Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/118

 cxiv INTRODUCTION ���what is far more significant, and that is that the notable poetess wrote the first of modern tramp-poems and gave the earliest effective modern picture of English peasant school- children, and that she was one of the first to write in blank verse of the Miltonic pattern. �During Lady Winchilsea's early maid of honor days the chief literary sensation in the court circle was Dryden's �satires and the ensuing host of lampoons and Satiric Work ... XT �libels. No personal portraits so masterly and �so malicious as those by Dryden had before appeared in English literature. Nor during Lady Winchilsea's period of poetical production did any other portraits so masterly appear, but the malice remained as the possession of all the Grub-street race. There were no more great satiric poems till Pope, but there was, in the meantime, plenty of snarling and snapping. The detracting, censorious spirit was pervasive. Against this Ardelia uttered her protest. Indeed, she rather plumed herself on the fact that her own resentments had never but once lured her into personal satiric verse. And this, too, in spite of the tempting inner consciousness that she could tag rhymes in abuse of her neighbors as well as another if she would but set her hand to such business. Yet Lady Winchilsea was much more of a satirist than she was willing to admit, for besides the one satiric poem to which she confesses, there is a vein of satiric comment giving tang and pungency to many poems. �The more we study Lady Winchilsea's work, the more certain it becomes that, in her youth at least, the phrase "the gentle Ardelia," could never have been rightly applied to her. Life at Eastwell brought serenity, but her young womanhood seems to have been one of smothered revolt. Bred at court, she was yet mentally at war with contempo- rary social, religious, and literary ideals, and, on a surprising number of topics, she expresses herself with caustic severity. ��� �