Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/322

308 very deplorable state, under which few would be able to support themselves.

Baron Cottwitz, a Silesian nobleman, who had long been celebrated for many amiable qualifications, became acquainted with her in the year 1760, as he was travelling through Glogau. He pitied her distress, and carried her to Berlin, where she became acquainted with several men of learning who were judges of poetry; her genius then shone with the greatest lustre, and she was much caressed at the Prussian court. In an edition of her poems, from the preface of which the preceding narrative is taken, written after this happy change of fortune, are a few remarks on Madame Darbach's genius, which we shall subjoin.

"Plato, in his discourse called Io, lays it down as the character of a true poet, that he delivers his thoughts by inspiration, himself not knowing the expressions he makes use of. According to him, the harmony and turn of the verse produce in the poet an enthusiasm, which furnishes him with such thoughts and images as in a more composed hour he would have sought in vain.

"This observation is verified in our authoress, who, without design, without art, and without instruction, is arrived at a wonderful perfection in the art, and may be placed among poets of the first class. It is from this cause she has been more successful in such pieces as were written whilst her imagination was warm, than in those which she has composed coolly, deliberately, and in leisure hours; the latter always bearing some marks of art, and betraying the absence of the muse.

"Whenever she is in a particular manner struck by any object, either in her solitary hours, or when in company, her spirits immediately catch the flame: she has no