produce as good as you can.  Mr. Rogers once told me that he expressed his regret to Crabbe that he wrote in his late works so much less correctly than in his earlier.  ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘but then I had a reputation to make; now I can afford to relax.’  Whether it was from a modest estimate of his own qualifications or from causes less creditable, his motives for writing verse and his hopes and aims were not so high as is to be desired.  After being silent for more than twenty years he again applied himself to poetry, upon the spur of applause he received from the periodical publications of the day, as he himself tells us in one of his Prefaces.  Is it not to be lamented that a man who was so conversant with permanent truth, and whose writings are so valuable an acquisition to our country’s literature, should have required an impulse from such a quarter?[10]

[10] In pencil on opposite page, by Mrs. Quillinan—­Daddy dear, I don’t like this.  Think how many reasons there were to depress his Muse—­to say nothing of his duties as a Priest, and probably he found poetry interfere with them.  He did not require such praise to make him write, but it just put it into his heart to try again, and gave him the courage to do so. (See Notes and Illustrations at close.  G)

Mrs. Hemans was unfortunate as a Poetess in being obliged by circumstances to write for money, and that so frequently and so much, that she was compelled to look out for subjects wherever she could find them, and to write as expeditiously as possible.  As a woman she was to a considerable degree a spoilt child of the world.  She had been early in life distinguished for talents, and poems of hers were published whilst she was a girl.  She had also been handsome in her youth, but her education had been most unfortunate.  She was totally ignorant of housewifery, and could as easily have managed the spear of Minerva as her needle.  It was from observing these deficiencies that one day, while she was under my roof, I purposely directed her attention to household economy, and told her I had purchased scales which I intended to present to a young lady as a wedding present; pointed out their utility (for her especial benefit), and said that no menage ought to be without them.  Mrs. Hemans, not in the least suspecting my drift, reported this saying in a letter to a friend at the time, as a proof of my simplicity.  Being disposed to make large allowances for the faults of her education and the circumstances in which she was placed, I felt most kindly disposed towards her and took her part upon all occasions, and I was not a little affected by learning that after she withdrew to Ireland a long and severe illness raised her spirit as it depressed her body.  This I heard from her most intimate friends, and there is striking evidence of it in a poem entitled [Blank; and in pencil on opposite page—­Do you mean a Sonnet entitled ‘Sabbath Sonnet,’ composed by Mrs. Hemans, April 26th, 1835, a few days