POETICAL WORKS ОР MRS. FELICIA HEMANS. NEW EDITION. ILLUSTRATED WITH STEEL ENGRAVINGS. BOSTON: PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, & CO., 110 WASHINGTON STREET, PREFACE. Or the genius of the gifted authoress of this volume, it is deemed entirely superfluous to speak; its proud eminence having so long and so universally been conceded by all lovers of poetry. Fame is the recompense, not of the living, but of the dead not always do they reap and gather in the harvest, who sow the seed - the flame of its altar is too often kindled from the ashes of the great. Hazlitt beautifully represents it as "the sound which the stream of high thoughts, carried down to future ages, makes as it flows-deep, distant, murmuring evermore like the waters of the mighty ocean." Though why should we insinuate its want of acknowledgment to her, when she so eloquently asks, "What is fame to a heart yearning for affection, and finding it not? Is it not as a triumphal crown to the brow of one parched with fever, and asking for one fresh, healthful draught the cup of cold water?'" No reputation can be called such, that will not endure Hazlitt's test; but when tried by his measure, and not found wanting, this is fame indeed. When thus favored, may it not begin and continue, coin cident with the popularity which is so often mistaken for itself? May not the spirit of a man transfuse its influence into the spirits of other men, without the mythological transmigration which, according to this theory, death implies; and the force of that influence be felt, ere yet the "swift decay of him" that so works for the world, shall quite release him from his toils? Alas! it is the common province of the one, to enjoy "the price of the bitter tears of the other." But it is enjoyed, and that is fame. The best confirmation, melancholy though it be, of the truth of these remarks, is furnished by the accomplished and amiable writer, whose beautiful illustration of her own career not to call it a prediction of her own destiny - we have borrowed, as better expressive of our views under consideration than anything we could say ourselves, did we write a volume. The mournful fancy sings, "When the strain is sung, Till a thousand hearts are stirr'd, What life-drops, from the minstrel wrung, Have gush'd with every word? "None! none! his treasures live like thine, Thou that hast been to the pearl's dark shrine |