Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie. Amelia Opie

form of the piece, for the first time in my life, an unprejudiced judgment. Mrs. Siddons, indeed, told me not to go, because the play was stupid; but I have since recollected, to counteract her influence, that Kemble says she knows nothing about a play. So I flatter myself I am still unprejudiced.

      I shall have left Norwich a month only next Sunday, and it seems to me three, at least, so much have I done and seen since my return. Mr. Opie, too, has been constantly employed. The T.s will be here in a month; that is a great joy to me. I purposely avoid saying anything of my evening at Mrs. Siddons’ on Tuesday evening last, as I expect to fill my letter to my father with it to-morrow.

      I am uneasy about Mr. Opie’s mother. She has again taken to her bed; and I fear the long struggle she had with death last winter, though she overcame him, will have weakened her too much to make it possible for her to endure another—and I did so ardently wish to see her! A committee of Academicians is to meet every Saturday till means are found to execute Mr. Opie’s plan for a Naval Pantheon; and this looks well. Just room for love to your circle, and my name,

      A. Opie.

      The fear expressed in this letter was, happily, not realized; Mr. Opie’s mother survived till the spring of 1805, when she died at the advanced age of ninety-two. To this parent he was most tenderly attached, and neither time nor the pressure of business, diminished his filial devotion to her. He delighted to dwell upon her early tenderness, her careful attention to his childish wants, and the encouragement which she afforded to his first attempts in the art he loved; his eye would glisten and his face kindle with affection when he spoke of her; and no sooner was it in his power to assist her, than he rejoiced in affording her the means of comfort and independence.

      How cordially could his wife sympathize with him in this fervent attachment; she, who was, throughout life, so sensitively alive to the claims of relationship, even in the remotest degrees, and whose whole being was devoted with tenderest love to her parents while living, and to their memory when dead! She appears to have been permitted the gratification of her wish to see her husband’s mother, and “I believe (she says) that scarcely any one who knew her would have thought this description of her an exaggerated one.”

CHAPTER VI.

       Table of Contents

      “THE FATHER AND DAUGHTER;” CRITIQUE IN THE EDINBURGH; THREE LETTERS TO MRS. TAYLOR; VOLUME OF “POEMS;” “GO, YOUTH BELOVED;” LETTER FROM SIR J. MACKINTOSH; S. SMITH’S LECTURE.

In the year 1801, Mrs. Opie gave to the world the “Father and Daughter;” her first acknowledged publication. She had, before her marriage, published an anonymous novel, entitled “the Dangers of Coquetry,” which does not appear to have attracted any attention. It will presently be seen that she refers to it in a letter to Mrs. Taylor, and it is included in the list of her works given in Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica, although without date, and placed in order after her earlier publications. The “Father and Daughter,” in the first edition, was accompanied by a poem called “The Maid of Corinth,” and some smaller pieces. It is unnecessary to do more than remind the reader of the warmth of approval with which this tale was received by the public.^[7] In the preface to it Mrs. Opie modestly confesses her diffidence in appearing as an avowed author at the bar of public opinion, and disclaiming for her little book the ambitious title of a novel, says, “Its highest pretensions are to be a simple moral tale.”

In the first volume of “The Edinburgh,” there is a review of her poems,^[8] in which the writer thus criticises the “Father and Daughter.”

      * * * “Mrs. Opie’s mind is evidently more adapted to seize situation than to combine incidents. It can represent, with powerful expression, the solitary portrait, in every attitude of gentler grief; but it cannot bring together a connected assemblage of figures, and represent each in its most striking situation, so as to give, as it were, to the glance of a moment, the feelings and events of many years. When a series of reflections is to be brought by her to our view, they must all be of that immediate relation which allows them to be introduced at any part of the poem; or we shall probably see before us a multitude, rather than a group. * * * * She has, indeed, written a novel; and it is one which excites a very high interest: but the merit of that novel does not consist in its action, nor in any varied exhibition of character. Agnes, in all the sad changes of fortune, is still the same; and the action, if we except a very few situations of the highest excitement, is the common history of every seduction in romance. Indeed, we are almost tempted to believe that the scene in the wood occurred first to the casual conception of the author; and that, in the design of fully displaying it, all the other events of the novel were afterwards imagined.”

      The three following letters to Mrs. Taylor admit us behind the scenes, and allow us to see the palpitations of her heart.

      Sunday Evening, 1801.

      My dear Friend,

      The only paper I can find consists of two half sheets, comme vous voyez. But no matter. I will not, for appearance’ sake, baulk my inclination to write to you.

      * * I am very sorry that Mrs. Jordan and the Duke of Clarence have hitherto managed their matters so ill, as always to disappoint you; but the lady is now about again, though, from pecuniary disputes with the manager, probably, she is, as yet, invisible to the public. However, by the time you come, I hope she will be on the boards again. I believe you were very right in what you said to me, about the good arising from my having delayed publishing my juvenile pieces; but some of those things which have now gained me reputation are juvenile pieces, written years ago; however, I am contented that I have, till now, lived unconscious of the anxieties of an author. I wish I were launched! As usual, all the good I saw in my work, before it was printed, is now vanished from my sight, and I remember only its faults. All the authors, of both sexes, and artists too, that are not too ignorant or full of conceit to be capable of alarm, tell me they have had the same feeling when about to receive judgment from the public. Besides, whatever I read appears to me so superior to my own productions, that I am in a state of most unenviable humility. Mr. Opie has no patience with me; but he consoles me by averring that fear makes me overrate others, and underrate myself. Be so good as to tell my father that, as a subscriber to Dyer’s book, he has half a guinea to pay for the volume I have received for him, and when the other two volumes are done, he will have to pay half a guinea more! Poor man; but tell him, as some little consolation, that there are three pretty stanzas addressed to me in the first volume, the old verses lengthened and improved, but they are “To a Lady,” not to Mrs. Opie. Viganoni was with me from twelve to three to-day, alternately singing with me and talking; he has, with all his genius, a great deal of what the French call bonhommie, which makes him talkative and confiding, when he is with those he thinks his friends. I was pleased, for his sake, to hear him say he should sing only two or three years longer, as he had saved money enough to live quite at his ease in his native country. He says music is now so cultivated and courted in England, that it is at its height, and must soon fall “en décadence;” but he thinks the present taste a vicious one. “Le monde Anglais;” he says, “like nothing equal to bravura singing,” which he thinks no singing at all, and which never goes to the heart like simple sentimental singing. Indeed he never puts in a grace, but what tends to illustrate the sentiment of the words, and the style of the air; his singing is conversation, put into sweet sounds. My plaudit is of no weight, perhaps; but Viganoni has, unrivalled, that of all the oldest, most experienced, and able professors of music—men who unite theory with practice, and are the only good judges, from having, from their situations, an opportunity of comparing singers and styles—men who have learnt to hear, an art, nothing but hearing constantly the first music and performers, can teach. I long to hear Mara again. V. says she sings better than ever, though her voice is on the wane. How strange it is that Bante retains her unequalled voice, though she gets drunk every day. This extraordinary creature can’t even write her name, and knows not a note of music. V. is sometimes forced to pinch her to keep her in time, and make her leave off her vile shake, or rather no shake, at the proper point. A gentleman declared to me he saw this; but I did not believe