Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

portrayed, mingled with the feeling of presumption which she often manifested in having "dared to

gaze"

"Upon the lamp which never can expire,
The undying, wild, poetic fire."

There is something extremely touching in the last

stanzas.

"And here, my harp, we part for ever,
I'll waken thee again-oh! never;
Silence shall chain thee cold and drear,
And thou shalt calmly slumber here!"

The Fear of Madness." - The reader will find his sympathies all awakened upon perusing this unfinished fragment from the pen of the lovely sufferer. It leaves too painful a sensation upon the mind to admit a comment.

I have suppressed a very few of the poems heretofore published, and have added many new

ones.

I have the honour to be,

Sir, your very sincere

and obliged friend,

M. M. D.

SARATOGA SPRINGS,

August, 1841.

This new Edition has been carefully revised, and the errors corrected. Upon the first publication of Amir Khan soine few stanzas were omitted, in consequence of the difficulty of decyphering, or some other good cause. Those stanzas are here restored, according to the original design of the author.

Saratoga Springs, March, 1843.

M. M. D.

BIOGRAPHY

OF

LUCRETIA MARIA DAVIDSON.

LUCRETIA MARIA DAVIDSON was born at Plattsburgh, in the state of New York, on the 27th of September, 1808. Her father, Dr. Oliver Davidson, is a lover of science, and a man of intellectual tastes. Her mother, Margaret Davidson, (born Miller,) is of a most respectable family, and received the best education her times afforded, at the school of the celebrated Scottish lady, Isabella Graham, an institution in the city of New York, that had no rival in its day, and which derived advantages from the distinguished individual that presided over it, that can scarcely be counterbalanced by the multiplied masters and multiform studies of the present day. The family of Miss Davidson lived in seclusion. Their pleasures and excitements were intellectual. Her mother has suffered year after year from ill health and debility; and being a person of imaginative character, and most ardent and susceptible feelings, employed on domestic incidents, and concentrated in maternal tenderness, she naturally loved and cherished her daughter's marvellous gifts, and added to the intensity of the fire with which her genius and her affections, mingling in one holy flame, burned till they consumed their mor

2*

(25)

tal investments. We should not have ventured to say thus much of the mother, who still survives to weep and to rejoice over her dead child more than many parents over their living ones, were it not to prove, that Lucretia Davidson's character was not miraculous, but that this flower of paradise was nurtured and trained by natural means and influences.

The physical delicacy of this fragile creature was apparent in infancy. When eighteen months old, she had a typhus fever, which threatened her life; but nature put forth its mysterious energy, and she became stronger and healthier than before her illness. No records were made of her early childhood, save that she was by turns very gay and very thoughtful, exhibiting thus early these common manifestations of extreme sensibility. Her first literary acquisition indicated her after course. She learned her letters at once. At the age of four she was sent to the Plattsburgh Academy, where she learned to read and to form letters in sand, after the Lancasterian method. As soon as she could read, her books drew her away from the plays of childhood, and she was constantly found absorbed in the little volumes that her father lavished upon her. Her mother, on some occasion, in haste to write a letter, looked in vain for a sheet of paper. A whole quire had strangely disappeared from the table on which the writing implements usually lay; she expressed a natural vexation. Her little girl came forward, confused, and said, "Mamma, I have used it." Her mother, knowing she had never been taught to write, was amazed, and asked what possible use she could have for it. Lucretia burst into tears, and replied that " she did not like to tell." Her mother respected the childish mystery, and made no farther inquiries. The paper continued to vanish, and the child was often observed with pen and ink, still sedulously shunning observation. At last her mother, on seeing her make a blank book, asked what she was going to do with it? Lucretia blushed, and left the room without replying. This sharpened her mother's curiosity; she watched the child narrowly, and saw that she made quantities of these little books, and that she was disturbed by observation; and if one of the family requested to see them, she would burst into tears, and run away to hide her secret treasure.

The mystery remained unexplained till she was six years old, when her mother, in exploring a closet rarely opened, found behind piles of linen, a parcel of papers, which proved to be Lucretia's manuscript books. At first, the hieroglyphics seemed to baffle investigation. On one side of the leaf was an artfullysketched picture; on the other, Roman letters, some placed upright, others horizontally, obliquely, or backwards, not formed into words, nor spaced in any mode. Both parents pored over them till they ascertained the letters were poetical explanations, in metre and rhyme, of the picture in the reverse. The little books were carefully put away as literary curiosities. Not long after this, Lucretia came running to her mother, painfully agitated, her face covered with her hands, and tears trickling down between her slender fingers-"Oh, mamma! mamma!" she cried, sobbing, "how could you treat me so? You have not used me well! My little books! you have shown them to papa, -Anne-Eliza, I know you have. Oh, what shall I do?" Her mother pleaded guilty, and tried to soothe the child by promising not to do so again: Lucretia's face brightened, a sunny smile played through her tears as she replied, "Oh, mamma, I am not afraid you will do so again, for I have burned them all;" and so she had! This reserve proceeded from nothing cold or exclusive in her character; never was

« ForrigeFortsæt »