t 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
"Noctur