Women of History: Selected from the Writings of Standard AuthorsVarious
History
Women of History: Selected from the Writings of Standard Authors
Various
Women -- Biography
With this we may compare what Klopstock says, writing of her: "How
perfect was her taste! how exquisitely fine her feelings! she observed
everything even to the slightest turn of the thought. I had only to look
at her, and could see in her face when even a syllable pleased or
displeased her; and when I led her to explain the reason of her
remarks, no demonstration could be more true, more accurate, or more
appropriate to the subject. But, in general, this gave us very little
trouble, for we understood each other when we had scarcely began to
explain our ideas."
But all this happiness, too bright for earth, or for long endurance, was
about to be suddenly extinguished. There is another letter from Meta to
Richardson, dated 26th August, in which she informs him that she has a
prospect of being a mother in the month of November, and of thus
attaining what has been her only wish ungratified for these four years.
She writes from Hamburg, where she was on a visit to her family, while
her husband had been obliged to make a journey to Copenhagen. It was the
first time that they had been separated. It is remarkable that she seems
to have had more than a mere apprehension, almost an assured foreboding,
of what awaited her. Klopstock rejoined her at last about the end of
September; her last lines, written to him before his return, are dated
the 26th of that month. The two following months they spent together at
Hamburg. From that place poor Meta was never to return. There, where she
had first drawn breath, she died in childbed on the 28th of November.
[Klopstock lived till 1803, and was then buried under a lime tree in the
churchyard of Ottenson, near Altona, by the side of his Meta and the
child that slept in her arms.]
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL.
[1720.]
JAMES BRUCE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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