will apply themselves more definitely to prose.

Their light touch, and exquisite ear, and delicate sense of balance and
proportion would be of no small service to us. I can fancy women
bringing a new manner into our literature.

However, we have to deal here with women as poetesses, and it is
interesting to note that, though Mrs. Browning's influence undoubtedly
contributed very largely to the development of this new song-movement, if
I may so term it, still there seems to have been never a time during the
last three hundred years when the women of this kingdom did not
cultivate, if not the art, at least the habit, of writing poetry.

Who the first English poetess was I cannot say. I believe it was the
Abbess Juliana Berners, who lived in the fifteenth century; but I have no
doubt that Mr. Freeman would be able at a moment's notice to produce some
wonderful Saxon or Norman poetess, whose works cannot be read without a
glossary, and even with its aid are completely unintelligible. For my
own part, I am content with the Abbess Juliana, who wrote
enthusiastically about hawking; and after her I would mention Anne Askew,
who in prison and on the eve of her fiery martyrdom wrote a ballad that
has, at any rate, a pathetic and historical interest. Queen Elizabeth's
'most sweet and sententious ditty' on Mary Stuart is highly praised by
Puttenham, a contemporary critic, as an example of 'Exargasia, or the
Gorgeous in Literature,' which somehow seems a very suitable epithet for
such a great Queen's poems. The term she applies to the unfortunate
Queen of Scots, 'the daughter of debate,' has, of course, long since
passed into literature. The Countess of Pembroke, Sir Philip Sidney's
sister, was much admired as a poetess in her day.

In 1613 the 'learned, virtuous, and truly noble ladie,' Elizabeth Carew,
published a Tragedie of Marian, the Faire Queene of Jewry, and a few
years later the 'noble ladie Diana Primrose' wrote A Chain of Pearl,
which is a panegyric on the 'peerless graces' of Gloriana. Mary Morpeth,
the friend and admirer of Drummond of Hawthornden; Lady Mary Wroth, to
whom Ben Jonson dedicated The Alchemist; and the Princess Elizabeth, the
sister of Charles I., should also be mentioned.

After the Restoration women applied themselves with still greater ardour
to the study of literature and the practice of poetry. Margaret, Duchess
of Newcastle, was a true woman of letters, and some of her verses are
extre