“Those hymns which thou dost consecrate to Heaven,
Which Israel’s singer to his God did frame,
Unto thy voyage eternity hath given,
And makes thee dear to Him from whence they came.”
Several of these are extant; one of them was published in the Guardian;[[182]] and it corresponds with a Psalm printed in the “Nugæ Antiquæ” as the Countess of Pembroke’s.[[183]] It has been regretted that these productions are not authorized to be sung in churches; for the present version, Mr. Hartley Coleridge remarks, “is a disgrace and a mischief to the establishment.” These translations are preserved in the library at Wilton.
The Countess was residing there when the “Discourse of Life and Death,” by Mornay, which she translated from the French, was printed. This was in 1590, when Philip Massinger was six years of age. She survived until 1621; and, since she extended her patronage both to arts and letters, it is probable that she not only befriended Ben Jonson, but that she encouraged and assisted the struggling dramatist, whose father had been so favoured or retained in her husband’s house. Ben Jonson’s well-known lines on her tomb have challenged various criticisms. Whilst by some they are deemed a tribute “which have never been exceeded in the records of monumental praise,”[[184]] by another critic they are considered “too hyperbolical, too clever, and too conceited to be inscribed on a Christian’s tomb.”[[185]]
“Underneath this marble hearse
Lies the subject of all verse--
Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother;
Death, ere thou canst find another,