The Swan of Lichfield by Alice Meynell

Miss Anna Seward should not be made answerable for the poetry of the late eighteenth century but that no office or responsibility could be conferred upon a more willing recipient; the honour is hardly more than she demanded from the respect of the age to come; and when she bequeathed her works to this great man for editing, her letters to that, and her name to posterity, she would have heard with the satisfaction of her conscious hopes, rather than with elation or surprise, that another century would charge her with all the accumulated opinions of 1799.

It is Mr. Lucas's witty commentary[1] that recalls the name of Anna Seward and her claim to speak for those days-the time between two ages. I have no intention whatever to write of her with irony. Neither has Mr. Lucas yielded to the obvious temptation. There is something worthy of no slight respect in the justified security of her representative attitude. To deride her would be to deride that age, almost the latest that had full confidence, that took its historic place absolutely, without reluctance, suffered no misgiving, and did not disturb the order and course of history.