FOUR BIOGRAPHIES.* WE remember, when we were young, an obnoxious
game called "forfeits," in which the unhappy victim was sometimes ordered to "bow to the wittiest, kneel to the prettiest, and kiss the one you love the best." This book seems, no doubt un- intentionally, to challenge us to an exhibition of preference something like that old game. It was always a painful alter- native, especially to the young and shy ; there was something invidious about it, something rude. From a modern point of view it is worse, it is unmoral : we do not suppose that the
* Pour Biographies from " Blackwood." By L. B. Walford, Antbor of "Mr. Smith," ite. Edinburgh and London : W. Blackwood and Sons. 1833.
game is admitted into High Schools. "Kneel to the prettiest," and pass the " wittiest " with the poor acknowledgment of a bow ! Human nature, in the days of our grandfathers and grandmothers, must have been rather a low and frivolous sort of thing.
However that may be, we cannot meet four distinguished women in one book—Jane Taylor, Elizabeth Fry, Hannah More, and Mary Somerville—without being tempted to draw comparisons between them. Their history, their character. their doings, their claims to distinction, are all—except, perhaps, in the case of Jane Taylor—intimately well known to the world. With Mrs. Hannah More at this time we find ourselves especially familiar. Miss Yonge's very interesting Life, reviewed in the Spectator not long ago, and now this agreeable sketch of Mrs. Walford's, are enough to take away all excuse for ignorance about Hannah More. No one now will dare to call her a Methodist any more. We know all about her London life, her friendship with Johnson and Garrick, her plays, her poems, her social and literary triumphs ; and we are equally well informed about the religious and philanthropic work of her later years, which showed another side of her charming and enthusiastic character. We have nothing more to say about Hannah More, except to recom- mend her book on Female Education to those interested in the subject, venturing at the same time the opinion that the reading of any of her books is not such a hopelessly impossible task for the minds of the present day as Mrs. Walford seems to think it. And it may not be out of place this year to quote a remark of hers on the "incredible folly" of a hundred. years ago :—
"The other night we had eleven damsels here, of whom I protest I hardly do them justice when I affirm that they had among them, on their heads, an acre and a half of shrubbery, besides slopes, grass-plots, tulip-beds, clumps of peonies, kitchen- gardens, and greenhouses."
There is something in Hannah More—it may be her friendship with Johnson—which seems to remove her a little further from us than the other ladies we meet in this book ; somehow, she stands on a different plane. No doubt she was no better than Mrs. Fry, or cleverer than Mrs. Somerville; yet, when it comes to be a case of bowing to the wittiest, we feel that Mrs. More's claims cannot be disputed. We are not sure that she was not also the prettiest, and her friends certainly thought her a most loveable person. On the whole, perhaps a comparison with her is not quite fair to the others.
Taking " wit " in its old meaning, we must, of course, and very respectfully, make our bow to Mrs. Somerville. It is pleasant to be reminded by this delightful sketch of all the surroundings among which her talents grew. She was only just able to read at eight years old, and not able to write at all ; happy among the seaweed and grass and shell-fish of the rocks and creeks of Burntisland ; miserable when school-days came, and she was tied up in steel stays and made to learn pages of Johnson's dictionary. Then she went to Edinburgh,—learning to dance, to draw, to cook, to do fancy-work, not disliking "a little quiet flirtation," and then accidentally introduced to all her future fame by seeing some questions in algebra at the end of a magazine of fashion. After this, said Mary Fairfax of herself, "I never lost sight of the main object of my life, which was to prosecute my studies." Her first marriage appears to have been a stupid one ; but poor Mr. Greig- is dismissed in a very few words ; and in her second.
husband, Mr. Somerville, she had—unusual fate for a woman of genius—a companion who perfectly understood. her, who joined and sympathised with her in all her pur- suits, who was thoroughly proud of her, helped her to the utmost of his own powers, which were of a high order, and rejoiced—" not one in ten thousand would have rejoiced as he did "—at her wonderful successes. Mrs. Somerville's long life- was an unusually happy one ; and one can hardly be wrong in tracing its happiness, more than to science and fame and the admiration of all the distinguished men of Europe, to the husband of whom "his daughter thus writes in after-years:"—
" My father never had the slightest ambition on his own account. He was far happier helping my mother in various ways, —searching the libraries for the books she required, and in- defatigably copying and recopying her manuscripts, to save her time. No trouble seemed too great which he could bestow upon her ; it was a labour of love."
We are led to believe that all these ladies, except, perhaps,
Jane Taylor—and if she had not beauty, she must have had charm—were pretty in their young days. Elizabeth Fry any one who was not extremely disgusting, but I felt a sort of love to Pennsylvania, setting up as a lawyer in Philadelphia. for them ; and I do hope I would sacrifice my life for the good of There, in 1780, he was thrown out of a carriage, suffered, with mankind?' characteristic cheerfulness, the loss of a leg, and went through Having bowed to Mary Somerville, we will kneel to Elizabeth the world thenceforth wearing a primitive contrivance, Fry. Whether she was the prettiest or not, she certainly consisting of "not much more than a rough oak stick seems to us the greatest and the best. The stuff to make with a wooden knob at the end." He said to a sym- saints of is found in men and women like her. pathetic friend,—" The loss is less than you imagine ; I And now we come to Jane Taylor. Love is free : we do not shall doubtless be a steadier man with one leg than two." It love people because they are clever, or because they are good. was as a delegate from Pennsylvania that he sat in the Con- Jane Taylor, no doubt, was both ; but for us she is something vention which framed the Constitution. There, again, he else besides; she wrote "The Cow and the Ass," and we love wrought vigorously against slavery, describing it as "a Jane Taylor. We love her better than Ann, or Adelaide, or nefarious institution, the curse of Heaven on all the States in any of the other people concerned in Original Poems. To which it prevailed ;" but for the sake of Union he had to us she is on a level with another name, with another hand, accept the fatal compromise. To him Madison ascribes "the —like hers, too soon cold and still. The gay, happy, gentle, finish given to the style and arrangement of the Constitution," humorous sweetness, the light touch of a delicate genius, a which, however, did not confer that strength on the central fine instinct that never could be stiff or strait-laced or tire- institutions which he so fervently desired. Having laid the some, living in the world indeed, yet in a pure air and a safe, foundation of a private fortune by mercantile enterprise as sweet place of its own,—all this is much the same in both, and well as law, and having bought his Royalist brother's share it is as charming as it is rare. There are too many people to of the paternal estate, he set out in 1788 bent on a tour in whom Jane Taylor and her writings are alike unknown : we Europe, landing at Havre in the beginning of the next year. hope that Mrs. Walford's most interesting sketch will do a From that time, for ten years, he remained on "this side of great deal to remove this reproach from us. the water," living in Paris, running to and fro between Leaving Mrs Hannah More, then, a little out of the question, France and England, fulfilling his painful duties as Minister we offer to Mrs. Somerville our respect, to Mrs. Fry our from the United States to the French Government, 1792-94, reverence, and to Jane Taylor our love, visiting and travelling over a large area of Germany. The
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