Volume III Part 15 (2/2)
Barry excells all his cotemporaries in tragedy; he there shews his power over our pa.s.sions, and bids the heart bleed, in every accent of anguish.
After Ess.e.x is carried out to execution, Mr. Jones introduces the queen at the tower, which has a very happy effect, and her manner of behaving on that occasion, makes her appear more amiable than ever she did in any play on the same subject. Mr. Jones in his language (in this piece) does not affect being very poetical;--nor is his verification always mellifluent, as in his other writings;--but it is well adapted for speaking: The design is well conducted, the story rises regularly, the business is not suspended, and the characters are well sustained.
5. The Island Queens, a Tragedy, of which we have already given some account; the name of it was afterwards changed to the Albion Queens.
6. The Innocent Usurper, or the Death of Lady Jane Gray, a Tragedy, printed 1694. It was prohibited the stage, on account of some groundless insinuations, that it reflected upon the government. This play, in Banks's own opinion, is inferior to none of his former. Mr. Rowe has written likewise a Tragedy on this subject, which is a stock play at both houses; it is as much superior to that of our author, as the genius of the former was greater than that of the latter.
7. Cyrus the Great, a Tragedy. This play was at first rejected, but it afterwards got upon the stage, and was acted with great success; the plot is taken from Scudery's Romance of the Grand Cyrus.
We cannot ascertain the year in which Banks died. He seems to have been a man of parts; his characteristic fault as a writer, was aiming at the sublime, which seldom failed to degenerate into the bombast; fire he had, but no judgment to manage it; he was negligent of his poetry, neither has he sufficiently marked, and distinguished his characters; he was generally happy in the choice of his fables, and he has found a way of drawing tears, which many a superior poet has tried in vain.
LADY CHUDLEIGH
Was born in the year 1656, and was daughter of Richard Lee of Winslade, in the county of Devon, esq; She had an education in which literature seemed but little regarded, being taught no other language than her native tongue; but her love of books, incessant industry in the reading of them, and her great capacity to improve by them, enabled her to make a very considerable figure in literature.
She was married to Sir George Chudleigh of Ashton in the county of Devon, Bart, by whom she had issue Eliza Maria, who died in the bloom of life, (much lamented by her mother, who poured out her griefs on that occasion, in a Poem ent.i.tled a Dialogue between Lucinda and Marissa) and George, who succeeded to the t.i.tle and estate, Thomas, and others.
She was a lady of great virtue, as well as understanding, and she made the latter of these subservient to the promotion of the former, which was much improved by study; but though she was enamoured of the charms of poetry, yet she dedicated some part of her time to the severer study of philosophy, as appears from her excellent essays, which discover an uncommon degree of piety, and knowledge, and a n.o.ble contempt of those vanities which the unthinking part of her s.e.x so much regard, and so eagerly pursue.
The works which this lady produced, are,
The Ladies Defence, or the Bride-Woman's Counsellor answered, a Poem; in a Dialogue between Sir John Brute, Sir William Loveall, Melissa, and a Parson. This piece has been several times printed; the writing it was occasioned by an angry sermon preached against the fair s.e.x, of which her ladys.h.i.+p gives the following account; 'Mr. Lintot, says she, some time since, intending to reprint my poems, desired me to permit him to add to them a Dialogue I had written in the year 1700, on a Sermon preached by Mr. Sprint, a Nonconformist, at Sherbourne in Dorsets.h.i.+re; I refusing, for several reasons, to grant his request, he, without my knowledge, bought the copy of the Bookseller who formerly printed it, and, without my consent, or once acquainting me with his resolution, added to it the second edition of my poems; and that which makes the injury the greater, is, his having omitted the Epistle Dedicatory, and the Preface, by which means he has left the reader wholly in the dark, and exposed me to censure. When it was first printed I had reason to complain, but not so much as now: Then the Dedication was left entire as I had written it, but the Preface so mangled, altered, and considerably shortened, that I hardly knew it to be my own; but being then published without a name, I was the less concerned, but since, notwithstanding the great care I took to conceal it, it is known to be mine; I think myself obliged, in my own defence, to take some notice of it[1].' The omission of this Preface, which contained an answer to part of the sermon, and gave her reasons for writing the poem, had occasioned some people to make ill-natured reflexions on it: this put her ladys.h.i.+p on justifying herself, and a.s.suring her readers, that there are no reflexions in it levelled at any particular persons, besides the author of the Sermon; him (says she) I only blame for being too angry, for his not telling us our duty in a softer more engaging way: address, and good manners render reproofs a kindness; but where they are wanting, admonitions are always taken ill: as truths of this sort ought never to be concealed from us, so they ought never to be told us with an indecent warmth; a respectful tenderness would be more becoming a messenger of peace, the disciple of an humble, patient, meek, commiserating Saviour.'
Besides this lady's poems, of which we shall give some account when we quote a specimen; she wrote Essays upon several subjects, in prose and verse, printed in 8vo. 1710. These Essays are upon Knowledge, Pride, Humility, Life, Death, Fear, Grief, Riches, Self-love, Justice, Anger, Calumny, Friends.h.i.+p, Love, Avarice, Solitude, and are much admired for the delicacy of the stile, there being not the least appearance of false wit, or affected expression, the too common blemishes of this sort of writing: they are not so much the excursions of a lively imagination, which can often expatiate on the pa.s.sions, and actions of men, with small experience of either, as the deliberate result of observations on the world, improved with reading, regulated with judgment, softened by good manners, and heightened with sublime thoughts, and elevated piety.
This treatise is dedicated to her Royal Highness the Princess Sophia, Electress, and d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of Brunswick, on which occasion that Princess, then in her 80th year, honoured her with the following epistle, written by the Electress in French, but which we shall here present to the reader in English.
Hanover June 25, 1710.
LADY CHUDLEIGH,
You have done me a very great pleasure in letting me know by your agreeable book, that there is such a one as you in England, and who has so well improved herself, that she can, in a fine manner, communicate her sentiments to all the world.
As for me I do not pretend to deserve the commendations you give me, but by the esteem which I have of your merit, and of your good sense, I will be always entirely
Your affectionate friend
to serve you,
SOPHIA ELECTRICE.
At the end of the second volume of the duke of Wharton's poems, are five letters from lady Chudleigh, to the revd. Mr. Norris of Bemmerton, and Mrs. Eliz. Thomas, the celebrated Corinna of Dryden.
She wrote several other things, which, though not printed, are carefully preserved in the family, viz. two Tragedies, two Operas, a Masque, some of Lucian's Dialogues, translated into Verse, Satirical Reflexions on Saqualio, in imitation of one of Lucian's Dialogues, with several small Poems on various Occasions.
She had long laboured under the pains of a rheumatism, which had confined her to her chamber a considerable time before her death, which happened at Ashton in Devons.h.i.+re, December 15, 1710, in the 55th year of her age, and lies buried there without either monument or inscription.
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