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FEMALE NOVELISTS.
No. VII.—Mrs. Marsh.
To have been deeply and devotedly, however inconsistently, in love with an entire bevy of fair ladies, one after the other, in rapid succession, is, we would fain hope, more pardonable where they are the creatures of fiction than in real life. Otherwise we are verily and exuberantly guilty in this matter; and, in common with us, Mrs. Marsh, the author of this manifold calamity, has much to answer for. If we have been susceptible so often, and so often faithless—now over head and ears in love with an innocent brunette, now engaged past recal to a pensive blonde—if we have been as comprehensive and gradational in our affections as the vacillating poet who sings, unblushingly enough, how he was enamoured of an infinite series of Marys and Annes, Isabellas and Marthas—
Gentle Henrietta then,
And a third Mary next began,
Then Joan, and Jane, and Audria,
And then a pretty Thomasine,
And then another Catherine,
And then a long "et cetera,"[1]—
if we have been absorbed in attachment to an Angela, and then sworn eternal fealty to a Flavia, and next week vowed everything that pretty is to a little Joan Grant, and anon plighted our troth to a Clarice de Vere, and haud longo intervallo done the same to a bewitching Clarinda, and then been enthralled by the power of that awful demoiselle, Grace Vaux, and in a trice raving about Lila, and charmed to a "power" which has no mathematical symbol by Emilia Wyndham—if by these and a score besides of equivalent syrens, we have been seduced from constancy and final perseverance, and have in intent been polygamists of inveterate habit and illimitable range—then we turn round, ungratefully, but not causelessly, upon the author of all our mishaps, and accuse her of being accomplice before the fact, and piteously upbraid her with the reproach, Why did you make them all so winning, if it was a sin in us to be won? Why did you create them with such powers, if the exorcise must needs entail aggravated mischief? Some creators fail to charm us with their creations, charm they never so wisely. But you and yours have no such excuse. And you at least cannot join in the impeachment of inconstancy against us, for you it was who produced in rapid succession each too fascinating fair one, and who qualified each with a peerless pair of bright eyes to rain influence upon us, and adjudge the prize to herself, Our sin lies at your door, and day and night on you it cries, as with the west-end thunder of a footman's double rap. Another point in which we have again and again felt Mrs. Marsh's
- ↑ Cowley: "The Chronicle." Abraham's only compunction seems to have been felt when there ensued a temporary cessation of these engagements: whereupon he says,
"Thousand worse passions then possess'd
The interregnum of my breast;
Bless me from such an anarchy!"
