Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/107

 INTRODUCTION ciii ���The Sun will Keep his pace, and Time revolve, Rough Winters pass, and Springs come smiling on ; But thou dost talk of Never, Demagetus : Yet ere Despair prevails, retract that word, Whose cloudy distance bars the reach of thought. Aristor rather subtly analyzes the process of falling in love. He says to Amalintha: �I saw you Fair, beyond the Fame of Helen ; �But Beauty's vain, and fond of new applause, �Leaving the last Adoarer in despair �At his approach, who can but praise it better: �Whilst Love, Narcissus-like, courts his reflection, �And seeks itself gazing orf Bothers eyes. �When this I found in yours, it bred that passion, �Which Time, nor Age, nor Death, shall ere diminish. �Almeria in Ardelia to Ephelia says that Ardelia Speaks of Otaway with such delight As if no other pen could move or write. �and various passages emphasize her partiality for The Orphan and Venice Preserved, which came out when she was nine- teen and twenty-one years of age, at just the right time to" affect her taste and guide her efforts. Otway's tragic death occurred while she was still in London, three or four years before the composition of her plays. Her attention was thus strongly directed to him, and it is not strange that her work should betray his influence. She read Lee with admiration, but she could not have imitated the Rival Queens. Lee at his best and at his worst was out of her range. But the tenderness and delicacy of Otway, the pathetic sweetness of his verse, and his love of external nature, would all strike a responsive chord in her mind and heart. �Of the songs, eighteen appear in the first manuscript. �These are copied into the folio with seven or eight additions, �but the impulse to song- writing died early, nor �did Lady Winchilsea later set much value on �this portion of her work. Her acknowledgement of indebt- ��� �