A collection of select letters, published by Mr. Hull, in two volumes, includes eleven written by the Duchess, and they have been well characterized as exhibiting rectitude of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and a truly classic ease and elegance of style; tinged with an air of melancholy, occasioned by the loss of her only son, Lord Beauchamp, to whom she so frequently refers in her letters to Dr. Watts. His death at Bologna, in 1744, cast a settled gloom over her mind, for he was a youth who seemed to give evidences of superiority and worth of character calculated to confer honour on the exalted station to which he was destined, had his life been spared. Her letters all breathe the spirit of unaffected simple piety and resignation; and from the time of her husband’s elevation to the dukedom, her life was subjected to the experience of intense troubles, first, in the death of her own son, and very shortly after, in 1750, the death of the Duke, her husband; and it is with reference to these occasions of grief that she writes to Lady Luxbrough, September 9th, 1750: “You are very obliging in the concern you express for the scenes of sorrow I have passed through. I have indeed suffered deeply, but, when I consider it is the will of God, who never chastises His poor creatures but for their good, and reflect at the same time how unworthy I was of these blessings, which I now lament the loss of, I lay my hand upon my mouth, and dare not repine, but hope I can with truth appeal to Him in the following words: ‘Such sorrow is sent that none may oppose His holy will. Let me sigh and offer up all my sighs to Him! Let me mourn, and in the meantime bless His name in the midst of my sorrow.’”
She did not herself long survive, only till July 7th, 1754, leaving an only daughter, who subsequently became Duchess of Northumberland. The Countess herself was the great and intimate friend likewise of Mrs. Rowe; and when this lady died, to the Countess and to Dr. Watts she left those confidential letters to which reference may be made in subsequent pages of the present volume. How far she drew the Doctor from his retreat, how often he visited the lady at her various houses, we have no means of knowing; the friendship continued certainly from 1729 to the close of Watts’ life, and it was probably commenced some time before this date, for the terms of the first letters are those of warm friendship. In 1731 she refers to her children, especially to the son, who was to be in after years a source of such grief to the mother’s heart, and she says, “My young people send their services to you; I assure you my little boy has grown a great proficient in your ‘Songs for Children,’ and sings them with great pleasure.” The lady herself secretly cultivated the recreation of verse, and sometimes forwarded her fancies in this way to the Doctor, but she says, “I beg the favour of you not to give any copy of the enclosed verses, for I would wish my excursions of this kind to be a secret from everybody but you, and a friend or two more, who know that I do not aim at the character of a genius by any attempt of this nature, but am led to them merely to amuse a leisure hour, and speak the sentiments of my heart.” She wrote, however, an elegy on Mrs. Rowe, which called forth an epigram from the Doctor, which was published in his posthumous volume of Miscellanies, “Remnants of Time, employed in Prose and Verse”:
Struck with a sight of Philomela’s urn,
Eusebia weeps and calls the Muse to mourn;
While from her lips the tuneful sorrows fell,
The groves confess a rising Philomel.
Writing from the Hermitage on St. Leonard’s Hill, she says: “I return you thanks for the epigram you were so good as to send me, and should think myself very happy if anything of mine could deserve to show the joy I should feel in being able to imitate Mrs. Rowe in the smallest instance. I have only two meditations of hers, which she gave me with the strongest injunctions not to let anybody see them, lest they should be thought too rapturous; but as I conclude she would not have included you among those from whom she meant they should be concealed, I will have them copied if you desire it.” There are in her letters very pleasing indications of an amiable mind and heart; she writes to him of the books which have met her in the course of her reading, and her remarks are characterized by a quiet wisdom and judgment: “My Lord and Betty (the future Duchess of Northumberland) are in London, so that my son and his governor are my only companions at present; but we pass our time agreeably enough between reading, walking, and such other amusements as this place in which we are and the season of the year afford us; we have been lately reading ‘Leonidas,’[29] in which I think there are many fine thoughts; but I hear the town are much divided in their sentiments about it, since one part are for preferring it to Milton, and others for levelling it to the lowest rank of poetry. I confess neither of these appear to me a just representation of it. If you have read it, I shall be glad to know your thoughts of it.” In another letter she remarks upon the poet Pope: “I think everybody must wish a muse like Mr. Pope’s were more inclined to exert itself on Divine and good-natured subjects; but I am afraid satire is his highest talent, for I think his ‘Universal Prayer’ is by no means equal to some other of his works, and I think his tenth stanza:
Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To hide the faults I see;