Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/82

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS Not more famous is the distich,

from Dick Lovelace's stanzas "To Althæa, from Prison"; though the handsome cavalier left many another ditty to distinguish him from our birds of a single flight. The lines here mentioned are the second example we have reached of the music, real or imagined, of imprisoned songsters; and to them I might add the Latin verses, "In Dura Catena," attributed to the Queen of Scots—certainly the one poem written by the Fayre Gospeller, Anne Askewe, who was burned at the stake by command of brutal and dying Harry, in 1546. After her last examination upon the rack, she was inspired to utter, in a Newgate cell, the heroic defiance:

We can well believe the statement of one who saw the girl led to execution, that "she had an angel's countenance and a smiling face." Poor Anne's verses have been preserved rather for her story's sake and for their religious ardor, than for poetical excellence; and it is noticeable that hymns, and fugitive lyrics animated with religious hope or aspiration, have a fairer chance, other things being equal, of obtaining a  [68]