"There are below but two things good,
Friendship and honesty,

And only those of all I would
Ask for felicity.

"In this retired and humble seat,
Free from both war and strife,
I am not forced to make retreat,
But choose to spend my life."

She was cut off by the small-pox-so was Anne Killigrew (1655), daughter of Sir Henry Killigrew, Master of the Savoy, and one of the prebendaries of Westminster. She was maid of honour to the Duchess of York; and her portrait, prefixed to her poetical compositions published after her death, a mezzotint from a picture by herself, is at once a proof, says Mr. Dyce, of her skill in painting. These lines are good.

THE COMPLAINT OF A LOVER.

"See'st thou yonder craggy rock,

Whose head o'erlooks the swelling main,
Where never shepherd fed his flock,
Or careful peasant sow'd his grain?

"No wholesome herb grows on the same,
Or bird of day will on it rest;
'Tis barren as the hopeless flame,
That scorches my tormented breast.

"Deep underneath a cave does lie,

The entrance hid with dismal yew,
Where Phoebus never show'd his eye,
Or cheerful day yet pierced through.

"In that dark melancholy cell

66

(Retreat and solace of my wo,) Love, sad despair, and I, do dwell,

The springs from whence my grief do flow.

Sleep, which to others ease doth prove,

Comes unto me, alas in vain;

For in my dreams I am in love,

And in them too she does disdain."

Mary Monk, daughter of Lord Molesworth, and wife of George Monk, Esq., (died 1715,) was a delightful being, and thou wilt read, perhaps not with unmoistened eyes, my Dora-these words of the dedication to the Princess of Wales, of her poems, written after her death by her father. "Most of them are the product of the leisure hours of a young gentlewoman lately deceased; who, in a remote country retirement, without omitting the daily care due to a large family, not only perfectly acquired the several languages here made use of (Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French,) but the good morals and principles contained in those books, so as to put them in practice, as well during her life and languishing sickness, as at the hour of her death; in short, she died not only like a Christian, but like a Roman lady, and so became at once the object of the grief and comfort of her relations." Of her poetry we have here two specimens one a very noble translation from Felicaia on Providence-the other, "Verses written on her death-bed at Bath to her husband in London." They are indeed most affecting.

"Thou who dost all my worldly thoughts employ,
Thou pleasing source of all my earthly joy,
Thou tenderest husband and thou dearest friend,
To thee this first this last adieu I send !
At length the conqueror Death asserts his right,
And will for ever veil me from thy sight;
He wooes me to him with a cheerful grace,
And not one terror clouds his meagre face;
He promises a lasting rest from pain,
And shows that all life's fleeting joys are vain;
Th' eternal scenes of heaven he sets in view,
And tells me that no other joys are true.
But love, fond love, would yet resist his power,
Would fain awhile defer the parting hour;
He brings thy mourning image to my eyes,
And would obstruct my journey to the skies.
But say, thou dearest, thou unwearied friend!
Say, should'st thou grieve to see my sorrows end?
Thou know'st a painful pilgrimage I've past;
And should'st thou grieve that rest is coine at last?
Rather rejoice to see me shake off life,
And die as I have lived, thy faithful wife."

Have not these "breathings," sincere and fervent, from breasts most pure, proved to your heart's content, that we were right in what we said above of poetry? These three were Christian ladies-in high life, but humble in spiritall accomplished in this world's adornments, but intent on heaven. There is an odour, as of violets, while we press the pages to our lips.

We never had in our hands the poems of Anne, Countess of Winchelsea, printed in 1713; but we well remember reading some of them in beautiful manuscript, many years ago, at Rydal Mount. Wordsworth has immortalized her in the following sentence:-" It is remarkable that, excepting a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, and some delightful pictures in the poems of Lady Winchelsea, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost and the Seasons, does not contain a single new image of external nature.' She was the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill of Sidmonton, in the county of Southampton, maid of honour to the Duchess of York, second wife of James II., and married Heneage, second son of Heneage, Earl of Winchelsea, to which title he succeeded on the death of his nephew. Mr. Dyce has given three of her compositions, all excellent-the Atheist and the Acorn-Life's Progress-and a Nocturnal Reverie.In the last are some" of the delightful pictures" alluded to by Wordsworth:

"In such a night, when every louder wind
Is to its distant cavern safe confined;
And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings,
And lonely Philomel, still waking, sings;
Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight,
She, hollowing clear, directs the wanderer right:
In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heaven's mysterious face;
When in some river, overhung with green,
The waving moon, and trembling leaves are seen;
When freshen'd grass now bears itself upright,
And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite,
Whence spring the woodbine, and the bramble-rose,
And where the sleepy cowslip shelter'd grows;
Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes,
Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes;

When scatter'd glow-worms, but in twilight fine,
Show trivial beauties, watch their hour to shine;
Whilst Salisb'ry stands the test of every light,
In perfect charms, and perfect virtue bright:
When odours which declined repelling day,
Through temperate air uninterrupted stray;
When darken'd groves their softest shadows wear,
And falling waters we distinctly hear;

When through the gloom more venerable shows
Some ancient fabric, awful in repose;

While sunburnt hills their swarthy looks conceal,
And swelling hay-cocks thicken up the vale;
When the loosed horse now, as his pasture leads,
Comes slowly grazing through th' adjoining meads,
Whose stealing pace, and lengthen'd shade we fear, `
Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;

When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
When curlews cry beneath the village walls,
And to her straggling brood the partridge calls;
Their short-lived jubilee the creatures keep,
Which but endures while tyrant man does sleep;
When a sedate content the spirit feels,

And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals;
But silent musings urge the mind to seek
Something too high for syllables to speak;
Till the free soul to a composedness charm'd,
Finding the elements of rage disarm'd,
O'er all below a solemn quiet grown,

Joys in th' inferior world, and thinks it like her own:
In such a night let me abroad remain,

Till morning breaks, and all's confused again;
Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renew'd,
Of pleasures, seldom reach'd, again pursued."

We find nothing comparable to what we have now quoted in any of the effusions of the thirty poetesses-let us in courtesy so call them-who flourished from the death of Lady Winchelsea to that of Charlotte Smith. True, that Lady Mary Wortley Montague is among the number, but her brilliant genius was not poetical, and shines in another sphere. Elizabeth Rowe, when Betsy Singer, was warmly admired by Prior, among whose poems is an 66 answer to Mrs. Singer's pastoral on Love and Friendship." But though she says, finely we think,

"There in a melting, solemn, dying strain,
Let me all day upon my lyre complain,
And wind up all its soft harmonious strings
To noble, serious, melancholy things;"

her verse is far inferior to her prose, though that be vicious, yet there are strains of true feeling in her Letters from the Dead to the Living. Mrs. Greville's celebrated Ode to Indifference does not disturb that mood, and Frances Sheridan's Ode to Patience tries that virtue. Yet they were both accomplished women, and both odes were thought admirable in their day. Henrietta, Lady O'Neil (born 1755-died 1793), had something of the true inspiration. Her Ode to the Poppy-too long to be extracted-is elegant and eloquent, and speaks the language of passion; and surely the following lines are natural and pathetic.

"Sweet age of blest delusion! blooming boys,

Ah! revel long in childhood's thoughtless joys,
With light and pliant spirits, that can stoop
To follow sportively the rolling hoop;
To watch the sleeping top with gay delight,
Or mark with raptured gaze the sailing kite;
Or eagerly pursuing Pleasure's call,
Can find it center'd in the bounding ball!
Alas! the day will come, when sports like these
Must lose their magic, and their power to please;
Too swiftly fled, the rosy hours of youth

Shall yield their fairy charms to mournful truth;
Even now, a mother's fond prophetic fear
Sees the dark train of human ills appear;

Views various fortune for each lovely child,

Storms for the bold, and anguish for the mild;

Beholds already those expressive eyes

Bearn a sad certainty of future sighs;

And dreads each suffering those dear breasts may know
In their long passage through a world of wo;

Perchance predestined every pang to prove,

That treacherous friends inflict, or faithless love;
For ah! how few have found existence sweet,
Where grief is sure, but happiness deceit !"

Mary Barber was the wife of a shopkeeper in Dublin, and
Mary Leapor a cook, but neither of them had so much of