Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

494 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD.
Bowles are the only lasting representatives of the half
of the world, up to that time chiefly silent, though it
has since then made much amends for time lost.
Mrs Hemans became a very frequent contributor to
' Maga,' and we have seen Wilson's opinion of her
value. Mr Blackwood published successive volumes
of her poetry, and worshipped the Muse on her occa-
sional appearances in Edinburgh with much enthusiasm—more,
indeed, than was altogether approved by
his wife, who, not very tolerant of authors in general,
could not away with the female of the species, and
had a habit of finding a visit to Carfin essential when
one of them was about to appear, leaving her sister,
Miss Steuart, to do the honours. Miss Caroline
Bowles, who afterwards married Southey in the end
of his life, was for a long time, however, a constant
contributor, her ' Chapters on Churchyards ' and
other prose compositions, as well as much poetry,
appearing first in the Magazine. Her opinion of the
ladies, her contemporaries, is prettily expressed in the
following letter :
—
9th July 1827.
Mrs Hemans's favourable opinion of my little books is worth
that of twenty mobs as far as one's intellectual gratification is
concerned, and I am obliged to you for communicating it to me.
Next to your own unrivalled Joanna Baillie, Mrs H. is surely
entitled to rank first among all our female writers. Many
write with as much feeling, some with taste as refined and as
melodious diction, but no other woman that I know of with
such loftiness and holiness of thought as Mrs Hemans, always
saving and excepting the gifted Joanna.
I may add, to show the view then taken of feminine
contributors, a cheering note in a letter to a lady
who had been unkindly treated by a publisher less