“The gentlest shepherdess that liv’d that day, And most resembling, both in shape and spirit, Her brother dear.”
In conjunction with him, this gifted woman is said to have translated the Psalms;[181] of which effort Daniel says:--
“Those hymns which thou dost consecrate to Heaven, Which Israel’s singer to his God did frame, Unto thy voyage eternity hath given, And makes thee dear to Him from whence they came.”
Joanna, Lady Abergavenny, Mary Arundel, Catherine Grey, Mary Duchess of Norfolk. See “Royal and Noble Authors.”
Several of these are extant; one of them was published in the _Guardian_;[182] and it corresponds with a Psalm printed in the “_Nugæ Antiquæ_” as the Countess of Pembroke’s.[183] It has been regretted that these productions are not authorized to be sung in churches; for the present version, Mr. Hartley Coleridge remarks, “is a disgrace and a mischief to the establishment.” These translations are preserved in the library at Wilton.
Horace Walpole’s “Royal and Noble Authors,” vol. ii., p. 308.
The Countess was residing there when the “Discourse of Life and Death,” by Mornay, which she translated from the French, was printed. This was in 1590, when Philip Massinger was six years of age. She survived until 1621; and, since she extended her patronage both to arts and letters, it is probable that she not only befriended Ben Jonson, but that she encouraged and assisted the struggling dramatist, whose father had been so favoured or retained in her husband’s house. Ben Jonson’s well-known lines on her tomb have challenged various criticisms. Whilst by some they are deemed a tribute “which have never been exceeded in the records of monumental praise,”[184] by another critic they are considered “too hyperbolical, too clever, and too conceited to be inscribed on a Christian’s tomb.”[185]
Note in Parke’s edition of “Royal and Noble Authors.”
“Underneath this marble hearse Lies the subject of all verse-- Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother; Death, ere thou canst find another, Learned, and fair, and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee.”
At all events, Massinger imbibed from his father’s connection with the Herbert family, one taste--that for theatricals. Amongst the retinue of the great peer, was a company of itinerant performers, “the Earl of Pembroke’s players;” and though the childhood of Massinger is indeed a blank, it maybe inferred that the attractions of the theatre, or rather of the hall, in which that portion of the Earl’s household must have been frequently occupied, were such as to fascinate a boy of an imaginative turn of mind. He is stated to have been shy, melancholy, retiring, and studious; that he received a classical education, as a boy, is also stated; but when that education was received, who directed that thoughtful and dreamy mind to poetry, or how he, who was evidently designed for a scholastic career, should have devoted himself to the profession of a play-writer, does not appear to have been ascertained, even by the indefatigable Gilford.