C.

AN ELEGY ON THE LADY JANE

PAWLET,

MARCHIONESS OF WINTON.2

HAT gentle ghost, besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew,3
And beckoning woos me, from the fatal tree
To pluck a garland for herself or me?

I do obey you, beauty! for in death

You seem a fair one. O that you had breath
To give your shade a name! Stay, stay, I feel
A horror in me, all my blood is steel;

Stiff, stark! my joints 'gainst one another knock!
Whose daughter?-Ha! great Savage of the Rock.*

2 An Elegy on the lady Jane Pawlet, &c.] The folio reads lady Anne, though Jane, the true name, occurs, as Whalley observes, just below. This wretched copy is so full of errors, that the reader's attention would be too severely proved, if called to notice the tithe of them; in general, they have been corrected in silence.

This lady Jane was the first wife of that brave and loyal nobleman, John, fifth marquis of Winchester. He was one of the greatest sufferers by the Usurpation; but he lived to see the restoration of the royal family, and died full of years and honour in 1674. The marchioness died in 1631, which is therefore the date of the Elegy.

3 What gentle ghost besprent with April dew,

Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?] Pope seems to have imitated the first lines of this elegy, in his poem to the Memory of an unfortunate Lady:

"What beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade,

Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade ?" WHAL.

Pope's imitation, however, falls far short of the picturesque and awful solemnity of the original.

* Great Savage of the Rock.] The seat of that family in

He's good as great. I am almost a stone,
And ere I can ask more of her, she's gone!-
Alas, I am all marble! write the rest

Thou would'st have written, Fame, upon my breast:
It is a large fair table, and a true,

And the disposure will be something new,
When I, who would the poet have become,
At least may bear the inscription to her tomb.
She was the Lady Jane, and marchionisse
Of Winchester; the heralds can tell this.
Earl Rivers' grand-child-'serve not forms, good
Fame,

Sound thou her virtues, give her soul a name.
Had I a thousand mouths, as many tongues,
And voice to raise them from my brazen lungs,
I durst not aim at that; the dotes were such
Thereof, no notion can express how much
Their caract was: I or my trump must break,
But rather I, should I of that part speak;
It is too near of kin to heaven, the soul,
To be described! Fame's fingers are too foul
To touch these mysteries: we may admire
The heat and splendor, but not handle fire.
What she did here, by great example, well,
T'inlive posterity, her Fame may tell;
And calling Truth to witness, make that good
From the inherent graces in her blood!
Else who doth praise a person by a new
But a feign'd way, doth rob it of the true.
Her sweetness, softness, her fair courtesy,
Her wary guards, her wise simplicity,
Were like a ring of Virtues 'bout her set,

Cheshire, from which the lady was descended. Camden gives us the following account of it: "The Wever flows between Frodsham, a castle of ancient note, and Clifton, at present called Rock Savage, a new house of the Savages, who by marriage have got a great estate here." Brit. p. 563. WHAL.

And Piety the centre where all met.
A reverend state she had, an awful eye,
A dazzling, yet inviting, majesty :
What Nature, Fortune, Institution, Fact
Could sum to a perfection, was her act!

How did she leave the world, with what contempt
Just as she in it lived, and so exempt
From all affection! when they urg'd the cure
Of her disease, how did her soul assure
Her sufferings, as the body had been away!
And to the torturers, her doctors, say,
Stick on your cupping-glasses, fear not, put
Your hottest caustics to, burn, lance, or cut:
'Tis but a body which you can torment,
And I into the world all soul was sent.
Then comforted her lord, and blest her son,
Cheer'd her fair sisters in her race to run,
With gladness temper'd her sad parents' tears,
Made her friends' joys to get above their fears,
And in her last act taught the standers-by
With admiration and applause to die!

Let angels sing her glories, who did call
Her spirit home to her original;

5

Who saw the way was made it, and were sent

5 Then comforted her lord, and blest her son, &c.] Warton calls this a "pathetic Elegy," and indeed this passage has both pathos and beauty. It is a little singular that Jonson makes no allusion to her dying in childbed, which, it would appear from Milton's Epitaph, she actually did. He speaks of a disease: she was delivered of a dead child; and some surgical operation appears to have been performed, or attempted, without success. There can be no doubt of Jonson's accuracy; for he was living on terms of respectful friendship with the marquis of Winchester.

Jonson principally dwells on the piety of this lady; she seems also to have been a person of rare endowments and accomplishments. Howell (p. 182) puts her in mind that he taught her Spanish, and sends her a sonnet which he had translated into that language from one in English by her ladyship, with the music, &c., and Cartwright returns her thanks, in warm language, "for two

To carry and conduct the compliment
'Twixt death and life, where her mortality
Became her birth-day to eternity!

And now through circumfused light she looks,
On Nature's secret there, as her own books:
Speaks heaven's language, and discourseth free
To every order, every hierarchy !

Beholds her Maker, and in him doth see
What the beginnings of all beauties be;
And all beatitudes that thence do flow:

Which they that have the crown are sure to know! Go now, her happy parents, and be sad,

If you not understand what child you had.

If

you dare grudge at heaven, and repent T'have paid again a blessing was but lent, And trusted so, as it deposited lay

At pleasure, to be call'd for every day!
If you can envy your own daughter's bliss,
And wish her state less happy than it is;
If you can cast about your either eye,
And see all dead here, or about to die!
The stars, that are the jewels of the night,
And day, deceasing, with the prince of light,
The sun, great kings, and mightiest kingdoms fall;
Whole nations, nay, mankind! the world, with all
That ever had beginning there, t' have end!
With what injustice should one soul pretend
T'escape this common known necessity?

most beautiful pieces, wrought by herself in needle-work, and presented to the University of Oxford, the one being the story of the Nativity, the other of the Passion of our Saviour."

"Blest mother of the church, he, in the list,
Reckon'd from hence the she-Evangelist;
Nor can the style be profanation, when
The needle may convert more than the pen ;
When faith may come by seeing, and each leaf,
Rightly perus'd, prove gospel to the deaf," &c.

Poems, p. 196.

When we were all born, we began to die;
And, but for that contention, and brave strife
The Christian hath t' enjoy the future life,"
He were the wretched'st of the race of men :
But as he soars at that, he bruiseth then

6 Sir John Beaumont has also an elegy on the death of this lady, beginning with these lines:

"Can my poor lines no better office have,

But lie like scritch-owls still about the grave?
When shall I take some pleasure for my pain,

Commending them that can commend again?" WHal.

It may also be added that Eliot has an "Elegy on the lady Jane Paulet, marchioness of Winchester," &c., in which he follows Milton, as to the immediate cause of her death. Though the poem, which is very long, is in John's best manner, I should not have mentioned it, had it not afforded me an opportunity of explaining a passage in Shakspeare which has sorely puzzled the

commentators:

"Either (says the gallant Henry V.)

Either our history shall, with full mouth,
Speak freely of our acts, or else, our grave,

Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshipp'd with a waxen epitaph." A. i. S. 2.

Steevens says that the allusion is "to the ancient custom of writing on waxen tablets," and Malone proves, at the expense of two pages, that his friend has mistaken the poet's meaning, and that he himself is just as wide of it.

In many parts of the continent, it is customary, upon the decease of an eminent person, for his friends to compose short laudatory poems, epitaphs, &c., and affix them to the herse, or grave, with pins, wax, paste, &c. Of this practice, which was once prevalent here also, I had collected many notices, which, when the circumstance was recalled to my mind by Eliot's verses, I tried in vain to recover: the fact, however, is certain.

In the bishop of Chichester's verses to the memory of Dr. Donne, is this couplet :

"Each quill can drop his tributary verse,
And pin it, like a hatchment, to his herse."

Eliot's lines are these:

"Let others, then, sad Epitaphs invent,

And paste them up about thy monument;