ative writers have
strolled, and those streets have been immortalized in the pages of
several great novelists, notably of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.

For the City of Norwich I have a particular affection, as for long the
home in quite separate epochs of Sir Thomas Browne and of George Borrow.
I recall that in the reign of one of its Bishops--the father of Dean
Stanley--there was a literary circle of striking character, that men and
women of intellect met in the episcopal palace to discuss all 'obstinate
questionings.'

But if he were asked to choose between the golden age of Bath, of
Norwich, or of Lichfield, I am sure that any man who knew his books would
give the palm to Lichfield, and would recall that period in the life of
Lichfield when Dr. Seward resided in the Bishop's Palace, with his two
daughters, and when they were there entertaining so many famous friends.
I saw the other day the statement that Anna Seward's name was unknown to
the present generation. Now I have her works in nine volumes {6}; I have
read them, and I doubt not but that there are many more who have done the
same. Sir Walter Scott's friendship would alone preserve her memory if
every line she wrote deserved to be forgotten as is too readily assumed.
Scott, indeed, professed admiration for her verse, and a yet greater
poet, Wordsworth, wrote in praise of two fine lines at the close of one
of her sonnets, that entitled 'Invitation to a Friend,' lines which I
believe present the first appearance in English poetry of the form of
blank verse immortalized by Tennyson.

Come, that I may not hear the winds of night,
Nor count the heavy eave-drops as they fall.

"You have well criticized the poetic powers of this lady," says
Wordsworth, "but, after all, her verses please me, with all their faults,
better than those of Mrs. Barbauld, who, with much higher powers of mind,
was spoiled as a poetess by being a dissenter."

Less, however, can be said for her poetry to-day than for her capacity as
a letter writer. A letter writing faculty has immortalized more than one
English author, Horace Walpole for example, who had this in common with
Anna Seward, that he had the bad taste not to like Dr. Johnson.

Sooner or later there will be a reprint of a selection of Anna Seward's
correspondence; you will find in it a picture of country life in the
middle of the eighteenth century--and by that I mean Lichfield life--that
is quite unsurpassed. An