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Elizabeth Rowe and the Countess of Hertford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Helen Sard Hughes*
Affiliation:
Wellesley College

Extract

Dr. Johnson praised the style of the author of Letters from the Dead to the Living in reviewing a miscellany of his day. “The essayists,” he declared, “imitated, or tried to imitate the copiousness and luxuriance” of Mrs. Rowe's writing, and “laboured to add to her brightness of imagery, her purity of sentiment.” The poets, he continued, “had Dr. Watts before their eyes.” Elizabeth Rowe also observed Dr. Watts. In his preface to her Devout Exercises of the Heart, Watts remarked:

Though there is not one complete copy of verses amongst all these transports of her soul, yet she ever carried with her a relish of poesy even into her sacred retirements. Sometimes she springs her flights from a line or two of verse, which her memory had impressed upon her heart: sometimes from the midst of her religious elevation she lights upon a few lines of some modern poet, even Herbert as well as Milton, etc. tho’ ’tis but seldom she cites their names. At other times the verses seem to be the effusions of her own rapturous thoughts in sudden melody and metre; or at least I know not whence the lines are copied; but she most frequently does me the honor to make use of some of my writings in verse in these holy meditations of her heart. Blessed be that God, who has so favored anything my pen could produce, as to assist so sublime a devotion.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1944 , pp. 726 - 746
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944

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References

1 G. B. Hill, ed., Boswell's Life of Johnson (Oxford, 1887), i, 312.

2 Elizabeth Rowe, Devout Exercises of the Heart in Meditation and Soliloquy and Praise…. Reviewed and Published at her Request by I. Watts, D.D. (London, 1737). In re the friendship between Watts and Mrs. Rowe see H. S. Hughes, The Gentle Hertford (New York, 1940), pp. 353 ff.

3 Hill, Boswell's Life of Johnson, loc. cit.

4 Ibid.

5 See H. S. Hughes, The Gentle Hertford (New York, 1940), Ch. iv, v, xi.

6 H. S. Hughes, “Thomson and the Countess of Hertford,” Mod. Philol., xxv, 450. “Philomela” was Mrs. Rowe's pen-name.

7 Memoir prefixed to Elizabeth Rowe, Miscellaneous Works (1772), i, xviii.

8 Memoir, p. vi.

9 Memoir, p. vi.

10 Elizabeth Rowe, Works (1796), ii, 120.

11 Memoir, p. vii.

12 Memoir, p. xviii.

13 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 120, and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fol. 81.

14 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 229, and Alnwick MS. No. 110, Letter 132.

15 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, i, xxv–xxvi.

16 Alnwick MS. No. 110, in the library of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle.

17 See Theophilus Rowe's account of his editorial procedure, at the end of this paper.

18 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii. 134.

19 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 1940 and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fol. 143.

20 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 325–326; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fols. 182–183. The printed version of this letter adds a concluding sentence: “Whether we are got into fairy land, or if 'tis the nature of the climate that lull'd us all in a golden dream is very uncertain, but for my part I am so pleas'd with the place and company that I am willing to indulge the charming madness without envying the most sedate reasoner on earth.”

21 Alnwick MS. No. 110, fol. 107.

22 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 173; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fols. 215–216. The passage in italics is not in the published version.

23 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 174; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fol. 216–217.

24 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 312.

25 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 179, and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fol. 222.

26 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 254; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fols. 341–343.

27 A popular Italian teacher and writer of librettos for current Italian operas.

28 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 131.

29 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 146; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fol. 151.

30 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 317–318.

Mambrino is a pagan king of an old romance who is killed by Rinaldo. In Ariosto's Orlando Furioso mention is made of his having won the helmet of invisibility,—the same helmet is mentioned in Don Quixote.

31 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 244–245; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fols. 334–336.

32 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 118; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fols. 64–65.

33 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 322; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fol. 82.

34 Memoirs, p. xlv.

35 Alnwick MS. No. 110, fol. 249; this sentence is omitted from the letter as printed in Miscellaneous Works, ii, 200.

36 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 169; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fols. 195–196. The first part of the printed letter (No. xlviii) is a composite of two letters in the manuscript (Nos. 81 and 82).

37 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 310.

38 Rowe, Works, i, 46–47.

39 Alnwick MS. No. 110, fols. 159–160. This letter as contained in the Green Booh I have published in The Gentle Hertford, pp. 128–129.

40 The affectionate relation between Lady Hertford and Lord Winchilsea is revealed in letters to her and to her little daughter. In one letter he mentions gratefully her kindness to his wife in the illness of her later years. The Gentle Hertford, pp. 38, 101–102.

41 Rowe, Works, i, 174–176.

42 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 147; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, 153.

43 Rowe, Works, i, 160.

44 Rowe, Works, i, 164.

45 Percy Family Letters and Papers, xxii, 161. See also H. S. Hughes, “A Romantic Correspondence of the Year 1729,” M. P, xxxvii, 200.

46 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, ii, 267–268; and Alnwick MS. No. 110, fols. 359–360.

47 Alnwick MS. No. 115, fols. 89–90.

48 Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, i, xc-xcvi.

49 Isaac Watts, Remnants of Time in Prose and Verse … ed. Edw. Parsons (London, 1800), vii, 430. “Eusebia” was the nom de plume signed to certain verses by Lady Hertford published by Watts. Watts also composed an elegy to Mrs. Rowe. Rowe, Miscellaneous Works, i, lxvii-lxvi.

50 Hone Fairchild, Religious Trends in English Poetry (N. Y., 1939), pp. 139–140.

51 Rowe, Works, ii, 122.

52 Percy Family Letters and Papers, xxv, fols. 24–25, second pagination. This letter is, I think, in the writing of Theophilus Rowe. He quotes from this letter in the Memoir, pp. xxxi–xxxii.

53 Rowe, Works, iv, 7–26. The dialogues bear the titles, “Against ridiculing personal defects,” “Against Gaming,” “Against a life of pleasure.”

54 Percy Family Leiters and Papers, xxvi, fols. 60–61.

55 Percy Family Letters and Papers, xxvi, fols. 123–124.

56 Percy Family Letters and Papers, xxvi, fols. 125–126.

57 Percy Family Letters and Papers, xxvi, fols. 127–128.

58 Supra, p. 737.

59 Percy Family Letters and Papers, xxvi, fols. 12–13 (second pagination).

60 Memoir, p. xxxiv.

61 Memoir, pp. xxxii-xxxiv. See also Mrs. Rowe's instructions, supra, p. 739.

62 Memoir, p. lxv.