Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/672

658 pen will be thought capable of adding to the reputation which her own has acquired, if it shall appear, that she was the author of The whole Duty of Man.

That the lady Pakington was capable of such a work, and that she only had a right to this in question, we shall produce the folowingfollowing [sic] testimonies.

The first witness is, the famous Dr. George Hickes, the vicinity of whose deanery to Westwood, his intimacy in the family, his known probity and unshaken integrity, will make his authority appear beyond all exception. The doctor in his preface to his Anglo-Saxon and Mœso-Gothic Grammars, printed before his Thesaurus, and inscribed to the late Sir John Pakington, having given an excellent character of his grandfather, proceeds in the following manner in relation to this excellent lady. He writes in Latin, which being translated, runs thus:

'But your grandmother, the daughter of the most renowned Thomas lord Coventry, keeper of the great seal, was remarkably illustrious for all virtues, especially such as consist in the practical part of a Christian life. She had moreover an excellent judgment, and a talent of speaking correctly, pertinently, clearly, and gracefully. In which she was so accomplished, particularly in an evenness of stile and consistent manner of writing, that she deserved to be called and reputed the author of a book concerning the Duty of Man, published in English by an anonymous person, and well known through the Christian world for the extraordinary completeness of a work of that kind. Hammond, Morley, Fell, and Thomas, those eminently learned men, averred she was as great an adept in the sacred scriptures, as themselves were, and as well versed in divinity, and in all those weighty and useful notions relating to Duty, which have been recommended and handed down to us, ther