Explore "Lady Winchilsea's Poems" by Edmund Gosse on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
MISCELLANY POEMS. _With Two Plays. By Ardelia. I never list presume to Parnass hill, But piping low, in shade of lowly grove, I play to please myself, albeit ill. Spencer Shep. Cal. June. Manuscript in folio. Circa_ 1696.
There is no other book in my library to which I feel that I possess so clear a presumptive right as to this manuscript. Other rare volumes would more fitly adorn the collections of bibliophiles more learned, more ingenious, more elegant, than I. But if there is any person in the two hemispheres who has so fair a claim upon the ghost of Ardelia, let that man stand forth. Ardelia was uncultivated and unsung when I constituted myself, years ago, her champion. With the exception of a noble fragment of laudation from Wordsworth, no discriminating praise from any modern critic had stirred the ashes of her name. I made it my business to insist in many places on the talent of Ardelia.