Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/76

In 1755 there appeared a compilation entitled Poems by Eminent Ladies. Eminent LadiesIt was designed, the preface tells us, as "a solid compliment to the sex," and was put forward as a convincing proof that "great abilities are not confined to men, and that genius often glows with equal warmth and perhaps with more delicacy in the breast of a female." Twelve poems by Lady Winchilsea are quoted in this volume. and for the first time the selections are made, not from Birch's Dictionary but from the Miscellany Poems of 1713, nine of the twelve being fables. Wordsworth commented most unfavorably on the literary insight that could choose to represent Lady Winchilsea by these selections.

In Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors (1758) is the note which Wordsworth found so scanty and unsatisfactory when he was in search of information concerning Ardelia.

The Biographia Brittanica (1763), Gough's Anecdotes of British Topography (1768), Granger's Biographical Dictionary (1769), echo in brief and perfunctory fashion the critical dicta of their predecessors.

There is, then, through the century an unemphatic, uncritical, but persistent literary tradition that Lady Winchilsea's claim to a niche in the Temple of Fame could not be entirely ignored. She was a countess, she wrote The Spleen, and Pope had praised her. These are the chief points on which eulogy was based. But we have also indications of a recognition much more spontaneous and pleasing. Anna SewardIn 1763 Anna Seward, a mature little lady of fifteen, was engaged in a serious literary correspondence well calculated to awaken parental fears lest she should become "that dreaded phenomenon, a learned lady." In the midst of counsel to a friend "the morning sun of whose youth is with difficulty escaping from the unwholesome mists of a foolish love affair," we come upon the following bit of criticism: