Note 1 — MISS EDGEWORTH.

With all her absurdities Miss Seward had some real critical power and appreciation; and some of her lines are very pretty.1 An 'Ode to the Sun' is only what might have been expected from this Lichfield Corinne. Her best known productions are an 'Elegy on Captain Cook,' a 'Monody on Major André,' whom she had known from her early youth; and there is a poem, 'Louisa,' of which she herself speaks very highly. But even more than her poetry did she pique herself upon her epistolary correspondence. It must have been well worth while writing letters when they were not only prized by the writer and the recipients, but commented on by their friends in after years. 'Court Dewes, Esq.,' writes, after five years, for copies of Miss Seward's epistles to Miss Rogers and Miss Weston, of which the latter begins:—'Soothing and welcome to me, dear Sophia, is the regret you express for our separation! Pleasant were the weeks we have recently passed together in this ancient and embowered mansion! I had strongly felt the silence and vacancy of the depriving day on which you vanished. How prone are our hearts perversely to quarrel with the friendly coercion of employment at the very instant in which it is clearing the torpid and injurious mists of unavailing melancholy!' Then follows a sprightly attack before which Johnson may have quailed indeed. 'Is the Fe-fa-fum of literature that snuffs afar the fame of his brother authors, and thirsts for its destruction, to be allowed to gallop unmolested over the fields of criticism? A few pebbles from the well-springs of truth and eloquence are all that is wanted to bring the might of his envy low.' This celebrated letter, which may stand as a specimen of the whole six volumes, concludes with the following apostrophe:—'Virtuous friendship, how pure, how sacred are thy delights! Sophia, thy mind is capable of tasting them in all their poignance: against how many of life's incidents may that capacity be considered as a counterpoise!'