Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/38

 xxxiv INTRODUCTION ���A pleasing wonder through my fancy roves, Smooth as her lawns, and lofty as her Groves. Boundless my Genius seems, when my free sight, Finds only distant skys to stop her flight. Like mighty Denhams, then, methinks my hand, Might bid the Landskip, in strong numbers stand, Fix all its charms, with a Poetick skill, And raise its Fame above his Cooper's Hill. �This, I confess, is what in itts self itt deserves, but the unhappy difference is, that he by being a real Poet, cou'd make that place (as he sais) a Parnassus to him ; whilst I that behold a real Par- nassus here, in that lovely Hill, which in this Park bears that name, find in myself so little of the Poet, that I am still restrained from attempting a description of itt in verse, tho' the agreeableness of the subject has often prompted me most strongly to itt. �The central figure in the family circle when Mr. and Mrs. Finch went to Eastwell was, of course, Charles, the The Family y oun g ear l) then eighteen or nineteen years of at Eastwell a g 6i His s i s ter Mariamne was three years older, while his mother, Elizabeth Wyndham, a widow from his birth, was still a young woman. Charles was the grand- son of the second earl by his second wife, Mary Seymour, of whose eleven children five, at least, were still living. Of these, Frances was the wife of Viscount Thynne of Long- leat. Leopold was warden of All-Soul's College, Oxford. The sons possibly still at Eastwell were Lashley and Henry, young men between twenty-two and eighteen years of age. Two daughters, Catherine and Elizabeth, between ten and fifteen, were children of the third wife. Elizabeth Ayres, the fourth wife, was still living, and though technically the grandmother of the earl, was a young woman of twenty- eight, with a son John, of seven, who became the fifth earl, and a little daughter, Anne, of two. It is possible that not all these persons lived at Eastwell. But it was at any rate a large, a young, and a curiously complex family circle into ��� �