

Whether the poems of' Mrs. HEstass are likely to be enduring, or whether the rage for them is not already somewhat on the wane, we need not discuss. In her life her celebrity was extraordinary, and even greater in America than in England ; for which she had to pay the tax in a voluminous correspondence, and the annoy- ances of lion-hunters and album-purveyors. One of her stranger visitants was, however, of a very strange kind.

"It was about this tune (W32-3) that a circumstance occurred, by which Mrs. Ileums was greatly affected and impressed. A stranger one day called

at her house, and begged earnestly to see her. She was then just recovering from one of her frequent illnesses, and was obliged to decline the visits of all but her immediate friends. The applicant was therefore told that she was unable to receive him ; but he persisted in entreating for a few minutes' audience, with

such urgent importunity, that at last the pomt was conceded. The moment he was admitted, the gentleman (for such his manner and appearance declared

him to be) explained, in words and tones of the deepest feeling, that the object of his visit Was to acknowledge a debt of obligation which he could not rest satisfied without avowing—that to her he owed, in the first instance, that faith and those hopes which were now more precious to him than life itself; for that it was by reading her poem of The Sceptic' he had been first awakened from the miserable delusions of infidelity, and induced to 'search the Scriptures.'

Baying poured forth his thanks and benedictions in an uncontrollable push of emotion, this strange but interesting visitant took his departure, leaving her overwhelmed with a mingled sense ot joyful gratitude and wondering humility."

Having in our notice of Mr. Cnoneey's book spoken distinctly of her affectations, it is but just to say that the present volume leaves a more favourable impression of Mrs. IhmiNs' general character. And the incident of lying on the deck of the vessel when she left Wales, with her face covered and her son watching till the mountains were out of sight, as she dared not look up till then, is in a measure explained : in addition to the sadness of leaving an early home and the breaking-up of domestic tics, her two elder sons had just parted from her to go to their father.