Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/681

Rh of thirteen a poem called "The Female Geniad," which was dedicated to Lady de Crespigny, and published under the patronage of that honored dame. Youthful prodigies were then much in favor. Miss Mitford comments very sensibly upon them, being filled with pity for one Mary Anne Browne, "a fine tall girl of fourteen, and a full-fledged authoress," who was extravagantly courted and caressed one season, and cruelly ignored the next. The "Female Geniad" sealed Miss Benger's fate. When one has written a poem at thirteen, and that poem has been printed and praised, there is nothing for it but to keep on writing poems—or prose—until Death mercifully removes the obligation.

It is needless to say that the drama—which then, as now, was the goal of every author's ambition—first fired Miss Benger's zeal. When we think of Miss Hannah More as a successful playwright, it is hard to understand how any one could fail; yet fail Miss Benger did, although we are assured by her biographer that "her genius appeared in many ways well adapted to the stage." She next wrote a mercilessly long poem upon the abolition of the slave trade (which appears to have been read only by antislavery agitators, who were enthusiastic but unremunerative), and two novels—Marian, and Valsinore: or, The Heart and the Fancy. Of these we are told that "their excellences were such as genius only can reach"; and if they also missed their mark, it must have been because—as Miss Aikin delicately suggests—"no judicious reader could fail to perceive that the artist was superior to the work." This is always unfortunate. It is the work, and not the artist, which is offered for sale in the market-place. Miss Benger's work is not much worse than a great deal which did sell, and she possessed at least the grace of an unflinching and courageous perseverance. Deliberately, and without aptitude or training, she began to write history, and in this most difficult of all fields won for herself a hearing. Her Life of Anne Boleyn and her Memoirs of Mary, Queen of Scots, were read in many an English schoolroom, their propriety and Protestantism making them acceptable to the anxious parental mind. A single sentence from Anne Boleyn will suffice to show the ease of Miss Benger's mental attitude, and the comfortable nature of her views:

"It would be ungrateful to forget that the mother of Queen Elizabeth was the early and zealous advocate of the Reformation, and that, by her efforts to dispel the gloom of ignorance and superstition, she conferred on the English people a benefit of which, in the present advanced state of knowledge and civilization, it would be difficult to conceive or to appreciate the real value and importance."

The "active and judicious Harriet" would have listened to this with as much

complacence as to Hume.

In La Belle Assemblée for April, 1823, there is an engraving of Miss Smirke's portrait of Miss Benger. She is painted in an imposing turban, with tight little curls, and an air of formidable sprightliness. It was this sprightliness which was so much admired. "Wound up by a cup of coffee," she would talk for hours, and her friends really seem to have liked it. "Her lively imagination," writes Miss Aikin, "and the flow of eloquence it inspired, aided by one of the most melodious of voices, lent an inexpressible charm to her conversation, which was heightened by an intuitive discernment of character, rare in itself, and still more so in combination with such fertility of fancy and ardency of feeling."

This leaves little to be desired. It is not at all like the Miss Benger of Lamb's letter, with her vapid pretensions and her stupid insolence. Unhappily, we see through Lamb's eyes, and we cannot see through Miss Aikin's. Of one thing only I feel sure. Had Miss Benger, instead of airing her trivial acquirements, told Lamb that when she was a little girl, bookless and penniless, at Chatham, she used to read the open volumes in the booksellers' windows, and go back again and again, hoping that the leaves might be turned, she would have touched a responsive chord in his heart. Who does not remember his exquisite sympathy for "street-readers," and his unlikely story of Martin B, who "got through two volumes of Clarissa" in this desultory fashion. Had he but known of the shabby eager child staring wistfully at the coveted books, he would never have written the most amusing of his letters, and Miss Benger's name would be to-day unknown.