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THE

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE,

AND

LITERARY MISCELLANY.

JUNE 1819.

REMARKS ON THE MEMOIR OF THE LIFE OF MRS BRUNTON.

Ir is with much hesitation that we now proceed to give a sketch of this Memoir, which, it seems to us, in truth, almost a profanation to touch. It is a composition which is only to be read in secret, apart from the intercourse of the world, and is then to be laid down in silence, unaccompanied with any other expression than the breathings of devotion or the effusion of tears. The subject is so elevated, the execution so feeling and yet so delicate, that we seem to ourselves as if on holy ground when we advance over it, and almost hear the voice which calls to us to "take our shoes from off our feet," lest we tread rudely on some hallowed sentiment, or some pure and retiring affection. Our own words, therefore, shall be but few, and we shall confine ourselves chiefly to the selection of such sages from the Memoir and Correspondence, as may give our readers a distinct impression of the character of that admirable woman, whose loss we we re called to deplore, at the very moments when her value was becoming greater and more extensively felt. The narrative thus begins:

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"Immediately after Mrs Brunton's death, various eloquent tributes were paid to her memory in the newspapers of Edin. burgh. Her literary friends, however, have expressed a wish, that some more detailed memoir of her life should be prepared, exhibiting chiefly the history of her mind, and her habits of composition. With that

* Emmeline, with some other pieces. By Mary Brunton, author of Self-Control and Discipline. To which is prefixed, a Memoir of her Life, including some extracts from her Correspondence. Edinburgh, Manners and Miller, &c. 1819.

wish I have willingly complied. It has been for twenty years my happiness to watch the workings of that noble mindmy chief usefulness to aid its progress, however feebly. Nothing is more soothing to me now, than to dwell on the rethan to diffuse the benefit of her example. membrance of her--nothing more dear,

"I know that I shall perform the task very inadequately. Were I better qualified than I am for its discharge, the relation which I bore to her makes it needful for me to repress feelings upon which any other biographer would have dwelt with delight. But if I can make her memory useful to one of her fellow-creatures, this is the only consideration which her sainted spirit would prize.

Her mo

"Mary Balfour was the only daughter of Colonel Thomas Balfeur of Elwick, a cadet of one of the most respectable families in the county of Orkney. ther was Frances Ligonier, only daughter of Colonel Ligonier of the 13th Dragoons.

"Mary was born in the Island of Burra in Orkney, 1st of November 1778. Her early education was not conducted on any regular plan. Her father, himselt a man of extraordinary talents and acquirements, had little leisure for superintending it, and was very often necessarily absent from his family. Her mother had early been left an orphan to the care of her uncle, FieldMarshal the Earl of Ligonier; and had been trained rather to the accomplishments which adorn a court than to those which are useful in domestic life. She was, however, a person of great natural acuteness, and of very lively wit; and her conversation, original though desultory, had, no doubt, considerable influence in rousing her daughter's mind. She was assiduous, too, in conveying the accomplishments which she herself retained; and Mary became, under her mother's care, a considerable proficient in music, and an excellent French and Italian scholar. From these languages she was much accustomed to translate; and there is no other habit of her carly life which tends, in any degree,

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to accounts for the great facility and corianind. She now taught herself to draw,ẢI rectness with which her subsequent com-sufficiently, at least, to sketch with facility positions were written lengvatt cebisand truth any object or scene which pecu"When she passed the bounds of mere liarly pleased her." pxide childhood, the defects under which her ear-1 ly education must otherwise have labouredw were remedied partly by a short residence at school in Edinburgh, and still more by the affectionate care of her father's sisters, of whose kindness she entertained through life the most grateful recollection. But, as a great part of her training was still left to herself, her love for reading spent itself poetry and fiction. They helped to people for her that world of her own which the day-dreams of youth called up in her soli

tude to ge

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At a very early age the charge of her father's household devolved upon her; and the details of housekeeping in Orkney are of so exhausting a kind, that, from her sixteenth to her twentieth year, she could have had very little leisure for self-improvement. q

"About this time Viscount

worth (who had formerly been

Mrs Balfour's brother, the second Earl Li

gonier) proposed that Mary, her god daughter, should reside with her in Lon don. What influence this alteration might have had on her after life, is left to be matter of conjecture. She preferred the quiet and privacy of a Scotch parsonage We were married in her twentieth year, and went to reside at Bolton, near Hadding,

ton." pp. Vid Bar &

In this seclusion of wedded tranquilli ty, Mrs Brunton dedicated much of her time to reading, and profited, we have no doubt, greatly from the friendly and skilful direction which her studies now received. Criticism and belles lettres,the philosophy of the hu man mind, and the best English his torians, formed a course of reading in which her husband accompanied her and in which she acquired stronger habits of attention, and a still finer sense of the beauties of composition Yet at this time she herself never at tempted to write. Even an ordinary letter was rather an annoyance to her. Her chief recreation was drawing,

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East Lothian, in general, is not distinguished for landscape beauty; but the situation of the manse of Bolton is pretty, and there is some fine scenery on the banks of the stream which washes it. These close banks formed a singular con

daydoh por bis einster Jet sendi The circumstance of two East Inter dian wards of her husband coming tasd reside in their family, gave Mrs Brunton occasion to exercise her talents for: education, and particularly to ex of her own religious belief, while she amine thoroughly into the foundations was instructing others in religion.0 bil

"Both in her own mind, and in the minds of her pupils, she was anxious to make religion an active principle, to carry its influence habitually into life. It mingled now with all her own pursuits. She of the pleasure which it bestowed, but from sought knowledge, not merely for the sake not for its own beauty alone, but for the a strong sense of duty. She loved nature. traces with which it abounds of the wisdom and the love of the Creator Her religion was not a religion of gloom; it shed bright the heart which it purified and exalted. ness and peace around her. It gladdened.

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useful and simple course, Six happy years flew along in this when she accompanied Dr Brunton to Elinburgh. A mind like hers, however modest and retiring, could not now but, rise to its own level; and although, we believe, there never was a human be ing more deeply sensible of what wast great or excellent in others, or in the profoundness of her admiration, more humble and self-abased, yet the na tural vigour of her faculties could not but come rieties of character, and the intellecplay, , amidst the vis tual converse which met her in this new scene. We must give in the words of the narrative itself the strik ing view of this opening of her mind, and of the circumstances which first set her upon literary composition. **

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36 koma studi tagot no bo Hitherto she does not seem to have been at all aware of the strength of her own mind. Our circle of acquaintance n has small. She appeared among them scarces ly in any other light than as an active and prudent young housewife; who submitted, with the most cheerful good-humour the inconveniences of a narrow income; but who contrived, by method and taste,

and he bare flats and the magnificent to join comfort with some share of elet

trast to
sea-prospects of Orkney, Contrast which
deepened the impression of both, and help
ed to form that habit of observing the wa-
rieties and beauties of nature which after
wards become so marked a feature of her

gance in the whole of her management. Few literary people were within our reach. It was chiefly with me that she talked of what she had read and as some of the subjects were new to her, she contracted,

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far more than enough, the habit of speak-work, and once she appealed tot amintis of ing as a pupil of Domate friend who was present whether he 31 would not be my publisher. He consent og red readily, but added, thats he would, at least as willingly, publish a book of her own writing. This seemed, at the time, y to strike her as something the possibility of which had never occurred to her before, s and she asked more than once whether hers bool ver was in earnest.***

It was otherwise in Edinburgh. Our circle widened. She mingled more with those whose talents and acquirements she had respected cat a distance. She found herself able to take her share in their con versation; and, though nothing could be farther from the tone of her mind than either pedantry or dogmatism, she came by degrees, instead of receiving opinions implicitly, to examine those of others, and to defend her own. There was a freshness and originality in her way of managing these little friendly controversies, a playfulness in her wit, a richness in her illustrafions, and an acuteness in her arguments, which made her conversation attractive to the ablest. If they were not convinced by her reasoning, they were gratified by her ingenuity, and by her unpretending openness.

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But the circumstance which, more than any other beyond the range of her own domestic intercourse, tended both, to develope her intellect, and to establish her character, was an intimacy which she formed, soon after her removal to Edinburgh, with a lady in her immediate neigh bourhood. They were, indeed, so near, that it w was easy for them to be much together. They together, worked together, and talked over, with confidential freedom, their opinions, from minuter points to the most important of all. In their leading views of human life and human duty, they were fully agreed. But, whether they agreed, or whether they dif fered, they benefited each other essentially, either mutually confirming each other in the truth, or mutually leading each other towards it.

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This intercourse continued for about six years, when it was interrupted by Mrs Izeu's removal from Edinburgh, But it was not, and could not be, suspended altogether; so far ras letters could prolong it, it was continued to the last, by the only close and confidential correspondence, beyond the bounds of her own family, in which Mary ever engaged.

"In the literary pursuits which they carried on together, there were occasional blanks, caused by the avocations of either. It was chiefly for the employment of accidental intervals of leisure, occasioned by the more numerous engagements of her friend, that Mrs Brunton began the writ ing of Self-Control. At first its author had no design that it should meet the eye of the public. But, as her manuscript swelled, this design, half unconsciously, began to mingle with her labours. Per haps, too, circumstance which I remem ber to have happened about this time miglit have had more weight than she was aware of in prompting the attempts She had of ten urged me to undertake some literary

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"A considerable part of the first vo-t lume of Self-Control was written before & knew any thing of its existence. When { she brought it to me, my pleasure was cer tainly mingled with surprise. The beauty of and correctness of the style, the acuteness,5 of observation, and the loftiness of sentis ment, were, each of them in its way,Abeyond what even I was prepared to expecte from her. Any encouragement which myt approbation could give her and she gato lued it at far more than it was worth) she received in the fullest measure." bad avad pp. xv-xixeq

We do not think there is a more interesting picture anywhere of a mind gradually becoming acquainted with its own powers, than this of Mrs Brunton; and the great charm, in truth, of her Self-Control, is the ap pearance of young delight with which she seems to be breaking out from hers fetters, and luxuriating in the new world of intelligence and of genius which was opening before her." It is this circumstance, perhaps, which throws a magic over t this fascinating work, scarcely to be found in her se cond novel. With all the glaring de fects of the story, there is an animation and interest throughout arising mainly from this cause. Her Discipline is better constructed, and still more cor rectly written, yet there is a want of the same spirit; and it appears that she did not write it with the same

freedom. or with equal delight. She then had to compare herself with herself, and with others.Of Self-Con trok, we are told, whatever was written most rapidly was the best written, It was only when she was dissatisfied with what she was doing, or when she was uncertain of what was to follow that she wrote with difficulty. It is only it such passages that there is inter lineation or blotting in the mant script. The work was printed from the first copy, and was dedicated to Miss Joanna Baillie, who acknowledged the anonymous compliment by a des ter to the publishers. Mrs Brunton replied in shernownsname;band her answer to Mish Baillie's detteri imer

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turn, contains a very open-hearted statement of her motives for engaging in the work, and of the manner in which it was written.

I have no intention of excusing the faults of my book to you, but, if you can have patience with so much egotism, I can account for them naturally enough. Till I began Self-Control, I had never in my life written any thing but a letter or a recipe, excepting a few hundreds of vile rhymes, from which I desisted by the time I had gained the wisdom of fifteen years; therefore I was so ignorant of the art on which I was entering, that I formed scarcely any plan for my tale. I merely intended to show the power of the religious principle in bestowing self-command; and to bear testimony against a maxim as immoral as indelicate, that a reformed rake makes the best husband. For the rest, I was guided by the fancy of the hour, Me laissant aller doucement, selon la bonne loi naturelle.' The incidents were inserted as they happened to occur to my mind, and were joined in the best way I could to those that went before and after.

"The thing was not meant at first to see the light; nor would it ever have done so, if I had not thought the time it came to cost me too much to be spent in mere unprofitable amusement. I cannot help laughing, when I recollect the glowing face and oppressed breathing with which I read the first chapters to my husband, making, in order to please him, a strong effort against my reluctance to the task. Indeed,

the book was far advanced before even he

saw it. Now, I can hear it censured by many with very little emotion, and praised by others with far less. Any thing like approbation from you has elevated me to a convenient height above common praise or

censure.

"Mr B. is delighted that you approve of the story of poor Jessie Wilson, which has always been his favourite part of the book; and I am no less gratified that you praise the American expedition, which is in equal favour with me. Both incidents have shared the fate of the book itself, being reprobated by some and applauded by others of the literary authorities here. Upon the whole, however, my success has very far exceeded what I ventured to expect. Edinburgh is ready for the second edition long ago; but I have not heard whether we are equally fortunate in London. L. and

ing this tour, and from another in an after tour in 1815, are now published in this volume.

On her return home, she again projected a novel, and after considerable hesitation, fixed on the story of Disci pline. Mrs Brunton made it a principle never to write without a distinct moral plan; and it has been suggested to us by high authority, that," besides the many general observations and reflections with which her novels are enriched, and her clear and happy her peculiar merits as a novelist is manner of expressing them, one et the unsparing zeal with which she makes out her moral, letting no fear of making her chief characters unpopular, or running counter to the common-place of sentimental notions, stand between her and her proposed end." There is much truth in this remark, and nothing certainly could be more praiseworthy than Mrs Brunton's design, or better, on the whole, than its execution; yet we are not sure but that the fetter which she has imposed upon herself may have, in some degree, trammelled her genius. The extravagances of SeifControl somewhat break in upon the didactic nature of the story, and so far they may unintentionally have a good is rather too unsparingly pressed upon effect; but in Discipline, the moral have cramped her own powers as well our view, and the feeling of this may

as chilled her readers. The human mind is of a very singular construction. It will willingly glide into the noblest moral and religious impressions, but it is ever apt to take offence when they are forced upon it as lessons, especially in a tale. pline is much less objectionable, on Yet Discithis score, than some of the productions of Mrs Hannah More, or even Miss Edgeworth.

The animated sketch of Highland manners, at the close of this book, was unfortunately anticipated by that wonderful production Waverley, which came out after Mrs Brunton's work had been nearly completed, but

a concern whit are too busy to recollect before it was published. She immes

is not quite so important to them as to me." pp. xli-xlin.

J

After this successful debut as an author, Mrs Brunton made her first visit with her husband to London in 1812, and some interesting extracts fron a journal which she kept dur

diately felt the superiority of this new candidate for public favour; but it is an instance of the noble ingenuousness of her mind, that she bowed before him with the most profound admiration, and her letters are fu I of the warmest expressions of her delight in his genius

i

as his books successively appeared. Of these, Guy Mannering was her favourite. Perhaps one of their leading excellencies consists in what we have hinted at above, the undesigned morality which breaks out from their glowing pictures. Discipline was more successful than she had hoped; and on her return from her second tour she projected another work. She thus writes to her brother:

Pam thinking of short tales, but have as yet scarcely devised any subject for them, I do not need to write for bread; and I would not write one volume merely A moral, to gain the fame of Homer. therefore, is necessary for me; but where to get one on which to found a tale that will be readable, is the question. A lofty moral, too, is necessary to my style of thinking and writing; and really it is not easy to make such a one the ground-work of any story which novel readers will endure. 8

1

One advantage, indeed, I possess; the path which I have chosen is almost exclusively my own. The few moral lessons which our English fictions profess to teach, are of the humblest class. Even Miss Edgeworth's genius has stooped to incul. Patience is cate mere worldly wisdom. a plaster for all sores, Honesty is the best policy,' A penny saved is a penny got seem the texts which she has established with her shrewd observation, and exquisite painting of character." p. lxxxii.

It is to this plan of writing short narratives that we owe what appears of her Emmeline, which would probably have been her most elegant and finished production. Her health, however, now suffered some severe shocks, and a deadness of spirit frequently accom panied these attacks, In one letter she writes,

T

rence, for I do not aim at either. Icams
setting down my thoughts just as they oc
Make out the feelings which prompt
cur.
them as you best can." p. xcii.

There is a melancholy little poem
which strikes us, as remarkably beau
tiful, and which must have been one
of the last things which she wrote, as,
it was not found till after her death.
While thou at eventide art roaming
Along the elm-o'ershaded walk,
Where, past, the eddying stream is foam-
ing

Beneath its tiny cataract,→→

ん 4

Where I with thee was wont to talk,-
Think thou upon the days gone by,
And heave a sigh!

When sails the moon above the moun.

tains,

And cloudless skies are purely blue,
And sparkle in the light the fountains,
And darker frowns the lonely yew--
Then be thou melancholy too,
When musing on the hours I proved
With thee, beloved!

I am as much in the open air as this As melancholy summer has allowed me. for my writing, it has been for four months entirely discontinued. For the greater part of that time, I have been utterly incapable of interesting myself in that, or indeed any other employment. The worst consequence, however, of my indisposition has been the uneasiness it has given to you and to Mr B., to him especially, for he has felt it much; and this has, no doubt, tended to increase it. I trust it is now removed, and that I shall, when an endless train of visitors allows me, be able once more to take my talent from its napkin. te, the "Do not write, to me either reproof or exhortation. I might have done some ing to rouse myself, but I had lost the will. I write without method or cohe,

1

When wakes the dawn upon thy dwelling,
And lingering shadows disappear,
And soft the woodland songs are swelling
A choral anthem on thine ear,
-Think--for that hour to thought is dear!
And then her flight remembrance wings
To by-past things.

To me, through every season, dearest;
In every scene-by day, by night,
Thou present to my mind appearest
A quenchless star-for ever bright!!
My solitary, sole delight!
Alone-in grove-by shore--at sea,
I think of thee!

Ex

W

But we must now hasten to the sad catastrophe.

13

"Composition had now long ceased to be a voluntary employment. It had come to be looked upon as a task; and she rather sought reasons to justify to her own mind her desertion of her former habits, than opportunities of renewing them in their strength. During the summer of 1818, however, she had in a great measure conquered these feelings; and, had it pleased Providence to spare her life, I am convinced that she would at this hour have been returning to her former occupations with all her former ardour.

She was strongly impressed, indeed, with a belief that her confinement, was to prove fatal; not on vague presentiment, but on grounds of which I could not entirely remove the force, though I obsrinately refused to join in the inference which she drew from themde Under this belief v she completed every the most minute presí paration for her great change, with the

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