On this occasion, Mr. Dryden's muse put on a mournful habit, and in one of the most melting elegiac odes that ever was written, has consigned her to immortality.
In the eighth stanza he does honour to another female character, whom he joins with this sweet poetess.
Now all those charms, that blooming grace,
The well-proportion'd shape, and beauteous face,
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes;
In earth, the much lamented virgin lies!
Not wit, nor piety 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 flow,
And plundered first, and then destroy'd.
[226] O! double sacrilege, on things divine,
To rob the relique, and deface the shrine!
But thus Orinda died;
Heav'n by the same disease did both translate,
As equal was their souls, so equal was their fate.
Miss Killegrew was buried in the chancel of St. Baptist's chapel in the Savoy hospital, on the North side of which is a very neat monument of marble and free-stone fixed in the wall, with a Latin inscription, a translation of which into English is printed before her poems.
The following verses of Miss Killegrew's were addressed to Mrs. Philips.
Orinda (Albion, and her sex's grace)
Ow'd not her glory to a beauteous face.
It was her radiant soul that shone within,
Which struck a lustre thro' her outward skin;
That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye,
Advanc'd her heighth, and sparkled in her eye.
Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame.
But high'r 'mongst the stars it fixt her name;
What she did write, not only all allow'd,
But evr'y laurel, to her laurel bow'd!
Soon after her death, her Poems were published in a large thin quarto, to which Dryden's ode in praise of the author is prefixed.
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