Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/52

38 dedicatory to her works. When she went to France, she was kindly received by their majesties, and the celebrated people at court; and wrote several sonnets in their praise, which are to be seen in the second part of her poems.

Isabella Andreini died of a miscarriage, at Lyons, in the forty-second year of her age. Her husband had her interred in the same city; and honoured her with an epitaph, in which he extols her virtues, talents, and piety; and it is worthy of remark, that, amidst all the incense offered to her charms and acquirements, she always preserved a most unblemished reputation.

The death of this actress was not only lamented by her husband, in many poems, but a number of Latin and Italian elegies were consecrated to her memory; several of which were prefixed to her works, in the edition of Milan, in 1605.

Besides her sonnets, madrigals, songs, and eclogues, we have a pastoral of her's, intitled Mirtilla, and letters, which were printed at Venice, in 1610. for her love to her country, was of Thebes, in Bœotia. That state was at war with the Orchomenians, they consulted the oracle, which answered, they would be victors, if the most noble amongst them would incur a voluntary death. Antiphenes, the father of Androclea, was the most illustrious, by birth, amongst the Thebans, but did not feel disposed to make that sacrifice for their welfare. Androclea and her sister Alcis, more courageous or more generous than their father, fulfilled this duty in his stead; and