in his paper on Celtic Letter Changes, desired to banish from our English speech. September 10, 1887. GLIMPSES OF ROMANTIC REALITIES FROM THE ISLE OF WIGHT IN THE SEVEN- In the miscellaneous Oglander MSS., devoid of all order and arrangement, scribbled often on the blank spaces of ledgers and account books, is an entry relating to an affair of the heart, or if not that, a poetic description of admiring love, such as is found in all dialects and languages in all ages of the world. It professes to be a story of unrequited, unreturned affection. 'She loved one who loved anotheran old story,' sings the German poet, Heine, but when it happens, it breaks the heart.' The worthy knight of Nunwell, to whom the Isle of Wight is indebted for so many curious and interesting glimpses into the social life of its past history, enters into no details about what gave rise to this short poem, which he attributes to Lady Worsley, widow of Sir Richard, who died in his thirtysecond year, somewhere about the opening second decade of the seventeenth century. The occasion of this sonnet was the marriage of Sir Charles Bartlett. 'Be what thou wilt, be counterfeit or right, Be constant, serious, or be vain or light, My love remains inviolate the same; Thou can'st be nothing that can quench the flame, But it will burn as long as thou hast breath To keep it kindled, if not after death. Where was there one more true than I to thee? And though my faith must now despised be, It would be well to know what competent critics of verse, think of these lines. They seem to me marked with that depth of feeling, combined with the strength and simplicity of diction, which distinguishes the poetry of the Elizabethan era. Mr. Davenport Adams in his History of the Isle of Wight, p. 213, after quoting the words, dismisses them with this faint praise, 'a very tolerable amatory effusion for a widow,' and also remarks that these 'curious verses would lead one to infer that over the death of her husband she by no means intended to sorrow for ever.' The inference is not altogether just or fair. It arises from the common notion that the productions of a poet are the real outpourings of his inward heart, instead of being, as they so often are, the mere exercises of imagination or fancy. People will insist upon love verses being autobiographical. The fact is that such compositions are not uncommonly published, or handed about among private friends, without the slightest apprehension that they would be regarded as expressing the writer's own personal feelings. This was probably the case with what Mr. Adams calls Lady Worsley's 'amatory effusion.' There is weakness and folly in the open or public expression of excessive or misplaced affection. It would have been in the highest degree unbecoming and discreditable in Lady Worsley-a widow, and the mother of children, to have given utterance to her own feelings of attachment to a man like Sir Charles Bartlett, already married. Sir John Oglander cannot use words too strong about his friend, Sir Richard Worsley, and he says of Lady Worsley, who was a daughter of Sir Henry Neville, that she was a fair lady who for beauty and virtues was worthy of the like commendations,' as her husband. Oglander was far too chivalrous an English gentleman to have inserted anything in his memoirs which would cast a blot upon the fair fame of a lady for whom he had such a high esteem, and who was too the widow of his own 'good friend.' He took the lady's love-sonnet, or elegy, as it was called in those days, in the sense in which it was intended, as a natural and simple picture of unreturned love, from which all idea of any personal feeling on the part of the writer was from the necessity of the case, strictly excluded. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth such artificial poetry was much in fashion, and took the shape of love verses in which one leading idea was repeated, like the variations of a musical air, and so distributed in different forms of expression. The Queen herself patronized this fashion, and permitted verses to be addressed to her by Raleigh and other courtiers in language breathing an ardent tone of affection, which, if taken seriously, that great sovereign would never have allowed to be written by a subject of hers. The Queen's maids of honour followed the example of their mistress, and received these exercises of poetry couched in words of passionate affection and extravagant praise, in full knowledge of how little it in reality all meant. Old Harrison, that faithful painter of the manners of the Court of Elizabeth, observes: This further is not to be omitted, to the singular commendation of both sorts and sexes of our courtiers here in England, that there are very few of them which have not the use and skill of sundry speeches, besides an excellent vein of writing before time not regarded.' The custom of Elizabeth's learned Court descended to that of her successor, the pedant James I. Fine gentlemen and ladies liked to put on the character of the lover in what they called a copy of verses.' In that light we may interpret the real intention of Lady Worsley's little poem, and as such it supplies an interesting specimen of the playful intercourse between the sexes in the upper and more cultivated classes of that period. This style of poetry was altogether different from the absurd and too often impudent gallantry of the Restoration times. It was framed upon Italian precedents dating from the time of Petrarch's sonnets to Laura. Like the model after which they were composed, these verses were exercises of ingenuity and poetic handling, animated by no warmer feeling than those of friendship or admiration for those to whom they were addressed. Nothing in Lady Worsley's graceful little poem would endanger the domestic peace of the newly married bride of Sir Charles Bartlett; her ladyship would look upon the verses as they were intended in the light of a compliment to her husband, and was probably on most friendly terms with their authoress. Womanly delicacy, both in thought and utterance, is such an absolutely essential element in wholesome national life, that every Englishman to whom the honour of his country-women is very precious is bound not to allow any aspersion on the character of wife, maid, or widow, to pass unchallenged; and only upon irresistible evidence should he pass judgement upon the offender against that law of purity both in feeling and speech which has governed English women in the best periods of our history. Domestic morality in the courtly circles of James I, as exhibited in the households of Somerset and Buckingham, and in the tribunal which lent itself to the divorce of Essex, was at a very low ebb, but the taint of corruption had not infected the manor houses of the country gentlemen of England, or reached the citizens of our provincial towns. The tender and pathetic sentiment of Lady Worsley's verse to Sir Charles Bartlett might perhaps not unnaturally lead a reader who gave them only a hasty glance to form the conclusion at which Mr. Adams has arrived. Hence the necessity of entering at some length into points which must be fully and fairly considered before charging a virtuous gentlewoman with conduct which is repugnant to all right feeling. Sir John Oglander's character as a gentleman would also be at stake if it were supposed that he had written down what might seriously affect the character of a lady whom he respected, and with whom he was on terms of close intimacy. Oglander, who lived in the best society of the Isle of Wight, must have known what interpretation people of good taste and high moral principle would put on Lady Worsley's verses. If in their judgement the lines addressed to Sir C. Bartlett by Lady Worsley had been at all dishonouring to the memory of his very dear friend, Sir Richard Worsley, or damaging to the reputation of his widow, Oglander would have suppressed her poem. Let us be thankful to him for having preserved it, since it helps us to see the standard of literary attainment which was reached by some of the ladies of that generation, in spite of the generally low condition of female education at that time. Lord Macaulay has said, 'the mutual relations of the two sexes seem to us to be at least as important as the mutual relations of any two governments in the world.' He has illustrated the position thus laid down by a romantic story of faithful love and long courtship, crowned by a happy marriage, which he relates in one of his Critical and Historical Essays. As the attachment sprung up in Carisbrooke Castle, it has an interest for us in the Isle of Wight. In 1648, the year so memorable for the imprisonment of Charles I in Carisbrooke Castle, a young man, the hero of this story, came to the Isle of Wight, where his cousin, Robert Hammond, was then Governor. He was the son of Sir John Temple, Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and a member of the Long Parliament, where he sat as member for Chichester, and belonged to the more moderate Presbyterian party in the House of Commons. Sir John Temple was married to an aunt of Colonel Hammond of Carisbrooke Castle. Their son William, born in London in the year 1628, after being educated by his maternal uncle, the excellent Henry Hammond, was sent to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where under the celebrated Cudworth as his tutor for two years he studied or otherwise amused himself after the fashion both then and since of many young gentlemen at both our Universities. He left Cambridge when he was twenty without taking a degree, according to his sister, Lady Giffard, who wrote a memoir of him, and set out for a tour in France, halting at the Isle of Wight. In that casual visit, as so often happens in the lives of men, his path was crossed by one who had the utmost influence on his career. For thither chanced also to come Sir Peter Osborne, who held Guernsey for King Charles, accompanied by his son and daughter. A certain Mr. Richard Osborne, who had been put by Parliament as a spy over the King, under the title of gentleman-usher, was associated with Mr. Edward Worsley of Gatcombe in the second attempt of Charles to escape from Carisbrooke Castle. I do not know if this Osborne, whose conduct laid him open to a grave suspicion of treachery, was connected with the Bedfordshire family of that name, but whether or no it does not appear that the visit of the Governor of Guernsey to the Isle of Wight had anything to do with this Osborne. The young people, like their father, Sir Peter, were warm for the Royal cause. At the inn where they stopped the brother amused himself with scribbling on the window some reflections upon the Parlia |