In six volumes. Archibald Constable
& Co., 1811. "Longwinded and florid" one biographer calls her letters,
but by the aid of what Scott calls 'the laudable practice of skipping'
they are quite entertaining.

{8} Sir Robert Thomas White-Thomson, K.C.B., wrote to me in reference to
this estimate of Miss Seward from Broomford Manor, Exbourne, North Devon,
and his letter seemed of sufficient importance from a genealogical
standpoint for me to ask his permission to make an extract from the
letter: "I have read your address in a Lichfield newspaper. Apart from
the wider and more important bearings of your words, those which had
reference to the Seward family were especially welcome to me. You will
understand this when I tell you that, with the exception of the Romney
portrait of Anna, and a few other objects left 'away' by her will, my
grandfather, Thomas White, of Lichfield Close, her cousin and residuary
legatee, became possessed of all the contents of her house. Some of the
books and engravings were sold by auction, but the remainder were taken
good care of, and passed to me on my mother's death in 1860. As thus,
'in a way' the representative of the 'Swan of Lichfield,' you can easily
see what such an appreciation of her as was yours means to me. Of course
I know her weak points, and how the pot of clay must suffer in trying to
'bump' the pot of iron in midstream, but I also know that she was no
ordinary personage in her day, when the standard of feminine culture was
low, and I have resented some things that have been written of her. Mrs.
Oliphant treats her kindly in her _Literary History of England_, and now
I have your 'appreciation' of her, for which I beg to thank you."

{15} Once certainly in the lines "On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet":--

Well try'd through many a varying year,
See Levet to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of ev'ry friendless name the friend.

{18} _Prayers and Meditations_: composed by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., and
published from his Manuscripts by George Straham, D.D., Prebendary of
Rochester and Vicar of Islington in Middlesex, 1785. Dr. Birkbeck Hill
suggests that Johnson could not have contemplated the publication of the
work in its entirety, but the world is the better for the self
revelation, notwithstanding Cowper's remark in a letter to Newton (August
27, 1785), that "the publisher of it is neither much a friend to the
cause of religion nor t