As Servile Preachers, who Preferment wait
Title:
To Mr. Granville, on his Comedy [The She-Gallants, 1696] Primary Text:
No MS; 1701 Gilden, 285-7*. Comment:
Tentatively attributed to Finch as one of the series of nine poems in this volume connected to Ann see "A Song: The Pretious Hours of Flying Youth" 1683-9); George Granville, Baron Lansdowne, was an important loyal Royalist, who wrote a series of poems to Mary of Modena; his play has assertive females who are chaste; Ann here venerates the pastoral Virgil and hates worldly sycophantic court politics, and says when "that Great Patroness of Wit" (Princess Anne) comes to the throne Granville will write poetry worthy of her; the tone recalls Finch's other epilogues and prologues; a Lansdowne MS contains the only place where her song on South Seas attributed to her (see 1720), Granville was related by marriage to Richard Thornhill who inspired a poem Rowe sent to Ann (Thornhill's seat, Ollantigh, was near Eastwell).
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