IN spite of the dullest of biographers, the life of Mrs. Inchbald has come down to us with the interest of romance. If there ever was danger of posterity being cheated of a good story, it was when Boaden, with his stale reflections, fullness of dates, meagreness of facts, scarcity of anecdote, and lack of philosophy generally, gathered together the various posthumous pocket books and note books, and undertook the life of this remarkable woman. With the most ardent enthusiasm for an original and noble specimen of female character, it requires all the patience to be won from an habitual love of books, and the curiosity inspired by a love of literary gossip, to penetrate the dull mass in which are hidden the few lifelike facts which this biography monger by profession, saw fit to collect for us in any shape. It may by the way be noticed, that most original biographies are very indifferently written: nearness of view is not always the most favorable to a philosophical estimate of character, and though the hand of love and friendship writes many a just, warm-hearted eulogy, there are very few contemporaries who have imagination enough to anticipate the demands of posterity, and record those little traits, the familiarity of which causes them to be overlooked, as trifling and unimportant. Fortunately, notwithstanding all errors of memoir writers, Mrs. Inchbald was a woman of genius, and genius is a ray of the divine spirit which cannot be hidden. can pierce even the dullness of Boaden, and exhibit to us in the midst of his scattered and disconnected details, a certain complete and beautiful harmony of life. It shows us a lady who was in all things a woman, she who was by nature the best of preceptresses, full of goodness and cheerfulness, with a sensibility that gave character and novelty to every incident, colored her conversation and writings with the warm hues of love, and over all whose actions there was cast an indefinable feminine charm, a graceful piquancy verging on coquetry, that retained its sprightliness and gayety through the darkness and heaviness of age. The mind and heart are painted in her face which she has herself characterized in one of her written fragments, "a description of me," as "full of spirit and sweetness; excessively interesting and without indelicacy, voluptuous." She was throughout a long life constantly loved and always loving; with a weight of intellect that kept in even

It

Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create,

As when she touched the brink of all we hate.

Such is the picture presented to us in the life of Mrs. Inchbald. We can have no more delightful literary study than in following so fascinating a being through her various adventures. We may meet as we proceed with humor that reminds us of Goldsmith, and sentiments that would do no discredit to Mackenzie.

Mrs. Inchbald, whose maiden name was Elisabeth Simpson, was born about the middle of the last century, the daughter of a Suffolk farmer, whose social position seems to have been firmly established among the middle classes and minor gentry of the township. He died when the daughter was quite young, and the widow kept up a numerous acquaintance among the neighboring society at Bury St. Edmunds and the capital of the county, Norwich. One of the sons turned actors, and several of the daughters were married and lived in London. Elisabeth was renowned for beauty, fond of society, and longed to see the world. Though she had an impediment in her speech she desired to go upon the stage, and addressed a letter to Griffiths, the manager of the Norwich theatre, having previously taken the precaution, to make her suit more interesting to herself, to fall in love with him. Mr. Griffiths returned such a civil answer as managers, editors, and others in authority are apt to vouchsafe in a complimentary mood, full of apologies and promises, and our heroine, though the actor was venerable enough for her parent, entered his name in her pocket-book in capitals, writing under them "Each dear letter of thy name is harmony!" This is girlish and delightful, and appears to have been the first sentiment of her life. She soon went to London and became acquainted with Mr. Inchbald, and we find her then one day stealing Griffiths's picture, the next sighing for a letter from Inchbald.

At this period, when she was about her eighteenth year, she left home alone for

London, and met with a series of adventures, which we find related in the Biographia Dramatica. Boaden is disposed to throw some doubt over their authenticity, but is unable to contradict them. To us they appear extraordinaries, quite in accordance with the plot of a farce or a novel, but sufficiently probable, morally if not literally true, when related of a woman with so great a natural fitness for them as Mrs. Inchbald. She was precisely of that character to create romance any where out of commonplace. A dull fellow who travels over the world along the surface, may eat his breakfast, dinner, and supper for his three score years without further adventure; but a man of genius like Goldsmith, or a woman like Mrs. Inchbald can scarcely cross their thresholds without an accident, a blunder, or an anecdote. People of deep feelings and original observation travel beneath the outer crust of society as it were, and see and feel strange things. People of little selfishness and much force of imagination, who think more of any thing else than themselves, and preserving the balance of dignity in their own persons, are apt sometimes like Don Quixote to mistake windmills for giants, and fulling machines for dragons. But to return to the adventure, having first suggested that want of belief in cases like these does not always imply a very praiseworthy sagacity.

Now that the reader is safely on his guard, we quote from the story, which may pass for what it is worth:

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"Having often heard her family speak of a distant relation who lived opposite Northumberland House, in the Strand, on her arrival in London she took a hackney coach, and sought this asylum; but, on reaching the place, was, to her great mortification, told that her relation had retired from business, and was settled in Wales. Her alarm at these unexpected tidings, and her evident distress, (it being near ten o'clock at night) moved the compassion of the people of the house where she enquired, who, at her request, generously accommodated her with a lodging. This civility, however, awakened suspicion: she had read in novels the various modes of seduction which were practised in London, and apprehended that she was in a dangerous house; this suspicion seemed confirmed by the entrance of a corpulent old lady, whose appearance exactly corresponded with the description she had read of a procuress. While, therefore, they were whispering their pity for her youth, and extolling her beauty, she suddenly snatched up her band-box and, without saying a word, rushed out of the house, leaving the people to stare at each other, and repent of their compassion. Much fatigued and alarmed, she knocked at a house, where she saw a bill announcing Lodgings to be let,' pretending that she was a milliner's apprentice, whose mistress had unexpectedly a number of visitors from the country that occupied all her beds, and had therefore desired her to seek a temporary accommodation. The veracity of her story was naturally doubted; but, she persisted in her tale, till, on turning about, to her great surprise and confusion, she perceived the identical tradesman whose house she had so precipitately left, listening attentively to her solemn assertion. Impelled by

curiosity, and determined on knowing who and what she was, this man had followed her to the present house. Confounded at this detection, she attempted another escape; but the door was locked and she was detained as an impostor. Sincerity was all she had now left; and with a flood of tears she confessed her real situation. But even now her truth was doubted, and the woman of the house desired a constable to be sent for; but her son, a boy of twelve years of age, more humane than his mother, joined his tears with those of the poor stranger; and by his intercession she was dismissed and left to wander the streets of London again. She now walked whither chance directed her, and exposed to all those insults which unprotected females must encounter. At two o'clock in the morning she found herself at Holborn bridge; and seeing the stage set off for York, which she understood was full, she entered the inn, pretended to be a disappointed passenger, and solicited a lodging. This scheme succeeded; though the landlady, much suspecting her character, took the precaution of locking the door where she slept. In vain she rose at her usual hour; for having no hell, she could not apprise the family that she was up. She was therefore obliged to wait till noon, when the landlady was pleased to liberate her, informing her that the York stage would set out again that evening. This intelligence having been delivered with an air of suspicion which was very cutting to Miss Simpson, she immediately took out all the money she had, to the last half crown, and absolutely paid for a journey she did not intend to take."

The end of the adventure was, that she found her way to one of her sisters. A single page relating to this period has been preserved out of four volumes of autobiography which she committed to the flames: it shows a grace of style, and an insight into character worthy the spirit of her plays and novels, and altogether as it is brief, we present it to the reader as an agreeable relief, after the penny-a-line style of the narrative just related. What is here said of her brother in law, Mr. Slender, though fragmentary, describes that gentleman so pleasantly we seem to know a great deal more about him than is told.

"In the year seventeen hundred and seventy-two, or sometime before, it was (I think) fashionable for gentlemen occasionally to curse and swear in conversation; and poor Mr. Slender would fain be in the fashion, whether it threatened peril to body or soul. He suddenly interrupted our conversation, reeling from the double pressure of bad health and had wine, and with an oath demanded where Miss Simpson meant to sleep that night?' I told him where I lodged; and that, as my sister sent no word to the contrary, I should remain at Holborn bridge. He allowed the house to be a respectable one, but said that he would see me safe to it; and then with another oath, he added, that by six in the morning he should come for me in a post-chaise, and take me down to my village of Standingfield. With all his numerous faults, Mr. Slender was in reality good natured: but his good nature consisted in frightening you to death, to have the pleasure of re-assuring you:- in holding an axe over your head for the purpose of pronouncing a reprieve."

The next adventure was with Dodd, the actor and manager, an impudent libertine. upon whom the threw a basin of hot water from the tea-kettle. Tired of these diffi

culties she married Mr. Inchbald, a painstaking man, a respectable actor,- at least Kemble wrote thus in his epitaph, and he is always making attempts at portrait painting with no particular success, altogether a dull fellow with no well defined principles, and unfit to be the husband of such a wife. It was as his widow that Mrs. Inchbald became known to the world by her intrigues.

It were needless to pursue the events of her life historically; they may be better classed by passions and feelings. Thus if we were writing a biography we should devote one chapter to the youth and romance of our heroine, another to her innocent coquetries; another to her love and tenderness, and we might find illustrations of all these in her books and letters from the period of her childhood, when she used to write Griffiths's name in her pocket-book, to the declining days of age, when she haunted the grave of Dr. Warren, at Kensington.

We should have been pleased to have read the mind of the lady in the character of her different suitors. But Boaden has told very little about them. There was a Mr. Sterling at Edinburgh, and a Mr. Redman with whom she corresponded, but we know only the names. In the greatest

abundance of minutiæ the reader almost perishes for want of a genuine tell-tale fact. But Mrs. Inchbald is not very well, and the oysters she eats by order of a physician are duly celebrated; she misses a ring, and Mr. Boaden conjectures she lost it while washing her hands.

Before Mr. Inchbald's death they made a trip to France together, where she took captive an abbé and a Carmelite friar, who were very attentive: but perhaps her intimacy with John Kemble has the most interest for us in these days. It arose when the great tragedian was young, before he had gained his laurels, when he used to read the History of England to her while she took notes, the gravity of the proceeding affording already a foretaste of his dramatic dignity, at other times the serious tragedian would most amiably unbend himself, teaching tricks with cards, and play with the fair actress, as she has herself recorded "with wax, dirt, thread, wire." It is only love that magnifies such trifles, and weighs its interests not by thousands but by units and fractions. Kemble soon became a great actor, and the lover changed to the friend. But he always delighted in the playfulness of her manners and the graces of her style, (he was a great admirer of her letters); he addresses her in notes as the tenth muse, and says that it is only because he is unceremonious that he has not invited the other nine, for he has observed they always come in her society.

Mrs.

It becomes us now to say something of Mrs. Inchbald's literary career, though we could dwell on these personal topics much longer; but when we take up the authoress we do not abandon the woman. Inchbald is Mrs. Inchbald still, throughout. Her heroine Miss Milner, in the Simple Story, is evidently a reflection of herself; and like Goldsmith in his Vicar of Wakefield, she has introduced the very incidents of her life. The chief interest of the story turns, it may be remembered, upon Miss Milner's attending a masquerade; the author herself had acted Bellario on a similar occasion. The coquetry of Miss Milner is a reflection of her own waywardness, in the same way, as it now appears from the recently published diary, that, the personal drawing-room distresses of Evelina, are reflections of the life of the contemporary Miss Burney.

Mrs. Inchbald modelled her taste by the study of Goldsmith and Mackenzie, but the purity and simplicity of her style were native to her: they were cherished by her choice of studies, but such qualities in their perfection are beyond the reach of imitation. Mrs. Inchbald read few books, but perhaps as is the case with people of genius who read few books, they were a source of great delight and profit. Her own mind enlightened the page, her vivid imagination set forth all the realities. Out of the stores of her own capacity she was liberal and generous to others. There is a critical faculty distinct and independent from all others, the fruit of an original habit of analysis and reflection. It was possessed by Charles Lamb, who had a genius for criticism. But even so great a man as Walter Scott lacked this literary instinct by which the delicacies of an author are at once detected, and the nice harmonies between language and thought so closely followed. He admired in books that which was adapted to his own habits for the very excellent reason that most men are readers. They find a sentiment or a fact suited to their experience and needs of daily life not one in a thousand regards literature as an art, or does justice to the humblest production of a genuine author who works with reflection and design.

The best authors generally read the poorest books. Burns idolized an indifferent Scotch poet, Ferguson; Crabbe used to read whole invoices of the forgotten Rosa Matilda school of novels; Mrs. Inchbald pronounced the "Lady of the Lake" one of the most exquisite poems that was ever published. She rallied a friend who was so unfortunate as to anticipate the judgment of posterity, and call the latter a trivial production, in a witticism that is quite as well worth remembering as any thing in the poem itself:

"I can compare your disliking the 'Lady of the Lake,' 999 says she in one of her letters, "to no one phenomnon in my memory, except that of the walking of a tiger up Picadilly."

The Simple Story, whatever may be thought of the plot, particularly of the second part, which falls off in naturalness, will always be published and read with the English classics. It is a tale of the heart, and wins every thing by its charms of womanly sentiment.

Nature and Art - her second novel — we believe is not so much read. It is the story of a youth who has been educated by a wise parent, among savages in the wilds of Africa, and who comes to England to learn something of civilization. His comments and arguments, excepting a few false conventionalisms on barbarism, are full of truth. He converses with a dean and bishop, and sets them to rights in argument. His nature is superior to all the sophistry of art. Take the following remark on Society in the practical exercise of judg ment in the world and justice, the very basis of political economy. "Health, strength, and the will to earn a moderate subsistence, ought to be every man's security from obligation." There are some exquisite touches of life and character; for instance, of the dean, who has in his mind two treatises,one to prove that the country is ruined, the other that it is a glorious noble country; the choice of which for publication depends upon his election to a bishopric, and who, when he is elected, publishes a folio on its prosperity. In one of the chapters the question of War is disposed of in a sentence.

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My father" said Henry, "used to tell me, we must not take away our own lives; but he forgot to tell me, we might sell them for others to take away.” War is thus a species of murder, wantonly incurred no more defensible than suicide; and though even yet, after half a century since the publication of Nature and Art, it is covered with glorious trappings and a fair outside of dress, equipage and noise, yet the opinion of society is turning more and more against it as something dishonorable, and a Channing may safely prophecy its downfall. unerring dictates of a woman's heart, freed from formality, anticipates the suggestion of economists, and the maturest legislation of the wisest lawgivers of her country. The story of Nature and Art has its improbabilities, but its sentiment is true to nature: it appeals to the heart, the last court of appeal to the novelist, and the decision is a favorable one.

The

It is no little recommendation to these old novels that they are brief. The chapters are short, and the sentences have point. There are no protracted scenes, no over

labored descriptions, but something is left to the imagination. Is it not strange in modern works of fiction, that as books multiply, and the topics upon which a gentleman should be informed grow every day more numerous, works of fiction designed to fill up not merely the intervals of business, but the intervals of more serious reading should grow longer and longer constantly? No novelist has courage to write now in a single volume. Why is the Castle of Otranto read and Sir Charles Grandison forgotten, but for the distinction of size?

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Mrs. Inchbald's pursuit of literature was profitable. She received in all, five thousand pounds for her writings, though her first farces were one after the other rejected. But the tide once turned, booksellers came to her to supplicate. She received fifty guineas for merely pointing out, without a word of preface, the set of farces known by her name. Murray solicited her to write for the first number of the Quarterly Review, offering her the choice of her subject and a carte blanche for terms.

Through the latter part of her life she lived on the principal and interest of her fortune, and left at her death about three or four hundred pounds, a sufficient refutation of the charge that she was avaricious. It was the saying of Harris, the manager, "That woman Inchbald has solemnly devoted herself to virtue and a garret." She was frugal, and pinched herself without a fire that she might relieve the wants of her family. London she loved, and she clung to its neighborhood, changing her lodging from one house to another. Of the city she writes, “If Buonaparte should come and conquer, I way then without reproach stand with a barrow of oranges and lemons in Leicester Square, and once more have the joy to call that place my home." She finally established herself at Kensington House, a Catholic boarding establishment, where she died in 1821, at the age of sixty-nine.

With a characteristic tribute from Leigh Hunt, which will leave a pleasant savor of this lady's memory on the mind of the reader, we shall conclude." She was fond of Kensington for its healthiness, its retirement, its trees and prospects, its catholic accommodations, (for she was a liberal believer of that church) - but not least, we suspect, for a reason which Mr. Boaden's interesting biography has not mentioned

namely, the interment in Kensington church yard, of the eminent physician, Dr. Warren, for whom, in her thirty-eighth year, and in the twelfth year of a widowhood graced by genius, beauty and refusals of other marriages, she entertained a secret affection so young and genuine, that she would walk up and down Sackville

ONE day in the year 1410, there wandered crying through the streets of Florence, a little beggar boy hardly two years old, who could only say to the charitable way-farers who asked what his troubles were, that his name was Filippo Lippi, and that his father and mother were both dead. So from street to street he wandered on, sobbing as he went, till, having stopped on the steps of a Carmelite monastery, some of the worthy brothers took compassion on his misfortunes, and gave him shelter, and, as the story tellers say, took care of him till he grew to be a big boy.

He became, in the course of time, a novice in the monastery, and, as Fra' Filippo Lippi, was likely to take as high rank as any man in that venerable institution. When however, he was eighteen years old, the artist Masaccio, the most distinguished painter of the day, came to the convent to paint some pieces for the adornment of the chapel. Lippi watched him day by day, as his brush moved on, and took the greatest interest iu his proceedings. His older friends among the Carmelites were kind enough to encourage the poor boy in his newly aroused zeal for art, and bade him try with the other students to copy some of these masterpieces which added so much to the beauty of their cloister home. Lippi tried, and tried again; he at once surpassed all his fellow students, and was thought by good judges to have at least equalled the works of Masaccio, although he had never received any instruction from him. The poor beggar boy of Florence at once became the most promising artist of his time.

Thus distinguished and happy he gave up his plan of connecting himself with the church, and devoted himself entirely to art. It was but a few months after, that, while with some young friends, he was enjoying

a delightful summer's day in a pleasure sail on the beautiful Tuscan sea, one of the Barbary corsairs which at that time infested the Mediterraneau, pounced upon them took them prisoners, and carried them to Tripoli. Our young friend went through the routine of misery of slave markets, transfers, forced marches and starvation till he was purchased by a Moorish nobleman who did not buy to sell again. The most distinguished artist of his day was thus made a poor hard-working slave.

A short time after, however, his master was absent for a day, at court, and as the lazy slaves whiled away their time as best they could, Lippi, with a piece of charcoal, made a sketch of his patron on the wall by which he was standing. The other slaves clustered around to see the prodigy. The arts of design were entirely unknown in those barbarous countries, and like Catlin's Indians, they thought the work was magic. With every touch of the coal the portrait grew more and more like, so that when the nobleman returned from his day's labor, his astonished slaves led him at once to see the place where his counterfeit was fixed on the wall. Like them he wondered, but he was too sensible to be alarmed. He said at once that the talent of Lippi ought not to be lost to the world, and gave him his freedom. The grateful artist painted for him two fine pictures, and then took ship for Naples. Here he was received with enthusiasm, and was engaged by the king at once to ornament some of the public buildings with his beautiful works. two years the poor Moorish slave lived highest in favor with King Alphonso.

For

But he began to pine for Florence, and having left Naples he repaired thither and was received with as great favor at home as elsewhere. Cosmo de' Medici delighted