Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/84

 Ixxx INTRODUCTION ���dwelt upon specific excellences and defects. He was impressed by her high qualities as a poet. He sought to make her known. He contemplated editing her works him- self. With Wordsworth begins the modern appreciation of Ardelia, and most critics of her verse after 1815 quote the Nocturnal Reverie and Wordsworth's comment. Only the more significant of the nineteenth century notices of her work demand attention here. �Of the Nocturnal Reverie Christopher North (Black- wood's, March, 1837) says: �Christopher We find nothing comparable to what we have now North quoted in any of the effusions of the Thirty Poetesses �let us by courtesy so call them who flourished from the death of Lady W. to that of Charlotte Smith. �In Men, Women, and Books (1847) Leigh Hunt says of Lady Winchilsea: �We are now come to one of the numerous loves we Leigh Hunt �possess among our grandmothers of old or rather �not numerous, but select, and such as keep fresh with us forever, like the miniature of his ancestress whom the Sultan took for a living beauty. This is Anne, Countess of Winchelsea (now written Winchilsea), daughter of Sir William Kingsmill, of Sidmonton, in the county of Southampton. �He quotes the Nocturnal Reverie with the naive critical method of italicizing the words and phrases he especially likes. The celebrated Spleen still deserves, according to Mr. Hunt, a place on every toilet, male and female. �Mrs. Hale's Woman's Record (New York, 1853), "an �invaluable manual for the parlor table," is interesting as the �first American recognition of Lady Winchilsea. �TVTra TTalo �" It should not be forgotten," Mrs. Hale says, " that she was the first Englishwoman who attempted to scale the Parnassian heights "- a neglect of the matchless Orinda against which Ardelia would have been the first to protest. ��� �