Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/100



"—What a rich mine of golden thought and feeling is laid open in the volumes bearing this title! How much of intellectual power, of moral emotion, and of keen observation have here blended their influences! Setting feeling aside for a moment, mere criticism is constrained to acknowledge the capabilities of that genius—the strength of that talent—which can pass with such graceful facility from the comparative loneliness of an old Italian palazzo, and the touching history of its gentle in habitants, to the splendor and dazzling wit of the magnificent court of Louis XIV, thence transport us to the greenwood haunts, their natural beauty, and the olden associations of England's forest scenery; to the stern beings, the stirring scenes and domestic trials of the time of the Commonwealth; and again to the gay cavaliers, the mirth, the pleasure, the badinage of Charles the Second's adherents; through the whole, working out characters with truthful interest; depicting scenes and circumstances with accurate tracery, but in glowing colours; and interspersing, among all, thoughts and imaginings, whose truth will no less entitle them to the philosopher’s assent, than their beauty will ensure the poet's admiration. At the same time all these changes are most skilfully effected, wrought with a vigor of which the most masculine intellect might be proud, yet touched with a delicacy, lightened by a refinement to only womanly feeling would be competent.