think, when we consider the degree of attention with which they have been received, that no undue or empirical means were resorted to, to influence popular suffrage. On the contrary, most of them were produced in solitude, and apart even from the exciting influences of literary society. The author experienced nothing of the fostering partiality of coteries; nor, as we have said, had she a personal acquaintance with any of the contemporary lights of poetry, until she herself had become a part of the constellation. With her sister spirits, Joanna Baillie, Caroline Bowles, Mary Mitford, Letitia Landon, and Mary Howitt, she pressed forward in generous emulation; but there was not a spark of rivalry in her bosom. Their glory was in a great measure felt as her own; and she rejoiced in their success, with a cordial warmth, which it was truly delightful to observe.
Without aspiring to the vehemence, which some writers have mistaken for energy, the
