Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/98

 xciv INTRODUCTION ���preciosity, almost no periphrases, and little poetic diction. She has surprisingly few metaphors or similes. There is no abundance or richness of descriptive epithets. It would, indeed, be difficult to find so large a body of work with less adornment. Frequently this extreme plainness of style results in long passages that are dull, commonplace, prosaic ; but now and then, when Lady Winchilsea is at her best, when her ideas are based on deep and rich experience, her honesty, her reticence, her inability to say any more than just what she sees or feels, flowers out into an exact, lovely simplicity like that of the facts she records. �Among Lady Winchilsea's earliest works are her transla- tions from the Italian. In spite of her association with Mary of Modena, she never gained more than a cursory knowledge of the Italian language, and she was obliged to make her translations through French or English versions. But it was, doubtless, while at court that she became acquainted with Tasso's Aminta, which so fascinated her that she at once secured a verbal translation and proceeded to turn it into verse. When, however, she had " finished the first Act extreamly to her satisfaction," and was convinced that the original " must be as soft and full of beauty s as ever anything of that nature was," her conscience asserted itself, pointing out that there was nothing of "a serious morality or usef ullnesse " in this soft Italian pastoral, and remanding her to the "more sollid reasonings" of her own mind. In the Preface to the folio she austerely recorded her repentance, and her determination to devote herself to strictly religious verse, but she is obliged to admit in a footnote that she was later beguiled into " a scene or two more," and when she selects poems for publication five " pieces " out of the Aminta are chosen. This translation and the tragi-comedy, Love and Innocence, seem to belong to the same early period of Ardelia's work. They are both ��� �