This lady died
suddenly, 31st May 1691, in a ball-room in her own house, just then
prepared for an entertainment. The disconsolate husband, who seems to
have been a patron of the Muses,[5] not satisfied with the volunteer
effusions of some minor poets, employed a mutual friend to engage Dryden
to compose a more beautiful tribute to his consort's memory. The poet,
it would seem, neither knew the lord nor the lady, but was doubtless
propitiated upon the mournful occasion;[6] nor was the application and
fee judged more extraordinary than that probably offered, on the same
occasion, to the divine who was to preach the Countess's funeral sermon.
The leading and most characteristic features of the lady's character
were doubtless pointed out to our author as subjects for illustration;
yet so difficult is it, even for the best poet, to feign a sorrow which
he feels not, or to describe with appropriate and animated colouring a
person whom he has never seen, that Dryden's poem resembles rather an
abstract panegyric on an imaginary being, than an elegy on a real
character. The elegy was published early in 1692.
In 1693, Tonson's Third Miscellany made its appearance, with a
dedication to Lord Ratcliffe, eldest son of the Earl of Derwentwater,
who was himself a pretender to poetry, though our author thought so
slightly of his attempts in that way, that he does not even deign to
make them enter into his panegyric, but contents himself with saying,
"what you will be hereafter, may be more than guessed by what you are at
present.
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