A poetic miscellany with early modern female ownership with contributions of two Poetesses.
777E Anne Wharton, (née Lee) 1659-1685 (contributor) Anne Finch Anne Countess of Winchilsea (Contributor) John Sheffield Buckingham 1647-1721
A Collection of Poems: Viz. The Temple of Death: By the Marquis of Normanby. An Epistle to the Earl of Dorset: By Charles Montague, Lord Halifax. The Duel of the Stags: By Sir Robert Howard. With Several Original Poems, Never before Printed, By The E. of Roscommon. The E. of Rochester. The E. Orrery. Sir Charles Sedley. } { Sir George Etherege. Mr. Granville. Mr. Stepney. Mr. Dryden, &c.
London: Printed for Daniel Brown at the Black Swann and Bible without Temple Bar; And Benjamin Tooke at the Middle-Temple-gate in Fleetstreet, 1701. Price $2,200
Octavo 19 x 11cm. Signatures: A⁴, B-2E⁸, 2F⁴ (Bb3 missigned “B3”) Bound in contemporary panelled calf, raised bands, reback’d, gilt spine and morocco label. A very good copy, being internally very crisp and clean. A revised and enlarged edition of A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, published in 1693, this itself being an expansion of the first edition of 1672. (see #844J)
Silence, you Winds; listen, Etherial Lights, While our Urania sings what Heav’n indites. (Waller)
The miscellany’s title-poem is a translation by the Earl of Mulgrave of Philippe Habert’s elegy ‘Le Temple de la Mort,’ in spite of the scorn expressed in the publisher’s preface for the French nation, and ‘the Servile way of following their Modes’. An essay on poetry, by J. Sheffield, 1st duke of Buckingham.–Horace: of the art of poetry, by Horatius Flaccus.–An essay on translated verse, by the earl of Roscommon.–Coopers hill, by J. Denham.–The duel of the stags, by R. Howard.–The temple of death, by P. Habert.–Macflecknoe, by J. Dryden; with Spencer’s ghost, by J. Oldham–Lecretius.–The plague of Ahtens (!) by T. Sprat.–The spleen, by A.K. Finch, contess of Winchilsea.–A letter from Italy, by J. Addison together with The mourning muse of Alexis, by W. Congreve.–The Kit-Cats, by R. Blackmore.–The campaign, by J. Addison.–Pastorals, by A. Philips.–Faction display’d, by W. Shippen.–Baucis and Philemon, by J. Swift; as also An ode upon, by W. Dillon, 4th earl of Roscommon.–Muscipula, by E. Holdsworth. This is the Fourth edition of the important ‘Temple of Death’ miscellany of Restoration poetry, retaining most of the poems from the third edition (1693) and adding much material, including all the poems on pp. 172-282 – with contributions from Stepney, Arwaker and Congreve – and the poems at the end (pp. 391-453), among them ‘The Spleen’ by ANNE ( Kingsmil) FINCH, Countess of Winchilsea. The Poetry Foundation , which misses the date of the poem The Spleen, writes “possibly Finch’s most well-known poem, was first published anonymously in 1709. [Actually FIRST PRINTED HERE]
The ode was immediately popular and received much attention for its accurate description of the symptoms of melancholia—the disease often associated with the spleen—which Finch suffered from throughout her life. The speaker begins by acknowledging that hypochondria is also often associated with the spleen, the “pretended Fits,” the “sullen Husband’s feign’d Excuse,” and the coquette’s melancholy pose, “careless Posture, and the Head reclin’d.” She then proceeds to undermine these portraits of feigned illness, treating the disease as a real and terrifying affliction:
From Speech restrain’d, by thy Deceits abus’d,
To Deserts banish’d or in Cells reclus’d,
Mistaken Vot’ries to the Pow’rs Divine,
Wilst they a purer Sacrifice design,
Do but the Spleen obey, and worship at thy Shrine.
THE DNB writes “WHARTON, ANNE (1632?–1685), poetess, born in Oxfordshire about 1632, was the second daughter and coheiress of Sir Henry Lee, third baronet, of Ditchley, by Anne, daughter of Sir John Danvers, knight, of Cornbury. On 16 Sept. 1673 she married, as his first wife, Thomas Wharton (afterwards first Marquis of Wharton) [q. v.], to whom she brought a dowry of 10,000l. and 2,500l. a year. In 1680 and 1681 she was in Paris, and both then and afterwards had some correspondence with Dr. Gilbert Burnet [q. v.], who sent poems for her to criticise, among them his ‘Paraphrase on the Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah, in imitation of Mrs. Anne Wharton.’ Her own ‘Lamentations of Jeremiah paraphrased,’ written apparently in 1681, appeared in the collection entitled ‘The Temple of Death,’ 1695
(it was reprinted with some addition in the second volume of ‘Whartoniana,’ 1727, pp. 64–92). Her ‘Verses on the Snuff of a Candle’ appeared in the first volume of ‘Dryden’s Miscellanies’ (1684, i. 144); her ‘Penelope to Ulysses’ in Tonson’s ‘Ovid’s Epistles by several Hands,’ of 1712, and some minor pieces, including a song, ‘How hardly I conceal’d my Tears,’ is published here in 1701 before ” Tooke’s ‘Collection’ (1716, p. 209), and in other miscellanies.
Her ‘Elegy on the Death of the Earl of Rochester’ (in the ‘Examen Miscellaneum’ of 1702, p. 15) drew from Waller the lines to ‘fairest Chloris,’ commencing ‘Thus mourn the Muses!’ and her ‘Paraphrase on the Lord’s Prayer,’ some tumid verses commencing
Waller pays the lady the somewhat doubtful compliment of assuring her that she was allied to Rochester ‘in genius as well as in blood.’ The kinship in either case was remote; the earl’s mother was aunt to Anne’s father, Sir Henry Lee. Her verses were also commended by Dryden, who upon the death of her elder sister, the Countess of Abingdon, in 1691, wrote the panegyrical poem ‘Eleonora.’ Anne Wharton died at Adderbury on 29 Oct. 1685, and was buried at Winchendon on 10 Nov. following. Her marriage had proved childless and unhappy, and it was only the good counsel of Burnet that prevented her from leaving her husband about 1682. A collection of ‘Copies of Mrs. Wharton’s Poems’ was appended to the Bodleian copy of Edward Young’s ‘Amoris Christiani mnēmoneutikon’ (1686). In addition to her printed writings, Mrs. Wharton left in manuscript a blank-verse tragedy in five acts called ‘Love’s Martyr, or Witt above Crowns.’ The subject is the love of Ovid for Julia, daughter of the emperor Augustus. The tragedy, formerly at Strawberry Hill, now forms Additional MS. 28693. A portrait, painted by Lely, was engraved by R. Earlom. Another, engraved by Bocquet, is given in Walpole’s ‘Royal and Noble Authors’ (1806, iii. 284).
[Ballard’s Memoirs of Learned Ladies, p. 297; Burke’s Extinct Peerage, pp. 347, 582; E. R. Wharton’s Whartons of Wharton Hall, 1898, p. 47; Nichols’s Lit. Anecdotes, v. 644; Waller’s Poems, ed. Drury, 1893, p. 342; General Dict. x. 122; Nichols’s Select Collection of Poems, 1780, i. 51, ii. 329, iii. 44, iv. 356; Chaloner Smith’s Mezzotint Portraits, p. 258, where Anne Wharton is wrongly entitled marchioness.]
English Short Title Catalogue Nº T116471; Case 151(e); Greer & Hastings, The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, 1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10(a), 20. 182. Prinz (Rochester) VII,21.*
https://datb.cerl.org/estc/T116471
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