xxii The Duchess of Newcastle 



" She on a dewy leaf doth bathe, 

 And as she sits, the leaf doth wave; 

 There like a new-fallen flake of snow. 

 Doth her white limbs in beauty shew. 

 Her garments fair her maids put on. 

 Made of the pure hght from the sun." 



And her study in a pair of figures, of Mirth and Melan- 

 choly, shows her imaginative vein at its richest: 



" Mirth laughing came, and running to me flung 

 Her fat white arms about my neck; there hung 

 Imbrac'd and kiss'd me oft, and strok'd my cheek, 

 Saying she would no other lover seek, — 

 ' I'U sing you songs, and please you every day, 

 Invent new sports to pass the time away.' 



But Melancholy, she will make you lean. 



Your cheeks shaU hollow grow, your jaws be seen . . ." 



But the whole poem must be read to be savoured 

 truly. It used to be said that Milton had borrowed 

 from it; the truth probably lay the other way about. 

 It seems her feeling about her own verse was less than 

 her pride in her philosophy. She writes in answer to 

 a request for her opinion of Virgil and Ovid, as to which 

 she thought was the better poet: " Truly, Madam, my 

 reason, skill, or understanding in poetry and poets is 

 not sufficient to give a judgment of two such famous 

 poets, and their poetry, for though I am a poetess, yet 

 I am but a poetastress, or a petty poetess, but howso- 

 ever, I am a legitimate poetical child of nature, and 

 though my poems, which are the body of the poetical 

 soul, are not so beautiful and pleasing as the rest of her 

 poetical childrens bodies are, yet I am nevertheless her 

 child, although but a brownet. ..." 



She would not have been a true daughter of her 

 century, as well as a child of nature and a " brownet," 

 had she not ventured on conceits in her verse, where it 

 turns to themes like Nature's Dissert, which offers 

 strange confectionery: 



" Sweet marmalade of kisses newly gather'd. 

 Preserved children, which were never father'd 

 Sugar of beauty, which away melts soon, 

 Marchpane of youth, and childish macaroon; 



