Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/99

 INTRODUCTION xcv ���marked by a soft, vague emotionalism, a hurry and abund- ance of detail, a luxuriance of phrase, not characteristic of later poems. �Lady Winchilsea had a competent knowledge of the French language and literature, but none of her translations from the French shows the eager delight apparent in the extracts from Tasso. Many of the earlier translations from the French read like mere exercises in versification, yet even here her choice of passages is rather significant. Mathurin Regnier caught her attention not by his clever social satire, but by the rarer, half -pensive moralizing of his occasional verse, and she reproduced his somewhat stiffly allegorical Equipage. So, too, in Montaigne it is not the homely common sense, the sly wit, the shrewdness, that interest her as these quali- ties certainly would have done later in life, but she chooses for translation the fanciful love-song of the young cannibal chieftain. From Bussy-Rabutin she selects some of the rather cynical maxims on love. Another author in whom she was interested was Madame Deshoulieres, whose Idyls, especially Les Moutons, had gained for her the appellations of " la Calliope Frangaise^ ' "la dixieme Muse."" She was a Pre- cieuse, the leader of a brilliant salon, and at the same time " a faithful wife, tender mother, and generous friend," qualities of a sort to appeal to Ardelia. Perhaps, too, the cruel frankness with which Madame Deshoulieres was advised, on the appear- ance of her tragedy, to retourner a ses moutons, touched a sympathetic chord. The most important of the translations from the French is the fragment from Racine's Athalie. When this play was first acted in 1691 it was far from a success. In book-form in the same year it likewise met with neglect or disapproval. Boileau alone among critics prophe- sied its final victory, a victory that did not come till 1716. It therefore speaks well for Lady Winchilsea's insight and independence that she should, before 1713, choose it to ��� �