Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/262

248 her imaginations; nor the greatest difficulties disarrange her ideas.

and ingenious French lady; wrote a work, entitled, Les Souvenir, which relate many interesting anecdotes of the reign of Lewis XIV. and clear up many historical doubts. 2em

comic writer; was of a respectable family, who suffered much for their attachment to whig principles. Her education was entirely of her own acquiring, with the assistance of a neighbouring French gentleman, who undertook to instruct her in the French language, wherein she made such a rapid progress, that, before she was twelve years of age, she could read Moliere with vivacity and interest. After the death of her father, the ill-usage of her step-mother induced her to leave home to seek her fortune, on foot and unprotected. Her beauty struck a young man of the university of Cambridge, who persuaded her to become his mistress, and to reside there with him in the disguise of a boy. Afterwards she came to London, and married, in her sixteenth year, a nephew of Sir Stephen