nd
to avoid the imputation of that affectation which I have just mentioned.

Mr. Wyerley once said of her, she had such a fund of knowledge of her
own, and made naturally such fine observations upon persons and things,
being capable, by the EGG, [that was his familiar expression,] of judging
of the bird, that she had seldom either room or necessity for foreign
assistances.

But it was plain, from her whole conduct and behaviour, that she had not
so good an opinion of herself, however deserved; since, whenever she was
urged to give her sentiments on any subject, although all she thought fit
to say was clear an intelligible, yet she seemed in haste to have done
speaking. Her reason for it, I know, was twofold; that she might not
lose the benefit of other people's sentiments, by engrossing the
conversation; and lest, as were her words, she should be praised into
loquaciousness, and so forfeit the good opinion which a person always
maintains with her friends, who knows when she has said enough.--It was,
finally, a rule with her, 'to leave her hearers wishing her to say more,
rather than to give them cause to show, by their inattention, an
uneasiness that she had said so much.'--

You are curious to know the particular distribution of her time; which
you suppose will help you to account for what you own yourself surprised
at; to wit, how so young a lady could make herself mistress of so many
accomplishments.

I will premise, that she was from infancy inured to rise early in a
morning, by an excellent, and, as I may say, a learned woman, Mrs.
Norton, to whose care, wisdom, and example, she was beholden for the
ground-work of her taste and acquirements, which meeting with such
assistances from the divines I have named, and with such a genius, made
it the less wonder that she surpassed most of her age and sex.

Her sex, did I say? What honour to the other does this imply! When one
might challenge the proudest pedant of them all, to say he has been
disciplined into greater improvement, than she had made from the mere
force of genius and application. But it is demonstrable to all who know
how to make observations on their acquaintance of both sexes, arrogant as
some are of their superficialities, that a lady at eighteen, take the
world through, is more prudent and conversable than a man at twenty-five.
I can prove this by nineteen instances out of twenty in my own knowledge.
Yet how do these poor boasters value themselve