VII.
A BALET BY THE EARL RIVERS.
The amiable light in which the character of Anthony Widville, the gallant Earl Rivers, has been placed by the elegant author of the Catal. of Noble Writers [Horace Walpole], interests us in whatever fell from his pen. It is presumed, therefore, that the insertion of this little sonnet will be pardoned, tho' it should not be found to have much poetical merit. It is the only original poem known of that nobleman's; his more voluminous works being only translations. And if we consider that it was written during his cruel confinement in Pomfret castle a short time before his execution in 1483, it gives us a fine picture of the composure and steadiness with which this stout earl beheld his approaching fate.
This ballad we owe to Rouse, a contemporary historian, who seems to have copied it from the earl's own handwriting. "In tempore," says this writer, "incarcerationis apud Pontem-fractum edidit unum balet in anglicis, ut mihi monstratum est, quod subsequitur sub his verbis: Sum what musyng, &c." Rossi, Hist. 8vo. 2 ed. p. 213. In Rouse the second stanza, &c. is imperfect, but the defects are here supplied from a more perfect copy printed in Ancient Songs, from the time of King Henry III. to the Revolution, p. 87 [by Joseph Ritson].
This little piece, which perhaps ought rather to have been printed in stanzas of eight short lines, is written in imitation of a poem of Chaucer's, that will be found in Urry's ed. 1721, p. 555, beginning thus:
"Alone walkyng, In thought plainyng,
And sore sighying, All desolate.
My remembrying Of my livyng
My death wishyng Bothe erly and late.
Infortunate Is so my fate
That wote ye what, Out of mesure
My life I hate; Thus desperate
In such pore estate, Doe I endure," &c.[310]
[This gallant and learned nobleman (brother of Edward IV.'s queen), who was murdered in the forty-first year of his age, figures as a character in Shakspere's Richard III., and as a ghost appears to warn the tyrant on the eve of the battle of Bosworth:
"Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow,
Rivers that died at Pomfret! despair and die.">[