Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/678

Rh 644 criticized in the Monthly Review, the little poetess was for some days in tears ; but the muse was soon reawakened. One of her brothers was fighting in Spain under Sir John Moore ; and Felicia, fired with military enthusiasm, wrote England and Spain, or Valour and Patriotism, a poem of some length and much elaboration, which was afterwards published and translated into Spanish. Her second volume, entitled The Domestic Affections and other Poems, appeared in 1812, on the eve of her marriage to Captain Hemans, which took place in the summer of that year. She lived for some time at Daventry, where her husband was appointed adjutant of the Northamptonshire militia; but about this time her father went on some commercial enter prise to Quebec and died there ; and, after the birth of her eldest son, she and her husband took up their abode with her widowed mother at Bronwylfa. Here during the next six years four more children all boys were born ; but in spite of domestic cares and uncertain health she still read and wrote indefatigably. Her poem entitled The Restora tion of Works of Art to Italy was published in 1816, her Modern Greece in 1817, and in the following year appeared her volume of Translations from Camoens and other Poets. In 1818 Captain Hemans went to Rome, leaving his wife, shortly before the birth of their fifth child, with her mother at Bronwylfa. No further explanation than that it was in the first instance for Captain Hemans s health has ever been offered of this step ; there seems to have been then merely a tacit agreement, perhaps on account of their limited means, that they should live for a time apart. Letters were interchanged, and Captain Hemans was often consulted about his children ; but the husband and wife remained separate, and indeed never met again. Kind and influ ential friends among them the bishop of St Asaph and Bishop Heber clustered round the poetess and her children. Her health, however, began to fail her, and her beauty, which was of a peculiarly delicate type, is said to have faded rapidly, leaving behind it an habitually worn and har assed expression. She became subject, too, to paroxysms of beating of the heart. Yet for the next six years her literary industry never flagged. In 1819 she published Tales and Historic Scenes in Verse, and in the same year she gained a prize of 50 offered for the best poem on The Meeting of Wallace and Bruce on the Banks of the Carron. The poem was published in BlacJcwood s Magazine. In 1820 appeared The Sceptic and Stanzas to the Memory of the late King. In June 1821 she won the prize awarded by the Royal (Society of Literature for the best poem on the subject of Dartmoor, and during the same year she began her play, The Vespers of Palermo. She now applied herself to a course of German reading. Korner was her favourite German poet, and her lines on the grave of Korner were one of the first English tributes to the genius of the young soldier-poet. The Voice of Spring, one of her best known lyrics, was written in 1823, the same year in which she began to contribute to the New Monthly Magazine ; and in the summer of 1823 a volume of her poems was published by Murray, containing &quot; The Siege of Valencia,&quot; &quot; The Last Constantino,&quot; and &quot; Belshaz- zar s Feast,&quot; which last had appeared previously in a collec tion edited for a charitable purpose by Joanna Baillie. The Vespers of Palermo was acted at Covent Garden, December 12, 1823, and Mrs Hemans received 200 for the copyright; but, though the leading parts were taken by Young and Charles Kemble, the play was a failure, and was withdrawn after the first performance. It was acted again in Edin burgh in the following April with greater success, when an epilogue, written for it by Sir Walter Scott at Joanna Baillie s request, was spoken by Mrs Henry Siddons. An interchange of notes on this subject was the beginning of a cordial friendship between Mrs Hemans and the novelist. In the same year she wrote De Chalillon, or the Crusaders ; but the manuscript was mysteriously lost, and the poem was not published till two years after her death, and then from a rough copy. In 1824 she began &quot;The Forest Sanctuary,&quot; which appeared a year later with the &quot; Lays of Many Lands &quot; and miscellaneous pieces collected from the New Monthly Magazine and other periodicals. In the spring of 1825 Mrs Hemans, with her mother and children and an unmarried sister, removed from Bronwylfa, which had been purchased by her brother, to Rhyllon, another house belonging to him on an opposite height across the river Clwyd. The contrast between the two houses suggested her Dramatic Scene between Bronwylfa and Rhyllon. The house itself was bare and unpicturesque, but the beauty of its surroundings has been celebrated in &quot; The Hour of Romance,&quot; &quot; To the River Clwyd in North Wales,&quot; &quot;Our Lady s Well,&quot; and &quot;To a Distant Scene.&quot; This time seems to have been the most tranquil in Mrs Hemans s life. Her children were growing up about her; her own variable health was at its best ; her popularity was spreading, not only in England but in America, where Professor Norton of Harvard university undertook to superintend the publication of a complete edition of her works and to secure to her the profits. But the death of her mother in January 1827 was a second great break ing-point in her life. Her own health began to alarm her ; and though the nature of her illness, which afterwards proved heart complaint, was not at first apparent, she was from this time an acknowledged invalid. In the summer of 1828 the Records of Woman was published by Blackwood, and in the same year the home in Wales was finally broken up by the marriage of Mrs Hemans s sister and the departure of her two elder boys to their father in Rome. Mrs Hemans therefore left Rhyllon, and took a very small house in the village of Wavertree, near Liverpool, where she hoped to obtain good schooling for her children and society for her self. But, although she had a few intimate friends there, among them her two subsequent biographers, Henry F. Chorley and Mrs Lawrence of Wavertree Hall, she was disappointed in her new home. She thought the people of Liverpool stupid and provincial ; and they, on the other hand, found her uncommunicative and eccentric. In the following summer she travelled by sea to Scotland with two of her boys, to visit the Hamiltons of Chiefswood. This visit to Scotland was one of the most daring feats, and perhaps the richest episode, in her uneventful life. She was cordially welcomed in Edinburgh, dined with Jeffrey and other celebrities, visited Henry Mackenzie, heard Ali son preach, and stayed with Sir David and Lady Wedder- burn, and with Sir Robert Liston at Milburn, where she sat for a bust to Angus Fletcher. Above all, while she was at Chiefswood, she enjoyed &quot; constant, almost daily, intercourse &quot; with Sir Walter Scott, with whom she and her boys afterwards stayed some time at Abbotsford. &quot; There are some whom we meet, and should like ever after to claim as kith and kin ; and you are one of those,&quot; was Scott s compliment to her at parting. One of the results of her Edinburgh visit was an article, full of praise, judiciously tempered with criticism, by Jeffrey himself for the Edin burgh Review. The poetess returned to Wavertree to com pose her Songs of the Affections, which were published early in 1830. In the following June, however, she again left home, this time to visit Wordsworth and the Lake country ; and in August she paid a second visit to Scotland. She was resolved to leave Wavertree, and wished to make Edinburgh her home ; but the climate was pronounced too rigorous, and, as a brother and his family were already settled in Ireland, it was arranged that she should go to live in Dublin. In her new home kind friends and ad mirers gathered round the invalid, who now had with her only the youngest of her children. She was obliged