Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/69

 Rh to the interests and feelings of others, a defect, however, which, under the mellowing influences of time and experience, almost disappeared in latter life; and which in poetry sometimes induced negligence of the laws of Art, not less imperative than the laws of Nature. The cause was the same m both cases, so complete a realisation of truth as the one thing needful, that it was difficult to convince her that social conventions or artistic refinements could count for anything in comparison.

This failing was aggravated by an intellectual defect, the absence of a lively sense of humour. How much vexation and friction Mathilde Blind would have spared herself had she sometimes been able to look at things on the amusing side! But no; she must always be enraptured or disgusted, always defiantly in earnest. Excess of truthfulness and excess of earnestness, however, are not failings to which humanity is so prone as to necessitate the discouragement of them with any great severity. Mathilde Blind would have been more popular if she had been less ardent and more conciliating; she would have been a more accomplished writer if the passion for essential truth had not made her unduly indifferent to artistic finish; but after every allowance has been made her poetry remains noble in execution as in aspiration, and her character was even more noble than her poetry. Both, it may be hoped, will be preserved from oblivion by the monument of "living stones" raised to her memory in the following pages, to which these imperfect lines are but the vestibule.

R. GARNETT.