[114] Two volumes, 1755. A.D.

But observing how injudicious that selection is in the case of Lady Winchelsea, and of Mrs. Aphra Behn (from whose attempts they are miserably copious), I have thought something better might have been chosen by more competent persons who had access to the volumes of the several writers.  In selecting from Mrs. Pilkington, I regret that you omitted (look at p. 255) ‘Sorrow,’ or at least that you did not abridge it.  The first and third paragraph are very affecting.  See also ‘Expostulation,’ p. 258:  it reminds me strongly of one of the Penitential Hymns of Burns.  The few lines upon St. John the Baptist, by Mrs. Killigrew (vol. ii. p. 6), are pleasing.  A beautiful Elegy of Miss Warton (sister to the poets of that name) upon the death of her father, has escaped your notice; nor can I refer you to it.  Has the Duchess of Newcastle written much verse? her Life of her Lord, and the extracts in your book, and in the ‘Eminent Ladies,’ are all that I have seen of hers.  The ‘Mirth and Melancholy’ has so many fine strokes of imagination, that I cannot but think there must be merit in many parts of her writings.  How beautiful those lines, from ‘I dwell in groves,’ to the conclusion, ‘Yet better loved, the more that I am known,’ excepting the four verses after ‘Walk up the hills.’  And surely the latter verse of the couplet,

    ’The tolling bell which for the dead rings out;
    A mill where rushing waters run about;’

is very noticeable:  no person could have hit upon that union of images without being possessed of true poetic feeling.  Could you tell me anything of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu more than is to be learned from Pope’s letters and her own?  She seems to have been destined for something much higher and better than she became.  A parallel between her genius and character and that of Lady Winchelsea her contemporary (though somewhat prior to her) would be well worth drawing.

And now at last for the poems of Lady Winchelsea.  I will transcribe a note from a blank leaf of my own edition, written by me before I saw the scanty notice of her in Walpole. (By the by, that book has always disappointed me when I have consulted it upon any particular occasion.) The note runs thus:  ’The “Fragment,” p. 280, seems to prove that she was attached to James II., as does p. 42, and that she suffered by the Revolution.  The most celebrated of these poems, but far from the best, is “The Spleen.”  “The Petition for an absolute Retreat,” and the “Nocturnal Reverie,” are of much superior merit.  See also for favourable specimens, p. 156; “On the Death of Mr. Thynne,” p. 263; and p. 280, “Fragment.”  The Fable of “Love, Death, and Reputation,” p. 29, is ingeniously told.’  Thus far my own note.  I will now be more particular.  P. 3, ‘Our Vanity,’ &c., and p. 163 are noticeable as giving some account from herself of her authorship.  See also p. 148, where she alludes to ‘The Spleen.’  She was unlucky in