nglish woman
who adopted literature as a profession'; and the Countess of Winchelsea's
Nocturnal Reverie. Wordsworth once said that, with the exception of this
poem and Pope's Windsor Forest, 'the poetry of the period intervening
between Paradise Lost and The Seasons does not contain a single new image
of external nature,' and though the statement is hardly accurate, as it
leaves Gay entirely out of account, it must be admitted that the simple
naturalism of Lady Winchelsea's description is extremely remarkable.
Passing on through Mrs. Sharp's collection, we come across poems by Lady
Grisell Baillie; by Jean Adams, a poor 'sewing-maid in a Scotch manse,'
who died in the Greenock Workhouse; by Isobel Pagan, 'an Ayrshire lucky,
who kept an alehouse, and sold whiskey without a license,' 'and sang her
own songs as a means of subsistence'; by Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Johnson's
friend; by Mrs. Hunter, the wife of the great anatomist; by the worthy
Mrs. Barbauld; and by the excellent Mrs. Hannah More. Here is Miss Anna
Seward, 'called by her admirers "the Swan of Lichfield,"' who was so
angry with Dr. Darwin for plagiarising some of her verses; Lady Anne
Barnard, whose Auld Robin Gray was described by Sir Walter Scott as
'worth all the dialogues Corydon and Phyllis have together spoken from
the days of Theocritus downwards'; Jean Glover, a Scottish weaver's
daughter, who 'married a strolling player and became the best singer and
actor of his troop'; Joanna Baillie, whose tedious dramas thrilled our
grandfathers; Mrs. Tighe, whose Psyche was very much admired by Keats in
his youthful days; Frances Kemble, Mrs. Siddons's niece; poor L. E. L.,
whom Disraeli described as 'the personification of Brompton, pink satin
dress, white satin shoes, red cheeks, snub nose, and her hair a la
Sappho'; the two beautiful sisters, Lady Dufferin and Mrs. Norton; Emily
Bronte, whose poems are instinct with tragic power and quite terrible in
their bitter intensity of passion, the fierce fire of feeling seeming
almost to consume the raiment of form; Eliza Cook, a kindly, vulgar
writer; George Eliot, whose poetry is too abstract, and lacks all
rhythmical life; Mrs. Carlyle, who wrote much better poetry than her
husband, though this is hardly high praise; and Mrs. Browning, the first
really great poetess in our literature. Nor are contemporary writers
forgotten. Christina Rossetti, some of whose poems are quite priceless
in their beauty; Mrs. Augusta Webster