Note 211 — Chapter II · LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760 (continued 3)

That Lady Winchilsea's work was pretty well known before 1713 is evident from an interesting passage in Mrs. Manley's The New Atalantis (1709). Some invisible spectators are being taken about under the guidance of "Intelligence." They are observing the daily parade of coaches on the "Prado" when Intelligence calls attention to a lady in one of the coaches. "The Lady," he says, "once belonged to the Court, but marrying into the Country, she made it her Business to devote herself to the Muses, and has writ a great many pretty Things: These Verses of the Progress of Life, have met with abundance of applause, and therefore I recommend them to your Excellency's Perusal." The Progress of Life is then quoted entire and Astræa comments: "The Lady speaks very feelingly: We need look no further than this, to know that she's herself past that agreeable Age she so much regrets. However, I am very well pleas'd with the Thought that runs thro'; if she had contracted something of the second and third stanza, it had not been the Worse. I presume she's one of the Few that write out of Pleasure, and not Necessity. By that means its her own Fault, if she publish any Thing but what's Good; for it's next to impossible to write much and write well." (Vol. I, p. 186.) In the Key the "Lady" thus spoken of is said to be "Col. Finch's Lady once a Maid of Honour." Mrs. Manley's version of The Progress of Life shows several slight verbal variations from the form published in 1713. Two lines on Parnassus in the second stanza appeared in 1713 as more orthodox lines on Canaan. But when Miss Seward's mother taught her the poem in 1763, it was the old and not the 1713 version that she used. (Winchilsea, Lady: Works, ed. Reynolds, p. lxxiii.)