Page:Tixall Poetry.djvu/38

 was an occasional versifier appears from the following extract of a letter by Edward Thimelby:—"I came into England with a slight leave, and leave it with as slight a farewell. Me thinkes I am now sorry that I saw you, and as glad not to have seene my deare sister Aston. For love of God let her not know I was in England. If I have tyme to coppy it, I shal send you here enclosed a rare ballad of her husband's, if not I shall send it by the next, and in the interim stay your stomacke with this other of my brother Parsall, from whose sonne's lodgens in Gray's-inne I am newly come from a treat, where he invited his father, mother, sister, Lord Aston, his sonnes, Lady Southcot and her husband, who are in earnest a happy couple, and he an excellent humor. Irnham and Corby's health went as rownd as the ballads."

Sir William Persall was of an ancient family, seated at Canwell, near Lichfield: but I am afraid that he fell into extravagance of one kind or other, and was obliged, some time before his death, to dispose of his estate. Of his children and descendants I have found no memorial.

(6.) Gertrude Aston, fourth daughter of Sir Walter, who married Henry Thimelby, appears to have employed herself occasionally in writing verses, not with a view of being thought a poetess, but merely from a strong desire to pour forth her feelings on such subjects as excited her sensibility. With this disposition, therefore, and living among persons of cultivated minds, and with a taste for poetry, she endeavoured to relieve her own emotions, and to interest her