Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/74

 Ixx INTRODUCTION ���his vulgar account of the supposed foundation and disrup- tion of her college, were no more unjust and libelous than was Pope's treatment of Lady Winchilsea in this play. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as Sappho in Pope's Epistle II. had really less right to complain. �There is probably a reference to this play in Gay's Wel- come from Greece. Among the illustrious ladies who crowd the quay to welcome Pope are "Winchilsea, still meditating song," while "afar off is frolic Bicknell," the actress who played Phoebe Clinket. The conjunction of names may be fortuitous, but it probably has covert reference to the play. �This play was, unhappily, one of the last important notices of Lady Winchilsea's work during her lifetime. But there Recognition were some minor indications of favorable recog- After 1725 nition. Steele and Fenton published some of her poems in their Miscellanies of 1714 and 1717; Harris in his History of Kent (1719) included her Fanscomb Barn, with a laudatory account of her writings ; and immediately after her death Dr. Stukeley republished her Spleen. Twenty- two years later, however, Pope, in the final edition of his works, omitted her previously published commendatory verses, because, says Mr. El win, they were "intrinsically worthless and the author's name no longer carried weight." This note probably represents the state of the case, and the revival of interest in Lady Winchilsea soon after Pope's death must be due to Birch's General Dictionary (1734-1741), which pub- Birch's General lished six of her poems, five of them being from Dictionary the manuscript in the possession of the Countess of Hertford, and added a brief life, giving the facts repeated in later biographical notices. During the next thirty years Lady Winchilsea's name appears with some frequency. �The purpose of John Duncomb's Feminead (1751) was to reveal to "lordly man" the glories of a sister-choir. In ��� �