t 1678.

Heu fragile humanum genus! heu terrestria vana!
Heu quem spectatum continet urna virum!

[Footnote A: A disappointment occasioned our throwing this life out
of the chronlogical order. But we hope the candid reader will pardon
a fault of this kind: we only wish he may find nothing of more
consequence to accuse us of.]

[Footnote B: Cook's Life of Andrew Marvel, Esq; prefixed to the first
volume of Mr. Marvel's Works, London 1726.]

[Footnote C: Life ubi supri.]

[Footnote D: Mr. John Oxenbridge, who was made fellow of Eton College
curing the civil war, but ejected at the Restoration; he died in New
England, and was a very enthusiastic person.]

* * * * *

Mrs. ELIZABETH THOMAS,

This lady, who is known in the world by the poetial name of Corinna,
seems to have been born for misfortunes; her very bitterest enemies
could never brand her with any real crime, and yet her whole life
has been one continued scene of misery[A]. The family from which she
sprung was of a rank in life beneath envy, and above contempt. She was
the child of an ancient, and infirm parent, who gave her life when
he was dying himself, and to whose unhappy constitution she was sole
heiress. From her very birth, which happened 1675, she was afflicted
with fevers and defluxions, and being over-nursed, her constitution
was so delicate and tender, that had she not been of a gay
disposition, and possessed a vigorous mind, she must have been more
unhappy than she actually was. Her father dying when she was scarce
two years old, and her mother not knowing his real circumstances, as
he was supposed from the splendour of his manner of life to be very
rich, some inconveniencies were incurred, in bestowing upon him a
pompous funeral, which in those times was fashionable. The mother of
our poetess, in the bloom of eighteen, was condemned to the arms of
this man, upwards of 60, upon the supposition of his being wealthy,
but in which she was soon miserably deceived. When the grief, which
so young a wife may be supposed to feel for an aged husband, had
subsided, she began to enquire into the state of his affairs, and
found to her unspeakable mortification, that he died not worth one
thousand pounds in the world. As Mrs. Thomas was a woman of good
sense, and a high spirit, she disposed of two houses her husband kept,
one in town, the other in the county of Essex, and retired into a
private, but decent co