International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 6, August 5, 1850

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Various. International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science - Volume 1, No. 6, August 5, 1850

GERMAN CRITICISM ON ENGLISH FEMALE ROMANCE WRITERS

MARGARET FULLER, MARCHESA D'OSSOLI

ON THE DEATH OF S. MARGARET FULLER. BY G.F.R. JAMES

FRASER'S MAGAZINE UPON THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA

Original Poetry

A RETROSPECT. BY HERMANN

THE AUTHOR OF "ION."

Recent Deaths

BOYER, EX-PRESIDENT OF HAYTI

THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE

GEORGE W. ERVING

DR. JOHN BURNS

HORACE SUMNER

The Fine Arts

Authors and Books

THE SERF OF POBEREZE

THE MYSTERIOUS COMPACT

IN TWO PARTS.—PART I

OUR "IN MEMORIAM."

TO W.J.R., WITH A MS

THE ACTUAL

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Sarah Margaret Fuller, by marriage Marchioness of Ossoli, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about the year 1807. Her father, Mr. Timothy Fuller, was a lawyer, and from 1817 to 1825 he represented the Middlesex district in Congress. At the close of his last term as a legislator he purchased a farm near Cambridge, and determined to abandon his profession for the more congenial one of agriculture; but he died soon after, leaving a widow and six children, of whom Margaret was the eldest.

At a very early age she exhibited unusual abilities, and was particularly distinguished for an extraordinary facility in acquiring languages. Her father, proud of the displays of her intelligence, prematurely stimulated it to a degree that was ultimately injurious to her physical constitution. At eight years of age he was accustomed to require of her the composition of a number of Latin verses every day, while her studies in philosophy, history, general science and current literature were pressed to the limit of her capacities. When he first went to Washington he was accustomed to speak of her as one "better skilled in Greek and Latin than half of the professors;" and alluding in one of her essays, to her attachment to foreign literature, she herself observes that in childhood she had well-nigh forgotten her English while constantly reading in other tongues.

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"From the essay entitled 'Philip Van Artevelde, I copy a paragraph which will serve at once to exemplify Miss Fuller's more earnest (declamatory) style, and to show the tenor of her prospective speculations:—

"From what I have quoted, a general conception of the prose style of the authoress may be gathered. Her manner, however, is infinitely varied. It is always forcible—but I am not sure that it is always anything else, unless I say picturesque. It rather indicates than evinces scholarship. Perhaps only the scholastic, or, more properly, those accustomed to look narrowly at the structure of phrases, would be willing to acquit her of ignorance of grammar—would be willing to attribute her slovenliness to disregard of the shell in anxiety for the kernel; or to waywardness, or to affectation, or to blind reverence to Carlyle—would be able to detect, in her strange and continual inaccuracies, a capacity for the accurate.

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