HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS:

"WE dined at Mr. H.'s," says Bozzy, in his de lightful book of twaddle, which has proved such an evidence of the world's love of idle gossip-"We dined at Mr. H.'s (Dr. Johnson and myself), and Mr. H. expected Miss Helen Maria Williams. He gave her Öde on Peace to Dr. Johnson; and when this amiable, elegant, and accomplished young lady entered, he (Dr. J.) took her hand in the most courteous manner, and repeated the finest stanza of her poem. He complained of ill health, and said to Miss Williams, 'I am very ill, when you are near me; what should I be if you were at a distance?"

Young, amiable, elegant, and a poetess! Sylphs, nymphs, and muses, how ye glided before me when, at sixteen, I read this passage in a green arbour at B- Castle! Then, to think of Dr. Cerberus growling gallantries: hearts of stone! what were your callosity under the influence of Helen Maria's eyes! I immediately wrote an ode to Helen Maria Williams, with all the rhymes borrowed from Pope's Essay on Man, and all the spirit from Anna Matilda's Farewell to Della Crusca (my constant study). My ode was quite as good as the poetry of rhyming young ladies of sixteen generally is. There was

not an original thought in it; but then there were such pretty sounding words! and it began, too, I remember, with "Oh! thou." I was most desirous to send my ode to Miss Williams without knowing any thing of her "whereabouts," partly for her sake, and very much for my own; for I really

thought the composition Sapphic, and when my volume of poems was published immediately after, (my début in authorship, of which nobody ever heard,) I was no less anxious to print it. But I did not.. Still, however, my imagination was full of its fair subject, of whom I only knew what Bozzy had told me; and the lapse of time which had intervened since he wrote, never suggested itself.

I was then in the commencement of my intimacy with Mrs. Le Fanu, the presiding priestess of the muses in Dublin; and I wrote to her on the subject, and received the following pleasant and sensible letter, which I have just tossed out of my portfolio, and which has brought the long forgotten subject to my recollection, in all its original freshness. The whole letter is so fair a specimen of the style of the literary ladies of the old school, so like the charming conversation of the writer, and so good a lesson to young ladies who write odes, and who read and write sentimental novels, (besides its coming from a Sheridan,) that I will transcribe it at large.

"Imagine to yourself, ma belle amie, how very gay I must feel, when I tell you I have had a confinement of near five weeks. I caught a feverish cold and sore throat, and, at the end of a fortnight, supposing myself in a manner well, I went out to take the air, or rather the damp (for nothing else was to be had); and I came home with rheumatic pains, first in my lungs, which removed to my right shoulder and arm, which confined me to my bed, where 1 was as agreeably as St. Laurence on his gridiron. Thank God, I am better, and hope revives, though the season be cheerless; but every day brings us nearer the spring, and as Madame de Sévigné observes, no one stops short in the midst of a month,

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or a bad road, for want of power to get through it. So vive la patience, best friend in sickness or sorrow. You recollect, no doubt, Mason's beautiful personification of it, in Elfrida. Patience here, her meek hands folded on her modest breast, in mute submission lifts the adoring eye, even to the storm that wrecks her.' The following is (I think) no bad invocation to the temperate goddess:

"Oh! Patience, heavenly power, hear!
Be ever to thy suppliant near,

Nor let one murmur rise;

Since still some mighty joys are given,
Dear to her soul, the gift of heaven,
The sweet domestic ties.'

You are precisely at the age; you are exactly of the character of mind to admire more the splendid than the useful virtues. They ever attract and still deceive. How many have lulled themselves into perfect self-satisfaction upon the strength of quick feelings, tender emotions, and easily excited sympathies, who have never practised the every-day qualities that come perpetually into play, and are essential to human happiness. Good humour, according to Johnson's definition, endurance of the follies and absurdities of others, appear qualities of such easy attainment, that they are neglected as vulgar. What a mistake-how fatal its consequences! Talents extort admiration; but genuine and habitual affectionate feelings alone beget love. Well has Rousseau insisted so much upon the 'cœur aimant' of Julie. I know two women, both highly gifted, the one of very striking and generally admired talents, the other possessing taste and powers of conversation in a very high degree, yet neither of them can boast the possession of one friend even in their own families. For, 'proud with opinion of

superior merit,' it tinctures their manners, it renders even their condescension offensive. And à propos to remarkable women, Helen Maria Williams's history is briefly as follows:-I believe it is many years since she first came forward as a literary character. The novel of Julia was, I think, her first publication: it has merit, but certainly a very bad tendency-some of the poetry in it is, I think, very beautiful. She was soon known to Dr. Johnson and other literary characters. She was at that time not more than twenty. The year after the French revolution, she was in Paris, and was present at a meeting of the National Assembly, of which she gives a very lively picture. In Paris she met a Mr. Stone, a married man; but with a noble disdain of every opinion we are bound by the laws of God and man to respect, she chose this gentleman for her companion in a tour to Switzerland. Perhaps you will think me harsh in my judgment, but certainly a woman possessing those talents that necessarily imply strong and delicate feelings, more justly incurs blame than another, when she sacrifices to passion the respectability of her character, and voluntarily incurs contempt when she might command respect and admiration. She becomes useless when she might highly benefit her fellow-creatures.*

It is not without much pain that I revive the memory of circumstances, which ought to lie buried in the tomb of the eminent lady to whom they relate. There is nothing so certain. as that morality varies with times and places; and that to censure conduct without reference to the age and nation of the individual, is substantial injustice. Helen Maria Williams came into life at a moment when the malignant influence of bad institutions on happiness, and the prevailing hypocrisy of the times, had rendered every moral principle problematical, and, like her highly-gifted contemporary, the author of the Rights of Woman, she fell into the common error of supposing, VOL. 11-M

"As I have not been out, I gave your two com missions to Tom. Archer has not yet received the English edition of St. Clair. He also called at Power's music shop, who lays the fault upon Stevenson that Castle Hyde has not yet come out. He has had it, I know not what time, to put basses to it.

"I have just been reading St. Clair for the third time, and was more pleased with it than at first, but I think the hero and heroine very dangerous people. You will tell me that the catastrophe would prevent any mischief arising from the witchery of such characters. I do not think so, for we all know that people are not punished in this world because they are vicious; and (as Horatio has it) to be good' is not always to be happy.' Moralists lead you into errors, and often throw you into despair, when they tell you so; for if you are good to the best of your lights and means, and the events of your life are disastrous, you will certainly not feel happy, though you may be resigned; and you will then, like Burgher's Leonora, either be tempted to arraign Providence, or reject altogether doctrines of which you have found the fallacy."

Time passed: and it became my turn to receive odes from young ladies in the country, beginning "Oh thou," quite as good and poetical as my own. Yet oh! how many successive idols of admiration had my fancy erected in the interval. There were Miss Edgeworth, and Madame de Staël, and Madame Cottin, and Miss Baillie, and a long et cetera of lite

that whatever is opposed to wrong must be right. But, though the individual should not be hastily condemned, the interests of the younger part of my own sex require that the error should be signalized. Female purity is indispensable to social happiness. It is one of nature's own laws; and is never violated with impunity.