Page:Tixall Poetry.djvu/39

 companions, by poetical effusions on the death, or marriage, of relations and friends, on their parting or meeting, and similar domestic topics. Her husband, for whom she had a most tender affection, died young, and left her a widow, with an only child, which soon followed its father to the grave. They appear to have lived at Corby, near Irnham, in Lincolnshire. On this melancholy event, she sought the consolations of religion in a convent of English nuns, at Louvain, in Flanders, of which her husband's sister, Winefrid Thimelby, was abbess. Of this lady I found no less than sixty or seventy very beautiful letters, addressed to Herbert Aston; from which, the following affecting passages relate to Mrs Henry Thimelby. "For our dearest sister, though her eyes' deluge be not yet wholly ceaced, yet who can repine att so happy a flood which has raysed her to the contemplation of heaven, whersuch pearlls as her tears contribute with other jewells to the ritches of that ocean of delight."—"But enouf of this sad subject, I must have place to communicate my ioyes. Our dear sister hath now changed murning into whight attire. Oh! had you seene the solemnity, I am confident yr hart wod not have contained all the ioy, but shed som att your eyes, no less than Hevin can dim the splendour of this glorious day. All things wear so compleatly acted, that my brother Ned and I wear not a little goodly."

Mrs Heury Thimelby died a nun, in the convent at Louvain.

(7.) Constantia Aston, the youngest daughter of Sir Walter Aston, was married to Walter Fowler, Esq. of St Thomas' Priory, near Stafford. That she had a great love for good poetry, is evident from the passages in her letters to her brother Herbert, already quoted: but that she wrote poems herself, I have no evidence to adduce. The reader will find a beautiful little poem addressed to her before her marriage, in the fourth division.