ANNE KILLIGREW.
[BORN 1660. DIED 1685.]
BALLARD.
HE daughter of Dr Henry Killigrew, prebendary of Westminster, became eminent in the arts of poetry and painting; and had it pleased Providence to protract her life, she might probably have excelled most of the professors in both. She was the Orinda of Mr Dryden, who seems quite lavish in her commendation; but as we are assured by a writer of great probity [Wood's "Athenæ">[ that she was equal to, if not superior to that praise, let him be my voucher for her skill in poetry.
"Art she had none, yet wanted none,
For Nature did that want supply;
So rich in treasures of her own,
She might our boasted stores defy;
Such noble vigour did her verse adorn,
That it seemed borrowed where 'twas only born."
The great poet is pleased to attribute to her every excellence in that science; but if she has failed of some of its excellences, still should we have great reason to commend her for having avoided those faults by which some have derived a reflection on the science itself, as well as on themselves. Speaking of the purity and charity of her compositions, he bestows on them this commendation,—
"Her Arethusian stream remains unsoiled,
Unmixed with foreign filth, and undefiled;
Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child."
She was also a great proficient in the art of painting, and drew King James II. and his queen, which pieces are highly applauded by Mr Dryden. These engaging and polite accomplishments were the least of her perfections, for she crowned all with an exemplary piety towards God in a due observance of the duties of religion, which she began to practise in the early part of her life. But as her uncommon virtues are enumerated on her monument-inscription, I shall only observe that she was one of the maids of honour to the Duchess of York, and that she died of the small-pox in the flower of her age, to the unspeakable grief of her relations and all others who were acquainted with her excellences, in her father's lodgings, within the cloister of Westminster Abbey, on the 16th day of June 1685, in her twenty-fifth year.
Mr Dryden's muse put on the mourning habit on this sad occasion, and lamented the death of our ingenious poetess in very moving strains, in a long ode, from whence I shall take the liberty of transcribing the eighth stanza; and the rather as it does honour to another female character.
"Now all those charms that blooming grace
The well-proportioned shape and beauteous face,
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes;
In earth the much-lamented virgin lies!
Not wit nor poetry could fate prevent,
Nor was the cruel destiny content
To finish all the murder at a blow,
To sweep at once her life and beauty too;
But, like a hardened felon, took a pride,
To work more mischievously slow,
And plundered first, and then destroyed.
O, double sacrifice, as things divine,
To rob the relique and deface the shrine!
But thus Orinda died:
Heaven by the same disease did both translate;
As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate."
Painted by Gole