MARY RUSSELL MITFORD'S CORRESPONDENCE.* Mess Mirionn's reputation will not be
enhanced by this collection of letters. They were written during the last ten years of an overworked life, and certainly the later lettere suggest that Miss Mitford, though she never reached the allotted span, was old for her age. It is natural that this correspondence—addressed, as it is, to John Ruskin and Charles Boner—should be largely concerned with books, and it is amazing that a writer of such delicate perception and such literary dexterity as Miss Mitford should have been so poor a critic. Her pages are sown with such sentences as the following. Alluding to Browning, she writes : "The few things of his which are clear, seem to me as weak as water." Carlyle she detests, and finds his humour atrocious, his style obscure, his thought almost undiscoverable. Hans Andersen's is a reputation which must Boon die, resting, as it does, upon nothing of permanent value. She has no power to appreciate fairy lore. There is, she says, "a sameness and a poverty in all that does not belong to our common kind which never really sustains itself." For almost none of the great lights of her time has she a word of praise. The American writers, however, please her, especially Oliver Wendell Holmes. She contrasts his works with "our vile school of obscurity, crude- ness, and self-conceit." Miss Lee's biographical pages make good reading enough, but the whole book is three times too big.
Previous page
