all. None recurs with more frequency, at one period, in her journals,
than the debate with herself, whether she shall make literature a
profession. Shall it be woman, or shall it be artist?

WOMAN, OR ARTIST?

Margaret resolved, again and again, to devote herself no more to these
disappointing forms of men and women, but to the children of the muse.
'The _dramatis personae_' she said, 'of my poems shall henceforth be
chosen from the children of immortal Muse. I fix my affections no
more on these frail forms.' But it was vain; she rushed back again to
persons, with a woman's devotion.

Her pen was a non-conductor. She always took it up with some disdain,
thinking it a kind of impiety to attempt to report a life so warm and
cordial, and wrote on the fly-leaf of her journal,--

'"_Scrivo sol per sfogar' l'interno_."'

'Since you went away,' she said, 'I have thought of many
things I might have told you, but I could not bear to be
eloquent and poetical. It is a mockery thus to play the artist
with life, and dip the brush in one's own heart's blood. One
would fain be no more artist, or philosopher, or lover, or
critic, but a soul ever rushing forth in tides of genial
life.'

* * * * *

'_26 Dec., 1842._--I have been reading the lives of Lord
Herbert of Cherbury, and of Sir Kenelm Digby. These splendid,
chivalrous, and thoughtful Englishmen are meat which my
soul loveth, even as much as my Italians. What I demand of
men,--that they could act out all their thoughts,--these have.
They are lives;--and of such I do not care if they had as many
faults as there are days in the year,--there is the energy
to redeem them. Do you not admire Lord Herbert's two poems on
life, and the conjectures concerning celestial life? I keep
reading them.'

* * * * *

'When I look at my papers, I feel as if I had never had a
thought that was worthy the attention of any but myself; and
'tis only when, on talking with people, I find I tell them
what they did not know, that my confidence at all returns.'

* * * * *

'My verses,--I am ashamed when I think there is scarce a line
of poetry in them,--all rhetorical and impassioned, as Goethe
said of De Stael. However, such as they are, they have
been overflowing drops from the somewhat bit