entitled "Saint Monica," shows her tendency to this

"From the mapp'd lichen, to the plumed weed;
From thready mosses to the veined flow'r."

Mrs. Smith suffered bitterly from the failure of her husband's mercantile speculations, and the consequent troubles they both incurred from the law; which, according to her representations, were aggravated in a scandalous manner by guardians and executors. Lawyers cut a remarkable figure in her novels; and her complaints upon these her domestic grievances, overflow, in a singular, though not unpardonable or unmoving manner, in her prefaces. To one of the later edition of her poems, published when she was alive, is prefixed a portrait of her, under which, with a pretty feminine pathos, which a generous reader would be loth to call vanity, she has quoted the following lines from Shakspeare:

"Oh, Grief has chang'd me since you saw me last; And heavy hours, with Time's deforming hand, Have written strange defeatures on my face."

MISS SEWARD is affected and superfluous; but now and then she writes a good line; for example:

"And sultry silence brooded o'er the hills."

And she can paint a natural picture. We can testify to the strange, unheard-of luxury, which she

describes, of rising to her books before day on a winter's

morning.

"SONNET.

December Morning, 1782.

"I love to rise ere gleams the tardy light,

Winter's pale dawn,—and as warm fires illume
And cheerful tapers shine around the room,
Thro' misty windows bend my musing sight,
Where, round the dusky lawn, the mansions white,
With shutters clos'd peer faintly thro' the gloom,
That slow recedes; while yon gray spires assume,
Rising from their dark pile, an added height
By indistinctness given.-Then to decree

The grateful thoughts to God, ere they unfold

To Friendship, or the Muse, or seek with glee

Wisdom's rich page-O hours! more worth than gold,
By whose blest use we lengthen life, and, free
From drear decays of age, outlive the old!"

Miss Seward ought to have married, and had a person superior to herself for her husband. She would have lost her affectation; doubled her good things; and, we doubt not, have made an entertaining companion for all hours, grave or gay. The daughter of the Editor of "Beaumont and Fletcher" was not a mean person, though lost among the egotisms of her native town, and the praises of injudicious friends. Meanwhile, it is something too much to hear her talk of translating an Ode of Horace "while her hair is dressing!"

The Psyche of MRS. TIGHE has a languid beauty, probably resembling that of her person.

This

lady, who was the daughter of the Rev. William Blachford, died in her 37th year, of consumption. The face prefixed to the volume containing her poem is very handsome. The greater part of the poem itself is little worth, except as a strain of elegance; but now and then we meet with a fancy not unworthy a pupil of Spenser. Cupid, as he lies sleeping, has a little suffusing light, stealing from between his eyelids.

"The friendly curtain of indulgent sleep

Disclos'd not yet his eyes' resistless sway,
But from their silky veil there seem'd to peep
Some brilliant glances with a soften'd ray,
Which o'er his features exquisitely play,
And all his polish'd limbs suffuse with light.
Thus thro' some narrow space the azure day,
Sudden its cheerful rays diffusing bright,

Wide darts its lucid beams to gild the brow of night."

This is the prettiest "peep o' day boy," which has appeared in Ireland.

SPECIMENS OF BRITISH POETESSES.

No. III.

Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Barbauld, Lady Ann Barnard, and Hannah More.

MRS. HUNTER, wife of the celebrated John Hunter the surgeon, and sister of the late Sir Everard Home, published a volume of poems, in which were a number of songs that were set to music, some of them by Haydn, who was intimate with her. Among the latter is one extracted by Mr. Dyce, beginning

"The season comes when first we met."

It is one of the composer's most affecting melodies, and not too much loaded with science. It is to be found in an elegant selection of airs, trios, &c., in two volumes, worthy the attention, and not beyond the skill of the amateur, published by Mr. Sainsbury, and entitled the Vocal Anthology. Mrs. Hunter was

author of the well-known Death Song of a Cherokee Indian,

"The sun sets in night, and the stars shun the day."

A simple and cordial energy, made up of feeling and good sense, is the characteristic of the better part of her writings.

HESTER LYNCH PIOZZI, the friend and hostess of Johnson, was the daughter of John Salusbury, Esq. of Bodvel in Caernarvonshire. Her first husband was Johnson's friend, Thrale, an eminent brewer; her second, Signor Piozzi, a teacher of music. The superiority of The Three Warnings to her other poetical pieces, excited a suspicion, as Mr. Dyce observes, that Johnson assisted her in its composi tion; but there was no foundation for the suspicion. The style is a great deal too natural and lively for Johnson. If anything were to be suspected of the poem, it would be that Mrs. Thrale had found the original in some French author, the lax metre and versification resembling those of the second order of French tales in verse.

MRS. RADCLIFFE's verses are unworthy of her romances. In the latter she was what Mr. Mathias called her, "a mighty magician;"-or not to lose the fine sound of his whole phrase," the mighty magician of Udolpho." In her verses, she is a tin

VOL. II.

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