Kenilworth | Page 5

lady so
pitifully murdered, instead of saying pitifully slain. This Earl, after all
his murders and poisonings, was himself poisoned by that which was
prepared for others (some say by his wife at Cornbury Lodge before
mentioned), though Baker in his Chronicle would have it at
Killingworth; anno 1588." [Ashmole's Antiquities of Berkshire, vol.i.,
p.149. The tradition as to Leicester's death was thus communicated by
Ben Jonson to Drummond of Hawthornden:--"The Earl of Leicester
gave a bottle of liquor to his Lady, which he willed her to use in any
faintness, which she, after his returne from court, not knowing it was
poison, gave him, and so he died."--BEN JONSON'S INFORMATION
TO DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN, MS., SIR ROBERT
SIBBALD'S COPY.]
The same accusation has been adopted and circulated by the author of
Leicester's Commonwealth, a satire written directly against the Earl of
Leicester, which loaded him with the most horrid crimes, and, among
the rest, with the murder of his first wife. It was alluded to in the
Yorkshire Tragedy, a play erroneously ascribed to Shakespeare, where
a baker, who determines to destroy all his family, throws his wife
downstairs, with this allusion to the supposed murder of Leicester's
lady,--
"The only way to charm a woman's tongue Is, break her neck--a
politician did it."

The reader will find I have borrowed several incidents as well as names
from Ashmole, and the more early authorities; but my first
acquaintance with the history was through the more pleasing medium
of verse. There is a period in youth when the mere power of numbers
has a more strong effect on ear and imagination than in more advanced
life. At this season of immature taste, the author was greatly delighted
with the poems of Mickle and Langhorne, poets who, though by no
means deficient in the higher branches of their art, were eminent for
their powers of verbal melody above most who have practised this
department of poetry. One of those pieces of Mickle, which the author
was particularly pleased with, is a ballad, or rather a species of elegy,
on the subject of Cumnor Hall, which, with others by the same author,
was to be found in Evans's Ancient Ballads (vol. iv., page 130), to
which work Mickle made liberal contributions. The first stanza
especially had a peculiar species of enchantment for the youthful ear of
the author, the force of which is not even now entirely spent; some
others are sufficiently prosaic.
CUMNOR HALL.
The dews of summer night did fall; The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall, And many an oak that grew thereby,
Now nought was heard beneath the skies, The sounds of busy life were
still, Save an unhappy lady's sighs, That issued from that lonely pile.
"Leicester," she cried, "is this thy love That thou so oft hast sworn to
me, To leave me in this lonely grove, Immured in shameful privity?
"No more thou com'st with lover's speed, Thy once beloved bride to see;
But be she alive, or be she dead, I fear, stern Earl, 's the same to thee.
"Not so the usage I received When happy in my father's hall; No
faithless husband then me grieved, No chilling fears did me appal.
"I rose up with the cheerful morn, No lark more blithe, no flower more
gay; And like the bird that haunts the thorn, So merrily sung the
livelong day.

"If that my beauty is but small, Among court ladies all despised, Why
didst thou rend it from that hall, Where, scornful Earl, it well was
prized?
"And when you first to me made suit, How fair I was you oft would say!
And proud of conquest, pluck'd the fruit, Then left the blossom to
decay.
"Yes! now neglected and despised, The rose is pale, the lily's dead; But
he that once their charms so prized, Is sure the cause those charms are
fled.
"For know, when sick'ning grief doth prey, And tender love's repaid
with scorn, The sweetest beauty will decay,-- What floweret can endure
the storm?
"At court, I'm told, is beauty's throne, Where every lady's passing rare,
That Eastern flowers, that shame the sun, Are not so glowing, not so
fair.
"Then, Earl, why didst thou leave the beds Where roses and where lilies
vie, To seek a primrose, whose pale shades Must sicken when those
gauds are by?
"'Mong rural beauties I was one, Among the fields wild flowers are fair;
Some country swain might me have won, And thought my beauty
passing rare.
"But, Leicester (or I much am wrong), Or 'tis not beauty lures thy vows;
Rather ambition's gilded crown Makes thee forget thy humble spouse.
"Then, Leicester, why, again I plead (The injured surely may repine)--
Why didst thou wed a