She had long laboured under the pains of a rheumatism, which had confined her to her chamber a considerable time before her death, which happened at Ashton in Devonshire, December 15, 1710, in the 55th year of her age, and lies buried there without either monument or inscription.

The poetical Works of this Lady consist chiefly in the Song of the Three Children Paraphrased, some Pindaric Odes, Familiar Epistles, and Songs.  We shall select as a specimen, a Dialogue between Lucinda and Marissa, occasioned by the death of her Ladyship’s Daughter, in the early bloom of her youth.  It is of a very melancholy cast, and expressive of the grief me must have felt upon that tender occasion.  Her ladyship has informed us in her preface to her poems, that she generally chose subjects suited to her present temper of mind.  ’These pieces (says she) were the employments of my leisure hours, the innocent amusements of a solitary life; in them the reader will find a picture of my mind, my sentiments all laid open to their view; they will sometimes see me chearful, pleased, sedate, and quiet; at other times, grieving, complaining, and struggling with my passions, blaming myself, endeavouring to pay homage to my reason, and resolving for the future with a decent calmness, an unshaken constancy, and a resigning temper, to support all the troubles, all the uneasiness of life, and then, by unexpected emergencies, unforeseen disappointments, sudden, and surprising turns of fortune, discomposed, and shock’d, ’till I have rallied my scattered fears, got new strength, and by making unwearied resistance, gained the better of my afflictions, and restored my mind to its former tranquility.  Would we (continues her ladyship) contract our desires, and learn to think that only necessary, which nature has made so; we should be no longer fond of riches, honours, applauses, and several other things, which are the unhappy occasions of much mischief to the world; and doubtless, were we so happy as to have a true notion of the dignity of our nature, of those great things for which we were designed, and of the duration and felicity of that state to which we are hastening, we should scorn to stoop to mean actions, and blush at the thoughts of doing any thing below our character.’  In this manner does our authoress discover her sentiments of piety.  We now shall subjoin the specimen;

Dialogue.

Marissa.

  O my Lucinda!  O my dearest friend! 
  Must my afflictions never, never end! 
  Has Heav’n for me, no pity left in store,
  Must I!  O must I ne’er be happy more! 
  Philanda’s loss had almost broke my heart,
  From her alas!  I did but lately part: 
  And must there still be new occasions found
  To try my patience, and my soul to wound? 
  Must my lov’d daughter too be snatch’d away,
  Must she so soon the call of fate obey? 
  In her first dawn, replete with youthful charms,
  She’s fled, she’s fled, from