Writing from the Hermitage on St. Leonard’s Hill, she says: “I return you thanks for the epigram you were so good as to send me, and should think myself very happy if anything of mine could deserve to show the joy I should feel in being able to imitate Mrs. Rowe in the smallest instance. I have only two meditations of hers, which she gave me with the strongest injunctions not to let anybody see them, lest they should be thought too rapturous; but as I conclude she would not have included _you_ among those from whom she meant they should be concealed, I will have them copied if you desire it.” There are in her letters very pleasing indications of an amiable mind and heart; she writes to him of the books which have met her in the course of her reading, and her remarks are characterized by a quiet wisdom and judgment: “My Lord and Betty (the future Duchess of Northumberland) are in London, so that my son and his governor are my only companions at present; but we pass our time agreeably enough between reading, walking, and such other amusements as this place in which we are and the season of the year afford us; we have been lately reading ‘Leonidas,’[29] in which I think there are many fine thoughts; but I hear the town are much divided in their sentiments about it, since one part are for preferring it to Milton, and others for levelling it to the lowest rank of poetry. I confess neither of these appear to me a just representation of it. If you have read it, I shall be glad to know your thoughts of it.” In another letter she remarks upon the poet Pope: “I think everybody must wish a muse like Mr. Pope’s were more inclined to exert itself on Divine and good-natured subjects; but I am afraid satire is his highest talent, for I think his ‘Universal Prayer’ is by no means equal to some other of his works, and I think his tenth stanza: Teach me to feel another’s woe, To hide the faults I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me: an instance how blind the wisest men may be to the errors of their own hearts, for he certainly did not mean to imprecate such a proportion of vengeance on himself as he is too apt to load those with whom he dislikes; nor would he wish to have his own failings exposed to the eye of the world with all the invective and ridicule with which he publishes those of his fellow creatures.” The following is one of the most interesting and favourable letters from the many which Dr. Gibbons has preserved of the correspondence extending over so many years: “_Jan. 17, 1739._ “SIR,