SOURCE: "Melancholy in Anne Finch and Elizabeth Carter: the Ambivalence of an Idea," in The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. I, 1971, pp. 108-19.

In the following excerpt, Sena compares Finch's description of melancholy in "The Spleen" with contemporary medical accounts.

The physical disability and psychological perturbations of melancholy were well known to one of the foremost women poets of the eighteenth century, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea. As a victim of the malady, her description of its effects were first-hand and specific, with none of the generalities born of vague knowledge. In an early poem on the subject, "Ardelia to Melancholy", Lady Winchilsea compares herself to a fortress and melancholy to an 'inveterate foe', a tyrant trying to scale her. She employs the 'useless arms' of diversion—music, mirth, friendship, and poetry—but her many 'troops of fancy' have failed her, yielding her 'Captive to her adversary'. She...