Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/788

774 those great critics who were conversant with her works when they were entire. One may see, by what is left of them, that she followed nature in all her thoughts, without descending to those little points, conceits, and turns of wit with which many of our modern lyrics are so miserably infected. Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry: she felt the passion in all its warmth, and described it in all its symptoms. She is called by ancient authors the tenth muse; and by Plutarch is compared to Cacus, the son of Vulcan, who breathed nothing but flame." . wrote an heroic poem on the life of Scanderbeg, King of Albania. Her house was the resort of men of letters, and she was flattered very much in her time.

the circumstances favourable to the promotion of letters in the fifteenth century, was the partiality shewn to these studies, and the proficiency made in them, by women, illustrious by their birth, or eminent for their personal accomplishments. Among these, Alessandria, the daughter of Bartolomeo Scala, was peculiarly distinguished. The extraordinary beauty of her person was surpassed by the endowments of her mind. At an early age she was a proficient