for! How happy for them, and for me, had I then been
denied to their prayers! But now I am eased of that care. All those
dear relations are living still--but not one of them (such as they think,
has been the heinousness of my error!) but, far from being grieved, would
rejoice to hear of my death.'

In all her readings, and her conversations upon them, she was fonder of
finding beauties than blemishes, and chose to applaud but authors and
books, where she could find the least room for it. Yet she used to
lament that certain writers of the first class, who were capable of
exalting virtue, and of putting vice out of countenance, too generally
employed themselves in works of imagination only, upon subjects merely
speculative, disinteresting and unedifying, from which no useful moral or
example could be drawn.

But she was a severe censurer of pieces of a light or indecent turn,
which had a tendency to corrupt the morals of youth, to convey polluted
images, or to wound religion, whether in itself, or through the sides of
its professors, and this, whoever were the authors, and how admirable
soever the execution. She often pitied the celebrated Dr. Swift for so
employing his admirable pen, that a pure eye was afraid of looking into
his works, and a pure ear of hearing any thing quoted from them. 'Such
authors,' she used to say, 'were not honest to their own talents, nor
grateful to the God who gave them.' Nor would she, on these occasions,
admit their beauties as a palliation; on the contrary, she held it as an
aggravation of their crime, that they who are so capable of mending the
heart, should in any places show a corrupt one in themselves; which must
weaken the influences of their good works; and pull down with one hand
what they build up with the other.

All she said and all she did was accompanied with a natural ease and
dignity, which set her above affectation, or the suspicion of it;
insomuch that that degrading fault, so generally imputed to a learned
woman, was never laid to her charge. For, with all her excellencies, she
was forwarder to hear than speak; and hence, no doubt, derived no small
part of her improvement.

Although she was well read in the English, French, and Italian poets, and
had read the best translations of the Latin classics; yet seldom did she
quote or repeat from them, either in her letters or conversation, though
exceedingly happy in a tenacious memory; principally through modesty, a