[In 1784, Miss Seward produced a poetical novel, entitled "Louisa," which became popular, and passed through several editions. Her memoirs of the life of Dr Darwin was her last composition. In this she lays claim to the lines at the commencement of "The Botanic Garden," though unacknowledged by the author. Her other poems are "Langollen Vale," a volume of sonnets, and some paraphrases of Horace. She died in March 1809, leaving Sir Walter Scott her literary executor. Mr Polwhele, in his "Unsexed Females," speaks thus: "Miss Seward's poems are thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."] CATHERINE COCKBURN. [BORN 1679. DIED 1749.] PROFESSOR CRAIK Mrs Cockburn, whose maiden name was Trotter, the daughter of a commander in the navy, was in youth said to have been distinguished by personal attractions. Her father died when she was very young; and her mother, who was nearly related to more than one Scotch noble family, was left in very narrow circumstances. Catherine began to show remarkable talent or vivacity of mind at a very early age. It is told that, while she was still a mere child, she one day surprised a company of her friends by some extemporaneous verses on an incident which had just happened in the street. Her first literary attempts were in verse. One poem, which she is stated to have written when she was only fourteen, is printed among her works. It is certain that in 1695, when she was only in her seventeenth year, she appeared as a dramatic writer,--a tragedy written by her, entitled "Agnes de Castro," having been brought out with success at the Theatre Royal in that year, and printed the following. This was followed by a second tragedy, entitled "Fatal Friendship," which was performed in the new theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1698, and printed the same year; and then came another tragedy and a comedy. These juvenile productions had, probably all of them, great defects; but the authoress of three tragedies and a comedy, all both printed and acted before she had reached the age of twenty-two, was at any rate no common phenomenon. And she had also, it seems, already been long a diligent student of metaphysics, besides having, while as we gather only in her teens, ventured so far into the maze of theological speculation and controversy, as to have been induced to leave the Church of England in which she had been educated, and to profess herself a Roman Catholic. The first fruit of her philosophical studies appeared in May 1702, when she published anonymously a defence of "Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding," in reply to an attack upon it, which was afterwards known to have proceeded from the learned and eloquent Dr Thomas Burnet of the Charter House.