Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/47

out. . . . . It comforts the Nerves, helps the Gout. . . . . strengthens broken Bones. . . . . takes away the swelling and pains of the Spleen . . . . and cures Aches and Cramps in any part of the body whatsoever." But even this concentrated apothecary's shop proved unavailing in Lady Winchilsea's case. Neither Tunbridge nor Astrop gave her the branch of healing spleenwort with which Pope's Umbriel safely penetrated to the cave of the gloomy goddess. Her poem on The Spleen is of the first-hand, naturalistic order. It has none of the glittering generalities born of vague knowledge. So full and accurate is its account of symptoms that it achieved prompt professional recognition. Dr. Stukeley published it in his treatise on the spleen, for the purpose, as he said, of helping out his own description. Lady Winchilsea admits that the spleen is often counterfeited, but maintains that the real disease is of the gravest sort. The sufferer is afflicted by insomnia or by boding dreams and terrifying visions. There are successive moods of stupid discontent, wild anger, panic fear. Spleen blights the ablest minds with self-doubt. It enters the realm of religion and perplexes men with endless, foolish scruples. It fills the heart with fancied griefs. It creates an abnormal love of solitude. Various early poems, as On Grief, To Sleep, To Melancholy, express in other terms the extreme depression of spirits against which the sufferer from the spleen had to contend. Ardelia addresses Melancholy as her "old invet'rate foe," who in spite of mirth, music, poetry and friendship, in spite even of "the Indian leaf and parch'd eastern Berry" still holds his throne in her darkened heart. In despairing surrender she exclaims: