more difficult:
wit in a female mind can no more cease to sparkle, than she who
possesses it, can cease to speak. Mr. Pilkington began to view her with
scornful, yet with jealous eyes, and in this situation, nothing but
misery was likely to be their lot. While these jealousies subsisted, Mr.
Pilkington, contrary to the advice of his friends, went into England, in
order to serve as chaplain to alderman Barber during his mayoralty of
the city of London.

While he remained in London, and having the strange humour of loving his
wife best at a distance, he wrote her a very kind letter, in which he
informed her, that her verses were like herself, full of elegance and
beauty[1]; that Mr. Pope and others, to whom he had shewn them, longed
to see the writer, and that he heartily wished her in London. This
letter set her heart on flame. London has very attractive charms to most
young people, and it cannot be much wondered at if Mrs. Pilkington
should take the only opportunity she was ever likely to have, of
gratifying her curiosity: which however proved fatal to her; for though
we cannot find, that during this visit to London, her conduct was the
least reproachable, yet, upon her return to Ireland, she underwent a
violent persecution of tongues. They who envied her abilities, fastened
now upon her morals; they were industrious to trace the motives of her
going to London; her behaviour while she was there; and insinuated
suspicions against her chastity. These detracters were chiefly of her
own sex, who supplied by the bitterest malice what they wanted in power.

Not long after this an accident happened, which threw Mrs. Pilkington's
affairs into the utmost confusion. Her father was stabbed, as she has
related, by an accident, but many people in Dublin believe, by his own
wife, though some say, by his own hand. Upon this melancholy occasion,
Mrs. Pilkington has given an account of her father, which places her in
a very amiable light. She discovered for him the most filial tenderness;
she watched round his bed, and seems to have been the only relation then
about him, who deserved his blessing. From the death of her father her
sufferings begin, and the subsequent part of her life is a continued
series of misfortunes.

Mr. Pilkington having now no expectation of a fortune by her, threw off
all reserve in his behaviour to her. While Mrs. Pilkington was in the
country for her health, his dislike of her seems to have encreased,
and,