Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/86

86 opportunities of exercising her matured powers seemingly unconscious of restraint. Not merely does this work contain unquestionable evidence of the versatility of her talents, and the ease with which she could adapt them to the most unpromising subjects, but it comprises much of her best writing—poems exhibiting a greatly improved taste, a more studious care for the harmonies of versification, a deeper and clearer vein of thought, and a knowledge of "the greatest art, the art to blot."

In addition to various poetical contributions to the "Annuals," and the "New Monthly Magazine," and the composition of another series of poems for the "Drawing-room Scrap-book," L. E. L., in 1832, produced twelve accompaniments to some engravings, issued by the same publisher, under the title of "The Easter Gift, a Religious Offering." These sacred poems are in every way worthy of the feeling with which they were introduced. "They were written," she says, "in a spirit of the deepest humility, but whose fear is not 'of this world;'" and she states that the illustration of these Scriptural subjects had given her the opportunity of embodying many a sad and serious thought which had arisen in hours of solitude and despondency. "I believe I myself am the better for their existence; I wish their effect may be the same on others. In this hurrying and deceitful world, no page will be written utterly in vain, which awakens one earnest or heavenward thought, one hope, or one fear, in the human heart."

Many of the engravings to which L. E. L. was called upon to provide poetical accompaniments, were views of eastern scenery and antiquities; and mellifluously to mention the bare names of the