Upon the death of Mrs. Rowe, as she had left her meditations for the hands of Dr. Watts, when he proposed to publish the volume with his preface, he also very naturally proposed to dedicate it to their friend the Countess. With extraordinary modesty, however, she shrunk from this. She writes: “The sincere esteem I have for you makes it very difficult for me to oppose anything you desire, and it is doubly so in an instance where I might have an opportunity of indulging so justifiable a pride as I should feel in letting the public see this fresh mark of your partiality to me, but as I am apprehensive that the envy such a distinction would raise against me might draw some vexation with it, I hope you will have the goodness to change the dedication into a letter to a friend, without giving me any such appellation.” In another letter, with characteristic modesty, she says: “I can, with the strictest truth, affirm that I do not know any distinction upon earth that I could feel a truer pleasure in receiving were I deserving of it, but as I am forced to see how much I fall below the idea which the benevolence of your nature has formed of me, it teaches me to humble myself by that very incident which might administer a laudable pride to a more worthy person. If I am constrained to acknowledge this mortifying truth, you may believe there are many people in the world who look upon me with more impartial eyes than self-love will allow me to do; and others, who perhaps think I enjoy more of this world’s goods than I either merit or than falls to the common lot, look at me with envious and malignant views, and are glad of every opportunity to debase me or those who they believe entertain a favourable opinion of me. I would hope that I have never done anything, wilfully I am sure I have not, to raise any such sentiments in the breast of the meanest person upon earth, but yet experience has convinced me that I have not been happy enough to escape them. For these reasons, sir, I must deny myself the pleasure and the pride I should have in so public a mark of your friendship and candour, and beg that if you will design me the honour of joining any address to me with those valuable remains of Mrs. Rowe, that you will either retrench the favourable expressions you intended to insert, or else give me no other title at the top of it than that of a friend of yours and hers, an appellation which, in the sincerity of my soul, I am prouder of than I could be of the most pompous name that human grandeur can lay claim to.”