[A Greek Islander, being taken to the Vale of Tempe, and called upon to admire its beauty, only replied—“The sea—where is it?”]

[All this time, her imagination was at work more busily than ever; new thoughts and fresh fancies seemed to spring up “as willows by the water-courses:” and the facility with which her lyrics were poured forth, approached, in many instances, to actual improvisation. When confined to her bed, and unable to use a pen, she would often employ the services of those about her, to write down what she had composed. “Felicia has just sent for me,” wrote her amanuensis on one of these occasions, “with pencil and paper, to put down a little song, (‘Where is the Sea?’) which, she said, had come to her like a strain of music, whilst lying in the twilight under the infliction of a blister; and as I really think ‘a scrap’ (as our late eccentric visitor would call it) composed under such circumstances, is, to use the words of Coleridge, a ‘psychological curiosity,’ I cannot resist copying it for you. It was suggested by a story she somewhere read lately, of a Greek islander, carried off to the Vale of Tempe, and pining amidst all its beauties for the sight and sound of his native sea.”—Memoir, p. 134.]

[In the autumn of 1827, at the urgent request of Mr Alaric Watts, who was then forming a gallery of portraits of the living authors of Great Britain, Mrs Hemans was prevailed upon to sit for her picture. The artist selected on this occasion was Mr W. E. West, an American by birth, who had passed some time in Italy, and painted the last likeness ever taken of Lord Byron, and also one of Madame Guiccioli, which was engraved in one of the annuals. During his stay at Rhyllon, where he remained for some weeks, he finished three several portraits of Mrs Hemans—one for Mr Alaric Watts, one which is now in the possession of Professor Norton, and a third, which he most courteously presented to Mrs Hemans’ sister, to whom it was even then a treasure, and is now become one of inestimable value. This likeness, considered by her family as the best ever taken of her, is the one which suggested Mrs Hemans’s affecting lines, “To my own Portrait.” ... It is, however, only fair to repeat the remark already made, and in which all those who were accustomed to study the play of her features must concur—that there never was a countenance more difficult to transfer to canvass; so varying were its expressions, and so impossible is it to be satisfied with the one which can alone be perpetuated by the artist. The great charm of Mr West’s picture is its perfect freedom from any thing set or constrained in the air; and the sweet, serious expression, so accordant with her maternal character, which recalls her own lines—

and which made one of her children remark, in glancing from it to the bust, executed some years after by Mr Angus Fletcher[386]—“The bust is the poetess, but the picture is all mother.”—Memoir, p. 129-130.]

“‘Passing away’ is written on the world, and all the world contains.”

[“Never was a philosophical imagination more beautiful than that exquisite one of Kircher, Digby, and others, who discovered in the ashes of plants their primitive forms, which were again raised up by the power of heat. The ashes of roses, say they, will again revive in roses, unsubstantial and unodoriferous; they are not roses which grow on rose-trees, but their delicate apparitions, and, like apparitions, they are seen but for a moment.”—Curiosities of Literature.]

[The dangerous islet called the Bell Rock, on the coast of Forfarshire, used formerly to be marked only by a bell, which was so placed as to be swung by the motion of the waves, when the tide rose above the rock. A lighthouse has since been erected there.]

[“Les sarcophages même chez les anciens, ne rapellent que des idées guerrières ou riantes: on voit des jeux, des danses, représentés en bas-relief sur les tombeaux.”—Corinne.