Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/762

748 of virtue, she was displeased with herself for having written any thing that did not directly promote it.

Of her two sisters, one died in childhood; the other survived to her twentieth year. She had the same extreme passion for books, chiefly those of medicine, in which art she arrived to a considerable insight.

What first introduced her to the notice of the noble family at Longleat, was a little copy of verses, with which they were so highly delighted as to express a curiosity to see her; and the friendship that commenced at that time, subsisted ever after; not more to her honour, who was the favourite of persons, so much superior to her in the outward distinctions of life, than to the praise of their judgment and taste, who knew how to prize, and took a pleasure to cherish such blooming worth. She was not then twenty. Her Paraphrase of the 38th Chapter of Job was written at the request of Bishop Kenn, and gained her a great deal of reputation.

She had no other tutor for the French and Italian languages, than the Honourable Mr. Thynne, son to the Lord Viscount Weymouth, who willingly took that task upon himself, and had the pleasure to see his fair scholar improve so fast under his lessons, that in a few months she was able to read Tasso's Jerusalem with great ease.

Her merit, and the charms of her person and conversation, procured her many admirers; and among others it is said that the celebrated Prior made his addresses to her. There was certainly much friendship, if not love between them; and Mr. Prior's answer to her Pastoral on those subjects, gives room to suspect, that there was something more than friendship on his side. He likewise addressed the poem which follows that in his