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Untitled Article
of fact in choosing good , taking- titles . A good title to a book is as hard ta get as a good title to an estate , a fact so well known to publishers , that one of our principal ones has given as much as 30 / . for a happy title , and had a book written to it . With the exception of * Chapters on Churchyards , ' we do not know a volume of Caroline Bowles ' s , whose title is not bad—vague—untaking . < Ellen Fitzarthur '— < A Widow ' s Tale * — < Solitary Hours '—who would feel any excitement of curiosity by these titles to buy the books ? Who would expect in ' Solitary Hours ' to find what there is , some of the most exquisite poetry of its kind in the language ; or , in short , anything but the lucubrations of one of the thousand-and-one amiable youths and delicate damsels
that take , similarly labelled , their passports to oblivion . Who would not be surprised to discover a poetess , the character of whose productions are the deepest pathos , the most holy purity of feeling , a keen perception and keen relish for all that is beautiful in nature , and ( for what may seem anomalous , yet really arises from the same delicate and acute organization ) for what is
grotesque in costume , and ludicrous in character and action , and withal that mental power which , adapting itself to the need and the occasion , is now developed in the graphic vivacity of its touches , and now , in the unfolding- and following out with sublime , because calm , unwavering , almost superhuman firmness ,
the workings of passion and woe on the hardest and the highest natures . Yet such are the characteristics of the writings of Caroline Bowles . The pathos and the beautiful purity of spirit are most conspicuous in her poems—the other qualities , though they occasionally glance out in her verse ., are most prevalent in her
prose . We shall first speak of her poetry . The two first volumes we will pass by . They appear to have been written in early youth , and exhibit rather a liking for poetry than the possession of it . With the exception of the two dramatic sketches in the Widow ' s Tale , ' which are full of vigour and feeling , they do not warm you like the genuine inspiration of the awakened heart of genius . They are fair and beautiful , but cold . Miss Bowles had wandered into the fairy-land of fancy , and approached within hearing of those springs of thought and emotion which gush forth in many of its dells , but cannot be come at , except through the spiny thickets of painful experience . Between the publication of these volumes and ' Solitary Hours , ' she had passed these lacerating barriers ; she had gone down into the depths of those rich but bitter springs , and the cries sent forth from her torn and bleeding heart had that thrilling tone
which startles all hearers into an everlasting sympathy . All other qualities of her being , seemed absorbed in the one uprising , all-imbuing , all-clothing spirit of love ;—love in its purest and divinest character ; love to all that is beautiful i « nature , and iu the heart and mind of man ; to the Spirit that spread out
Untitled Article
The Writings and Genius of Caroline Bowles . 880
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 339, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/27/
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