CATHERINE PHILLIPS.
[151]
[BORN 1631. DIED 1664.]
BALLARD.
From WOMEN OF HISTORY:
SELECTED FROM THE WRITINGS OF STANDARD AUTHORS.
BY THE EDITOR OF "MEN OF HISTORY."
“Biography is the most universally pleasant and universally profitable of all reading."
EDINBURGH: W. P. NIMMO, HAY, & MITCHELL. 1890.
MORRISON AND GIBB, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
[Public Domain]
THE celebrated Orinda was the daughter of John Fowler of Bucklersbury. Her improvement was so early, that whoever reads the account given of her by M. Aubrey, will look upon all her succeeding progress in learning to be no more than what might justly be expected. He tells us that she was very apt to learn, and made verses when she was at school; that she devoted herself to religious duties when she was very young; that she would then pray by herself an hour together; that she had read the Bible through before she was full four years old; that she could say by heart many chapters and passages of Scripture, was a frequent hearer of sermons, which she would bring away entire in her memory, and would take sermons verbatim when she was but ten years old.
She became afterwards a perfect mistress of the French tongue, and learned the Italian under the tuition of her ingenious and worthy friend Sir Charles Cottrell. Born with a genius for poetry, she began to improve it early in life, and composed many poems, upon various occasions, for her own amusement, in her recess at Cardigan and retirement elsewhere. These being dispersed among her friends and acquaintances, were by an unknown hand collected together and published 152in 1663, without her knowledge and consent,—an ungenteel and ungenerous treatment, which proved so oppressive to her great modesty, that it gave her a severe fit of illness. She poured forth her complaints in a long letter to Sir Charles Cottrell, in which she laments, in a most affecting manner, the misfortune and injury which had been done to her by this surreptitious edition of her poems.
Her remarkable humility, good nature, and agreeable conversation, greatly endeared her to all her acquaintances, and her ingenious and elegant writings procured her the friendship and correspondence of many learned and eminent men, and of persons of the first rank in England. Upon her going to Ireland with the Viscountess of Dungannon, to transact her husband's affairs there, her great merit soon made her known to, and esteemed by, those illustrious persons,—Ormond, Orrery, Roscommon, and many other persons of distinction,—who paid a great deference to her worth and abilities, and showed her singular marks of their esteem.
While in Ireland, she was very happy in carrying on a former intimacy with the famous Dr Jeremy Taylor, the worthy Bishop of Down and Conner, who addressed to her "A Discourse of the Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship." It is possible that his acquaintance with Mrs Philips might contribute much towards the good opinion he entertained of the female sex. It is certain that he was a great admirer of them. "But, by the way, madam," he says, "you may see how much I differ from the morosity of those cynics who would not admit your sex into the communities of a noble friendship. I believe some wives have been the best friends in the world, and few stories can outdo the nobleness and piety of that lady that sucked the poisoned purulent matter from the 153wound of our brave prince in the holy land, when an assassin had pierced him with a venomed arrow. And if it be told that women cannot return counsel, and therefore can be no brave friends, I can best confute them by the story of Portia. I cannot say that women are capable of all those excellences by which men can oblige the world; and therefore a female friend, in some cases, is not so good a counsellor as a wise man, and cannot so well defend my honour, nor dispose of reliefs and assistances, if she be under the power of another; but a woman can love as passionately, and converse as pleasantly, and retain a secret as faithfully, and be useful in her proper ministries, and she can die for her friend as well as the bravest Roman knight. A man is the best friend in trouble, but a woman may be equal to him in the days of joy; a woman can as well increase our comforts, but cannot so well lessen our sorrows, and therefore we do not carry women with us when we go to fight; but, in peaceful cities and times, virtuous women are the beauties of society and the prettinesses of friendship."
Mrs Philips went for a time into a sort of melancholy retirement, occasioned, perhaps, by the bad success of her husband's affairs; and, going to London in order to relieve her oppressed spirits with the conversation of her friends there, she was seized by the small-pox, and died in her thirty-third year. Mr Aubrey observes that her person was of a middle stature, pretty fat, and ruddy complexion.
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