Unmix'd with foreign filth, and undefiled;
Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.*

V.
Art she had none, yet wanted none;
For nature did that want supply:
So rich in treasures of her own,

She might our boasted stores defy ;
Such noble vigour did her verse adorn,
That it seem'd borrow'd where 'twas only born.
Her morals, too, were in her bosom bred,

By great examples daily fed, What in the best of books, her father's life, she read: And to be read herself she need not fear; Each test, and every light, her muse will bear, Though Epictetus with his lamp were there. E'en love (for love sometimes her muse exprest) Was but a lambent flame which play'd about her

breast : Light as the vapours of a morning dream, So cold herself, whilst she such warmth exprest, 'Twas Cupid bathing in Diana's stream.

VI. Born to the spacious empire of the Nine, One would havethoughtsheshould have been content To manage

well that mighty government; But what can young ambitious souls confine ?

To the next realm she stretch'd her sway,

For Painture near adjoining lay,
A plenteous province, and alluring prey.

À chamber of dependencies was framed, (As conquerers will never want pretence,

When arm'd, to justify the offence,)

* This line certainly gave rise to that of Pope in Gay's epitaph:

In wit a man, simplicity a child.

And the whole fief, in right of poetry, she claim’d.
The country open lay without defence;
For poets frequent inroads there had made,

And perfectly could represent

The shape, the face, with every lineament, And all the large domains which the Dumb Sister

sway'd ; All bow'd beneath her government,

Received in triumph wheresoe'er she went.
Her pencil drew whate’er her soul design'd,
And oft the happy draught surpass’d the image in

her mind.
The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks,
And fruitful plains and barren rocks,
Of shallow brooks that flow'd so clear,
The bottom did the top appear ;
Of deeper too and ampler floods,
Which, as in mirrors, shew'd the woods ;
Of lofty trees, with sacred shades,
And perspectives of pleasant glades,
Where nymphs of brightest form appear,
And shaggy satyrs standing near,
Which them at once admire and fear.
The ruins too of some majestic

piece,
Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece,
Whose statues, frizes, columns, broken lie,
And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye;
What nature, art, bold fiction, e'er durst frame,
Her forming hand gave feature to the name.

So strange a concourse ne'er was seen before, But when the peopled ark the whole creation bore.

VII. The scene then changed; with bold erected look Our martial king* the sight with reverence strook :

}

James II. painted by Mrs Killigrew.

For, not content to express his outward part,
Her hand call'd out the image of his heart :
His warlike mind, his soul devoid of fear,
His high-designing thoughts were figured there,
As when, by magic, ghosts are made appear.

Our phoenix queenf was pourtray'd too so bright,
Beauty alone could beauty take so right:
Her dress, her shape, her matchless grace,
Were all observed, as well as heavenly face.
With such a peerless majesty she stands,
As in that day she took thecrown from sacred hands :
Before a train of heroines was seen,
In beauty foremost, as in rank, the queen.

Thus nothing to her genius was denied, But like a ball of fire the further thrown,

Still with a greater blaze she shone, And her bright soul broke out on every side, What next she had design'd, heaven only knows: To such immoderate growth her conquest rose, That fate alone its progress could oppose.

VIII.
Now all those charms, that blooming grace,
The well-proportion'd shape, and beauteous face,
Shall never more be seen by mortal eyes;
In earth the much-lamented virgin lies.

Not wit, nor piety, could fate prevent;
Nor was the cruel destiny content
To finish all the murder at a blow,

To sweep at once her life and beauty too;
But, like a harden’d felon, took a pride

To work more mischievously slow,
And plunder'd first, and then destroy'd.

a

† Mary of Este, as eminent for beauty as rank, also painted by the subject of the elegy.

*

O double sacrilege on things divine,
To rob the relic, and deface the shrine !

But thus Orinda died ;
Heaven, by the same disease, did both translate;
As equal were their souls, so equal was their fate.

IX.
Meantime, her warlike brother on the seas
His waving streamers to the winds displays,

a

* Mrs Katherine Philips, whom the affectation of her age

called Orinda, was the daughter of Mr Towler, a citizen of London. Aubrey, the most credulous of mankind, tells us, in MS. Memoirs of her life, that she read through the Bible before she was four years old, and would take sermons verbatim by the time she was ten. She married a decent respectable country gentleman, called Wogan; a name which, when it occurred in her extensive literary correspondence, she exchanged for the fantastic appellation of Antenor. She maintained a literary intercourse for many years with bishops, earls, and wits, the main object of which was the management and extrication of her husband's affairs. But whether because the correspondents of Orinda were slack in at. tending to her requests in her husband's favour, or whether because a learned lady is a bad manager of sublunary concerns, An. tenor's circumstances became embarrassed, notwithstanding all Orinda's exertions, and the fair solicitor was obliged to retreat with him into Cardiganshire. Returning from this seclusion to London, in 1664, she was seized with the small-pox, which carried her off in the 33d

year Her poems and translations were collected into a folio after her death, which bears the title of “ Poems by the most deservedly admired Mrs Katherine Philips, the matchless ORINDA. London, 1667."-See BALLARD's Memoirs of Learned Ladies, p. 287.

This lady is here mentioned with the more propriety, as Mrs Anne Killigrew dedicated the following lines to her memory:

Orinda (Albion's and our sexes grace)
Owed not her glory to a beauteous face-
It was her radiant soul that shone within,
Which struck a lustre through her outward skin,
That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye,
Advanced her height, and sparkled in her eye ;
Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame,
But higher ’mong the stars it fix'd her name ;
What she did write not only all allow'd,
But every laurel to her laurel bow'd.

of her age.

а

And vows for his return, with vain devotion, pays.

Ah, generous youth ! that wish forbear,

The winds too soon will waft thee here: Slack all thy sails, and fear to come ; Alas, thou know'st not thou art wreck'd at home! No more shalt thou behold thy sister's face, Thou hast already had her last embrace. But look aloft, and if thou ken'st from far Among the Pleiads a new-kindled star, If any sparkles than the rest more bright, 'Tis she that shines in that propitious light.

X. When in mid-air the golden trump shall sound,

To raise the nations under ground;

When in the valley of Jehosophat,
The judging God shall close the book of fate,

And there the last assizes keep,
For those who wake, and those who sleep;
When rattling bones together fly,

From the four corners of the sky;
When sinews o'er the skeletons are spread,
Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,

And foremost from the tomb shall bound, For they are covered with the lightest ground; And straight, with inborn vigour, on the wing, Like mountain larks, to the new morning sing. There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shall

go, As harbinger of heaven the way to show, The way which thou so well hast learnt below.