Seward, ANNA

Seward, ANNA, the 'Swan of Lichfield,' was born in 1747 at the rectory of Eyam in Derbyshire, but lived from the age of seven all her days at Lichfield, where her father, himself a poet, became a canon residentiary. Dr Darwin and Mr Day were notable figures in the society of Lichfield; her dearest friend was Honora Sneyd, who married Edgeworth; Dr Johnson, like the prophet of the proverb, had more honour everywhere else than among his own people. Miss Seward only escaped a nearer connection with the lexicographer by the death of her only surviving sister Sarah on the eve of marriage with Lucy Porter's brother. Her own father died in 1790, but she continued to live as before in the bishop's palace, dear to her friends and correspondents—Mrs Piozzi, Hayley, Southey, Scott—and died 23d March 1809. She published her poetical novel, Louisa, in 1782; her Sonnets in 1799; her Life of Dr Darwin in 1804; but bequeathed to [Sir] Walter Scott the care of the collected edition of her poems (3 vols. 1810). Her long-winded, florid letters, on which she piqued herself even more than her poems, were collected in six volumes (1811-13). Boswell received from her 'some obliging communications concerning Johnson,' but after his book was published quarrelled with her, accusing her of malevolence towards his hero. Her monody on Major André and an elegy on Captain Cook were thought her best poems. In the letters she is Johnsonian without strength, metaphorical beyond all measure, feeble and absurd to a degree. Horace Walpole says of her and some other harmonious virgins, 'Their thoughts and phrases are like their gowns—old remnants cut and turned.'