Miss Seward, in a letter to her friend Miss Ponsonby, related that several years after the peace a friend of Washington's, an American officer, introduced himself to her (Miss Seward), saying he was commissioned by General Washington to call upon her and assure her that no circumstance of his life had been so mortifying as to be censured in the "Monody" on André as the pitiless author of his ignominious fate; that he had labored to save him; and that he requested his friend to leave with Miss Seward a package of papers which he had sent, consisting of copies of the records of the court-martial, etc. "The American officer referred to," says Sargent, "is supposed to have been Colonel Humphreys." Various opinions have been expressed concerning the writings of Miss Seward. The literary circle of Lichfield, of which she was the central figure, appears to have been a mutual-admiration society. The productions of each member appear to have been eulogized by every other member. Her friend, the celebrated Dr. Erasmus Darwin, declared that she was "the inventress of epic elegy"; the eccentric philosopher Day called her a "prodigy of genius"; while the wits of London gently ridiculed the pretensions of the literary Lichfieldians. Horace Walpole wrote: "Misses Seward and Williams, and a half a dozen more of these harmonious virgins, have no imagination, no novelty. Their thoughts and phrases are like their gowns--old remnants cut and turned." The Rev. Alexander Dyce wrote: "She was endowed with considerable genius, and with an ample portion of that fine enthusiasm which sometimes may be taken for it; but her taste was far from good, and her numerous productions (a few excepted) are disfigured by florid ornament and elaborate magnificence." After Miss Seward's death, in 1809, there was published a small volume with the title of "The Beauties of Anna Seward." She died a maiden. The portrait preceding this brief memoir is a carefully drawn copy with pen and ink of an engraving by A. Carden, from the original picture painted in 1763, when she was sixteen years of age, by Tilly Kettle, an English portrait-painter of note, who was then only about twenty-three years of age. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 65: André in his correspondence with Miss Seward on the topic of Honora addressed her as "Julia."] [Footnote 66: A reading society at Shrewsbury is here alluded to.] [Footnote 67: Alluding to an "Essay on Woman," written by Johnson.] MONODY ON MAJOR ANDRÉ. By Miss SEWARD, (AUTHOR OF THE ELEGY ON CAPTAIN COOK.) TO WHICH ARE ADDED LETTERS ADDRESSED TO HER By MAJOR ANDRÉ, IN THE YEAR 1769. LICHFIELD: PRINTED AND SOLD BY J. JACKSON, FOR THE AUTHOR; SOLD ALSO BY ROBINSON, PATER-NOSTER ROW; CADELL AND EVANS, IN THE STRAND, LONDON; PRINCE, OXFORD; MERRILL, CAMBRIDGE; AND PRATT AND CLINCH, BATH. M.DCC.LXXXI. [_Price, Two-Shillings-and-Six-Pence._] TO HIS EXCELLENCY, SIR HENRY CLINTON, KNIGHT OF THE BATH.