Author: Godwin, Catherine Grace (1798-1845)
Title: The Wanderer's Legacy; a Collection of Poems, on Various Subjects.
Date: 1829
Contemporary Reviews of this Volume
The Antheneum; or the spirit of the English Magazines. Vol. 1. Boston: Published by John Cotton. March 1828-9. Pp. 395-397. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044092528843;view=1up;seq=7
There has been no remarkable absence of decent poems lately; but we have met with none for a long time which as given us so much pleasure as this volume of Mrs. Godwin. This lady is, we understand, the younger daughter of the late Dr. Garnett, the author of “Zoonomia,” “Observations on a Tour through the Highlands of Scotland,” &c. Dr. Garnett left two orphan children, for Mrs. Garnett had died a few years before. They were entrusted to the care of a kind and attached female friend, who retired with them to their father’s native palce, Barbon, a secluded little village, near Kriby-Lonsdale, in Westmoreland. In this village they both continued to reside till they had attained to womanhood, and it is still the home of Mrs. Godwin. It is not surprising that in os beautiful and romantic a country, and surrounded by every circumstance calculated to operate powerfully upon the youthful fancy, the germ of poetical genius, which disclosed itself early in the life of the fair author of the poems now under our notice, should have gradually expanded until it arrived at a rich and luxuriant maturity. Her first publication, “The Night before the Bridal Sappho, and other Poems,” received, soon after its appearance, the praise which it deserved. Her present work raises Mrs. Godwin still more in our estimation In addition to splendor or imagination, copiousness of diction, beauty and variety of imagery, and rare facility and harmony of versification, the volume is embued with a depth of, and a strength of feeling, which indicate a mind of a very superior order—a mind capable of producing “what the world will not willingly let die.”
The volume opens with an “invocation.” It is a noble and enthusiastic little composition; and as it affords a fair specimen of Mrs. Godwin’s powers, we will give nearly the whole of it [the reviewer goes on to quote most of the “invocation”] . . . . If this is not very exquisite poetry, we acknowledge that we do not know what is.
The “Wanderer’s Legacy” is a collection of poems supposed to be bequeathed to the world by a man,--
“A toil-worn, venerable man,
In humble guise, although of travelled mien,
With meditative brow, and visage wan,
In whose deep eye immortal thoughts were
Seen,”--
Who had journeyed over many parts of the earth; had seen men, manners, and nature, and who had been fond of embodying his observation and experience in verse.
To the romantic scene, the home of his youthful days, this “grey-haired wanderer” returns. His reflections, as he gazes at the well-known objects around him, are full of beauty, and of patriotic feeling.
“Land of my sires! Oh, with what chasten’d love
My soul, unwarp’d, dispassionate, and free
Guided by some kind angel from above,
Returns with filial gratitude to thee!...”
[quote from the poem continues]
Finding that the lapse of years has deprived him of all his kindred and friends, he retires to a peaceful hermitage, where the passes
“. . . the quiet autumn of his age
In such pursuits as whiled the hours away:
From Wanderer grown to Anchorite and Sage;
A moonlight eve closed manhood’s chequer’d day.”
In his cell, after his death, are discovered his tablets, on which are inscribed “The Wanderer’s early Recollections;” forming the third and longest poem of the volume. The earlier portion of the Recollections, is the admirably detailed history of an ardent but uninformed mind, conscious of the existence of unattained knowledge, and panting for its acquisition. We can quote only a few short and detached passages [quotes passages from poem]
The latter part of the Recollections exhibits equal poetical power; but we own that we do not think the subject,-- the caprice of the heartless coquette, and its effects on her lover,-- deserves the talent bestowed upon it. Materiem superabat opus.
The next poem, “The Seal Hunters,” creates a striking and delightful diversity. Mres. Godwin paints the rigors of the polar regions with a masterly pencil. One would think she had accompanied Captain Parry in his northern expeditions.
The adventures of two young and gallant Finlanders, their voyage through the stormy Arctic Sea, their disembarkation (we had nearly said landing) on an iceberg, the drifting and destruction of their frail boat, their suffering and despair, and their ultimate deliverance, are told with a truth, a pathos, and an energy which will greatly surprise as well as gratify the reader. We have devoted a larger space to extracs from this volume than we can well spare; but there is reality, and strength, and body, in Mrs. Godwin’s poetry; and, in these days, a volume of which this can honestly affirmed must not be lightly esteemed, or hastily discussed.
Buckingham, J.S. The Athenaeum. London Literary and Critical Journal. London: William Lewer. 1828. Pp. 944-946. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000020221805;view=1up;seq=7
The Wanderer’s Legacy: a Collection of Poems on various subjects. By Catherine Grace Godwin, (Late Catherine Grace Garnett.) 12 mo. Pp 277. Maunder. London, 1829.
There has been no remarkable absence of decent poems lately: but we have met with none for a long time which has given us so much pleasure as this volume of Mrs. Godwin. With this lady’s former works we are not acquainted—but unless her change of name and increase of experience have greatly mellowed her powers, or unless the public has been shamefully neglectful of good books—we think this must arise rather from our ignorances than from their obscurity. Whether or not, however, she has previously established a reputation, ‘The Wanderer’s Legacy’ is a very sufficient foundation for one. Judging from her book, Mrs. Godwin must be a person who has read the great writers of our day diligently, and has an habitual love for the tracks of thought which they have marked out, but who has resorted to them not for the illegitimate purpose of supplying out of their fountains the streams which should issue from its well-spring in her own mind, bt for the legitimate purpose of educing and cultivating, by contact with superior minds, her original powers.
The ‘Wanderer’s Legacy’ is a collection of poems supposed to be bequeathed to the world by a man who had journeyed over many parts of the earth; had seen men, manners, and nature, and who had been fond of embodying his observation and experience in verse.
Our favourite piece, and the one from which at present we shall borrow our extract, is ‘The Wanderer’s Early Recollections.’ This is a very beautiful poem, and a poem which proves the authoress to possess a power which very rarely belongs to her sex,-- the power of endowing a character with feelings, and surrounding it with circumstances, perfectly different from her own. We say this without fear of contradiction, because, whatever trials of feeling Mrs. Godwin may have passed through, and we do not believe that she could write such good poetry if she had not passed through many, she cannot possibly have experienced those intellectual struggles, of which she has given no feeble or incorrect impersonation in ‘The Wanderer.’ Keeping this in mind, it did not at all spoil our pleasure in reading the poem that the early part of it recalled two of the most wonderful inward-life pictures to which this country (the native place of that school of art) ahs ever given birth. Mrs. Godwin will see that we refer to Shelley’s ‘Alastor,’ and to the description of the childhood of that other ‘Wanderer’ who is the hero or rather the spirit of the Excursion. For these wonderful productions, so very different, yet each so full, rich, and satisfactory, are obviously not, in the strict dramatic sense of the word, works of creation. They are magnificently vivid exhibitions of past states of feeling, which have existed in the minds of their authors, and to which, after they have passed through a change like that undergone by the entire human soul when it quits its present tabernacle, the faculty of imagination has given a bodily resurrection. They are not attempts to fashion a fresh world out of void and formless elements. To create anew a character as real and actual, and as complete in all its mechanism, as those which have been reanimated by such might magicians, would have been impossible, perhaps, for Shakespeare himself. Our readers therefore, will see how monstrous it would be to try Mrs. Godwin by such standards and how much genius she must have employed, if she has made even an approximation to consistency and truth in forming an image of which she had also to conceive the archetype. The true test by which to try her poem is to place it by the side of such a production as Beattie’s ‘Minstrel,’ likewise an attempt at a purely imaginary character; and if our readers will take the trouble to institute this comparison, we think they will find, that, while the Scotchman’s conception of Edwin is throughout indistinct, incoherent, and contradictory, Mrs. Godwin, though imperfect and erroneous in many of the details she has introduced, nevertheless approaches nearer than could possibly have been expected to a correct and consistent theory of the part.
It is so rarely that we meet with a lady who ever attempts to create, far less, who at all succeeds in it, that our pleasure at the occurrence has betrayed us unawares into remarks which we fear our readers will think tedious, and which have prevented us from doing justice to the more obvious merits of Mrs. Godwin’s poetry. The following passage on ‘The Wanderer’s’ first introduction to English poetry strikes us as very beautiful. We do not know whether it is an honest expression of womanly feeling, or a real conviction that there is a dramatical appropriateness in making ‘The Wanderer,’ at this crisis of his mind, prefer what is purely beautiful to what is severely intellectual, that has induced Mrs. Godwin to fix upon the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ as the type of Shakespeare’s genius.
“Athwart my path a ray of sunlight fell.
Imagination,--That in guise untrick’d
By cunning arts of the world’s fashioning,
Had been the mistress of my constant love…”
[Goes on to quote pp. 38-43]
‘The Wanderer’s Early Recollections,’ however, not all turn upon these high themes:
“Here I have not writ
How my enthusiast nature long had drawn
Its honied nature from the wilding flowers…”
[Goes on to quote pp. 44-45]
This first meeting with his love—a lady much poorer, but much more highly born than himself, (the Wanderer is merely a rustic)—the progress of his attachment, the steps by which he transfers the beauties of soul with which his ideal female was endowed, to the very common-place coquette who had smitten him, are described with great prettiness and delicacy. At length their union is determined on. He is to spend three years at Oxford, to take orders, and then to claim his bride. The day before he is to set off for college
, he visits his betrothed, is denied admittance, and finds that she has ben attacked with a fever. He passes five days in bitter and useless distress. [Goes on to quote the aforementioned scene from pp. 61-66]
The mother of the worthy lady, whose life he was the means of preserving, is much incensed at the grossly improper step which he adopted for that purpose; and he recovers from a dangerous fever which he had caught by his heroism, to discover that the young lady’s sense of propriety is equally wounded. He is long before he realizes the possibility of her being serious in her ingratitude; but the discovery that a gay and wealthy roué is taying in the neighbourhood; and a visit to the house of the lady, where she shows him off to his rival as an amusing and conceited rustic, at last reveals the truth to him. After the marriage of Eliza to Sir Thomas Vernon, he turns wanderer, visits various countries, and thereby gives occasion to the remaining poems in the volume. To these we shall return shortly, for there is reality, and strength, and body, in Mrs. Godwin’s poetry; and, in these days, a volume of which this can be honestly affirmed, must not be slightly esteemed or hastily discussed.
La Belle Assemblee… Vol. IX. London: By Whittaker, Treacher, and Co., Ave-Maria Lane. June 1829. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081673547;view=1up;seq=11
There are two ladies to whom we must now pay our respects: Catherine Grace Godwin, late Catherine Grace Garnett, the younger daughter of the late Dr. Garnett, author of Zoonomia, &c., for her “Wanderer’s Legacy, a Collection of Poems on various Subjects;” and Mrs. Norton, grand-niece, or grand-daughter, we are not certain which, of the late Richard Brinsley Sheridan.—Prefixed to the Wanderer’s Legacy is an Invocation, of which these lines constitute a part:--
Spirit! that deign’st to hover o’er my path,
When in the twilight gleam of some deep dell,
Or Naïad-haunted spring, I wander forth
To hold communion with the peering start ;
Or on the voiceful shore I pause, to view
The round moon fling her bright reflection far
Upon the crystal waves ; or clambring thence
Along the rock-goat’s steep and dangerous way,
Where toppling crags hand o’er the billowy main
Their fortress rude, I mark the sun descend
From his cloud-canopied Olympian throne,
His regal brow all filleted with fire ;
Spirit presiding then—pervading all—
Seen in the sunset—breathed in all the airs
That wanton through the summer-tinted groves,
Felt in the balmy influence of those tears
Wept by the heavens o’er Day’s deserted fanes ;
Spirit of poesie ! on thee I call.
Of Mrs. Godwin’s truly elegant and beautiful poems, our limits restrain us from offering even the slightest analysis; but the insertion of their titles may serve to convey the reader some idea of the character of her subjects. Besides The Wanderer’s Legacy, we have… [goes to list the poems in the volume]
The Ladies’ Museum. Vol. I. London: James Robins and Co., Ivy Lane. June1829. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hn1prx;view=1up;seq=6
Some, eager to take Time by the forelock, have been launching their literary barks during the last month, in the hope, no doubt, of escaping the fate of these small craft, which are too often run down when vessels of more bulky freightage are under way. Some of them, however, need be under no apprehension of being obscured by those works which may be said to cast their shadows before. “The Wanderer’s Legacy,” a collection of poems, by Catherine Grace Godwin, (late C. G. Gernett) would command attention at any time. IT exhibits in an eminent degree the higher powers of intellect—great happiness of expression, and a most fertile fancy. It is, however, somewhat metaphysical. Mrs. Godwin, in straining after effect, gets completely rid of simplicity; and has fallen into a prevalent error in supposing that ethical paradoxes and startling conclusions add to the value of a poem. No mistake can be more grievous: ambitious poetry ahs never been popular; for Cowley, notwithstanding the abundance of mind which he infused into every thing he wrote, has never been a general favourite. Mrs. Godwin has only to adhere somewhat more to nature, and the suggestions of her own good sense, to merit a place beside a Hemans and a Baillie.
Lodge, Edmund. Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain… London: Printed for Harding and Lepard. 1829. P.13.
WANDERER’S LEGACY: a Collection of Poems on Various Subjects. By CATHERINE GRACE GODWIN, (late C.G. GARNETT.) Dedicated, by permission, to W. Wordsworth, Esq. Price 8s. 6d.
“In addition to splendor of imagination, copiousness of diction, beauty and variety of imagery, and rare felicity and harmony of versification, the volume is imbued with a depth of thought and strength of feeling which indicate a mind of a very superior order.”—Literary Gazette [the original copy of this could not be found]
The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, vol. 3. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bently. 1829. Pp 514. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951000750718n;view=1up;seq=7;size=50
The Wanderer’s Legacy, and Other Poems. By Catherine Grace Godwin (late Garnett).
Another volume of elegant poetry from the pen of a female, whose preceding works we have noticed already. “The Wanderer’s Legacy” displays the powers of the author in no mean point of view; and in any days but these of present overflowing poetical production, would, we are confident, attract the attention it merits. “The Wanderer’s Legacy” is followed by several shorter poems, of equal claims to commendation. “The Seal Hunters;” the “Hebrew Girl at the Auto da Fé;” the “Dying Crusader;” “Destiny;” &c. are well worthy the reader’s attention, but are too long for analysis in this place. An elegant fancy, a chase poetical genius, and considerable inventive power, are discoverable in these poems, which confer high credit on the pen of Mrs. Godwin.
Prepared by Abbigail Mazour, University of Nebraska, April 2018.
© Abbigail Mazour, 2018.