[206] The estimate of Lady Winchilsea here given was based on the 1713 edition of her poems. In 1903, through the kindness of Mr. Edmund Gosse and of the Earl of Winchilsea, I was enabled to bring out a complete edition of her works. In the Introduction to those poems I have endeavored to indicate Lady Winchilsea’s literary qualities and affiliations, and to give some idea of her life and personality. So far as her attitude toward Nature is concerned nothing is to be found in the scope of her voluminous verse that is of higher significance than the poems published by Ward. The new fact that does emerge from a fuller knowledge of her writings is the very interesting relation between her poetry of Nature and the events of her life. For an analysis of this relation I must refer to pp. cxxxiii-cxxxiv of the Introduction to my edition of her poems (“The Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea,” The University of Chicago Press, 1903). [207] “Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions,” Written by a Lady, 1713. [208] In the references to the nightingale by Chaucer, Milton, Cowper, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Matthew Arnold, and Mrs. Browning, the only approaches to description of the appearance of the bird are Matthew Arnold’s “tawny-throated,” Keats’ “full-throated,” and Coleridge’s “bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full.” [209] Cf. Milton’s, “sweetest, saddest plight;” or “most musical, most melancholy;” and Shelley’s, “melodious pain;” and Keats’ “plaintive anthem;” and Matthew Arnold’s, “Wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain.” Coleridge speaks once of “pity-pleading strains,” but in another poem contends for the “merry nightingale,” and refuses to hear anything but “love and joyance” in the song. [210] Cf. Matthew Arnold’s “How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves;” and Chaucer’s “lusty nightingale” whose voice made a “loud rioting;” and Shelley’s “storm of sound;” and Wordsworth’s “tumultuous harmony;” and Keats’ “pouring forth thy soul abroad in such an ecstasy;” and Coleridge’s The merry nightingale That crowds and hurries and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes. [211] Cf. Arnold’s “Eternal passion!” Milton’s “amorous power;” Shelley’s “voluptuous nightingale;” Coleridge’s “wanton song;” and all of Mrs. Browning’s “Bianca among the Nightingales.” [212] Cf. Gosse, “Gossip in a Library,” p. 123; “Eighteenth Century,” p. 35. [213] Gay, “Rural Sports,” i, 35. [214] _Ibid._, i, 99. [215] Gay’s “Chair.” [216] See “Coquette Mother and Daughter” for a second reference to the fragrant bean-flower before Thomson. [217] Compare Tennyson’s “wrinkled sea” in “The Eagle.”