SOURCE: "The Swan of Lichfield," in Spectatorial Essays, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1964, pp. 28-33.

In the following essay, which was originally published in 1907, Strachey delivers an appreciative review of A Swan and Her Friends.

Miss Seward's name is a familiar one to readers of eighteenth-century memoirs and letters, though doubtless in the majority of cases the familiarity does not extend further than to the name. She appears somewhat dimly in Boswell; she flits for a minute or two through Fanny Burney's diary; she is mentioned more than once by Horace Walpole, and always with a laugh. Her own letters, published after her death, in accordance with the directions of her will, in six bulky volumes, are certainly not calculated to inspire a closer acquaintance; and her collected poems—'a formidable monument of mediocrity', which Scott found himself obliged to edit—could hardly fail to freeze the zeal of...