f my lady's worth, nor a due veneration for her memory.

Dr Donne, the greatest wit, though not the greatest poet of our nation,
acknowledges, that he had never seen Mrs Drury, whom he has made
immortal in his admirable "Anniversaries." I have had the same fortune,
though I have not succeeded to the same genius. However, I have followed
his footsteps in the design of his panegyric; which was to raise an
emulation in the living, to copy out the example of the dead. And
therefore it was, that I once intended to have called this poem "The
Pattern:" and though, on a second consideration, I changed the title
into the name of the illustrious person, yet the design continues, and
Eleonora is still the pattern of charity, devotion, and humility; of the
best wife, the best mother, and the best of friends.

And now, my lord, though I have endeavoured to answer your commands; yet
I could not answer it to the world, nor to my conscience, if I gave not
your lordship my testimony of being the best husband now living: I say
my testimony only; for the praise of it is given you by yourself. They
who despise the rules of virtue both in their practice and their morals,
will think this a very trivial commendation. But I think it the peculiar
happiness of the Countess of Abingdon to have been so truly loved by you
while she was living, and so gratefully honoured after she was dead. Few
there are who have either had, or could have, such a loss; and yet fewer
who carried their love and constancy beyond the grave. The exteriors of
mourning, a decent funeral, and black habits, are the usual stints of
common husbands: and perhaps their wives deserve no better than to be
mourned with hypocrisy, and forgot with ease. But you have distinguished
yourself from ordinary lovers, by a real and lasting grief for the
deceased; and by endeavouring to raise for her the most durable
monument, which is that of verse. And so it would have proved, if the
workman had been equal to the work, and your choice of the artificer as
happy as your design. Yet, as Phidias, when he had made the statue of
Minerva, could not forbear to engrave his own name, as author of the
piece: so give me leave to hope, that, by subscribing mine to this poem,
I may live by the goddess, and transmit my name to posterity by the
memory of hers. It is no flattery to assure your lordship, that she is
remembered, in the present age, by all who have had the honour of her
conversation and acquai