She says that she was sent at first to the "Putney School," but that she was taken home at about ten by her mother who had come to consider such schools as "Academies of Vanity and Expense, no Way instructive in the Rudiments of a Country Gentlewoman's Life." At fifteen she was sent to London under the care of an aunt to learn "Town Politeness."[216] Her father lived near Cambridge,[217] and through her brother, a Cambridge man, she was well known in the younger literary set at the University. The praise accorded her verse was excessive. "Philaster" of St. John's hails her as the true heiress of the great Orinda. To "C. G." she is the Elijah for whose mantle meaner poets wait. "Exilius," also of St. John's, celebrates the miracles of her Almighty Pen. "S. C." wonders to see men "tug at Classic Oars" and "sweat over Horace" when along comes a lady who without effort utters "well-shapt Fancy and true Digested Thought." "Fidelius" rejoices to see "Physick and Anatomie done into purest Verse." And "J. N.," Fellow of St. John's, praises her Scipina as writ in lines, More than Astrea's soft, more than Orinda's Chaste. Another gentleman from St. John's said that she surpassed "the Scaroons and Scudderies of France" and showed that England could originate as well as translate.[218] Miss Barker was evidently in the stimulating and unusual position of being the temporary literary idol of an academic coterie. There was a false lover in Miss Barker's early life who, as "Strephon" in verse[219] and as "Bosvil" in prose,[220] is copiously written up along with her own emotional experiences as "Galesia." The most interesting portion of the affair has to do with Galesia's original ways of reëstablishing her happiness. She found comfort in contemplating the wonderful works of Creation.[221] She wandered along shady paths, by little streams, and through the meadows. She loved the early morning, the evening dews, the starry night sky. There is no felicitous phrasing in the references to nature, but the fact remains that Galesia found in nature a satisfaction and sometimes an exaltation quite foreign to the heroines of her time. Galesia's second resource is study. She says of this new occupation: Finding myself abandon'd by _Bosvil_ and thinking it impossible ever to love any Mortal more, resolv'd to espouse a Book, and spend my Days in Study ... I imagin'd my self the _Orinda_ or _Sapho_ of my Time. In order to this, I got my brother, who was not yet return'd to Oxford,[222] to set me in the way to learn my Grammar, which he really did, thinking it ... a Freak without Foundation to be overthrown by the first Difficulty I shou'd meet with in the Syntax, knowing it to be less easy to make Substantive and Adjective agree, than to place a Patch or Curl.[223]