Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/406

392 poems in English, on which she set so little value, that she neglected to leave copies, but of very few, behind her.

She is said to have exemplified that fine saying of a French author: "That a great genius should be superior to his own abilities." When Lord Carteret was lord-lieutenant of Ireland, he obtained a patent for Mr. Grierson, her husband, to be king's printer; and to distinguish and reward her uncommon merit, had her life inserted in it.

The foregoing account is entirely transcribed from Mrs. Barber's preface prefixed to her poems. To this we shall add some particulars, which Mrs. Pilkington has recorded. She tells us, "that when about eighteen years of age, she was brought to her father to be instructed in midwifery; that she was mistress of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, understood mathematics as well as most men; and what made these extraordinary talents yet more surprising, was, that her parents were poor illiterate country people; so that her learning appeared like the gift, poured out on the apostles, of speaking all languages without the pains of study." Mrs. Pilkington enquired of her, where she had gained this prodigious knowledge? To which Mrs. Grierson answered, "that she received some little instruction from the minister of the parish, when she could spare time from her needle-work, to which she was closely kept by her mother." Mrs, Pilkington adds, "that she wrote elegantly both in verse and prose; that her turn was chiefly to philosophical or divine subjects; that her piety was not inferior to her learning; and that some of the most delightful hours she herself had ever passed, were in the conversation of this female philosopher."

She wrote an Abridgement of the History of England. There