Friendship with Robert Southey In 1818, ‘encouraged’, as she later told him, ‘by the knowledge of his kind reception of Hjenry] K[irke] White’s Poems’ (Dowden, p. 50n.), and driven by urgent financial need, Caroline Bowles sent off a letter to the reigning Poet Laureate.6 She asked for his help and advice in seeking a publisher for her long poem, Ellen Fitzarthur, which she enclosed. Written in rhymed tetrameters, a form she later abandoned in favour of the (to her) more natural flow of unrhymed pentameters, and betraying the influence of Scott, it moves from a slow and self-conscious start through five cantos of increasingly assured verse narrative, telling the age-old story of seduction and betrayal, but with a unique emphasis on the power of filial affections. It also shows promise of a gift for natural imagery, though still rather constrained by the adherence to a strict rhyme scheme; as, for example, when the heroine is first able to admit to herself the extent of her loss in exchanging a parent’s undying affec­ tion for the love of a fickle seducer:

doi:10.4324/9780429459375-30

Chapter

Friendship with Robert Southey In 1818, ‘encouraged’, as she later told him, ‘by the knowledge of his kind reception of Hjenry] K[irke] White’s Poems’ (Dowden, p. 50n.), and driven by urgent financial need, Caroline Bowles sent off a letter to the reigning Poet Laureate.6 She asked for his help and advice in seeking a publisher for her long poem, Ellen Fitzarthur, which she enclosed. Written in rhymed tetrameters, a form she later abandoned in favour of the (to her) more natural flow of unrhymed pentameters, and betraying the influence of Scott, it moves from a slow and self-conscious start through five cantos of increasingly assured verse narrative, telling the age-old story of seduction and betrayal, but with a unique emphasis on the power of filial affections. It also shows promise of a gift for natural imagery, though still rather constrained by the adherence to a strict rhyme scheme; as, for example, when the heroine is first able to admit to herself the extent of her loss in exchanging a parent’s undying affec tion for the love of a fickle seducer:

Chapter

Friendship with Robert Southey In 1818, ‘encouraged’, as she later told him, ‘by the knowledge of his kind reception of Hjenry] K[irke] White’s Poems’ (Dowden, p. 50n.), and driven by urgent financial need, Caroline Bowles sent off a letter to the reigning Poet Laureate.6 She asked for his help and advice in seeking a publisher for her long poem, Ellen Fitzarthur, which she enclosed. Written in rhymed tetrameters, a form she later abandoned in favour of the (to her) more natural flow of unrhymed pentameters, and betraying the influence of Scott, it moves from a slow and self-conscious start through five cantos of increasingly assured verse narrative, telling the age-old story of seduction and betrayal, but with a unique emphasis on the power of filial affections. It also shows promise of a gift for natural imagery, though still rather constrained by the adherence to a strict rhyme scheme; as, for example, when the heroine is first able to admit to herself the extent of her loss in exchanging a parent’s undying affec tion for the love of a fickle seducer:

ABSTRACT

In 1818, ‘encouraged’, as she later told him, ‘by the knowledge of his kind reception of Hjenry] K[irke] White’s Poems’ (Dowden, p. 50n.), and driven by urgent financial need, Caroline Bowles sent off a letter to the reigning Poet Laureate.6 She asked for his help and advice in seeking a publisher for her long poem, Ellen Fitzarthur, which she enclosed. Written in rhymed tetrameters, a form she later abandoned in favour of the (to her) more natural flow of unrhymed pentameters, and betraying the influence of Scott, it moves from a slow and self-conscious start through five cantos of increasingly assured verse narrative, telling the age-old story of seduction and betrayal, but with a unique emphasis on the power of filial affections. It also shows promise of a gift for natural imagery, though still rather constrained by the adherence to a strict rhyme scheme; as, for example, when the heroine is first able to admit to herself the extent of her loss in exchanging a parent’s undying affec tion for the love of a fickle seducer:

Oh precious tear! for many a day The first, from Ellen’s eyes to stray; It fell, as on the burning plain Fall the large drops of summer-rain; Heavy and slow at first, they break The surface smooth of pool or lake, Till thicker, smaller drops descend, And circles into circles blend, And the low clouds, their garnered store In one long plenteous deluge pour.