Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/86

 Ixxxii INTRODUCTION ���occasioned them. Anyhow, this allusion indicates the existence of a friendship between the two countesses, and rescues the memory �of one from the obscurity of ancestral archives Great �experimental knowledge of human life and human feeling is mani- fested in this poem [TTie Progress of Life] ; and we are induced by it to regret our ignorance of that particular course of experience by which Lady Winchilsea acquired the wisdom which enhanced the power of her native genius. �Though there might be additions to this account of the �progress of Lady Winchilsea's fame, enough has probably �been quoted to show her place in critical �Edmund Gosse �esteem up to the time of the publication of Ward's English Poets (1880). Wordsworth was the first man of authority to pronounce a discriminating eulogy on Ardelia, and it is evident that his judgment impressed itself on all succeeding criticism. But that we have any actual knowledge of her life and poems is due to Mr. Edmund Gosse. He introduced her to a large circle of readers by securing for her a place in Ward's English Poets. Matthew Arnold was emphatic in his expression of delight in Ardelia 's work as it stood thus revealed. The feeling of surprise and pleasure was general, while students of the beginnings of romanticism were stirred to the keenest interest by the quality and significance of these poems. By his suggestive introductory comments in English Poets, by a notice in his Eighteenth Century Literature (1889), and in other ways, did Mr. Gosse contribute to the popularity and the right understanding of Ardelia's verse ; and, finally, in Gossip in a Library (1891) he made the lady herself known to us. At his touch she emerged from the shadow-land of the past, a charming and most real personality. �But with all this weight of high poetical and expository authority in favor of Ardelia, there was no opportunity to know more of her and her work than Ward's Selections and Mr. Gosse's Essay revealed. Dyce and Wordsworth had ��� �