Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/75
this chivalrous enterprise he counts himself but as the coadjutor of his friend Richardson, whose "Pamela" and "Clarissa had proved him "the sex's champion and constant patron." John Duncomb's FemineadDuncomb heads the list of "lettered nymphs" with the chaste Orinda, but Ardelia, who is commended in a foot-note as a "lady of great wit and genius," makes a close second. It is her Spleen that rouses Mr. Duncomb's admiration.
Thy horrors, Spleen! which all, who paint, must feel.
My praises would but wrong her sterling wit,
Since Pope himself applauds what she has writ.
In 1752 George Ballard in his Memoirs of several Ladies who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the learned languages, arts, and sciences, Ballard's Memoirsreferred to Lady Winchilsea as "a lady of excellent genius especially in poetry," and quoted her answer to Pope's Impromptu.
Cibber in the Lives of the Poets (1753) quotes Pope's Impromptu with the comment: Cibber's Lives of the Poets"The answer which the countess makes to the above is rather more exquisite than the lines of Mr. Pope; he is foiled at his own weapons, and outdone in the elegance of compliment." Referring to the poems in Birch's Dictionary he says:
If all her poetical compositions are executed with as much spirit and elegance as these, the lovers of poetry have some reason to be sorry that her station was such as to exempt her from the necessity of more frequently exercising a genius so furnished by nature to have made a great figure in that divine art.
Of the "excellent picturesqueness" of her Spleen he speaks in the warmest terms, and affirms that this poem alone would give her a "very high station among the inspired tribe."