Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/111

 INTRODUCTION cvii ���through Cowley and his imitators. But Congreve said in his Discourse (circa 1706) that Cowley not only had not brought Pindar to England, but had, through his "irregular Odes," been the principal, though innocent, cause of the great crowd of deformed poems supposedly formed on Pindar. From this time on there was a reaction against the more extreme licenses of the pindaric form. But the school of Cowley held that the true pindaric marks were exalted themes, striking and unusual figures, abrupt transitions, impetuosity and excitement of mood, with an extreme com- plexity and irregularity of stanzaic structure and rhyme scheme. Lady Winchilsea's three Odes come between 1694 and 1703, hence they belong to the last period of Cowley's influence and just before the reactionary period set in. She called Cowley master, and theoretically she accepted his pindaric conventions; but her Odes, while irregular, are not markedly so, nor have they any of the "flights" of Cowley's Odes, nor any of the conceits. Lady Winchilsea had an inherent respect for order and coherence, and she could never quite trust herself to the stiff gale on which the Theban swan was supposed to stretch his wings. Hence her pindarics seldom " toil too much the reader's ear." The themes, moreover, are interesting. All is Vanity is, to be sure, timid, and too much a versified resume of her reading, but it is well-knit, and its fearless outlook, its dignity and controlled pathos, make it a promising early poem. The Spleen has none of the softness and grace of All is Vanity. It reads like more mature work. It is more keenly analytic, the outlines are sharper, and the material is more frankly based on observation and experience. The third ode, On the Hurricane, written in 1703, immediately after the disas- trous storm of November 27, 1703, is longer and much looser in structure than the other odes. It was evidently written in great haste and while the events of the storm ��� �