HEMANS, Mrs., one of the most pleasing of English poetesses, was born at Liverpool in 1793. Her maiden name was Felicia Dorothea Browne. Her father was a Liverpool merchant, who, meeting with some reverse in business, retired with his family into Wales, where his daughter imbibed that love of nature that glows in her works. Before she was fifteen she published a volume of poems, which had no great success, but the popularity gained by her second publication (a poetical volume on The Domestic Affections which appeared in 1812), encouraged her to persist in her literary career. In the same year she married Captain Hemans, but the union was not a happy one; and though it was never formally dissolved, yet when the Captain was obliged by bad health to seek a more genial climate in Italy, his wife remained at home to educate her children, and they never met again. In 1819 Mrs Hemans gained the prize of £50 offered by a patriotic Scotsman for the best poem on the subject of Sir William Wallace. Her next considerable effort was a tragedy entitled The Vespers of Palermo, which, though produced on the London stage by John Kemble (he and Young taking the principal parts), was not successful. It is matter of much regret that she should have been obliged to waste her powers on occasional pieces which she produced in great numbers for the periodicals of the day. But the expenses of her children's education compelled her to exert herself in this way, and it may be doubted, even if she had had the leisure necessary for the production of a great work, whether her powers of mind
Hemaline were equal to such a task. The Lays of Leisure Hours, National Lyrics, Songs of the Affections, &c., under which titles her fugitive pieces were republished, all show that her genius was lyrical and reflective in its character, and hardly equal to any great narrative or dramatic effort. Her best pieces, it must be confessed, are those which, from their shortness, give no scope for the inflation and mannerism that disguise most of her more ambitious efforts. These small poems exhibit much purity of sentiment, a fine vein of feeling, and a dangerous ease of versification. Her powers of description are very considerable; and as Lord Jeffrey remarked, "a lovely picture serves as a foreground to some deep or lofty emotion." It may be doubted if much of Mrs Heman's poetry will be read by posterity. Sir Walter Scott hinted that "there were too many flowers for the fruit;" and it is true that her works, though they fill the ear and the fancy, leave the heart and the intellect unsatisfied. Mrs Heman's personal character was in all respects exemplary and amiable. After various changes of residence she settled in Dublin, where she died in 1835. There is a complete edition of her poems, with a biographical memoir by her sister, 6 vols. Edinburgh, 1839.