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Mrs. Augusta Webster, Mrs. Hamilton King, Miss Mary Robinson, Mrs. Craik; Jean Ingelow, whose sonnet
on An Ancient Chess King is like an exquisitely carved gem; Mrs. Pfeiffer; Miss May Probyn, a poetess with
the true lyrical impulse of song, whose work is as delicate as it is delightful; Mrs. Nesbit, a very pure and
perfect artist; Miss Rosa Mulholland, Miss Katharine Tynan, Lady Charlotte Elliot, and many other
well-known writers, are duly and adequately represented. On the whole, Mrs. Sharp's collection is very
LITERARY AND OTHER NOTES I 89
Reviews
pleasant reading indeed, and the extracts given from the works of living poetesses are extremely remarkable,
not merely for their absolute artistic excellence, but also for the light they throw upon the spirit of modern
culture.
It is not, however, by any means a complete anthology. Dame Juliana Berners is possibly too antiquated in
style to be suitable to a modern audience. But where is Anne Askew, who wrote a ballad in Newgate; and
where is Queen Elizabeth, whose 'most sweet and sententious ditty' on Mary Stuart is so highly praised by
Puttenham as an example of 'Exargasia,' or The Gorgeous in Literature? Why is the Countess of Pembroke
excluded? Sidney's sister should surely have a place in any anthology of English verse. Where is Sidney's
niece, Lady Mary Wroth, to whom Ben Jonson dedicated The Alchemist? Where is 'the noble ladie Diana
Primrose,' who wrote A Chain of Pearl, or a memorial of the peerless graces and heroic virtues of Queen
Elizabeth, of glorious memory? Where is Mary Morpeth, the friend and admirer of Drummond of
Hawthornden? Where is the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James I., and where is Anne Killigrew, maid of
honour to the Duchess of York? The Marchioness of Wharton, whose poems were praised by Waller; Lady
Chudleigh, whose lines beginning
Wife and servant are the same,
But only differ in the name,
are very curious and interesting; Rachel Lady Russell, Constantia Grierson, Mary Barber, Lætitia Pilkington;
Eliza Haywood, whom Pope honoured by a place in The Dunciad; Lady Luxborough, Lord Bolingbroke's
half-sister; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Lady Temple, whose poems were printed by Horace Walpole;
Perdita, whose lines on the snowdrop are very pathetic; the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, of whom
Gibbon said that 'she was made for something better than a Duchess'; Mrs. Ratcliffe, Mrs. Chapone, and
Amelia Opie, all deserve a place on historical, if not on artistic, grounds. In fact, the space given by Mrs.
Sharp to modern and living poetesses is somewhat disproportionate, and I am sure that those on whose brows
the laurels are still green would not grudge a little room to those the green of whose laurels is withered and the
music of whose lyres is mute.
* * * * *
One of the most powerful and pathetic novels that has recently appeared is A Village Tragedy by Margaret L.
Woods. To find any parallel to this lurid little story, one must go to Dostoieffski or to Guy de Maupassant.
Not that Mrs. Woods can be said to have taken either of these two great masters of fiction as her model, but
there is something in her work that recalls their method; she has not a little of their fierce intensity, their
terrible concentration, their passionless yet poignant objectivity; like them, she seems to allow life to suggest
its own mode of presentation; and, like them, she recognises that a frank acceptance of the facts of life is the
true basis of all modern imitative art. The scene of Mrs. Woods's story lies in one of the villages near Oxford;
the characters are very few in number, and the plot is extremely simple. It is a romance of modern
Arcadia a tale of the love of a farm-labourer for a girl who, though slightly above him in social station and
education, is yet herself also a servant on a farm. True Arcadians they are, both of them, and their ignorance
and isolation serve only to intensify the tragedy that gives the story its title. It is the fashion nowadays to
label literature, so, no doubt, Mrs. Woods's novel will be spoken of as 'realistic.' Its realism, however, is the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]