The style of Gaspara Stampa is clear, simple, graceful. The Italian critics find something to censure in the versification. In purity of taste I should incline to set her above Bernardino Rota, though she has less vigour of imagination. Corniano has applied to her the well-known lines of Horace upon Sappho. But the fires of guilt and shame that glow along the strings of the AEolian lyre ill resemble the pure sorrows of the tender Anasilla. Her passion for Collalto, ardent and undisguised, was ever virtuous; the sense of gentle birth, though so inferior to his as perhaps to make a proud man fear disparagement, sustained her against dishonourable submission. But, not less in elevation of genius than in dignity of character, she is very inferior to Vittoria Colonna, or even to Veronica Gambara, a poetess who, without equalling Vittoria, had much of her nobleness and purity. We pity the Gasparas. We should worship, if we could find them the Vittorias. ANNE ASKEW. [BORN 1529. DIED 1546.] HUME. Anne Askew, a young woman of merit as well as beauty, who had great connections with the chief ladies at court, and with the queen herself, was accused of dogmatising on that delicate article [the presence of the body of Christ in the sacrament]; and Henry (the Eight), in place of showing indulgence to the weakness of her sex and age, was but the more provoked that a woman should dare to oppose his theological sentiments. She was prevailed upon by Bonner's menaces to make a seeming recantation; but she qualified it with some reserves which did not satisfy that zealous prelate. She was thrown into prison; and she, therefore, employed herself in composing prayers and discourses, by which she fortified her resolution to endure the utmost extremity, rather than relinquish her religious principles. She even wrote to the king, and told him that, as to the Lord's Supper, she believed as much as Christ Himself had said of it, and as much of His divine doctrine as the Catholic Church had required. But, while she could not be brought to acknowledge an assent to the king's explications, this declaration availed her nothing, and was rather regarded as a fresh insult.