Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wharton, Anne
WHARTON, ANNE (1632?–1685), poetess, born in Oxfordshire about 1632, was the second daughter and coheiress of Sir Henry Lee, third baronet, of Ditchley, by Anne, daughter of Sir John Danvers, knight, of Cornbury. On 16 Sept. 1673 she married, as his first wife, Thomas Wharton (afterwards first Marquis of Wharton) [q. v.], to whom she brought a dowry of 10,000l. and 2,500l. a year. In 1680 and 1681 she was in Paris, and both then and afterwards had some correspondence with Dr. Gilbert Burnet [q. v.], who sent poems for her to criticise, among them his ‘Paraphrase on the Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah, in imitation of Mrs. Anne Wharton.’ Her own ‘Lamentations of Jeremiah paraphrased,’ written apparently in 1681, appeared in the collection entitled ‘The Temple of Death,’ 1695 (it was reprinted with some addition in the second volume of ‘Whartoniana,’ 1727, pp. 64–92). Her ‘Verses on the Snuff of a Candle’ appeared in the first volume of ‘Dryden's Miscellanies’ (1684, i. 144); her ‘Penelope to Ulysses’ in Tonson's ‘Ovid's Epistles by several Hands,’ of 1712, and some minor pieces, including a song, ‘How hardly I conceal'd my Tears,’ in Tooke's ‘Collection’ (1716, p. 209), and in other miscellanies. Her ‘Elegy on the Death of the Earl of Rochester’ (in the ‘Examen Miscellaneum’ of 1702, p. 15) drew from Waller the lines to ‘fairest Chloris,’ commencing ‘Thus mourn the Muses!’ and her ‘Paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer,’ some tumid verses commencing
Silence, you Winds; listen, Etherial Lights,
While our Urania sings what Heav'n indites.
Waller pays the lady the somewhat doubtful compliment of assuring her that she was allied to Rochester ‘in genius as well as in blood.’ The kinship in either case was remote; the earl's mother was aunt to Anne's father, Sir Henry Lee. Her verses were also commended by Dryden, who upon the death of her elder sister, the Countess of Abingdon, in 1691, wrote the panegyrical poem ‘Eleonora.’ Anne Wharton died at Adderbury on 29 Oct. 1685, and was buried at Winchendon on 10 Nov. following. Her marriage had proved childless and unhappy, and it was only the good counsel of Burnet that prevented her from leaving her husband about 1682. A collection of ‘Copies of Mrs. Wharton's Poems’ was appended to the Bodleian copy of Edward Young's ‘Amoris Christiani mnēmoneutikon’ (1686). In addition to her printed writings, Mrs. Wharton left in manuscript a blank-verse tragedy in five acts called ‘Love's Martyr, or Witt above Crowns.’ The subject is the love of Ovid for Julia, daughter of the emperor Augustus. The tragedy, formerly at Strawberry Hill, now forms Additional MS. 28693. A portrait, painted by Lely, was engraved by R. Earlom. Another, engraved by Bocquet, is given in Walpole's ‘Royal and Noble Authors’ (1806, iii. 284).
[Ballard's Memoirs of Learned Ladies, p. 297; Burke's Extinct Peerage, pp. 347, 582; E. R. Wharton's Whartons of Wharton Hall, 1898, p. 47; Nichols's Lit. Anecdotes, v. 644; Waller's Poems, ed. Drury, 1893, p. 342; General Dict. x. 122; Nichols's Select Collection of Poems, 1780, i. 51, ii. 329, iii. 44, iv. 356; Chaloner Smith's Mezzotint Portraits, p. 258, where Anne Wharton is wrongly entitled marchioness.]