Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/487

 10 s. VIIL NOV. -23, loo:.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1907.

CONTENTS. No. 204.

NOTES : ' The Progress of Life,' 401 The Mystery of Hannah Lightfoot, 402 Roth well Parish Register- Lewis Carroll's Sources, 404 Ocean Penny Post- Christening the Dead Blank Leaves in Books Daniel's ' Civil Wars,' 405 Spanish Place : Hertford House Bruton Church, Virginia Lieut. -Col. Shakespeare "Besturne"in Troubadour Poetry Provand's Lordship, Glasgow, 406 Landor and Menage John Price Little- cote House, Wiltshire, 407.

QUERIES : Charles II. and Catherine of Braganza Suffolk Bishopric, 407 Courvoisier Ibbotson : Hyde Cromwell : Bettiss : Kiuderley ' Ignes Fatui,' Hudi- brastic Poem, 408 Tavern Sign Brittany Idolatrous Folk-lore Erra Pater 'The Shotoyer Papers' The Crucifixion Sir Gilbert Beauchamp : Sir Richard Francis, 409 Eburne's ' Plaine Pathway ' Prayers about Lambs and Green Fields " My name is William Guiseman " Literary Allusions, 410.

REPLIES : London Penny Post : William Dockwra, 410 No. 7, Fleet Street Defoe's ' Colonel Jacque,' 411 Gosling Family Kilmarnock in 1547 English Players in Germany, 412 Court Leet : Manor Court Cabbage Society " Potwaller " Civic Baronetcies since 1837, 413 Nonjurors Hodson of the Indian Mutiny Pre-Refonna- tion Parsonages West London Rivers Bouyear or Beau- vais London and Birmingham Railway Liss Place, 414 Norman Court, Hampshire Lady Drake of Ashe "Drive": "Ride" Arms, 1653 Public Speaking in Shakespeare's Day Archbishop Blackburn, 415 Rein- deer : its Spelling C. F. de Breda Greensted Church, 416 The King's Old Bargehouse, 417 Hamlet as a Christian Name Door-shutting Proverb "Slink": "Slinking" Admiral Neale Lord-Lieutenants in Scot- land Eleventh Commandment, 418.

NOTES ON BOOKS :' Cradle Tales of Hinduism' Forster's ' Life of Dickens ' ' Te Tohunga ' ' Quarterly Review ' ' L'Interme'diaire.'

Notices to Correspondents.

'THE PROGRESS OF LIFE.'

THIS is probably the best known of Lady Winchilsea's poems, although neither in the subject nor the treatment is there anything especially novel. Its history has been given "by Miss Myra Reynolds in her edition of ' The Poems of Anne, Countess of Win- chilsea,' 1903, which received a deservedly appreciative notice at 9 S. xii. 280. In the Introduction to that work, pp. Ixxiii-lxxv, Miss Reynolds states how a letter from Miss Reward, which contains a version of the poem, and is published in Sir Walter Scott's edition of that lady's ' Poetical Works,' was the first instance of detailed criticism applied to Lady Winchilsea's verse. Miss Seward calls it

" a pleasing little poem, to which, in infancy, I have often listened with delight from the lips of my mother, who used frequently to repeat it as she sat at work. She had learnt it from a lady who

was the friend of her youth She had never taken

the trouble of copying it ; therefore was it mine, as it was hers, by oral tradition, before I attained my

tenth year She never saw it printed, so she

never asked after th'- -"*iir."

Miss Sewarj ' J ~">t.ifv it,

nor was Sir Walter Scott ; but in 1812 a correspondent of The Gentleman's Magazine found it in a volume of old poems ascribed to the Countess of Winchilsea. This, it may be presumed, was the first edition of that lady's poems, which was published in 1713. The correspondent points out the most interesting of the variations result- ing from oral transmission :

"The second stanza is thus printed in Miss Seward's ' Works ' :

How pleasing the world's prospect lies ;

How tempting to look through ! Parnassus to the Poet's eyes, Nor Beauty, with her sweet surprise,

Can more inviting shew.

But in the volume I have mentioned, it is inserted in the following manner :

How pleasing the world's prospect lies ;

How tempting to look through ! Not Canaan to the prophet's eyes. Nor Pisgah, with her sweet surprise,

Can more inviting shew.

Miss Seward's version certainly preserves more poetical beauty, though perhaps the latter one is most correct. The Ode in general is very excellent, and is written in that style of chaste simplicity which was so peculiar to the Poets in the reign of Anne."

On this Miss Reynolds asks whether it was

"the lady with the needlework, or the friend of her youth, or the swan of Lichfield herself, that thus substituted a bit of poetical paganism for Ardelia's honest Hebraisms.

The curious thing is that none of Lady Winchilsea's editors seems to have been aware that the poem in question was in print four years before Lady Winchilsea published her ' Poems.' It will be found at p. 169 of the first volume of Mrs. De- lariviere Manley's ' Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality of j both Sexes from the New Atalantis,' which i was published in May, 1709, and which ! one would have thought was a sufficiently well-known work. Mrs. Manley intro- duces Ardelia, who was then the Hon. Mrs. Heneage Finch, in the following terms :

" The Lady once belong'd to the Court, but marrying into the Country, she made it her busi- ness to devote herself to the Muses, and has writ a great many pretty things : These Verses of the Progress of Life, have met with abundance of Applause, and therefore I recommend 'em to your Excellencies perusal."

Then follow the verses, and Astrea, to whom they were recited, delivers herself of what was really the earliest critique of them :

" The Lady speaks very feelingly, we need look p no further than this, to Know she 's her self past
 * that agreeable Age she so much regrets [Mrs. Finch