Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/704

690 While in Ireland, she was very happy in renewing a former intimacy with the famous Dr. Jeremy Taylor, bishop of Down and Connor; who some time before, had done her much honour by writing and publishing, ''A Discourse of the Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship, with Rules of conducting it. In a Letter to the most ingenious and excellent Mrs. Katherine Phillips''.

Mrs. Phillips left Ireland, 1663, and went to Cardigan, where she spent some time, and then going to London, to enjoy the conversation of her friends, she was seized with the small-pox, died of it in Fleet-street, in the thirty-third year of her age, and was buried in the church of St. Bennet Sherehog, under a large monumental stone, where several of her ancestors were before interred.

She was of a middle stature, rather fat, and ruddy complexioned. In 1667 were published, in folio, ''Poems by the most deservedly admired Mrs. Catherine Phillips, the matchless Orinda. To which are added, M. Corneille's Pompey and Horace, Tragedies, with several other Translations from the French; and her Picture before them, engraved by Faithorne''. There was likewise another edition in 1678; in the preface to which we are told, 'that she wrote her familiar letters with good facility, in a very fair hand, and perfect orthography; and if they were collected with those excellent discourses she wrote on several subjects, they would make a volume much larger than that of her Poems.' In 1705, a small volume of her Letters to Sir Charles Cotterel was published, under the title of Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus. The editor of which tells us, that 'they were the effect of an happy intimacy between herself and the late famous Poliarchus, and are an mirable