Page:Mrs Elwood 1843.pdf/18

320 Landon's muse, and whilst she identified herself in idea with those whose sorrows she sang, lamenting, often in the first person, over disappointments and treacheries she never had then experienced, it may easily be supposed that those readers who were wholly unacquainted with the fair poetess, naturally concluded her to be the pining victim of unrequited affection. One of her friends, however, asserts, that so far from this having been the case, she manifested an extraordinary want of succeptibility in affairs of the heart, which she imputes to her having formed, in her own imagination, a beau ideal, to which standard of perfection none of her numerous admirers ever attained. Her temper seems to have been naturally amiable and obliging, but from an extreme susceptibility of her nervous system, she was impatient under pain, and occasionally suffered severely from spasms or cramp, for which no adequate cause could be assigned. When highly excited, she experienced a sensation of atmospheric oppression,—when her constitutional irritability of temperament would find relief only in rapid motion in the open air, and however inclement might be the weather, she would pace for hours in the garden, or if she found that too bounded for her feelings, she would seek a wider space. Her delicacy of feeling and irritability of frame rendered her very unequal to stand up against the various ill-natured rumours and remarks which perhaps were put into circulation by those who were envious of the admiration she excited, and the success of her literary labours. So deeply did she feel the unkindness of the suspicions, that of herself she broke off a matrimonial engagement into which she was at one time about to