IV.

WORK AND FRIENDS.

The plentiful contributions from her pen were becoming increasingly popular, and it may be added increasingly useful.  There is no doubt that she was a distinct moral power for good.

As almost every one thinks that he or she can compose poetry, and that better than others, it often happens that in a prize poem competition there is no lack of persons ready to enter the lists.  So it was when a patriotic Scotchman offered a prize of L50 for the best poem on “The meeting of Wallace and Bruce.”  The number of competitors was astounding, and the mass of matter sent in overwhelming, one production being as long as “Paradise Lost.”  Quality prevailed over quantity, and the award was made to Mrs. Hemans.  This was not the only occasion on which she was adjudged the prize in a competition.  In 1821 she obtained that awarded by the Royal Society of Literature for the best poem on “Dartmoor.”

One of her poems, which was destined to be almost more useful than any of the others, was “The Sceptic.”  A reviewer’s testimony to the elevating influence of the work, after complaining of the grave defect in some of the most popular writers of the day, in that “they are not sufficiently attentive to the moral dignity of the performances,” concludes with this encomium on Mrs. Hemans’ work:—­“With the promise of talents not inferior to any, and far superior to most of them, the author before us is not only free from every stain, but breathes all moral beauty and loveliness; and it will be a memorable coincidence if the era of a woman’s sway in literature shall become co-eval with the return of its moral purity and elevation.”  A more gratifying testimony to the worth of “The Sceptic” was given in a visit of a stranger to Mrs. Hemans.  It occurred many years after “The Sceptic” was published; indeed, a very short time before her death.  The visitor was told that she was unable to see him, as she was only just recovering from an illness.  He entreated for a few minutes’ interview with such importunity that it was granted to him.  On his admission he explained with the utmost feeling that the object of his visit was to acknowledge the deepest debt of obligation; “that to her he owed, in the first instance, that faith and those hopes which were now more precious to him than life itself; for that it was by reading her poem of ‘The Sceptic’ he had been first awakened from the miserable delusion of infidelity and induced to ‘search the Scriptures.’” This was not the only time she received a comforting assurance of this kind with regard to the poem.