“F. Hertford.”
It is pleasant in these letters to notice the indications of a quiet and retreating spirit. Upon her return, after a considerable absence, to the family seat near Marlborough, she says: “I have the pleasure of finding my garden extremely improved in the two years I have been absent from it, some little alterations I had ordered are completed; the trees which I left small ones are grown to form an agreeable shade, and I have reason to bless God for the pleasantness of the place which is allotted me to pass many of my retired hours in; may I make use of them to fit me for my last, and that I may do so, allow me to beg the continuation of your prayers.” She several times refers to her “dear old nurse,” the “very valuable old woman” mentioned in the lengthy letter quoted above: “Your good prayers for poor Rothery have met with unexpected success, she is so much recovered that I begin to think she will get entirely well, and if she does I think nothing of that kind has since I can remember looked more like a miraculous operation of the healing power of the Almighty. I hope the same Divine mercy will long preserve you a blessing to the age, and that you will find your strength return with the warm weather.” This was written from Windsor Forest; the next month she writes from Marlborough: “My poor old woman has got hither, contrary to her own and all our expectations; she has the deepest gratitude for your goodness to her, and begs you will accept her thanks; she is still very weak, and I fancy will hardly get over the autumn.”
This lady’s letters exhibit a vein of intelligence and interesting reading in pleasant contrast to the frivolity of most of the courtly ladies of that age. “I have just had the oddest pamphlet sent me I ever saw in my life, called ‘Amusemens Philosophiques sur le Language des Bêtes.’ It was burnt by the hands of the common executioner at Paris, and the priest who wrote it banished till he made a formal retraction of it, and yet I think it very plain by the style that the man was either in jest or crazed. It is by no means wanting of wit, but extremely far from a system of probability.” Again, in another letter: “I have forgotten whether in any of my later letters I ever named to you a little book newly translated from the Italian, by the same Mrs. Carter who has a copy of verses printed in the beginning of Mrs. Rowe’s works, occasioned by her death. The book she has now translated is Sir Isaac Newton’s ‘Doctrine of Light and Colours made easy for the Ladies.’ My daughter and I have both read it with great pleasure, and flatter ourselves that we at least understand some parts of it.” It would be interesting to know who was the lady referred to in the following letter—it was probably Mrs. Elizabeth Carter; the work of the Doctor’s to which so marked a reference is made was undoubtedly his discourses “On the World to Come,” which had only just been published, a copy of which he had forwarded to her, and which had been acknowledged two or three weeks before in a letter from his “faithfully affectionate servant, F. Hertford.”
“Marlborough, July 30, 1739.
“Sir,
“I would much sooner have written to you to thank you for the favour of your last letter, had I enjoyed more leisure; but I have had a friend with me this last month who has engrossed a good many of those hours which I used to employ in writing to my correspondents. She is a very pious and religious, as well as agreeable woman, and has seen enough of the world in her younger years to teach her to value its enjoyments and fear its vexations no more than they deserve, by which happy knowledge she has brought her mind and spirits to the most perfect state of calmness I ever saw; and her conversation seems to impart the blessing to all who partake of her discourse. By this you will judge that I have passed my time very much to my satisfaction while she was with me; and, though I have not written to you, you have shared my time with her, for almost all the hours I passed alone I have employed in reading your works, which for ever represent to my imagination the idea of a ladder or flight of steps, since every volume seems to rise a step nearer the language of heaven, and there is a visible progression toward that better country through every page; so that, though all breathe piety and just reason, the last seems to crown the whole, till you shall again publish something to enlighten a dark and obstinate age, for I must believe that the manner in which you treat Divine subjects is more likely to reform and work upon the affections of your readers than that of any other writer now living. I hope God will in mercy to many thousands, myself in particular, prolong your life many years. I own this does not seem a kind wish to you, but I think you will be content to bear the infirmities of flesh some years longer to be an instrument in the hands of God toward the salvation of your weak and distressed brethren. The joys of heaven cannot fade, but will be as glorious millions of ages to come as they are now, and what a moment will the longest life appear when it comes to be compared with eternity!”
Upon the death of Mrs. Rowe, as she had left her meditations for the hands of Dr. Watts, when he proposed to publish the volume with his preface, he also very naturally proposed to dedicate it to their friend the Countess. With extraordinary modesty, however, she shrunk from this. She writes: “The sincere esteem I have for you makes it very difficult for me to oppose anything you desire, and it is doubly so in an instance where I might have an opportunity of indulging so justifiable a pride as I should feel in letting the public see this fresh mark of your partiality to me, but as I am apprehensive that the envy such a distinction would raise against me might draw some vexation with it, I hope you will have the goodness to change the dedication into a letter to a friend, without giving me any such appellation.” In another letter, with characteristic modesty, she says: “I can, with the strictest truth, affirm that I do not know any distinction upon earth that I could feel a truer pleasure in receiving were I deserving of it, but as I am forced to see how much I fall below the idea which the benevolence of your nature has formed of me, it teaches me to humble myself by that very incident which might administer a laudable pride to a more worthy person. If I am constrained to acknowledge this mortifying truth, you may believe there are many people in the world who look upon me with more impartial eyes than self-love will allow me to do; and others, who perhaps think I enjoy more of this world’s goods than I either merit or than falls to the common lot, look at me with envious and malignant views, and are glad of every opportunity to debase me or those who they believe entertain a favourable opinion of me. I would hope that I have never done anything, wilfully I am sure I have not, to raise any such sentiments in the breast of the meanest person upon earth, but yet experience has convinced me that I have not been happy enough to escape them. For these reasons, sir, I must deny myself the pleasure and the pride I should have in so public a mark of your friendship and candour, and beg that if you will design me the honour of joining any address to me with those valuable remains of Mrs. Rowe, that you will either retrench the favourable expressions you intended to insert, or else give me no other title at the top of it than that of a friend of yours and hers, an appellation which, in the sincerity of my soul, I am prouder of than I could be of the most pompous name that human grandeur can lay claim to.”
She shrunk from all observation, and in another letter says, “I will trespass so far on your good nature as to beg you will leave out whatever will imply my attempting to write poetry; but if there be any among the things you have of mine which you think worth placing among yours I shall have just cause to be pleased at seeing them come abroad in such company, if you will have the goodness to conceal my name, either under that of Eusebia or A Friend, a title which I shall think myself happy to deserve.” This letter enables us to identify four poetical pieces, entitled “A Rural Meditation,” “A Penitential Thought,” “A Midnight Hymn,” and the “Dying Christian’s Hope,” inserted in Watts’ Miscellanies, and attributed to Eusebia, as the compositions of the Countess. It may not be unpleasant to the reader to have brought before him some of these verses, which will show that the modesty of the Countess need not have been dictated by the poverty of her expression:
A RURAL MEDITATION.
Here in the tuneful groves and flow’ry fields,