The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and
Instruction, by Various

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Title: The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction
Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828

Author: Various

Release Date: February 24, 2004 [EBook #11264]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MIRROR OF LITERATURE, NO. 327 ***

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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION

VOL. XII. No. 327.] SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1828. [PRICE 2d.

ROSAMOND'S WELL AND LABYRINTH.

[Illustration: Rosamond's Well and Labyrinth at Woodstock.]

For the originals of the annexed engravings we are indebted to the
sketchbooks of two esteemed correspondents.[1] The sites are so
consecrated, or we should rather say perpetuated, in history, and the
fates and fortunes of Rosamond Clifford are so familiar to our readers,
that we shall add but few words on the locality of the Well and Bower.
Their existence is thus attested by Drayton, the poet, in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth:--"Rosamond's Labyrinth, whose ruins, together with her
Well, being paved with square stones in the bottom, and also her Tower,
from which the Labyrinth did run, are yet remaining, being vaults arched
and walled with stone and brick, almost inextricably wound within one
another, by which, if at any time her lodging were laid about by the
queen, she might easily avoid peril imminent, and, if need be, by secret
issues, take the air abroad, many furlongs about Woodstock, in
Oxfordfordshire."

Sir Walter Scott (of whom, as of Goldsmith, it may hereafter be said, he
"left no species of writing untouched or unadorned by his pen") has
resuscitated the interest attached to this spot, in his masterly novel
of _Woodstock_.[2] It is here that the beautiful Alice meets the
facetious Charles in his disguise of an old woman; and on the bank over
the Well is the spot where tradition relates fair Rosamond yielded to
the menaces of Eleanor. Our correspondent, _T.W._, jocosely observes,
that he sends us the Labyrinth "without the silken cord which guided the