Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie. Amelia Opie

’midst fairer maids,

      To think on her thou leav’st behind.

      Thy love, thy fate, dear youth, to share,

      Must never be my happy lot;

      But thou may’st grant this humble prayer

      Forget me not! forget me not!

      Yet should the thought of my distress

      Too painful to thy feelings be,

      Heed not the wish I now express,

      Nor ever deign to think of me!

      But oh! if grief thy steps attend,

      If want, if sickness be thy lot,

      And thou require a soothing friend,

      Forgot me not! forget me not!

      Sir James Mackintosh, in a letter written to Mr. Sharpe, from India, refers to these lines in the following manner: “Tell the fair Opie that if she would address such pretty verses to me as she did to Ashburner, I think she might almost bring me back from Bombay, though she could not prevent his going thither. I beg that she will have the goodness to convey Lady M.’s kindest compliments and mine, to her friend Madame Roland, of Norwich.” (By this playful epithet Mrs. Taylor was designated, in consequence of a fancied resemblance to her portrait.) It was probably, the delivery of this message which produced the impromptu by Mrs. Opie, on being asked if she had written verses on the absence of Sir James Mackintosh, in India:—

      No! think not in verse

      I his absence deplore:

      Who a sorrow can sing

      Till that sorrow is o’er?

      And when shall his loss

      With such sorrow be classed?

      Oh! when shall his absence

      Be pain that is past?

      Sir James acknowledged the compliment thus paid him by the following letter, dated,

      Bombay, 30th September, 1805.

      My dear Mrs. Opie,

      Many thanks for all your late presents, your good cousin, your most affecting novel, and your elegant verses. Your cousin will do well, and return to you, I hope, in a few years, with a reasonable fortune, and an unbroken constitution. At present I think he looks fresher than I ever saw him in Norfolk. Of Adeline, I cannot speak with quite so much unmixed complacency; she has occasioned many painful moments, and even cost us some tears. The verses I am sure I should admire, even if they had not bribed me to do so. The first four lines in particular are so ingenious and so natural, so lively and so easy, that they resemble the light poetry of the French, in which they so much surpass all nations. Standing by themselves, they would make an admirable impromptu answer to the question which is the subject. Perhaps you will allow me to prove the sincerity of this praise, by adding that the remaining lines though excellent, are not perhaps of quite so high a cast as the first four. I have some thought of publishing these four in our Bombay Paper, in the form of which I have spoken; if I do, I bespeak pardon by anticipation.

      The character of the Hindu is, in your songs, and in most European descriptions, beautiful and poetical; but on near approach it is base and odious enough. Their fine forms and graceful attitudes might indeed furnish subjects for Mr. Opie’s pencil, but their minds will seldom be worthy of your verse or your prose. I agree with you about the commencement of the third volume of Godwin’s novel. It is most masterly. There are other admirable parts; but, taken throughout, I think it the worst of his three; though far indeed above the limits of a vulgar fate. So unlettered and incurious is this place, that the copy of Fleetwood which came here, was suffered to lie on the shop counter with all the common trash of the Minerva press, undistinguished by our novel readers, to whom Godwin has no name; and might have so remained till it was devoured by the white ants, if I had not heard of it by chance, and eagerly snatched it from these animals, or from others of nobler shape, but not much nobler nature. I need scarcely say that no hostility was mixed with my eagerness; on the contrary, I expected, and I found great pleasure. I hope you are in love with Walter Scott’s “Lay of the Last Minstrel.” Nowhere else, but in “Warwick Castle,” are antique character and dignity reconciled with modern elegance and regularity. It has many charming passages, and the narrative is full of warlike and Homeric spirit; if the poem be sometimes tedious, so is Homer himself, the prince of ballad-makers, and of border minstrels. I presume that you have read Madame de Genlis’ “Duchesse de la Valière;” which, though not precisely a novel, is surely a most fascinating work. Have you ventured on the Abbé Delille’s translation of “Paradise Lost?” I presume it is a capital crime to praise it in England; and perhaps the importation of it may be prohibited; I see it is most profusely panegyrized in the Moniteur, and the only fault in the opinion of the French critics, is that the Translator has not altered Milton sufficiently. How would this sound on the banks of my beloved Thames? It would be blasphemy in England, and would be very bad taste anywhere, not to mention its glaring inconsistency with the first idea of translation. The bearer of this letter is Mrs. Stewart, a very amiable, and rather unfortunate woman, who brought here beauty and understanding fit for happier spots, and who is now going to England in search of long-lost health; any attention that you may have the goodness to show her, Lady M. and I shall consider as a great favour to us. I am confident, that when your own ingenious delicacy has gently dispelled the clouds that dejection and retirement have spread around her, you will see in herself sufficient motives for kindness to her.

      I am, my Dear Madam,

      Truly and faithfully yours,

      James Mackintosh.

      A triple crown was to be awarded to this song “Go, youth beloved.” It was selected by the Rev. Sydney Smith, in one of his “Lectures on Moral Philosophy,” delivered at the Royal Institution in 1804-5, as possessing peculiar excellence in its style; he says, “If any man were to discover the true language of nature and feeling in this little poem of Mrs. Opie’s, he would gain no credit for his metaphorical taste, because the beauties of it are too striking for a moment’s hesitation.”

      The authoress was present at the time when Mr. Smith pronounced this eulogium upon her verses; and she used laughingly to tell how unexpectedly the compliment came upon her, and how she shrunk down upon her seat, in order to screen herself from the observation of those around her.

[7]	It was afterwards taken as the groundwork for one of the most popular Italian operas of the time, the “Agnese” of Paer.

[8]	Written by Dr. Brown.

CHAPTER VII.

       Table of Contents

      THE TRIALS OF GENIUS; DOMESTIC TROUBLES; LETTERS TO MRS. TAYLOR; JOURNEY TO FRANCE; ARRIVAL AT PARIS; THE LOUVRE; THE FIRST CONSUL; CHARLES JAMES FOX; THE SOIRÉE; KOSCIUSKO.

      We have seen how diligently Mrs. Opie laboured during the year 1801, and with what success her efforts had been crowned. Yet this was the severest season of domestic anxiety and trouble, she was, as a wife, destined to experience. She tells us, in her Memoir of her husband, that although he had a picture in the Exhibition of 1801, which was universally admired, and purchased as soon as beheld, yet “he saw himself at the end of that year, and the beginning of the next, almost wholly without employment; and even my sanguine temper yielding to the trial, I began to fear that, small as our expenditure was, it must become still smaller. Not that I allowed myself to own that I desponded; on the contrary, I was forced to talk to him of hopes, and to bid him look forward to brighter prospects, as his temper, naturally desponding, required all the support possible. But gloomy and painful indeed were those three alarming months, and I consider them as the severest trial that I experienced during my married life. However,