But this witty, pretty creature unfortunately over-estimated her possibilities. The next ten years passed in a round of gaiety which took the form of courtship by no one under the rank of gentleman commoner. With the baronet in view, however, such mere mortals fell in their hundreds. Some she rejected “because a better might offer, some because they had too much sense; others because they had too little; this was too old, that too young,” and, in consequence, she was gradually deserted, as her physical charms waned, until at last her name was never mentioned “without the odious reproach of ‘she has been’ added to it.” At the moment of writing this first letter she was compelled to work for her bread and the support of her mother. This she did with her pen, turning out poems and novels; being, as she informed _The Student_, at present engaged in “composing sermons for a bookseller, which he designs to sell for the MS. Sermons of an eminent divine lately deceased, warranted originals.” _The Student_, liking the tone of her first letter, encouraged her to write further, and from time to time she sent in various articles, such as a scathing criticism of Academical Gallantry, in which she roundly chaffed all gownsmen for their bragging propensities and gallant follies, and gave an account of the various Dons and their habits who had laid vain siege to her heart, and a discussion on the sin of living single, and the fustiness of old maids--a plight in which she admitted herself to be, though not by “desire or inclination.” In spite of the editorial desire to give umbrage to no person or party, certain of the Bucks seem to have considered her an unamusing, brazen creature, whose inclusion in _The Student_ was a sad mistake, for she received the following crushing letter from one of their number. “---- Coll., Oxford, _June 11, 1751_. “MADAM,--As the character I bear in this University is that of a profess’d critic-general on pamphlets, and as my opinion is look’d upon as infallible and oracular in a certain coffee-house frequented by Wits, where a subscription is carried on for raking together the dulness of the age, I think I may take the liberty (without being styled Prig, Fop, Witling, or Poetaster) of transmitting you my full and candid sentiments on your monthly productions. And first, Madam Student, with as much laconic politeness as possible, I beg leave to inform you that you pretend to that choice ingredient of good writing Humour, without having one syllable of it. In a word, Madam, if you have any Humour at all, it is that low species of it, never so much as heard of in Greece and Rome, originally invented by Tom Brown of blackguard memory, and now first revived by the Female Student.