From a drawing by herself engraved in an initial for her translation of _The Pastoral of St. Gregory_, 1709, and used also in her _Grammar_ in 1713] The brother of whom Miss Elstob speaks was William Elstob, who was ten years older than she. At eleven he was sent to Eton. At sixteen he went to Cambridge, and later to Oxford, where he was finally, in 1696, elected fellow of University College. In 1702 he became rector of the united parishes of St. Swithin and St. Mary Bothaw, in London, where he died in 1715 at the age of forty-two. He was a highly trained linguist, a great lover of antiquities, and one of the most promising Anglo-Saxon scholars of his time. He apparently had liberal sentiments concerning the education of women, so that as soon as his sister came under his care all her desires for study were gratified. Just when she went to Oxford is not certain, but it was probably about the time he took his fellowship, when she was thirteen. She gives the date of her entrance upon her Anglo-Saxon studies as 1698, when she was fifteen. In that year her brother had made a transcript of King Alfred's version of the Latin historian Orosius which he designed to publish. She wished to understand it and says, "Having gained the Alphabet, I found it so easy, and in it so much the grounds of our present Language, and of a more particular Agreement with some Words which I had heard when very young in the _North_, as drew me to be more inquisitive after Books written in that Language." Her brother was well pleased and recommended the _Saxon Heptatuch_. From this she went on to other treatises, and finally began to divert herself with taking transcripts of such ancient manuscripts as she could find.[239] She proved to be particularly facile with her pen. The copies she made of the old manuscripts were said to be marvels in the way of beauty and accuracy of lettering. Her copy of the _Textus Roffensis_ is described by Nichols as "one of the most lovely specimens of modern Saxon writing that can be imagined." She was well received in the University, for Mr. Rowe Mores speaks of her as "the _indefessa comes_ of her brother's studies, a female student in the University and a favourite of Dr. Hudson and the Oxonians."[240] In 1702 she went with her brother to London and they kept on in their work together with great eagerness and satisfaction. There gradually grew up in Miss Elstob's mind a desire to translate and publish some Anglo-Saxon manuscript. She was encouraged in this not only by her brother, but by Dr. Hickes, "the great patron of the Septentrional Studies," who said that by publishing somewhat in Saxon she might invite "the ladies to be acquainted with the Language of their Predecessors, and the Original of their Mother Tongue." The text finally determined upon was the _Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory_. Dr. Hudson, "a man of so generous a mind as not to discourage learning, even in the female sex," gave her access to the