generosity than in those of men: hence, "commend us," says Mr. Gilfillan, "to female critics. The principle nil admirari is none of theirs; and whether it he that a sneer disfigures their beautiful lips, it is seldom seen upon them." The sneer may nevertheless be translated into prints and sometimes is, by those whose lips are innocent of aught but smiles (and kisses)—for in a book, even a beauty may sneer away, if so disposed, without peril to her facial muscles, whatever the peril to her heart; but Mrs. Jameson is incompetent in the art, though her generosity is anything but indiscriminate, anything but common and open to all comers. For, as a veteran authority remarks of another lady-scribe, "on croit sentir" (and the croyance is not mere credulity) "un esprit ferme et presque viril, qui aborde les sujets élevés avec une subtilité raisonneuse, et qui en comprend tous les divers aspects." Whatever else she may be—crotchety, as some allege,—speculative, daring, determined, paradoxical, or what not,—she is not insipid, nor given to platitudinary prosing.
Mrs. Jameson's productions have been too many to allow, in this place, of separate comment,—and too good to be curtly discussed in a hurried summary. Some must, therefore, be pretermitted, and the rest inadequately, but respectfully, "touched upon"—and would that our ordeal by touch could command, as this lady can, the ornavit as on invariable sequent to the tetigit! Greeting with a passing mention her "Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad," "Diary of an Eenuyée," and "Celebrated Female Sovereigns," we come to a full stop, plus a note of admiration, at that ever delightful book, "Characteristics of Women." The success which hailed this choice performance, was, it seems, to the author, "so entirely unlooked for, as to be a matter of surprise as well as of pleasure and gratitude." It was undertaken without a thought of fame or money; it was written out of the fulness of her own heart and soul, and already she felt amply repaid, ere ever a page was in type, by the new and various views of human nature its composition opened to her, and the beautiful and soothing images it placed before her, and the conscious exercise and improvement of her own faculties. The purpose of these volumes is, to illustrate the various modifications of which the female character is susceptible, with their causes and results—not indeed formally expounding the writer's conviction, that the modern social condition of her sex is false and injurious, but implying certain positions of this nature by examples, and leaving the reader to deduce the moral and to draw the inference. The characters best fitted to her purpose she finds among those whom History ignores—women being illustrious in History, not from what they have been in themselves, but generally in proportion to the mischief they have done or caused, or else presented under seemingly irreconcilable aspects[1]—it is to Shakspeare she turns
- ↑ The Duchesse de Longueville being instanced, as one whom History represents, in her relation to the Fronde, as a fury of discord, a woman without modesty or pity, "bold, intriguing, profligate, vain, ambitious, factious;" and, on the other hand, in her protection of Arnauld,—an angel of benevolence, and a worshipper of goodness. History, it is contended, provides nothing to connect the two extremes in our fancy. Whereas, if Shakspeare had drawn the duchesse's character, he would have shown us the same individual woman in both situations—since the same being, with the same faculties, and passions, and powers, it surely was.
