g her study at leisure, to which examination I
was strongly prompted by my curiosity. Here I found a thousand scraps
of her own poetry, consisting of three, four, ten, twelve, and twenty
lines, on an infinity of subjects, which, as whim inspired, she
had begun, without constancy or capacity to bring to any degree of
composition: but, what was very extraordinary in a female poet, there
was not the least mention made of love in any of her performances. I
counted fragments of five tragedies, the titles of which were "The Stern
Philosopher," "The Double," "The Sacrilegious Traitor," "The Fall
of Lucifer," and "The Last Day." From whence I gathered, that her
disposition was gloomy, and her imagination delighted with objects of
horror. Her library was composed of the best English historians, poets,
and philosophers; of all the French critics and poets, and of a few
books in Italian, chiefly poetry, at the head of which were Tasso and
Ariosto, pretty much used. Besides these, translations of the classics
into French, but not one book in Greek or Latin; a circumstance that
discovered her ignorance in these languages.

After having taken a full view of this collection, I retired, and at the
usual time was preparing to lay the cloth, when I was told by the maid
that her mistress was still in bed, and had been so affected with the
notes of the hounds in the morning, that she actually believed herself
a hare beset by the hunters, and begged a few greens to munch
for breakfast. When I expressed my surprise in this unaccountable
imagination she gave me to understand that her lady was very much
subject to whims of this nature; sometimes fancying herself an animal,
sometimes a piece of furniture, during which conceited transformations
it was very dangerous to come near her, especially when she represented
a beast; for that lately, in the character of a cat, she had flown at
her, and scratched her face in a terrible manner: that some months ago,
she prophesied the general conflagration was at hand, and nothing would
be able to quench it but her water, which therefore she kept so long,
that her life was in danger, and she must needs have died of the
retention, had they not found an expedient to make her evacuate, by
kindling a bonfire under her chamber window and persuading her that the
house was in flames: upon which, with great deliberation, she bade them
bring all the tubs and vessels they could find to be filled for the
preservation