I missed this the first time, only saw it this morning. Thanks for the bump and the original post. She's obviously a fascinating person, and while I'm no scholar of literature, I'll say that the first thing that occurred to me while reading these was the apparent influence of Lucretius. I know Dryden had a translation around that time (I've read this morning that she claims not to have known any language but English). I've also read that Lucy Hutchinson did one even before he did, but it wasn't published until recently. Do we know whether Cavendish might have been aware of the Hutchinson version?
Sorry for the shallowness of my response, but I figured I'd help get the ball rolling.
|