Stapleton Martin

“ To Samuel Johnson, the sweetest airs and most superb harmonies were but unmeaning noises. [39] I often regret that Milton and Handel were not contemporaries; that the former knew not the delight p. 40of hearing his own poetry heightened as Handel has heightened it.”
The poetess thought that “The contemptible rage for novel-reading is a pernicious and deplorably prevalent taste, which vitiates and palls the appetite for literary food of a more nutritive and wholesome kind. . . . I am well assured, that novels and political tracts are the only things generally read.” ”

“ Anna Seward said, “is as absolute a monarch of the human passions as Shakespeare.” . . . “Were Handel living, I should approach and address him with much more awe than any merely good sort of body upon the throne of England.” . . .
“Poetry itself, though so much the elder science, for music has been a science only since the harmonic combinations were discovered, possesses not a more inherent empire over the passions than music, of which Handel is the mighty master ”

“ The conversation of my beloved husband, when my breath will let me have it, is my greatest delight, he procures me every comfort, and as he always said he thought he should, contrives for me everything that can ease and quiet my weakness. ”

“ When we see that man in the pulpit whom we are in the habit of meeting at the festal board, at the card-table, perhaps seen join in the dance, and over whose frailties, in common with our own, no holy curtain has been drawn, we expect modest exhortation, sober reasoning, chastened denunciation. ”

“ Anna Seward seems to have known everybody worth knowing, and she met many celebrities of her day,—not only at Lichfield, but when she visited Buxton and Harrogate, as she sometimes did, for the Baths. Writing from Buxton in 1796 to Mr. Saville, she said, “my acquaintance here seem to set a far higher value on my talents and conversation, such as they are, than the Lichfieldiens; but it is more than probable that novelty is the cause of this so much more appreciating attention” ”

“ Alfred Austin, the Laureate of our own day, has recently written in an article, entitled, “The Essentials of Great Poetry,” that the English masters of song are, Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron, and he tells us that only the merest fraction of Wordsworth’s work is real poetry. Anna Seward would seem to have agreed with the selection of these names, if we substitute Pope for Byron. ”

“ In a letter written by Anna Seward to T. S. Whalley, dated November 7th, 1784, she said, “The extinction, in our sphere, of that mighty spirit, approaches fast. A confirmed dropsy deluges the vital source. It is melancholy to observe with what terror he contemplates his approaching fate.” In a letter to Mrs. Knowles (the wife of Dr. Knowles, an eminent physician in London, and in her younger days a well-known Staffordshire beauty) , dated March 27th, 1785, Anna Seward says, “O, yes, as you observe, dreadful were the horrors which attended poor Johnson’s dying state. ”

“ Johnson’s ‘Lives of the Poets,’ and all the records of his own life and conversation, prove that envy did deeply stain his spirit. To your question, ‘Whom could Johnson envy’? I answer, all his superiors in genius, all his equals; in short, at times, every celebrated author, living or p. 24dead . . . I cannot help feeling that he has superiors, and that in a very large degree, though they will not be found amongst our essayists, where I acknowledge his pre-eminence. Johnson was a very bright star, yet to Shakespeare and Milton, he was but as a star to the sun . ”

“ Literature and music and science have been found this year amazingly prolific in centenary commemorations of their great exemplars, as a leading article in the “Times,” for April, 1909, has lately reminded us. Yet the death in 1809 of Anna Seward, who “for many years held a high rank in the annals of British literature,” to quote the words of Sir Walter Scott, has generally passed unnoticed. ”

“ Anna Seward died 25th March, 1809, and is buried Lichfield Cathedral, probably in the choir. She had always prayed for a sudden death, but though this prayer was not literally answered, she did not long suffer serious illness, for on the 23rd of March she was seized with “an universal stupor,” which only continued until the 25th.
The poetess has always been known as “The Swan of Lichfield,” though no one seems to know who gave her the name. ”

“ Anna Seward considered Southey’s genius, beyond comparison, superior to that of Wordsworth. She wrote in 1796, “This is the age of wonders. A great one has lately p. 37arisen in the poetical world—the most extraordinary that ever appeared, as to juvenile powers, except that of the ill-starred Chatterton—Southey’s Joan of Arc, an epic poem of strength and beauty, by a youth of twenty.” Cowper was, to her mind, a vapourish egotist and a fanatic. She hated his Calvinism, and thought that the spirit of scornful denunciation everywhere prevails when Cowper reprehends the errors of mankind. ”

“ They are to men what beauty is to women, a dangerous gift, which has a natural tendency to make them indolent, silly, and worthless. Let property be hereditary, but let titular honours be the reward of noble or useful exertions. ”

“ Happening to peruse some verses apparently written by her, he took an opportunity of calling at the Palace when Anna Seward was alone, and satisfied himself that she could write good poetry unaided, and that her literary abilities were of no common kind.
Dr. Darwin (who was a native of Nottinghamshire) in either the year 1756 or 1757, arrived in Lichfield to practise as a Physician there, where he resided until 1781. Darwin was a “votary to p. 13poetry,” a philosopher, and a clever though an eccentric man. ”

“ Anna Seward informs us that she was “no great reader of sermons,” but she wrote a sermon for “an ingenious young clergyman of our neighbourhood, who has just taken orders, and who wishes to make his first essay in the pulpit with something of my writing. If I know anything of my talents, sermonising is their forte.” ”

“ Darwin died suddenly, in the very act of writing a letter to Richard Lovell Edgeworth; and in 1804 Anna Seward published a biographical Memoir of Darwin, in reference to which Sir Walter Scott wrote, “he could not have wished his fame and character entrusted to a pen more capable of doing them ample and, above all, discriminating justice.” She called Darwin her “bright luminary.” On his death she wrote thus:—“His extinction is universally lamented, from the most operative cause of regret; and while disease may no longer turn the eyes of hope p. ”

“ In spite of his petition that General Washington would “adapt the mode of death to his feelings as a man of honour,” he was hanged as a spy at Tappan. General Washington was unable to listen to strong appeals for clemency, for, though commander of the American armies, his voice counted but one on the court martial. André was of French descent, and has been described as high-spirited, accomplished, affectionate and merry-hearted. Anna Seward tells us that he appeared to her to be “dazzled” by Honora, who estimated highly his talents ”

“ Anna Seward sympathised with the views expressed in his books on the French Revolution, though she p. 35considered many of his views on politics far too fanciful to be put into practice; moreover, she thought they would, if adopted, “ruin the earth.”
Her affection for a Mr. Saville (“a man of sense, and a scholar”) who was for 48 years Vicar-choral of Lichfield Cathedral, appears to have been merely platonic, though deep and sincere. ”

“ Still, in answer to a request for her opinion of Cowper, she wrote, “He appears to me at once a fascinating, and a great poet; as a descriptive one, hardly excelled;” but she would not allow that his constitutional melancholy was any excuse for his misantrophy. She writes, “Dante is the only poetic author of high reputation, whom I cannot understand. ”

“ Though the ideas of absolute equality in the sexes are carried too far, and though they certainly militate against St. Paul’s maxims concerning that important compact, yet they do expose a train of mischievous mistakes in the education of females. ”

“ The story of the young soldier is truly a sad one. In 1780, while serving in America, André was entrusted with secret negotiations for the betrayal of West Point to the British forces, but was captured by the Americans. ”

“ Mr. Seward attained some literary fame, and was co-adjutor to an edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher. When Anna Seward was seven years old, the family p. 2removed to Lichfield, and when she was thirteen they moved into the Bishop’s Palace, “our pleasant home” as she called it, where she continued to live after her father’s death, and for the remainder of her days.
The derivation of the word “Lichfield” has excited a good deal of controversy. ”

“ He died August 2nd, 1803, aged 67 years. She erected a monument to his memory in the Cathedral, and composed the verses inscribed on it. His vault is on the south side of the green surrounding the Cathedral.
In a letter to Sir Walter Scott, written in 1807, the poetess remarks that her “astonishment and disgust” rose to their utmost height while she read Wordsworth’s poem, “The Daffodils”—“dancing daffodils, ten thousand, as he says, in high dance in the breeze beside the river, whose waves dance with p. 36them, and the poet’s heart, we are told, danced too.” ”

“ It may be added that Johnson also said, “the Devil was the first Whig.” She confessed she had no great appetite for politics, though she expressed her views pretty freely on the subject. In 1790 the titles of nobility were suppressed in France, and Anna Seward disapproved of Burke’s vindication of hereditary honours. She thought that “they are more likely to make a man repose, with slumbering virtue upon them, for the distinction he is to receive in society, than to inspire the effort of p. 32rendering himself worthy of them. ”

“ Johnson, but his presence was not much appreciated. “There was,” wrote Sir Walter Scott, “some aristocratic prejudice p. 21in their dislike, for the despotic manners of Dr. Johnson were least likely to be tolerated when the lowness of his origin was in fresh recollection.”
How came Anna Seward to dominate and reign as the Queen over the literary society in Lichfield? The great “magnetic” power she must have possessed accounts to a large extent for the popular adulation bestowed upon her. ”

“ Their sweet, crush’d lily low in earth is laid.
p. 4John Hunter was Samuel Johnson’s schoolmaster, and Johnson declared that he was very “severe, and wrong-headedly severe.” He once said, “My master whipt me very well. Without that, sir, I should have done nothing.” Mrs. Hunter died in July, 1780, aged 66. She had been very beautiful, from all accounts, insomuch that Dr. Green, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, and Dr. Newton, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield (“the learned and lucky pair”) were once, Anna Seward tells us, rivals in their attachment to her. ”

“ Dr. Johnson also said, when Boswell named a gentleman of his acquaintance who wrote for the vase, “He was a blockhead for his pains”; on the other hand, when told that the Duchess of Northumberland wrote, Johnson said, “Sir, the Duchess of Northumberland may do what she pleases: nobody will say anything to a lady of her high rank.” Remembering who were ranked among the contributors to the “Saloon of the Minervas,” these criticisms seem rather absurd, for ”