ashamed to confess that Daphnis--for so she styled the
excellent Heneage Finch--absorbed every corner of her mind that was
not occupied by the Muses. It is a real pleasure to transcribe, for
the first time since they were written on the 2nd of April, 1685,
these honest couplets:

_This, to the crown and blessing of my life,
The much-loved husband of a happy wife;
To him whose constant passion found the art
To win a stubborn and ungrateful heart;
And to the world by tenderest proof discovers
They err who say that husbands can't be lovers.
With such return of passion as is due,
Daphnis I love, Daphnis my thoughts pursue,
Daphnis, my hopes, my joys are bounded all in you_!

Nearly thirty years later the same accent is audible, thinned a little
by advancing years, and subdued from passion to tenderness, yet as
genuine as at first. When at length the Earl began to suffer from the
gout, his faithful family songster recorded that also in her amiable
verse, and prayed that "the bad disease"

_May you but brief unfrequent visits find
To prove you patient, your Ardelia kind_.

No one can read her sensitive verses, and not be sure that she was the
sweetest and most soothing of bed-side visitants.

It was a quiet life which Daphnis and Ardelia spent in the recesses of
Eastwell Park. They saw little company and paid few visits. There
was a stately excursion now and then, to the hospitable Thynnes at
Longleat, and Anne Finch seldom omitted to leave behind her a metrical
tribute to the beauties of that mansion. They seem to have kept up
little connection with the Court or with London. There is no trace of
literary society in this volume. Nicholas Rowe twice sent down for
their perusal translations which he had made; and from another source
we learn that Lady Winchilsea had a brisk passage of compliments with
Pope. But these were rare incidents. We have rather to think of
the long years spent in the seclusion of Eastwell, by these gentle
impoverished people of quality, the husband occupied with his
mathematical studies, his painting, the care of his garden; the wife
studying further afield in her romantic reverie, watching the birds in
wild corners of her park, carrying her Tasso, hidden in a fold of her
dress, to a dell so remote that she forgets the way back, and has to
be carried home "in a Water-cart driven by one of the Underkeepers in
his green Coat, with a Hazle-bough for a Whip." It is a little
oa