The Revd. Dr. Birch, who has prefixed a life of Mrs. Cockburn before the collection he has made of her works, with great truth observes, that it is a justice due to the public, as well as to the memory of Mrs. Cockburn, to premise some account of so extraordinary a person. "Posterity, at least, adds he, will be so sollicitous to know, to whom they will owe the most demonstrative and perspicuous reasonings, upon subjects of eternal importance; and her own sex is entitled to the fullest information about one, who has done such honour to them, and raised our ideas of their intellectual powers, by an example of the greatest extent of understanding and correctness of judgment, united to all the vivacity of imagination. Antiquity, indeed, boasted of its Female Philosophers, whose merits have been drawn forth in an elaborate treatise of Menage[1]. But our own age and country may without injustice or vanity oppose to those illustrious ladies the defender of Lock and Clark; who, with a genius equal to the most eminent of them, had the superior advantage of cultivating it in the only effectual method of improvement, the study of a real philosophy, and a theology worthy human nature, and its all-perfect author. [Transcriber's note: closing quotes missing from original.] She was the daughter of captain David Trotter, a Scots gentleman, and commander of the royal navy in the reign of Charles II. He was highly in favour with that prince, who employed him as commodore in the demolition of Tangier, in the year 1683. Soon after he was sent to convoy the fleet of the Turkey company; when being seized by the plague, then raging at Scanderoon, he died there. His death was an irreparable loss to his family, who were defrauded of all his effects on board his ship, which were very considerable, and of all the money which he had advanced to the seamen, during a long voyage: And to add to this misfortune, the goldsmith, in whose hands the greatest part of his money was lodged, became soon after a bankrupt. These accumulated circumstances of distress exciting the companion of king Charles, the captain's widow was allowed a pension, which ended with that king's life; nor had she any consideration for her losses in the two succeeding reigns. But queen Anne, upon her accession to the throne, granted her an annual pension of twenty pounds.