consummate integrity, kindness, and active benevolence.
The social sphere in which this favoured daughter of the muse ha!s ever moved, was peculiarly suited to her character and genius; it was one in which taste, and literature, and the highest moral endowments were understood and appreciated. She had no need to resort to her pen from pecuniary motives, and her standing in society' made fame of little moment to her. But the spirit prompted, and she obeyed its voice—always, we think, with that loftiest motive of human action or purpose, the desire of doing good.
To accomplish those reforms which she felt society needed, she determined to attempt the reform of that mimic world, the stage, by furnishing dramas whose representation should have a salutary effect on morals. In pursuance of this idea, she planned her celebrated "Plays on the Passions,"—love, hatred, fear, religion, jealousy, revenge, and remorse, she has pourtrayed with the truth, power, and feeling, which richly entitle her to the honour of having her fame as a dramatic writer associated with that of Shakspere. The parallel which was drawn by Scott is true, so far as placing the name of Joanna Baillie in the same relation to the dramatic poets of her own sex, which the name of Shakspeare bears to that of men. In such compositions she is unrivalled by any female writer, and she is the only woman whose genius, as displayed in her works, appears competent to the production of an Epic poem. Would that she had attempted this.
In the portraiture of female characters, and the exhibition of feminine virtues, she has been very successful. Jane de Montfort is one of the most sublime, yet womanly, creations of poetic art.
The power of Miss Baillie's genius seems concentrated in one burning ray—the knowledge of the human heart. She has illustrated this knowledge with the cool judgment of the philosopher, and the pure warm feelings of the Christian. And she has won fame, the highest which the critic has awarded to woman's lyre. Yet we have often doubted whether, in selecting the drama, as her path of literature, she judged wisely. We have thought that, as an essayist, or a novelist, she might have made her great talents more effective in that improvement of society, which she evidently had so deeply at heart, and have won for herself, if not so bright a wreath of fame, a more extensive and more popular influence. And even had she chosen poetry as the vehicle of instruction, we still think that she would better and more generally have accomplished her aim, by shorter effusions, and more simple plans.
There is in the "Cyclopaedia of English Literature," a very clever and candid criticism on Miss Baillie's peculiar style of constructing her dramas; it is appropriate to our plan of showing, whenever possible, the opinions of literary men concerning the genius, and productions of women. After stating that the first volume of Joanna Baillie's "Plays on the Passions" was published in 1798; that she had, in her theory, "anticipated the dissertations and most of the poetry of Wordsworth," and that her volume passed through two editions in a few months, it goes on:—"Miss Baillie was then in the thirty-fourth year of her age. In 1802, she published a second volume, and in 1812 a third. In the interval she had produced a volume of miscellaneous dramas (1804,) and 'The Family Legend,' (1810,) a tragedy founded on a Highland tradition, and brought out with success at the Edinburgh theatre. In
