Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/325

 some others. In 1776, she went through the ordeal of a trial of her poetic powers, for three days, at Rome, before a vast concourse of literary and noble personages. Some of the subjects were, Moral Philosophy, Revealed Religion, Physics, Metaphysics, Heroic Poetry, Harmony, Pastoral Poetry, etc. These were handed to her in order, in sealed notes, and she acquitted herself in every case so as to disarm criticism. She then was solemnly crowned with a laurel wreath. A minute description of this ceremony, which was accompanied with wonderful poipp and pageantry, has been written by two literary abbés, and published by the celebrated Bodoni, in 1779. Our poetess, after passing her youth amidst the homage of the great and powerful, retired upon her laurels to Florence, where she lived tranquilly to the age of sixty. She died in 1800.

FERRIER, MARY, born in Edinburgh. Her father, James Ferrier, Esq., was a writer to the Signet, one of Sir Walter Scott's "brethren of the clerk's table;" and the great novelist, at the conclusion of the "Tales of my Landlord," alluded to his "sister shadow," the author of "the very lively work entitled Marriage," as one of the labourers capable of gathering in the large harvest of Scottish character and fiction. In his private diary. Sir Walter has thus jotted down his reminiscences of Miss Ferrier:—"She is a gifted personage, having, besides her great talents, conversation the least exigeante of any author, female at least, whom I have ever seen, among the long list I have encountered; simple, full of humour, and exceedingly ready at repartee; and all this without the least affectation of the blue-stocking." Commenting on this, Mr. Chambers, in his "Cyclopaedia of Literature," thus endorses the opinion of the great novelist:—"This is high praise j but the readers of Miss Ferrier's novels will at once recognise it as characteristic, and exactly what they would have anticipated. Miss Ferrier is a Scottish Miss Edgeworth—of a lively, practical, penetrating cast of mind; skilful in depicting character, and seizing upon national peculiarities; caustic in her wit and humour, with a quick sense of the ludicrous; and desirous of inculcating sound morality and attention to the courtesies and charities of life. In some passages, indeed, she evinces a deep religious feeling, approaching to the evangelical views of Hannah More; but the general strain of her writing relates to the foibles and oddities of mankind, and no one has drawn them with greater breadth of comic humour or effect. Her scenes often resemble the style of our best old comedies, and she may boast, like Foote, of adding many new and original characters to the stock of our comic literature."

"Marriage," the first work of Miss Ferrier, was published in 1818. "The Inheritance" appeared in 1824, and "Destiny, or the Chief's Daughter," in 1831—all novels in three volumes each. It is rather strange that, as all these works were successful, the author has never tried another venture in literature. She resides chiefly in Edinburgh, where she is highly honoured. Mr. Chambers, from whom we have before quoted, and who must be a good judge of her talent for pourtraying the peculiarities of Scottish character, in particular, pays a just and elegant tribute to her genius; his opinion of her merits coincides entirely with that of most critics of her extensively read works.