aveller both before
and after I was married to your lordship, and some times shown myself at
your lordship's command in public places or assemblies, but yet I
converse with few. Indeed, my lord, I matter not the censures of this
age, but am rather proud of them; for it shows that my actions are more
than ordinary, and according to the old proverb, it is better to be
envied than pitied; for I know well that it is merely out of spite and
malice, whereof this present age is so full that none can escape them,
and they'll make no doubt to stain even your lordship's loyal, noble,
and heroic actions, as well as they do mine; though yours have been of
war and fighting, mine of contemplating and writing: yours were
performed publicly in the field, mine privately in my closet; yours had
many thousand eye-witnesses; mine none but my waiting-maids. But the
great God, that hitherto bless'd both your grace and me, will, I
question not, preserve both our fames to after-ages.

"Your grace's honest wife,
"and humble servant,
"M. NEWCASTLE."

The last portion of this life, which consists of the observations and
good things which she had gathered from the conversations of her
husband, forms an excellent Ana; and shows that when Lord Orford, in his
"Catalogue of Noble Authors," says, that "this stately poetic couple was
a picture of foolish nobility," he writes, as he does too often, with
extreme levity. But we must now attend to the reverse of our medal.

Many chagrins may corrode the nuptial state of literary men. Females
who, prompted by vanity, but not by taste, unite themselves to scholars,
must ever complain of neglect. The inexhaustible occupations of a
library will only present to such a most dreary solitude. Such a lady
declared of her learned husband, that she was more jealous of his books
than his mistresses. It was probably while Glover was composing his
"Leonidas," that his lady avenged herself for this _Homeric_ inattention
to her, and took her flight with a lover. It was peculiar to the learned
Dacier to be united to woman, his equal in erudition and his superior in
taste. When she wrote in the album of a German traveller a verse from
Sophocles as an apology for her unwillingness to place herself among his
learned friends, that "Silence is the female's ornament," it was a trait
of her modesty. The learned Pasquier was coupled to a female of a
different character,