E541204A. The Keepsake (1855).
The Morning Chronicle, 4 December 1854, p. 3.
As reprinted in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 387.
This a volume elegantly got up, and illustrated with many engravings of a first-rate character, and which reflect credit even upon the skill and ability of Mr. F. A. Heath. The text of the work, however, is almost entirely of that mediocre style which usually characterises the annuals, which appear to be produced solely for the purpose of displaying the vast superiority of the productions of the artist and engraver over those which profess to be of a literary character. If Albert Smith had either volunteered his assistance to the work, or his name had been forced unwillingly into the list of contributors, a regard for his reputation and literary fame might surely have induced him to contribute something more worthy of his talent than the story, tale, or what it may be called of “Only once a-year,” and the fair editress of the Keepsake must have regretted the necessity of inserting “The Red Nun,” and one or two other tales of a similar character and style, in a work which aims at being of a first class character. Some lines by Elizabeth Barrett Browning help so much to redeem the character of the book, that we are tempted to make a short extract.
She was not as pretty as women I know,
And yet all your best, made of sunshine and snow,
Drop to shade, melt to nought, in the long trodden ways,
While she’s still remembered in warm and cold days,
My Kate.
Her air had a meaning—her movement a grace;
You turned from the fairest to gaze on her face;
And when you had once seen her forehead and mouth
You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth,
My Kate.
She never found fault with you—never implied
Your wrong by her right; and yet men at her side
Grew nobler, girls purer, as through the whole town
The children were gladder that pulled at her gown,
My Kate.
The meek and the gentle, the ribald and rude,
She took as she found them, and did them all good.
It always was so with her—see what you have!—
She has made the grass greener e’en here . . . . with her grave,
My Kate.
The engravings, as we have already intimated, are excellent, and we have seldom seen a plate so completely successful in its treatment as “The Page.” The remaining plates in the work are portraits of Lady Bolton, Lady Greenock, and Miss Olivia Talbot, and illustrations of the Novice of St. Claire, the Bashful Lover, May Leigh, May Leslie, the Broken Snare, Emma, Elinor, and Juliet and the Friar.
Reviewed:
The Keepsake, ed. Margaret Power, London: 1855.
___________________
