least five regular poems, of several cantos each, some estimate may be formed of her poetical labors. Besides these were twenty-four school exercises, three unfinished romances, a complete tragedy, written at thirteen years of age, and about forty letters, in a few months, to her mother alone." This statement does not comprise the large proportion (at least one third of the whole) which she destroyed.
The genius of Lucretia Davidson has had the meed of far more authoritative praise than ours. The following tribute is from the "London Quarterly Review," a source whence praise of American productions is as rare as springs in the desert. The notice is by Mr. Southey, and is written with the earnest feeling that characterizes that author, as generous as he is discriminating. "In these poems," ("Amir Khan," etc.) "there is enough of originality, enough of aspiration, enough of conscious energy, enough of growing power, to warrant any expectations, however sanguine, which the patrons, and the friends, and parents of the deceased could have formed."
But, prodigious as the genius of this young creature was, still marvelous after all the abatements that may be made for precociousness and morbid development, there is something yet more captivating in her moral loveliness. Her modesty was not the infusion of another mind, not the result of cultivation, not the effect of good taste; nor was it a veil cautiously assumed and gracefully worn; but an innate quality, that made her shrink from incense, even though the censer were sanctified by love. Her mind was like the exquisite mirror, that cannot be stained by human breath.
