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berland and Derby, and lady Scroope, in their own coaches, and not unfrequently received from them, and others, presents of gold trinkets, besides venison, once a whole stag at a time, and fish and fruit.

It was at the close of this early residence in London, when she was but thirteen years old, that Daniel addressed to her a poetical epistle, from which, as possessing considerable merit in a moral and admonitory point of view, I shall beg leave to extract a few lines.

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TO THE LADY ANNE CLIFFORD.

With so great care doth she that hath brought forth
That comely body, labour to adorn

That better part, the mansion of your mind,

With all the richest furniture of worth

To make ye as highly good as highly born,
And set your virtues equal to your kind.
She tells you how that honour only is
A goodly garment put on fair deserts,
Wherein the smallest stain is greatest seen,
And that it cannot grace unworthiness;
But more apparent shews defective parts,
How gay soever they are deck'd therein.

She tells you, too, how that it bounded is
And kept enclosed with so many eyes,
As that it cannot stray and break abroad
Into the private ways of carelessness;
Nor ever may descend to vulgarise

Or be below the sphere of her abode :

But, like to these supernal bodies set
Within their orbs, must keep the certain course
Of order, destin'd to their proper place :—

Such are your holy bounds, who must convey
(If God so please) the honourable blood
Of Clifford, and of Russel, led aright

To many worthy stems, whose offspring may
Look back with comfort, to have had that good,
To spring from such a branch that grew s' upright:
Since nothing cheers the heart of greatness more
Than the ancestor's fair glory gone before."

One of the most pleasing features in the character of this justly celebrated woman, both in her youth and old age, was her gratitude to, and affection for, her preceptors. She ever delighted to recal them to her recollection, and to associate their existence, as it were, with her own. Thus, in a whole-length picture of her at Appleby castle, we behold a small portrait of her tutor Daniel; and in the side leaves of the great family picture at Skipton castle, where she is likewise drawn at full-length, one compartment exhibiting her at the age of thirteen, and the other in middle life, over the first of these we again perceive the head of Daniel, and accompanied by that of her governess, Mrs. Anne Tayler. In the same leaf, also, she has contrived,

by a representation of her library, to acquaint us with the favourite authors of her early days, among which we find Eusebius, St. Augustine, sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Godfrey of Boulogne, the French Academy, Camden, Ortelius, and Agrippa on the Vanity of Occult Sciences; whilst in the second of these leaves we as distinctly learn what were the chief studies of her maturer age, by the books which are there depicted being wholly confined, with the exception of one on distillations and excellent medicines, to the Bible, Charron on Wisdom, and some pious tracts.

She was, indeed, throughout life a great and persevering reader, deriving from this source some of her dearest consolations; for "whenever her eyes began to fail," relates Dr. Whitaker, "she employed a reader, who marked on every volume or pamphlet the day when he began and ended his task; many books so noted yet remain in the evidence room at Skipton *."

Whilst on this subject, I may add that her affectionate recollection of him who had been a chief instrument in inspiring her with a love of reading

* Hist. of Craven, p. 313.

was still further evinced on her coming into possession of her long-disputed property; for shortly afterwards she placed over the remains of the bard, who had slept unhonoured for half a century in the parish church of Beckington in Somersetshire, a monument at her sole expense, and accompanied by the following inscription:

"Here lies, expecting the second coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the dead body of SAMUEL DANIEL, Esq.; that excellent Poet and Historian, who was Tutor to the Lady ANNE CLIFFORD in her youth, she that was daughter and heir to GEORGE CLIFFORD, Earl of CUMBERLAND; who in gratitude to him erected this monument to his memory, a long time after, when she was Countess Dowager of PEMBROKE, DORSET, and MONTGOMERY. He died in Octob. an. 1619."

It would appear, notwithstanding, that the early years of lady Anne were, from her own account, not passed without incurring numerous perils both from accident and disease, for, whilst enumerating in her Memoirs the mercies which had been vouchsafed to her, she adds, "I must not forget to acknowledge, that in my infancy and youth I have escaped many dangers, both by fire and water, by

passage in coaches and falls from horses, by burning fevers and excessive extremity of bleeding, many times to the great hazard of my life; all which, and many cunning and wicked devices of my ene mies, I have escaped and passed through miraculously; and much the better by the help of the prayers of my devout mother, who incessantly begged of God for my safety and protection."

It was, however, only to her maiden state, and to her last but long widowhood, that this munificent heiress of the Cliffords could, in her closing days, look back with perfect satisfaction and thankfulness; for her married life was one of almost continued vexation and disappointment. Her first lord, Richard Sackville earl of Dorset, was indeed a man of cultivated talents and splendid habits, a competent judge and liberal rewarder of literary merit, but he was, at the same time, extremely licentious in his morals, and inordinately profuse in his expenses. By this nobleman, to whom, with all his faults, she appears to have been strongly attached, the countess had three sons, who died young, and two daughters, Margaret and Isabel, who married the earls of Thanet and Northampton.

VOL. II.

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