SPERANCE EN DIEU ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND: IN HER OWN RIGHT BARONESS PERCY,LUCY,POYNINGS,FITZ-PAYNE, BRYAN, AND LATIMER. MADAM, TH HOSE writers, who folicit the protéction of the noble and the great, are often exposed to cenfure by the impropriety of their addreffes: a remark that will perhaps be too readily applied to him, who having nothing better to offer than the rude fongs of ancient minstrels, afpires to the patronage of the Countess of NORTHUMBERLAND, and hopes that the barbarous productions of unpolished ages can obtain the approbation or the notice of her, who adorns courts by her prefence, and diffufes elegance by her example. ་ But this impropriety, it is prefumed, will disappear, when it is declared that these poems are prefented to your LADYSHIP, not as labours of art, but as effufions of nature, fhewing the firft efforts of ancient genius, and exhibiting the customs and opinions of remote ages: of ages that had been almost loft to memory, had not the gallant deeds of your illustrious ancestors preserved them from oblivion. No active or comprehenfive mind can forbear fome attention to the reliques of antiquity: (ix) quity: It is prompted by natural curiofity to furvey the progrefs of life and manners, and to inquire by what gradations barbarity was civilized, groffnefs refined, and ignorance inftructed but this curiofity, MADAM, must be ftronger in those, who, like your LADYSHIP, can remark in every period the influence of fome great progenitor, and who still feel in their effects the tranfactions and events of distant centuries. By fuch Bards, MADAM, as I am now introducing to your prefence, was the infancy of genius nurtured and advanced; by fuch were the minds of unlettered warriors foftened and enlarged; by fuch was the memory of illustrious actions preserved and propagated; by fuch were the heroic deeds of the Earls of NORTHUMBERLAND fung at festivals in the hall of ALNWICK: and thofe fongs, which the bounty of your ancestors rewarded, now return to your LADYSHIP by a kind of hereditary right; and, I flatter myself, will find |