A. E. B.
WINIFREDA.—"CHILDE HAROLD."
(Vol. iii., pp. 27. 108. 155.; Vol. iv. p. 196.)
I have not yet thanked LORD BRAYBROOKE for the obliging manner in which, in reply to my inquiry, he furnished a list of the reputed authors of "Winifreda." His recent note on the same subject gives me an occasion for doing so, while expressing my concurrence in his view that G. A. Stevens was not the author. In short, it may be taken now I think as an established fact, that the author is unknown.
Nevertheless, I do not believe that this poem was written in any part of the seventeenth century. It appears to me to be the work of a true poet in the most vicious age of English poetry, and infected with all its faults. Weakened with epithets, and its language poor and artificial, it rises to nature at the close, than which nothing of the kind can be much better. In the following stanza I do not altogether like the personification of Time:—
"And when with envy, Time transported,
Shall think to rob us of our joys,
You'll in your girls again be courted,
And I'll go wooing in my boys."
A likely thought, truly, for a boy of sixteen! My own impression is, that it did not long precede the age of "the little folks on Strawberry Hill."
Since writing the above I have referred to my copy of Steven's songs, which I had not at hand before. It is the Oxford edition mentioned by LORD BRAYBROOKE; and although it does not contain "Winifreda," a clue, it appears to me, may be drawn from it as to Stevens's connexion with this piece. In the first place, it is to be remarked that the title of the book is, Songs, Comic and Satyrical, by George Alexander Stevens. The motto is from the author's Lecture on Heads, "I love fun!—keep it up!" These circumstances are important, as one would hardly expect to find "Winifreda" in such a volume, though it were by the same author. Yet, there is a song which, though written in a more lilting measure, is quite as much out of place; and this song shows evidence, in my opinion, of Stevens having known and admired "Winifreda." It is entitled "Rural Felicity," and is to be found at page 71 of the volume. Compare the two following stanzas with the last two of "Winifreda:"—