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Untitled Article
would be difficult to select any which would equal Leigh Hunt ' s most exquisite verses to his son during sickness , beginning— .
* Sleep breathes at last from out thee My little patient boy 'Mr . Watt ' s ' Death of the First-born / and Alfred Tennyson ' s address of a dying girl to her mother , entitled ' New-Year ' s Eve ' Along with these , and second to none , ought to be placed Miss Bowles' < Address to a Dying Infant / and that of the c Dying
Mother to her Child / which last appeared in the Literary Souvenir' for 1830 . No living writer could descend deeper into the maternal heart than she has done in this beautiful poem . Alfred Tennyson ' s Dying Girl' bears a great resemblance to it both in style and spirit , so much so , that hearing it read without the author ' s name being mentioned ., we exclaimed—Caroline Bowles
Miss Bowles , however , makes no pretension to the high and peculiar imagination of Alfred Tennyson . She is often equally graphic in her descriptions , and happy in her epithets ; but her forte in poetry lies in the expression of that soul of tenderness , purity , and piety , which dwells so richly in her . Her tenderness is the simple tenderness of unaffected nature—her piety ,
notwithstanding the natural regretfulness of so affectionate a temperament , hardly and often tried by death and separation , though it has an undertone of subdued melancholy , has , on most occasions , a strong confidence , a grateful delight in the living objects of its attachment , and is always free from cant . She has the true heart of an English lady—a true woman ' s heart . There is a frankness about her that is peculiarly captivating , and
accompanied as it always is by the evidences of so pure , so holy , so highly beneficent , and naturally joyous a spirit , you are made to think that nothing could be more delightful than to take your place by her pony ' Minikin' when she mounts him for a ride into the forest ; or to sit by her side in some open glade of those old woods on a warm summer ' s day , and enjoy with so thorough a lover of nature its finest aspects ; and then returning to that sweet roseembowered cottage of hers , to hold Colloquies' with her , perhaps not as learned , but as delightful as those which Southey has held there .
There is nothing which we should covet so much , were it within the range of distance and possibility , for our own children , as to grow up under the influences of a spirit and heart like hers . To imbibe , what is now so much needed , amid the artificial
refinements of modern life , her simple , healthful tastes , her love of nature , her frank , ardent attachment to , and undisguised advocacy of , what is true and beautiful ; and , above all things , to breathe in , daily and hourly , that pure , holy , yet unbigoted mind that sanctifies everything about it , without deadening or constraining the freedom of a buoyant and blameless nature . But as this cannot
Untitled Article
842 The Writing * and Genius of Caroline Bowles .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 342, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/30/
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