Immortal Memories | Page 2

its streets and quadrangles, is with us upon every visit. Bath
again has noble memories. Upon house after house in that fine city is
inscribed the fact that it was at one time the home of a famous man or
woman of the past. Through its streets many of our great imaginative
writers have strolled, and those streets have been immortalized in the
pages of several great novelists, notably of Jane Austen and Charles
Dickens.
For the City of Norwich I have a particular affection, as for long the
home in quite separate epochs of Sir Thomas Browne and of George
Borrow. I recall that in the reign of one of its Bishops--the father of
Dean Stanley--there was a literary circle of striking character, that men
and women of intellect met in the episcopal palace to discuss all
'obstinate questionings.'
But if he were asked to choose between the golden age of Bath, of
Norwich, or of Lichfield, I am sure that any man who knew his books
would give the palm to Lichfield, and would recall that period in the
life of Lichfield when Dr. Seward resided in the Bishop's Palace, with
his two daughters, and when they were there entertaining so many
famous friends. I saw the other day the statement that Anna Seward's
name was unknown to the present generation. Now I have her works in
nine volumes {6}; I have read them, and I doubt not but that there are
many more who have done the same. Sir Walter Scott's friendship
would alone preserve her memory if every line she wrote deserved to
be forgotten as is too readily assumed. Scott, indeed, professed
admiration for her verse, and a yet greater poet, Wordsworth, wrote in
praise of two fine lines at the close of one of her sonnets, that entitled
'Invitation to a Friend,' lines which I believe present the first
appearance in English poetry of the form of blank verse immortalized
by Tennyson.
Come, that I may not hear the winds of night, Nor count the heavy
eave-drops as they fall.

"You have well criticized the poetic powers of this lady," says
Wordsworth, "but, after all, her verses please me, with all their faults,
better than those of Mrs. Barbauld, who, with much higher powers of
mind, was spoiled as a poetess by being a dissenter."
Less, however, can be said for her poetry to-day than for her capacity
as a letter writer. A letter writing faculty has immortalized more than
one English author, Horace Walpole for example, who had this in
common with Anna Seward, that he had the bad taste not to like Dr.
Johnson.
Sooner or later there will be a reprint of a selection of Anna Seward's
correspondence; you will find in it a picture of country life in the
middle of the eighteenth century--and by that I mean Lichfield life--that
is quite unsurpassed. Anna Seward, her friends and her enemies, stand
before us in very marked outline. As with Walpole also, she must have
written with an eye to publication. Veracity was not her strong point,
but her literary faculty was very marked indeed. Those who have read
the letters that treat of her sister's betrothal and death, for example, will
not easily forget them. The accepted lover, you remember, was a Mr.
Porter, a son of the widow whom Johnson married; and Sarah Seward,
aged only eighteen, died soon after her betrothal to him. That is but one
of a thousand episodes in the world into which we are introduced in
these pages. {8}
The Bishop's Palace was the scene of brilliant symposiums. There one
might have met Erasmus Darwin of the Botanic Garden, whose fame
has been somewhat dulled by the extraordinary genius of his grandson.
There also came Richard Edgeworth, the father of Maria, whose Castle
Rackrent and The Absentee are still among the most delightful books
that we read; and there were the two young girls, Honora and Elizabeth
Sneyd, who were destined in succession to become Richard
Edgeworth's wives. There, above all, was Thomas Day, the author of
Sanford and Merton, a book which delighted many of us when we were
young, and which I imagine with all its priggishness will always
survive as a classic for children. There, for a short time, came Major
Andre, betrothed to Honora Sneyd, but destined to die so tragically in

the American War of Independence. It is to Miss Seward's malicious
talent as a letter writer that we owe the exceedingly picturesque account
of Day's efforts to obtain a wife upon a particular pattern, his selection
of Sabrina Sidney, whom he prepared for that high destiny by sending
her to a boarding school until she was of the right age--his lessons in
stoicism--his disappointment because she screamed when he fired