Revolution and Romanticism

MATILDA BETHAM

The Lay of Marie 1816

Matilda Betham (1776-1852) was a talented miniaturist, compiled a biographical dictionary of celebrated women, and published some volumes of verse of which The Lay of Marie was the most successful. Using the historical twelfth-century Marie de France as its starting point, Betham’s poem is a grand romance comparable to The Lay of the Last Minstrel; though while both she and Scott use history she is the more inward, her writing a mingling of narrative and self-revelation. Admired by Coleridge, supported by the Lambs and Southey, Betham is a poet whose work manages the transition between the revolutionary period and the early Victorians.

£35 $55

Matilda! I have heard a sweet tune played
On a sweet instrument - thy poesie -
Sent to my soul by Boughton’s pleading voice,
Where friendship’s zealous wish inspirited,
Deepened and filled, the subtle tones of taste:
So have I heard a nightingale’s fine notes
Blend with the murmur of a hidden stream...
(Coleridge: ‘To Matilda Betham from a stranger’)

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