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THE HEROINE
BY
EATON STANNARD BARRETT
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
WALTER RALEIGH
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
1909
OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
INTRODUCTION
'In Glamorganshire, of a rapid decline, occasioned by the bursting of ablood-vessel, Eaton Stannard Barrett, esq., a native of Ireland, and astudent of the Middle Temple. He published "All the Talents", a Poem,8vo. 1817.—"The Comet", a mock newspaper, 8vo. 1803.—A very pleasingpoem intituled "Woman", 8vo. 1810.—"The Heroine, or Adventures ofCherubina", 3 vols. 12mo, 2d. edit. 1814. This volume is said to aboundin wit and humour.'
Very little can now be added to this obituary notice, which appeared inthe Gentleman's Magazine for April, 1820. The youngIrishman whose death it records was born at Cork in 1786, received hiseducation chiefly in London, addicted himself to the law, and was earlydiverted into the profession of letters, which he practised with greatenergy and versatility. Besides the works mentioned above, he wrote aserio-comic romance called The Rising Sun, and a farcicalcomedy, full of noise and bustle, called My Wife, WhatWife? The choice of this last phrase (sacred, if any words inpoetry are sacred) for the title of a rollicking farce indicates acertain bluntness of sensibility in the author. He was young, and fellhead over ears in love with cleverness; he was a law-student, and tookto political satire as a duck takes to the rain; he was an Irishman,and found himself the master of a happy Irish wit, clean, quick, anddainty, but no ways searching or profound. At the back of all hissatire there lies a simple social creed, which he accepts from themiddle-class code of his own time, and does not question. The two ofhis works which achieved something like fame, Woman, aPoem, and The Heroine, here reprinted, set forththat creed, describing the ideal heroine in verse, and warning her, inprose, against the extravagances that so easily beset her. The mode infemale character has somewhat changed since George was king, and thepensive coyness set up as a model in the poem seems to a modern readeralmost as affected as the vagaries described in the novel. Yet the poemhas all the interest and brilliancy of an old fashion-plate. Here iswoman as she wished to be in the days of the Regency, or perhaps as manwished her to be, for it is impossible to say which began it. Bothgloried in the contrast of their habits. If man, in that age o