The writer of the present essay has not met with any printed statement of the successive editions through which the separate publications of Mrs. Hemans have passed. An advertisement of Messrs. Blackwood for 1860, shows that four different editions of her collected Works' continue on sale. Until the copyrights have run out, a just estimate can scarcely be made of the hold those 'Works' have taken upon public favour: so many would gladly buy a part, who cannot conveniently afford to buy the whole, even in their least expensive form, that a new era of wide popular circulation probably awaits the favourite poems. In the best extant edition, the poems are rather put together than arranged: annotations follow poems to which they do not belong, and the general index is defective. The collections of various dates from magazines, musical depositaries, annuals, and other sources, under the general titles of 'Miscellaneous Poems' and 'Miscellaneous Pieces' require sorting. Those which are on subjects to which Mrs. Hemans had already given specific names, should be designated second and successive series of such subjects. The rest ought to be divided under headings descriptive of their respective bearing, such as Poems suggested by Sound, the Wind, Music, &c.;' 'Poems suggested by Pictures,' 'Poems suggested by Sculpture,' 'Poems addressed to Persons,' 'Monodies.' Machiavelli, in his 'Reflections on Livy,' remarks :— "I have often thought that the cause of every man's success in life is due to the adaptation of his mind to the times in which he lives."* This may with equal propriety be asserted of books; and the proposition in an enlarged form is likewise indisputable,—that the adaptation of books to those principles of human nature which continue Bohn's Translated Edition. unchanged throughout the fluctuations of ages will render them permanently acceptable. The writings of Mrs. Hemans met with immediate and extensive popularity, alike in the most distant and alienated colonial settlements and in the old home of the British race. Their suitability to more than one condition of social life has thus been manifested. Their writer died more than a quarter of a century ago, and many of them have now been more than forty years before the public in undiminished favour. These are good auguries. Perhaps when the century has run its course, and a critical reviewer, like a gardener at the breaking up of winter, examines the ground and sorts out surviving plants from those which have perished in the frost of time, two-thirds of those produced by Mrs. Hemans will be found to possess perennial vitality. CHAPTER XVIII. THE POETESSES. A.D. 1838. OCTOBER. Lætitia-Elizabeth Landon. "We might have been! These are but common words; Whose music life deplores when unavailing: We might have been!"* LETITIA-ELIZABETH LANDON. EARLY in the eighteenth century, Sir William Landon, Knight, possessed patrimonial estates in the county of Hereford. He speculated in the South Sea scheme, and was ruined by it. His son, the Rev. John Landon, held the rectories of Nursted and Ilsted in Kent, and distinguished himself by writing against dissenters from the Church of England. The Rev. John Landon's son bore the same name and designation, and held the rectory of Tedstone-Delamere. John, the eldest son of this last rector, went to sea when a boy, with Admiral Bowyer, and visited the African coast. On the death of the admiral, Mr. John Landon retired from the naval service, and subsequently became a partner in the prosperous firm of Adair and Co., army agents, in Pall Mall. He married Catherine-Jane Bishop, a gentle *Life and Literary Remains of L. E. L.,' vol. ii. p. 248. woman of Welsh extraction, and took up his abode at the house in Hans Place, Chelsea, which in 1839 was known as number 25. Lætitia-Elizabeth Landon, their eldest child, was born there on the 14th of August, 1802. They had a younger daughter, who died at the age of twelve years, and an only son, the Rev. Whittington-Henry Landon, who was Lætitia's almost inseparable companion and friend. She was remarkable in early childhood for ardent affections, self-sacrificing generosity, an impetuous temper, and an excessive predilection for books. In her sixth year she attended, as a day scholar, at a school kept by a Miss Rawdon, No. 22, Hans Place. Her father unfortunately inherited his knightly ancestor's turn for speculation, and practised model agriculture at Coventry farm on the borders of Hertfordshire. His family, including Lætitia, occasionally accompanied him thither, but she never lived in the country until she was seven years old, when he removed his home to Trevor Park, East Barnet, where a cousin, called Miss Landon, resided with them, and became the gentle teacher of the eccentric child, whose quickness of apprehension, retentive memory, and keen sagacity, excited her admiration. No sooner had Lætitia conquered the difficulties of mechanical initiation than she entered eagerly upon the acquisition of knowledge. She learned French with facility, but found the art of penmanship almost unattainable, and never could write a good hand. Her attempts to become a good pianoforte player utterly failed; yet she always loved music, and its sounds, both vocal and instrumental, acted as an invocation to her poetic faculty. Her course of reading in childhood was carefully directed, and limited to history and biography; and novels were strictly prohibited. Nevertheless, her brother recollects that he and his sister read together by stealth during their childhood not less than a hundred and fifty volumes of 'Cooke's Poets and Novelists,' besides other books of the same sort, a proof of negligent oversight in the governess, and of habitual deceptiveness in the pupil. The restriction in this case was injudicious; and its ill effects may serve as a warning to those persons who undertake the heavy responsibility of training a child of genius. Her appetite for books became voracious and indiscriminating, and as long as she lived it never knew satiety. Her spirits were lively, and she shared with alacrity her brother's boyish sports, becoming expert at trap-ball, hoop, and archery; nor was she unsuccessful in donkey riding and donkey racing. In other moods of mind, she would walk up and down in the garden, or pace the lime-tree walk for hours together in silent thoughtfulness, and at night reveal the subject of her reveries in long stories of imaginary adventures. She learned, of her own accord, long poems by heart, and Scott's 'Lady of the Lake' was among her dearest favourites. All her inventive fancies required speedy utterance, and she often found difficulty in procuring a patient listener. She used, therefore, to bribe her brother with gifts to attend to her rhapsodies and recitations, and he, being a dull boy, endured her eloquent sallies merely for the sake of some ulterior enjoyment better suited to his taste. The attachment which subsisted between them was, however, perfect in its kind, and so great in its degree, that their father learned by experience when either of them was found guilty of a fault, that the most efficacious way of producing penitence in the culprit was by subjecting the boy to punishment for the offences of the girl, and the girl for those of the boy. The travels of her cousin, Captain Landon, in America, |