MARGARET, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE.
This lady, if not more of a woman than Mrs Phillips, was considerably more of a poet. She was born (probably) about 1625. She was the daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, and became a maid-of-honour to Henrietta Maria. Accompanying the Queen to France, she met with the Marquis, afterwards Duke of Newcastle, and married him at Paris in 1645. They removed to Antwerp, and there, in 1653, this lady published a volume, entitled 'Poems and Fancies.' The pair aided each other in their studies, and the result was a number of enormous folios of poems, plays, speeches, and philosophical disquisitions. These volumes were, we are told, great favourites of Coleridge and Charles Lamb, for the sake, we presume, of the wild sparks of insight and genius which break irresistibly through the scholastic smoke and bewildered nonsense. When Charles II. was restored, the Marquis and his wife returned to England, and spent their life in great harmony. She died in 1673, leaving behind her some beautiful fantasias, where the meaning is often finer than the music, such as the 'Pastime and Recreation of Fairies in Fairy-land.' Her poetry, particularly her contrasted pictures of Mirth and Melancholy, present fine accumulations of imagery drawn direct from nature, and shewn now in brightest sunshine, and now in softest moonlight, as the change of her subject and her tone of feeling require.