The Nine Muses Rhetorick) has not been identified; her initials are "Mrs. D. E." The Nine Muses The Nine Muses, Or, Poems Written by Nine severall Ladies Upon the death of the late Famous John Dryden, Esq. (London: Richard Basset, 1700) was an elegiac volume of poetry published pseudonymously. The contributors were English women writers, each of whom signed their poems with the names of Muses. The collection was edited by Delarivier Manley (who wrote as "Melpomene" and "Thalia") and includes pieces by Susanna Centlivre ("perhaps," according to Blain et al.), Sarah Fyge Egerton ("Erato", "Euterpe", and "Terpsichore"), Mary Pix ("Clio"), Catherine Trotter
The Vision of Delight masque; it features the mythological figures and personifications of abstractions that are standard for the form. The work opens with personifications of Delight, Harmony, Grace, Love, Laughter, Revel, Sport, and Wonder; they are later joined by the ancient Greek deities Zephyrus and Aurora. Jonson's verse, heralding the coming of Spring, is lush and vibrant; the nineteenth-century critic and editor William Gifford called the masque "one of the most beautiful of Jonson's little pieces, light, airy, harmonious, and poetical in no common degree. It stands without parallel among performances of this kind..." Two anti-masques feature comical figures of "pantaloons" and "phantasms,"