Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/134

134 —exposed the most fearful of our responsibilities, the most sacred of our duties, the most humiliating of our infirmities. And beyond a doubt this truth was the natural result of mature experience on the writer's side, a more perfect mastery of the will, and additional power of taming the "wild heart" of her imagination to the "loving hand" of sympathy. The era of Pope, of Lady Mary, of Kneller, Wharton, Walpole, Peterborough—the era of the Curlls and Lintots—is here revived and restored. The most varied powers are requisite to the painting of such portraitures, to the keeping of such a picture, to the flinging so many opposing minds into dramatic and characteristic action, giving them thought, passion, language, motion. How excellent is the Twickenham scene! Lady Mary lives again, and we feel that we have loitered with Pope in his own garden. Walpole's character had been scanned with a close and critical eye, that saw not merely the manners and action, but much of the policy and philosophy of the time: there is scarcely one portrait that does not exhibit marks of studious painting and insight into humanity. On the character and career of Maynard, she lavished her pains freely, and the result rewarded her. Old Sir Jasper is a creature made up of life's light and shadow. Marchmont, Norbourne, Courtenay—the several groups of authors, actors, booksellers and loungers, are full of life, spirit, and ease. Still more deep and beautiful is the work in the delineation of female character. We feel this whether we glance at the mingled colours that compose the "web of life" in which the dazzling Henrietta moves, or at the lovely gentleness and affecting devotion of Constance: at the blended calmness and fervour, the subdued heart