In soft assemblage, listen to my song, Which thy own season paints; when nature all And see where surly Winter passes off, As yet the trembling year is unconfirm❜d, 10 15 20 * This distinguished lady was Frances Thynne, eldest daughter and co-heir of the Honourable Henry Thynne, the son of Thomas, first Viscount Weymouth. She married Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford, who, in 1748, succeeded to the Dukedom and estates of his father; by which event she became Duchess of Somerset. She was one of the ladies of the bedchamber to Queen Caroline. If the portrait, in Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, (vol. iv. p. 239.), be a correct likeness, the Duchess of Somerset could not be described as a regular beauty. Her forehead was rather low, and the upper lip too long; yet her eyes were good and expressive of intellect; and her mouth of amiability: the whole of the lower portion of the face was well formed and beautiful. Her carriage was dignified; but it displayed somewhat of the stiffness which was the general characteristic of the sex in her time. If her Grace, however, could not be ranked among the beauties of her period, the whole tenor of her life was exemplary and unexceptionable. Her conjugal felicity was enviable; she adored her husband, and survived him only four years. His Grace died in 1750, after which the Duchess retired to Percy lodge, near Colnbrook, where she lived until her death, in 1754. "In all her friendly attachments," says Mr. Bingley, her biographer," she was sincere, tender, and affectionate. In her family she was ever anxiously alive to the call of duty. During the long sickness of her husband, she was his principal nurse and attendant: and in care respecting the education of her children, inspiring into their youthful minds the principles of virtue and the love of religion, The bittern knows his time with bill ingulf'd To shake the sounding marsh*; or, from the shore she has had but too few equals in her rank of life. Her acquirements in literature were various, and her reading, particularly in history, appears to have been very extensive."1 Her Grace, when Countess of Hartford, was the patroness of our poet, who appended to the first edition of his Spring, a dedication which has not been reprinted, in which he eulogizes her love of rural scenery, the poetic vein of her mind, and the piety of her life. He afterwards, unfortunately, forfeited her esteem from a circumstance which Dr. Johnson has erroneously stated. The Countess was in the habit of inviting annually to her house in the country some of the most popular poets to hear her verses and assist her studies. "This honour," says Dr. Johnson, "was one summer conferred on Thomson, who took more delight in carousing with Lord Hartford than assisting her Ladyship's poetical operations: "2 consequently, he was not again invited. But it has been affirmed, with more probability, that our author lost her Grace's friendship by promising to write, at her request, a poetical description of Vaucluse, which he did not perform. The Duchess's poetical effusions have an elegance of style, but they are not of the highest order or merit: they are chiefly contained in Dr. Watts's Miscellany, and in her Correspondence. She is not to be judged by her literature: the eulogy which the poet has bestowed upon her, none has ever disputed; and what higher praise could be bestowed? * This bird is the Ardea stellaris of Linnæus and Pennant3, the Botaurus stellaris of Selby, the Bittour of our ancestors. It is a tall bird the general colour of the plumage is rusty-yellow, streaked and barred with dark-brown; a tuft of black feathers on the crown of the head, and the feathers on the neck loose and waving; the legs are strong, of a pale green colour; and the feet furnished with long claws. The length of the bird is two feet and a half; the bill four inches long, brown above and green below. The nest is made of sticks and rushes, among reeds in marshy ground, in April, and usually contains four or five pale brown-coloured eggs. The provincial name, " Mire-drum," originates from the booming noise which the bird always makes during the breeding season, and which the poet refers to in the expression "shakes the sounding marsh." The above passage of the poem might seem to imply that the bittern is migratory; but it is found in Britain throughout the year. favourite locality is Manton Common, near Brigg, in Lincolnshire. Its 1 Prefatory Memoir to her Correspondence, edited by Mr. W. Bingley, in 3 vols. p. xv. 2 Lives of the Poets, iv. 252. 3 Brit. Zool. vol. ii. p. 14. 4 Brit. Ornith, vol. ii. p. 30, The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath, And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.*, 25 In the autumnal evenings, when the Bittern was more common than in the present day, it was often seen to soar, in a spiral line, to an amazing height, screaming in a peculiar note. The food of the Bittern is small fish, frogs, water newts, and some aquatic vegetable substances. The bird was formerly prized for the table; and when falconry was the favourite sport of the English gentry, it was one of those quarries which constituted what were called "great flights." It was protected by severe penalties, and even one year's imprisonment, and a fine of eightpence for each egg, was the punishment for destroying the eggs (Stat. 25 Henry VIII., confirmed by Edward VI.). The bill of the Bittern placed the hawk in some danger, even after the bird was brought down; for, when wounded and on the ground, by striking at the eye, he often blinded the falcon; it was, therefore, the duty of the falconer to rescue the hawk by plunging the bill of the Bittern into the ground. * The golden Plover (Charadrius pluvialis Linn. and Pennant, Brit. Zool. vol. ii. p. 98., the Cwttyn yr Aur of the ancient British) is a well-known bird, found, according to many naturalists, in the four quarters of the globe; but, according to Mr. Selby its range is confined to Europe, northern Asia, and a few districts of Africa. It is about the size of a pigeon, has a straight, slender, compressed bill, shorter than the head, black legs, with three toes on each foot, all directed forwards, but the inner one only free, the middle and external being united by a short membrane. The plumage varies in summer and in winter. In the former season, the upper parts of the body are deep black, with small spots of a bright golden hue dispersed over all the borders of the feathers: the front and the space between the eyes are white, and this extends in a narrow space curved over the eye, and downwards on the side of the body, varied with large black and yellow spots; the lateral parts of the head, the breast, and the lower portion of the body, are deep black. In winter, the throat and lower parts become white, varied and spotted with ashy brown and yellow. In this island it forms a very inartificial nest, in a shallow depression in the ground, on heathy hills. The eggs are four in number, of a greenish-cream colour, covered with irregular umber. brown blotches. The young quit the nest almost as soon as they are hatched, and follow their parents for four or five weeks, after which they are able to fly and provide for themselves. When tending the brood, the old birds employ a number of stratagems to divert the attention of any one approaching them. They feign At last from Aries rolls the bounteous sun, And the bright Bull receives him.* Then no more The expansive atmosphere is cramp'd with cold; lameness, tumble over as if unable to fly; and then, after running for some distance, they take wing and perform many gyrations before again alighting. This is not, however, peculiar to the golden Plover; the Lapwing adopts the same stratagem. Shakspeare employs it as a metaphor, Far from her nest, the lapwing cries" away."- Comedy of Errors. When on the wing the Plover utters a peculiar shrill monotonous whistle or call note, which is so easily imitated by sportsmen, that the birds can be enticed within gun shot. When merely wounded they run so fast that they often escape. Towards the end of August the Plover leaves the moors, and descending to the cultivated vales, gets fat by picking up the larvæ and worms in the newly-sown wheat fields; but as the winter draws on it moves to the coast, where it remains until the approach of spring, as described in the poem. In autumn, when the Plover is fat, it is eaten, and is scarcely inferior to the woodcock; but it was more esteemed formerly than at present. The Plover's eggs, regarded as a delicacy, and frequently seen at the tables of the opulent and luxurious, are not those of the golden plover, but of the Lapwing. There are several other species of the family known in this country; among which may be mentioned the Dottrel (Charadrius Morinellus Linn. and Penn., Brit. Zool. vol. ii. p. 102.), and the Peewit or Lapwing (Tringa vanellus Linn. and Penn., Brit. Zool. vol. ii. p. 66.); the latter of which, as already mentioned, furnishes the plover's eggs of the London market. The person who robs the nest always leaves one egg to induce the bird again to make up the number, which is four. They are of an olive colour, spotted and blotched with black. * Aries and Taurus, the ram and the bull, are two signs of the ecliptic, into the latter of which the sun is supposed to enter on the 20th of April. The ecliptic is an imaginary circle in the heavens, which shows the sun's apparent annual course. It runs along the middle of another imaginary broad circle, the zodiac, intersecting the equator at an angle of 23° 28′ nearly, and touching the tropic of Cancer on one side of the equator, and the tropic of Capricorn on the other side. Astronomers have divided this circle into twelve equal parts, each part containing thirty degrees; and have named these after the twelve constellations of the zodiac, the signs of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, But, full of life and vivifying soul, Lifts the light clouds sublime, and spreads them thin, Fleecy, and white, o'er all surrounding heaven. Forth fly the tepid airs; and unconfin'd, Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays. Joyous, the impatient husbandman perceives Relenting nature, and his lusty steers 31 35 Drives from their stalls to where the well-us'd plough 40 They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil, The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene. Be gracious, Heaven! for now laborious man Has done his part. Ye fost'ring breezes, blow! Ye softening dews, ye tender showers, descend! And temper all, thou world-reviving sun, 50 50 Aquarius, and Pisces. The time, which the sun takes, of apparently passing through any one of these signs, is termed a solar month. But the ecliptic shows, in reality, the course of the earth annually round the sun. The sun's apparent motion is dependent on each period of the earth's course, in which he must be betwixt the earth and some one of the signs; therefore, although the earth only has changed its place, yet to an observer standing on it, the sun appears to have moved. The earth is always in the opposite sign to that one in which the sun appears. The sign of Aries is that division of the ecliptic which intersects the equator; where, owing to what is called the earth's declination, the sun appears to pass to the northern side of the equator, producing our vernal equinox. |