Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/362

 Lucas, earl of Colchester, a noble family, for all the brothers were valiant, and all the sisters virtuous.’ At an early age she displayed some disposition towards literature, and wrote upon philosophical subjects. This tendency developed with her increasing years. During her banishment from England she found consolation in the composition of the folio volumes which bear her name, and the same occupation cheered the hours of her voluntary seclusion from court life. She is said in her later life to have ‘kept a great many young ladies about her person, who occasionally wrote what she dictated. Some of them slept in a room contiguous to that in which her grace lay, and were ready, at the call of her bell, to rise any hour of the night to write down her conceptions lest they should escape her memory’ (, Lives of the Poets, ii. 165). Her poems and plays, together with her ‘Philosophical Fancies,’ and her ‘Philosophical and Physical Opinions,’ and one or two other works, were written previous to or during her exile. The remainder are of later date. A full bibliography of her works has yet to be written. The following list of the editions published during her life is compiled from the British Museum and from Lowndes, supplemented by a private collection of her works: 1. ‘Philosophical Fancies,’ London, 21 May 1653, 8vo. 2. ‘Poems and Fancies,’ London, 1653, folio; second edition, London, 1664, folio; third edition, London, 1668, folio. 3. ‘Philosophical and Physical Opinions,’ London, 1655, folio; reprinted, London, 1663, folio. 4. ‘Nature's Pictures drawn by Fancie's Pencil to the Life,’ London, 1656 (some copies 1655), folio; second edition, London, 1671, folio. 5. ‘The World's Olio,’ London, 1655, folio; second edition, London, 1671, folio (Lowndes treats the two forementioned works as the same). 6. ‘Playes,’ London, 1662, folio, containing twenty-one plays. 7. ‘Plays never before printed,’ London, 1668, folio, containing five plays. 8. ‘Orations of Divers Sorts,’ London, 1662, folio (in some copies the date is 1663); second edition, 1668, fol. 9. ‘Philosophical Letters, or Modest Reflections upon some Opinions in Natural Philosophy maintained by several learned authors of the age,’ London, 1664, folio. 10. ‘CCXI Sociable Letters,’ London, 1664, folio. 11. ‘Observations upon Experimental Philosophy,’ to which is added the ‘Description of a New World,’ London, 1666, folio; second edition, 1668. 12. ‘The Life of William Cavendish, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Newcastle, Earl of Ogle, Viscount Mansfield, and Baron of Bolsover, of Ogle, Bothal, and Hepple, &c.’ London, 1667, fol.; another edition, London, 1675, 4to. A Latin translation was published, London, 1668, fol. 13. ‘Grounds of Natural Philosophy,’ London, 1668, fol. This is a second edition, much altered, of ‘Philosophical and Physical Opinions.’ In many cases succeeding editions differ widely from the first. To point out alterations, or even to give the full titles of the various works, is impossible within reasonable limits. The ‘Select Poems’ of the duchess have been edited and reprinted at the Lee Priory Press, 8vo, 1813, as has the ‘True Relation of the Birth, Breeding, and Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, written by Herself’ (Lee Priory Press, 8vo, 1814), which saw the light in the first edition of ‘Nature's Pictures drawn by Fancie's Pencil,’ and is absent from the second edition. The life of the duchess, and that of the duke, edited by M. A. Lower, were both printed in a volume of the ‘Library of Old Authors’ of J. R. Smith, London, 1872, and the life of the duchess, with a selection from her poems, opinions, orations, and letters, edited by Mr. Edward Jenkins, was published in the same year. Mr. C. H. Firth edited a new edition of both lives in 1886. In these works so much of the literary baggage of the duchess as time will care to burden itself with is preserved. To the student of early literature the ponderous folios in which her writings exist will have a measure of the charm they had for Lamb. Through the quaintness and the conceits of her poems a pleasant light of fancy frequently breaks. Her fairy poems are good enough to rank with those of Herrick and Mennis, though scarcely with those of Shakespeare, as some enthusiasts have maintained. The thoughts, when they are not obscured by her ineradicable tendency to philosophise, are generous and noble, and she is one of the earliest writers to hint at the cruelty of field sports. In a paper in the ‘Connoisseur,’ in which a fanciful picture is afforded of the duchess mounting her Pegasus, Shakespeare and Milton are represented as aiding her to descend. The duchess then, at the request of Euterpe, reads her beautiful lines against ‘Melancholy.’ All the while these lines were repeating Milton seemed very attentive, and it was whispered by some that he was obliged for many of the thoughts in his ‘L'Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’ to this lady's ‘Dialogue between Mirth and Melancholy’ (Connoisseur, ii. 265, edit. 1774). This suggestion of indebtedness is, it is needless to say, futile. Her gnomical utterances are often thoughtful and pregnant. In her plays she is seen almost at her worst. The praise accorded her by Langbaine for the invention of her own plots is cheaply earned,