Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/97

 and improvement of her intellect, by introducing her into a circle of society more enlightened than any in which she had hitherto moved. The native powers of her mind were slowly developed; she ripened from the simple housewife into the clear-minded and intelligent savante. Yet for many years, she was only known as a well-informed, hut perfectly unpretending female. So far from displaying any disposition to active literature, she felt the composition of a letter to he burdensome. A trivial circumstance is said to have operated, with several other causes, in inducing her to attempt a regular work. She had often urged her husband to undertake some literary work, and once she appealed to an intimate friend, who was present, whether he would not publish it. This third party expressed a ready consent, but said he would at least as willingly publish a book of her own writing. This seemed at the time to strike her with a sense of her powers hitherto not entertained, and she asked more than once whether he was in earnest. She then appears to have commenced her novel, entitled "Self Control," of which she had finished a considerable part of the first volume before making even her husband privy to her design. In 1811, the work was published at Edinburgh, in two volumes, and the impression which it made upon the public was immediate and decisive. It was acknowledged that there were faults of a radical and most unfortunate kind—such as the perpetual danger to which the honour of the heroine was exposed, (an intolerable subject of fictitious writing,) but every one appreciated the beauty and correctness of the style, and the acuteness of observation, and loftiness of sentiment, which pervaded the whole. The modesty of Mrs Brunton, which was almost fantastic, induced her to give this composition to the world without her name. Four years afterwards, she published a second novel in three volumes, entitled "Discipline," which was only admired in a degree inferior to the first. She afterwards commenced a third tale under the title "Emmeline," which she did not live to finish.

Mrs Brunton had been married twenty years without being blessed with any offspring. In the summer of 1818, when a prospect of that blessing occurred, she became impressed with a belief that she should not survive. With a tranquillity, therefore, which could only be the result of great strength of mind, joined to the purest sentiments of religion, and virtue, she made every preparation for death, exactly as if she had been about to leave her home upon a journey. The clothes in which she was to be laid in the grave, were selected by herself; she herself had chosen and labelled some tokens of remembrance for her more intimate friends; and she even prepared with her own hand a list of the individuals to whom she wished intimations of her death to be sent. Yet these anticipations, though so deeply fixed, neither shook her fortitude, nor diminished her cheerfulness. They neither altered her wish to live, nor the ardour with which she prepared to meet the duties of returning health, if returning health were to be her portion.

To the inexpressible, grief of her husband and friends, and, it may be said, of the literary world at large, the unfortunate lady's anticipations proved true. On the 7th of December, she gave birth to a still-born son, and for some days recovered with a rapidity beyond the hopes of her medical attendants. A fever, however, took place, and, advancing with fatal violence, terminated her valuable life on the 1.9th, in the forty-first year of her age.

The whole mind and character of Mrs Brunton was "one pure and perfect chrysolite" of excellence. We are so agreeably anticipated in an estimate of her worth by an obituary tribute paid to her memory by Mrs Joanna Baillie, that we shall make no scruple for laying it before the reader:—