Emily looked down on the calm deep waters, and wished that she were sleeping beneath them. Fo her the wide world was a desolation. London Published by Richard Bentley, 1848. 23 42367 MEMOIR OF L. E. L. THIS volume, in the usual form of three volumes, was the first prose publication of L. E. L., who had previously achieved, even in her girlhood, a widely popular fame by her poetical productions. If these had startled the public by their fancy, beauty, feeling, and passion, the sparkling vivacity, the wonderful display of acute and comprehensive observation, and the neatness with which the ideas were expressed, the novelty in matter and manner, and the variety and charm of the whole, in this new exercise of luxuriant faculties, raised the reputation of the author to a still higher pitch; and those who are unwilling to bend the knee to Genius in Poetry were foremost to comprehend and appreciate this more ordinary form of its development. The Improvisatrice of the incognito and spell-like initials became yet more celebrated; and from that period, for many years, continued to delight the world with an unceasing efflux of many-coloured literature. The amount which she wrote is almost incredible. It was not "no day without a line," but no day without a piece of poetical composition, an essay, or a chapter. Writing was the atmosphere in which she breathed and lived, and her facility was so great that no task ever seemed to be a labour to her. Her invention and powers were equal to any demand; and what to others must have been a heavy burthen, was to her, as it were, a plaything. But let it not therefore be supposed that what appeared to be so easily and lightly done was of that quality which has |