Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/30

30 finished, formed the principle feature of a little volume, published in the summer of the following year, by Mr. Warren, of Bond-street. Its title was "The Fate of Adelaide," a Swiss romantic tale, and it was dedicated to Mrs. Siddons. The story is of love, war, and misery. Adelaide loves and is loved, but her Orlando is inconstant; war calls him to the east, and there he marries; both ladies die for him— "They laid Zoraide (for so she wish'd it) by the side Of her sweet rival;"— and the hero hangs over the grave, a melancholy man, to point the moral of the lay. The poem and the minor verses that follow it, were of value only as promises—as indications of poetical genius; and these promises were soon redeemed by an assiduous cultivation of that beautiful faculty of song which, like mercy, is twice blessed, being ever in its best and highest exercise a joy inestimable.

Immediately after the publication of this volume she commenced, in the "Literary Gazette," a series of "Poetical Sketches," to which was affixed her initials only—"L. E. L." The three letters very speedily became a signature of magical interest and curiosity. Struck by the evident youth of the writer, by the force as well as the grace of her careless and hurried notes, by the impassioned tenderness of the many songs and sketches that, week after week, without intermission, appeared under the same signature, the public unhesitatingly recognised these contributions as the fresh and unstudied outpourings of genius; and they, by whom the loftier beauties and the more cultivated, grace of the living masters of the lyre were best