At the time of Captain Hemans's first acquaintance with her, or in 1808, she was already an avowed poetess, having not only written much verse, but having already published a volume. While they lived together, though called upon to care for a rapidly increasing family--for at the time of Captain Hemans's departure for Italy he was the father of five boys--she still pursued her studies, and wrote and published her poems. In 1812 appeared, Domestic Affections and other Poems; and soon after, Tales and Historic Scenes. After her husband's departure she continued her writing with undaunted fortitude. In 1819 she contended for the prize for a poem on Sir William Wallace, and bore it away from a host of competitors. In 1820 she published The Skeptic; and the following year she won another prize from the Royal Society of Literature, for the best poem on Dartmoor. From this time Mrs. Hemans may be said to be fairly before the public; and her fame, from year to year, continued steadily to advance. There is something admirable in the manner in which Mrs. Hemans, as a deserted wife, her father also now being dead, and at such a distance from the literary world, marched on her way, and at every step won some fresh ground of honor. During this period she made a firm and fatherly friend of Dr. Luxmore, the Bishop of St. Asaph, and, at his house, became acquainted with Reginald Heber. Her sister returning from a visit to Germany, where one of her brothers then was, brought with her a store of German books, and a great enthusiasm about German literature. This opened up to her a new field of intellectual life, and produced a decided effect on her poetic tone and style. From the hour of Mrs. Hemans's acquaintance with the German literature you perceive that she had discovered her own _forte_, and a new life of tenderness and feeling was manifest in all she wrote. She became an almost constant writer in Blackwood's and Colburn's Magazines. Schiller, Goethe, Körner, and Tieck--how sensibly is the influence of their spirit felt in The Forest Sanctuary; how different was the tone of this to all which had gone before! The cold classical model was abandoned, the heart and the fancy spoke out in every line, warm, free, solemn, and tenderly thoughtful. She dared the stage, in The Vespers of Palermo; and though the tragedy was cruelly used in London, she bore up bravely against the unkindness, and was afterward rewarded by a reception of it in Edinburgh, as cordially rapturous, and which brought her the friendship of Sir Walter Scott.