Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/108

 civ INTRODUCTION ���edness to Prior must refer to her conventional love-lyrics and her few convivial songs; and so far as dates go it is not impossible that Prior should have been influential in turning her attention to this sort of writing, for though his songs were not published till 1709, many of them were written as early as 1692, and they were well-known in manuscript. Doubtless these songs would find their way to Eastwell and they might so have caught Ardelia's ear and attuned it to novel melodies. The impulse must, however, have been one quickly acted on, for Ardelia's songs are very nearly con- temporary with Prior's. Beyond this suggestion or impulse, Prior's influence on Lady Winchilsea is not apparent. She calls him the master-singer, while she is but the bird crudely striving to imitate his ravishing notes ; but this is an overstate- ment. Certainly where Prior is most characteristic it is impossible that she should imitate him. She was too inflexi- ble, too serious, too deeply conscious of realities, to reproduce the abandon, the gayety, the dash, the moral indifference, of Prior's captivating appeals to Chloe. Let the Fool Still Be True and If for a Woman I Would Die have something of Prior's spirit. But though Ardelia touches with some deft- ness the philosophy of the butterfly lover who, inconstant �to one, �Can each Beauty adore, And love all, and love all, and love all, and forever, �she much more effectively represents the dark obverse, �Who make the hearts of men then: care Will have their own betrayed. �Ardelia's delicately imaginative appreciation of the Punch Bowl in the lines to Leslie Finch must free her from any suspicion of a puritanic rigor hardly known in her day, but her other poems on wine were never inspired by the god of mirth. The riotous glee of Prior's �'Tis the mistress, the friend, and the bottle, old boy ! ��� �