. The most
remarkable peculiarity, alike of her character and of her literary
productions, is the extraordinary prominence in them of the sentiment
of friendship. She seems nearly all her life to have been enamored of
this experience. Her affectionate spirit drew people to her by its
strong charms, and still breathes vividly in her neglected pages. The
overcharged and somewhat fantastic ideal of friendship which she
unweariedly strove to realize in her relations with various persons,
was so sincere and earnest in heart, that no one, who appreciates it,
can suffer himself to ridicule, though he may smile at, its apparent
affectation on the surface. Its deep ear nestness is proved in her
life and character, as set forth by her associates: its superficial
fancifullness appears in the sentimental names she was pleased to
give herself and her friends. She was Orinda: her friends were
Palmon, Poliarchus, Philaster, Silvander, Polycrite, Valeria,
Lucasia, Rosania. Friendship is prominently treated in nearly every
thing that she wrote. Her friendships with men, Jeremy Taylor,
Francis Finch, Sir Charles Cotterel, and others, were as happy and
unbroken as they were fervent and pure. Her long correspondence with
Cotterel was published under the title, "Letters from Orinda to
Poliarchus." When Finch had written his treatise on friendship, Mrs.
Phillips addressed to him a poem, inscribed, "To the Noble Palmon, on
his Incomparable Discourse of Friendship:"

Temples and statues time will eat away;
And tombs, like their inhabitants, decay:
But here Palm non lives, and so he must
When marbles crumble to forgotten dust.

There is also in her volume of poems, another one addressed to "Mr.
Francis Finch, the Excellent Palmmon:"

'Twas he that rescued gasping friendship,
when The bell tolled for her funeral with men:
'Twas he that made friends more than lovers burn,
And then made love to sacred friendship turn.

Mrs. Phillips was less fortunate in the sequels to her friendships
with persons of her own sex; though, while they lasted, they were,
at least on her side, moreardent and entire. Her principal female
friends were Regina Collier, whom she named Rosania, and Mrs. Anne
Owen, designated, in all their communications, as Lucasia. Many of
her poems were written to these two idolized friends. She
concludes a most glowing celebration of her union with the former,
thus:

A dew shall dwell upon our tomb,
Of such a quality
That fight