Her best known productions are an 'Elegy on Captain Cook,' a 'Monody on
Major Andre,' whom she had known from her early youth; and there is a
poem, 'Louisa,' of which she herself speaks very highly. But even more
than her poetry did she pique herself upon her epistolary correspondence.
It must have been well worth while writing letters when they were not
only prized by the writer and the recipients, but commented on by their
friends in after years. 'Court Dewes, Esq.,' writes, after five years,
for copies of Miss Seward's epistles to Miss Rogers and Miss Weston, of
which the latter begins:--'Soothing and welcome to me, dear Sophia, is
the regret you express for our separation! Pleasant were the weeks we
have recently passed together in this ancient and embowered mansion! I
had strongly felt the silence and vacancy of the depriving day on which
you vanished. How prone are our hearts perversely to quarrel with the
friendly coercion of employment at the very instant in which it is
clearing the torpid and injurious mists of unavailing melancholy!' Then
follows a sprightly attack before which Johnson may have quailed indeed.
'Is the Fe-fa-fum of literature that snuffs afar the fame of his brother
authors, and thirsts for its destruction, to be allowed to gallop
unmolested over the fields of criticism? A few pebbles from the
well-springs of truth and eloquence are all that is wanted to bring the
might of his envy low.' This celebrated letter, which may stand as
a specimen of the whole six volumes, concludes with the following
apostrophe:--'Virtuous friendship, how pure, how sacred are thy
delights! Sophia, thy mind is capable of tasting them in all their
poignance: against how many of life's incidents may that capacity be
considered as a counterpoise!'

Footnote 1: In a notice of Miss Seward in the _Annual Register_, just
after her death in 1809, the writer, who seems to have known her,
says:--'Conscious of ability, she freely displayed herself in a manner
equally remote from annoyance and affectation.... Her errors arose from
a glowing imagination joined to an excessive sensibility, cherished
instead of repressed by early habits. It is understood that she has left
the whole of her works to Mr. Scott, the northern poet, with a view to
their publication with her life and posthumous pieces.'

There were constant rubs, which are not to be wondered at, between Miss
Seward and Dr. Darwin, who, though a poet, was also a s