[In the following essay, Blunden offers an appreciation of Leapor's poetry.]

Of the agreeable writer whom I am now to discuss, I cannot pretend to offer a sufficient biographical account; and indeed part of my purpose is to encourage some other enthusiast forward with his or her fuller knowledge. Mary Leapor (for that is the name of the poetess) has never been quite forgotten since her death. William Cowper liked her work. She has her little nook in the Dictionary of National Biography. Some of the most discerning anthologists—Robert Southey, Alexander Dyce, and in our own day Sir John Squire selecting his “Women Poets”—have gladly revived a few poems of hers. But Professor Nichol Smith missed or rejected her in compiling his Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse—and if the following paragraphs should bring him to repentance another part of my purpose will be achieved.

Mary Leapor “was born at Marston St. Lawrence, in Northamptonshire, in the year 1722;” her father was gardener to Judge Blencowe. Her mother died early. She removed with him “to Brackley in the same county, where she resided the remainder of her life.” It is stated that for part of it she was cook-maid in a gentleman's family. Though she is described on the title-page of her book as “Mrs.” Mary Leapor, I take it that this was the old-fashioned style, and that she was unmarried. “Mrs. Leapor from her childhood delighted in reading, and particularly Poetry, but had few opportunities of procuring any books of that kind: her whole library consisted of sixteen or seventeen odd volumes, among which were part of the works of Mr. Pope, her greatest favourite, Dryden's Fables, some volumes of plays, etc.” In her day a certain uneducated poet, Stephen Duck the Wiltshire thresher, had found his verses the road to patronage and the company of distinguished people; but it appears unlikely that his example had anything to do with Mary Leapor's love and study of poetry. She was “taken from the World”—by measles, in 1746—“at the time when she first began to meet with encouragement to print” her poems, and “her dying Request” was that they should be “published for the Benefit of her Father.” The “Persons of Rank and of distinguished Taste and Judgement” to whom her papers had been submitted and who had begun “promoting a Subscription for their being printed,” carried their intention into effect. Garrick is credited with drawing up the Prospectus. One of her poems was written on the occasion of her being offered £10 for her collection. Probably the publication brought her father a still larger sum.

In 1748 there appeared Poems upon Several Occasions, by Mrs. Leapor of Brackley in Northamptonshire. London, Printed and Sold by J. Roberts in Warwick-Lane. Three years later the same publisher brought out “The Second and Last Volume.” The editor was Isaac Hawkins Browne the elder. In 1755 a selection of “Poems by Eminent Ladies” was published, in two volumes, the second of which contains a hundred and twenty pages of Mary Leapor's work. Dyce says that the editors who honoured her memory so handsomely were Colman and Bonnel Thornton,—men at that time prominent in journalism and the literary stage; and he notices a later edition of their book, about 1780, which I have not seen. “There is,” they said, “no good reason to be assigned why the poetical attempts of females should not be well received. … This collection is not inferior to any miscellany compiled from the works of men.” And almost one-fifth of it was the production of the young Northamptonshire girl, of whom perhaps they were particularly mindful in observing that “most of these Ladies (like many of our greatest men writers) were more indebted to nature for their success, than to education.”

One of the qualities of Mary Leapor's poetry is the ease and good humour of her self-portraiture, far removed from the querulous or savage tones of many writers in humble circumstances and equally free of stiffness, bowing and scraping. For poetical purposes she called herself, anagrammatically, Mira. Let me follow Mira without tears through her two volumes. She makes her Will in rhyme:—

                                                            . … and then
To the small poets I bequeath my pen.
Let a small sprig (true emblem of my rhyme)
Of blasted laurel on my hearse recline;
Let some grave wight, that struggles for renown
By chanting dirges through a market-town,
With gentle step precede the solemn train;
A broken flute upon his arm shall lean.
Six comic poets may the corse surround,
And all freeholders,—if they can be found …

She writes an “Epistle to a Lady,” in which with more of real foreboding she anticipates her early death. This will have been one of her latest compositions, for she mentions her age in it:—

'Tis twenty winters, (if it is no more)
To speak the truth it may be twenty-four;
As many springs their 'pointed space have run,
Since Mira's eyes first open'd on the sun.
'Twas when the flocks on slabby hillocks lie,
And the cold Fishes rule the wat'ry sky.

She speaks of her happy dreams, in which

          books and pictures in bright order rise,
And painted parlours swim before her eyes,

until

She wakes, alas! to business and to woes,
To sweep her kitchen, and to mend her clothes.

The dreams and the disappointments alike are coming to an end:

But see pale sickness with her languid eyes,
At whose appearance all delusion flies:
The world recedes, its vanities decline,
Clorinda's features seem as faint as mine:
Gay robes no more the aking sight admires,
Wit grates the ear, and melting music tires:
Its wonted pleasures with each sense decay,
Books please no more, and paintings fade away;
The sliding joys in misty vapours end:
Yet let me still, ah! let me grasp a friend:
And when each joy, when each lov'd object flies,
Be you the last that leaves my closing eyes.

Her great desire had been to find friends who would understand her and indulge her in her literary and intellectual habits. In genial verses she hints that her village neighbours were not altogether satisfied with her goings on. One of her numerous Pastorals, for instance, entitled, “Corydon: Phillario; or, Mira's Picture,” seems to be derived from actualities. Corydon is a shepherd, Phillario a man of business taking his ease in the country; Mira approaches as they talk.

PHILLARIO.
But who is she that walks on yonder hill,
With studious brows, and night-cap dishabille?
That looks a stranger to the beams of day,
And counts her steps, and mutters all the way?
CORYDON.
'Tis Mira, daughter to a friend of mine;
'Tis she that makes your—what-d'ye call—your rhyme.
I own the girl is something out o' th' way:
But how d'ye like her? good Phillario, say!

Phillario is unimpressed, and Corydon has to admit something arguable in his opinion:

Her eyes are dim, you'll say: Why, that is true:
I've heard the reason, and I'll tell it you.
By a rush-candle (as her father says)
She sits whole evenings reading wicked plays.
PHILLARIO
She read!—She'd better milk her brindled cows.
I wish the candle does not singe her brows,
So like a dry furze-faggot; and, beside,
Not quite so even as a mouse's bide.
CORYDON.
Come, come; you view her with malicious eyes:
Her shape—
PHILLARIO.
—Where mountains upon mountains rise?
And, as they fear'd some treachery at hand,
Behind her ears her list'ning shoulders stand.

It is recorded that Mary Leapor was “indeed plain” in person, but that though in this poem “she has made very free with herself, yet her appearance was by no means disagreeable.”

She frequently addresses one of her friends of superior position under the name Artemisia; she invites her to tea,—

If Artemisia's Soul can dwell
Four hours in a tiny Cell,
(To give that Space of Bliss to me)
I wait my Happiness at three.
Our Tommy in a Jug shall bring
Clear Nectar from the bubbling Spring:
The Cups shall on the Table stand,
The Sugar and the Spoons at hand:
A skilful Hand shall likewise spread
Soft Butter on the yielding Bread;
And (as you eat but mighty little,
And seem an arrant Foe to Vittle)
You'll cry perhaps, One Bit may do,
But I'm resolv'd it shall be two:
With you and your Amanda blest,
Care flies away from Mira's Breast;
O'er stubborn Flax no more I grieve,
But stick the Needle in my Sleeve;
For let them work on Holiday
Who won't be idle when they may …
Now to the Company we fall,
'Tis Me and Mira that is all:
More wou'd you have—Dear Madam, then
Count me and Mira o'er agen.

It is to this Artemisia that Mary Leapor addresses one of the best of her longer poems, called “Crumble Hall”—perhaps someone in Northamptonshire knows the place she describes so well as it was in her day. Or has it gone the way of Charles Lamb's “Blakesmoor in H——shire”?

Of this rude palace might a poet sing
From cold December to returning Spring;
Tell how the building spreads on either hand,
And two grim giants o'er the portals stand;
Whose grisled beards are neither comb'd nor shorn,
But look severe, and horribly adorn.
Then step within—there stands a goodly row
Of oaken pillars—where a gallant show
Of mimic pears and carv'd pomgranates twine,
With the plump clusters of the spreading vine.
Strange forms above present themselves to view;
Some mouths that grin, some smile, and some that spew. …
Safely the mice thro' you dark passage run,
Where the dim windows ne'er admit the sun.
Along each wall the stranger blindly feels;
And trembling dreads a spectre at his heels. …
See! yon brown parlour on the left appears,
For nothing famous but its leathern chairs,
Whose shining nails like polish'd armour glow,
And the dull clock beats audible and slow.

And so she leads the way through the house, with a friendly joke on the tapestry here, the dusty books there,—on the lumber that has made its way in,

Grey Dobbin's gears, and drenching-horns enow;
Wheel-spokes—the irons of a tatter'd plough,—

and comes to the servants. It is still the age when the farm labourers take their meals in the great house,

O'er the warm kettles, and the sav'ry steams,
Grave Colinettus of his oxen dreams:
Then, starting, anxious for his new-mown hay,
Runs headlong out to view the doubtful day:
But dinner calls with more prevailing charms:
And surly Gruffo in his aukward arms
Bears the tall jug, and turns a glaring eye
As tho' he fear'd some insurrection nigh
From the fierce crew that gaping stand a-dry.

It has been claimed for our authoress that at a time when few of our poets had any sense of the countryside she wrote of it with particularity and love. I do not think the general statement about early eighteenth century poets will bear examination, though few of them went in strong chase “of Flora and the country green”; but among them certainly the gardener's daughter has a way with her flowers and fruit and trees and birds. In an eclogue called “The Month of August” she puts the case for the contented peasant and as she does so displays in warm colouring the little world she inherited. Sylvanus, “a Courtier,” invites Phillis “a Country Maid” into his gardens; but (the Squire generally loses on these occasions) Phillis declines. He describes his vines, his nectarines, peaches, figs, espaliers of pears—she retorts,

In vain you tempt me while our orchard bears
Long-keeping russets, lovely Cath'rine pears,
Pearmains and codlings, wheaten plums enow,
And the black damsons load the bending bough.
No pruning-knives our fertile branches teaze,
While your's must grow but as their masters please.
The grateful trees our mercy well repay,
And rain us bushels at the rising day.

Sylvanus changes his attack.

Fair are my gardens, yet you slight them all;
Then let us haste to you majestick hall;

he asks whether his drawing-room, cool fountain, orange-flowers and art collection are “not fairer than a thresher's barn”? Phillis thinks not:

Believe me, I can find no charms at all
In your fine carpets and your painted hall.
'Tis true our parlour has an earthen floor,
The sides of plaster and of elm the door;
Yet the rubb'd chest and table sweetly shines,
And the spread mint along the window climbs:
An aged laurel keeps away the sun,
And two cool streams across the garden run.

Sylvanus makes a final effort:—

Can feasts or musick win my lovely maid?—

he invites her to dinner, with orchestral accompaniment. No luck. The “simple maid” is already engaged.

Not this will lure me, for I'd have you know
This night to feast with Corydon I go:
To night his reapers bring the gather'd grain
Home to his barns, and leave the naked plain:
Then been and coleworts, beans and bacon too,
And the plum-pudding of delicious hue,
Sweet-spiced cake, and apple-pies good store
Deck the brown board; who can desire more?
His flute and tabor too Amyntor brings,
And while he plays soft Amaryllis sings.

At moments one might almost fancy Mary Leapor had read Theocritus, and indeed she may well have met with the hearty, homely translation by Creech. In her description of dawn she vies with Elizabethan dramatic poets:

Old night had more than half her progress run;
The stars grew paler at the distant sun;
The chearful east was streak'd with lighter grey;
And the shrill lark began to look for day.

Her “Winter” (another poem specially meant for Artemisia) is an imitation of an Epistle by Ambrose Philips from Copenhagen, a composition long famous among the connoisseurs—but the imitation glows into originality when she comes to close quarters with her subject.

The silent linnet views the gloomy sky,
Sculks to his hawthorn, nor attempts to fly:
Then heavy clouds send down the feather'd snow;
Through naked trees the hollow tempests blow;
The shepherd sighs, but not his sighs prevail;
To the soft snow succeeds the rushing hail;
And these white prospects soon resign their room
To melting showers or unpleasing gloom;
The nymphs and swains their aking fingers blow,
Shun the cold rains, and bless the kinder snow;
While the faint travellers around them see
Here seas of mud, and there a leafless tree;
No budding leaves, no honey-suckles gay,
No yellow crow-foots paint the dirty way;
The lark sits mournful as afraid to rise,
And the sad finch his softer song denies.
Poor daggled Urs'la stalks from cow to cow,
Who to her sighs return a mournful low;
While their full udders her broad hands assail,
And her sharp nose hangs dropping o'er the pail.
With garments trickling like a shallow spring,
And his wet locks all twisted in a string,
Afflicted Cymon waddles thro' the mire,
And rails at Win'fred creeping o'er the fire.

It is easy to see that Mary Leapor enjoyed writing about the people of her village as much as of the scenes and seasons round her; and she may have taken special pleasure in the impression she made on some of them—the mystery they found in her use of pen, ink and paper. One day she is using them for “The Epistle of Deborah Dough,” an amusing record of rustic outlook two hundred years ago.

Dearly beloved Cousin, These
Are sent to thank you for your Cheese:
The Price of Oats is greatly fell:
I hope your Children all are well,
(Likewise the Calf you take delight in)
As I am at this present writing.
But I've no News to send you now;
Only I've lost my brindled Cow;
And that has greatly sunk my Dairy:
But I forgot our Neighbour Mary;
Our Neighbour Mary,—who, they say,
Sits scribble—scribble all the Day,
And making—what—I can't remember,
But sure 'tis something like December;
A frosty Morning—Let me see—
O! now I have it to a T.
She throws away her precious Time
In scrawling nothing else but Rhyme;
Of which, they say, she's mighty proud,
And lifts her Nose above the Croud;
Tho' my young Daughter Cicely
Is taller by a Foot than she,
And better learnt (as People say)
Can knit a Stocken in a Day:
Can make a Pudden, plump and rare;
And boil her Bacon, to an Hair:
Will coddle Apples nice and green,
And fry her Pancakes—like a Queen.
But there's a Man that keeps a Dairy,
Will clip the Wings of Neighbour Mary:
Things wonderful they talk of him,
But I've a Notion 'tis a whim.
Howe'er, 'tis Certain he can make
Your Rhymes as thick as Plumb in Cake:
Nay more, they say, that from the Pot
He'll take his Porridge, scalding hot,
And drink 'em down;—and yet they tell ye
Those Porridge shall not burn his Belley:
A Cheese-cake o'er his Head he'll throw;
And when 'tis on the Stones below
It shan't be found so much as quaking,
Provided 'tis of his Wife's making:
From this some People would infer
That this good Man's a Conjurer.
But I believe it is a Lye;
I never thought him so; not I:
Tho' Win'fred Hobble, who, you know,
Is plagu'd with Corns on ev'ry Toe,
Sticks on his Verse with fast'ning spittle,
And says it helps her feet a little.
Old Frances too his paper tears,
And tucks it close behind her Ears;
And (as she told me t'other Day)
It charm'd her Tooth-ach quite away. …

Deborah Dough reappears in an eclogue, with Cicely and Joan—a poem well worth finding for the sake of its touch of history. Cicely is distressed because her sweetheart has enlisted. Joan comforts her by saying, “the Duke is to his Soldiers kind.” Deborah arrives with a quart of beer and reports the Duke's victory over the rebels.

We've kill'd two thousand of the Rogues (d'ye mind?)
Egad, their Gen'ral durst not look behind;
Tho' Gaffer Doubt-man (with the blinking eye)
Says 'tis but Fifty—and that's pretty nigh.

All drink the health of the Duke of Cumberland—

Hark, the Men shout, and Bonfires light the Plain:
Then shall we sit and lick our lips in vain?

The end is “Bring t'other Quart.” Such was the spirit of the country in the days of the Forty-Five.

But let me return to Mary Leapor herself, in her little room, studying Pope and Rowe and Prior, and finding her way in versification. She is witty and ingenious, and clearly does not intend to be confined in “this low pinfold” of the bucolic existence. She tries her skill in satires, moral essays, devotional odes—kinds of writing which the Town approves. She will not be considered deficient in the item of classical allusion,—and one of her cleverest improvisations transforms a ten-party into

                                                            a sacrifice
To the Pernassian deities,
Which I am ordered by Apollo
To shew you in the words that follow.

She loves her easy-seeming allusion to Jove and Cythera, to Homer, Virgil, Ovid; so writing, she seems to move among the British poets already, in “the gay busy town.”

Her being a poet is a fact which itself often impels her verses. “To Grammaticus” is a letter in rhyme “atoning” for her sending her verses to him and wounding his ear; she offers a cure,

For that Incisions made by Rhymes
Are worse than Ulcers fifty Times …
And give unutterable Pain
To the small Fibres of the Brain.

“An Epistle to Artemisia: on Fame” presently approaches

Ev'n Mira's Self, presuming on the Bays,

and provides some history of the reception of her poems in manuscript. “Once Delpho read,” but Delpho declined to give an opinion on their chances of success. Then

Cressida comes, the next unbidden Guest;
Small was her Top-knot, and her Judgment less:
A decent Virgin, blest with idle Time,
Now gingles Bobbins; and now ponders Rhime:
Not ponders—reads—Not reads—but looks 'em o'er
To little purpose, like a thousand more.
‘Your Servant, Molly.’ ‘I am yours the same’
‘I pay this Visit, Molly, to your Fame:
‘Twas that that brought me here; or let me die.’
‘My Fame's oblig'd: And truly so am I.’
‘Then fetch me something; for I must not stay,
Above four Hours.’ ‘But you'll drink some Tea?’
We sip and read; we laugh, and chat between,
The Air is pleasant, and the Fields are green.
‘Well, Molly, sure, there never was thy Fellow.
But don't my Ruffles look exceeding yellow?
My Apron's dirty—Mira, well, I vow,
That Thought of yours was very pretty now.
I've read the like, tho' I forget the Place:
But, Mrs. Mira, How d'ye like my Lace?’
Afflicted Mira, with a languid eye,
Now views the Clock, and now the Western Sky.
‘The Sun grows lower: Will you please to walk?’
‘No; read some more.’ ‘But I had rather talk.’
‘Perhaps you're tired.’ ‘Truly that may be.’
‘Or think me weak.’ ‘Why, Cressy, Thoughts are free.’
At last we part, with Congees at the Door:
‘I'd thank you, Mira; but my Thanks are poor.
I wish, alas! But Wishes are in vain.
I like your Garden; and I'll come again.
Dear, how I wish!—I do, or let me die
That we liv'd near’—Thinks Mira, ‘So don't I.’

After Gressida, there came Vido whose business was to commend; and Codrus, a rival poet

Who pour'd thick Sonnets like a troubled Spring;

and Parthenia, who didn't think much of women writers; and Sophronia, who thought still less and said still more of them; and at last the kind, the sensitive Artemisia.

Towards the end of the Epistle “On Fame,” unkind mention is made of “soft Pappilia” who, finding time hang on her hands through the wet weather, tells someone to “run to Leapor's, fetch that idle Play.” This Play, which may have been the tragedy in blank verse entitled “The Unhappy Father,” was a conspicuous part of the authoress's later life. She sends it in manuscript “To a Gentleman,” and a careful rhyming letter with it, comparing herself to a country matron anxiously witnessing her child's departure for service in London—

On the pure ghost of Win'fred then she calls
To guard her child within its guilty walls.
So this rude babe I to your mercy yield,
Rough as the soil of some untillag'd field:
Can nature please?—

She modestly asks, with her customary jest, that at least her play may be lodged in “some little corner” in A Gentleman's house.

Where the fierce rat (all dreadful) never climbs,
Nor the sleek mouse, sad foe to Mira's rhymes.

But other perils awaited her bantling—at least, we know of no other travels except to A Gentleman, and from such a visit one manuscript reappeared a trifle altered. This is shown by the delightful stanzas “Upon Her Play Being Returned to Her, Stained with Claret.” It would be sacrilege to abbreviate this clever and yet pathetic little poem.

Welcome, dear wanderer, once more!
          Thrice welcome to thy native cell!
Within this peaceful humble door
          Let thou and I contented dwell!
But say, O whither hast thou rang'd?
          Why dost thou blush a crimson hue?
Thy fair complexion's greatly chang'd:
          Why, I can scarce believe 'tis you.
Then tell, my son, O tell me, where
          Didst thou contract this sottish dye?
You kept ill company, I fear,
          When distant from your parent's eye.
Was it for this, O graceless child!
          Was it for this you learn'd to spell?
Thy face and credit both are spoil'd:
          Go drown thyself in yonder well.
I wonder how thy time was spent:
          No news (alas!) hast thou to bring?
Hast thou not climb'd the Monument?
          Nor seen the Lions, nor the King?
But now I'll keep you here secure:
          No more you view the smoaky sky:
The Court was never made (I'm sure)
          For idiots, like thee and I.

Born into a period which favoured philosophic and moral discussion in the works of its poets, the period of the “Essay on Man” and “Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality,” Mary Leapor naturally devoted some of her notebooks to her serious speculation and belief. The compositions thus produced, with Pope's method and manner very much in her view, do not at the present moment give the liveliest proofs of her original vein. She opens her reflections “On Mr. Pope's Universal Prayer” with these couplets:

Ah thou! whom nature and thy stars design'd
At once the joy and envy of mankind,
To thy lov'd memory this sigh I send,
To thee a stranger, to thy lines a friend:
How blest the Muse cou'd she like thine aspire,
So smooth her accent, and sublime her fire;
With bright description make the bosom glow,
Charm like thy sense, and like thy numbers flow:
O teach my soul to reach the seats divine,
And praise her Maker in a strain like thine.

The numbers indeed flow, the sentiments pass by in a creditable imitation of the man whom they commemorate; but one might expect anyone's signature, Mary Leapor's or five hundred others.

Still, she is able to be herself even under the burden of this ethical and metrical convention; in “The Question, occasion'd by a serious Admonition,” she examines her case directly and with warmth of feeling. “Is Mirth a Crime?”

If (like the most) my undistinguish'd Days
Deserve not much of Censure or of Praise:
If my still Life, like subterraneous Streams,
Glides unobserv'd, nor tainted by Extremes,
Nor dreadful Crime has stain'd its early Page,
To hoard up Terrors for reflecting Age;
Let me enjoy the sweet suspense of Woe,
When Heaven strikes me, I shall own the Blow:
Till then let me indulge one simple Hour,
Like the pleas'd Infant o'er a painted Flower;
Idly, 'tis true, but guiltlessly the Time
Is spent in trifling with a harmless Rhyme.
Heroick Virtue asks a noble Mind,
A Judgment strong, and Passions well refin'd:
But if that Virtue's measur'd by the Will,
'Tis surely something to abstain from Ill.

What occupies her in another poem called “The Enquiry” is not so personal, yet she contrives to give it her own touches. Finding people inclined to “let Nature rest” as inscrutable, and disdain the astronomers, she enquires why? Why were we given eyes to see the stars, “a thinking Soul” to meditate on their motions and their atmospheres or even their populations? She passes like Pope and Thomson (but I am not clear from her style that she had met with “The Seasons”) to adoration of creative omnipotence, and the gradation of living beings. It is not the train of thought but the naive and genuine approach which makes her freshly readable here:

And there are Creatures which no Eye can see,
That for a Moment live and breathe like me:
Whom a small Fly in bulk as far exceeds
As you tall Cedar does the waving reeds.

The possibilities of “Worlds in Miniature” particularly lure on her young fancy

Where little Forests on a Leaf appear
And drops of Dew are mighty Oceans there:
These may have Whales that in their Waters play,
And wanton out their Age of half a Day:
In these small Groves the smaller Birds may sing,
And share like us their Winter and their Spring.
Pluck off you Acorn from its Parent Bough,
Divide that Acorn in the midst—and now
In its firm Kernel a fair Oak is seen
With spreading Branches of a sprightly Green:
From this young Tree a Kernel might we rend,
There would another its small Boughs extend.
All Matter lives, and shews its Maker's Power;
There's not a Seed but what contains a Flower:
Tho' unobserv'd its secret Beauty lies
Till we are blest with Microscopick Eyes.
When for blue Plumbs our longing Palate calls,
Or scarlet Cherries that adorn the Walls,
With each plump Fruit we swallow down a Tree,
And so destroy whole Groves that else would be
As large and perfect as those Shades we see.

Lingering over Mary Leapor's poems, I cannot evade the revisitings of another Northamptonshire poet, born perhaps with even fewer prospects of worldly fortune than she. To compare her broadly with John Clare would be an error. She died young; he, as he said, “having lived too long.” She spent her life, so far as I can discern, in circumstances of regularity and security (though far from affluence); he, in early manhood, partly through labour troubles and partly through his own recklessness, saw more of the frowning aspects of existence. But there is a deeper difference between these two extraordinary persons. Mary Leapor is eagerly concerned with the human comedy, with men and women in their wisdom or their folly, with the tricks of the world (little as she has had of the world), with paradox and satire, with herself as a luckless but merry adventurer among the figures and passions of life. Of what is called “nature” she is a simple lover—she has known it from the first—without much profundity of insight. She does not write poems to evening primroses, or morning stars, or dormice, or ancient oaks, or rivers, though all those are saluted as part of the frame of the circling year she loves. In short, her strongest characteristic appears to me that of the potential novelist or dramatist; and I half or almost half claim that the play which went to town and came home splashed with claret was a comedy.

Now Clare, by contrast, was destined for nature poetry; he had an inexhaustible and thrilling curiosity for “animated nature,” and though he was not without his shrewdness in the affairs of human society he was instinctively led away into

                                                                                                    a lonely place,
And chanted a melody loud and sweet

in delight at the “blue hawk” or the fairy ring. Mankind for him were like antkind, or mousekind—part of the larger world of nature's ways and the song of eternity.

Moreover, whatever the explanation may have been, the Northamptonshire Peasant possessed that gift without which no poetry can ever truly thrive. He was capable of infinite melodiousness. If he fell into some monotony of form and metre at certain periods, nevertheless, one may find in him a great variety of song. Not without justice and larger significance has Professor Lascelles Abercrombie pointed out the exquisite newness of one of his Asylum poems in its metrical effect. Mary Leapor, on the evidence of the verse we have of hers, was without that inner fountain of cadences. Her measures are simpler and she appears not to think of anything more audacious than writing a few forms skilfully and with point. The iambic was Pope's mainstay and it was good enough for her. But Pope, now and then at least, deserted his couplets for stanzas with another movement, and so does she; and when she does her instinct for a completeness of design is notable. To take an instance, and one which attests not merely her power of rounding off a poem and drawing a general richness of sound from her words but also her charm of lively humour, here shall be given her “Song to Cloe, playing on her Spinet.”

When Cloe strikes the trembling Strings,
Applauding Cupids round her fly;
Exulting clap their little Wings,
Bask'd in the Sun-shine of her Eye.
                    The Graces too,
                    As others do,
In Raptures stand to hear,
Time stays his flagging Wings, and adds
One Hour to the rolling Year:
          Keep off, ye Beaus,
          For who but knows
That Cloe's Eyes can wound?
If those you miss—yet pray avoid
The Danger of enchanting Sound.
          Amphion led the ravish'd Stones
(They say)—and as he'd rise or fall,
Bricks, Pebbles, Slats, and Marrow-Bones
Wou'd form a Steeple or a Wall:
                    But this, you know,
                    Is long ago:
We fancy 'tis a Whim:
O had they charming Cloe heard,
They'd surely not have stir'd for him.
                    The Thracian Bard,
                    Whose Fate was hard,
(And Proserpine severe)
Had brought Eurydice back—alas!
But Cloe was not there.

Fungar inani munere. Memorials such as the present tiny sprig of laurel (Mary would have said elder) leave their maker lamenting. It should have been one day in 1746, at Brackley, when she was well and looking with some hopefulness on the future of herself among the authors, that these words should have been spoken on the subject of her poems. But probably she would only have added one more quick sketch to the gallery of interruptors in her “Epistle to Artemisia.”