Book Description

Excerpt from The Works of Mary Russell Mitford, Prose and Verse, Viz Our Village, Belford Regis, Country Stories, Finden's Tableaux, Foscari, Julian, Rienzi, Charles the First It should, perhaps, be owned in speaking of these village sketches, that, their writer enamels too brightly - not the hedgerows and the mea dow-streams, the orchards and the cottage gar dens, for who could exceed nature?-but the figures which people the scene; that her country boys and village girls are too refined, too constantly turned to favour and to prettiness. But this flattery only shows to us the health and benevo lence of mind belonging to the writer; nor would it be just to count it as a fault, unless we also were to denounce Crabbe as an unfaithful painter of English life and scenery, because, with a ten dency diametrically opposite, he lingers like a lover in the workhouse and the hovel, and dwells rather upon decay, and meanness, and misery, than the prosperity and charity and comfort with which their gloom is so largely chequered. He may be called the Caravaggio, Miss Mitford the Claude, of village life in England and the truth lies between them. Both, however, are remark able for the purity and selectness of their lan guage; both paint with words, in a manner as faithful as it is significant. Crabbe should be re served for those. Bright moments when the too buoyant spirits require a chastener, a memento of the days of darkness Miss Mitford resorted to in hours of depression and misgiving, when any book bearing an olive-branch to tell us that there is fair weather abroad, is a blessed visitant. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.