Fair Corinna,

’I have sent your two poems back again, after having kept them so long from you:  They were I thought too good to be a woman’s; some of my friends to whom I read them, were of the same opinion.  It is not very gallant I must confess to say this of the fair sex; but, most certain it is, they generally write with more softness than strength.  On the contrary, you want neither vigour in your thoughts, nor force in your expression, nor harmony in your numbers; and me-thinks, I find much of Orinda in your manner, (to whom I had the honour to be related, and also to be known) but I am so taken up with my own studies, that I have not leisure to descend to particulars, being in the mean time, the fair Corinna’s

    Most humble, and

      Most faithful servant
  Nov. 12, 1699.  John Dryden.

Our amiable poetess, in a letter to Dr. Talbot, Bishop of Durham, has given some farther particulars of her life.  We have already seen that she was addressed upon honourable terms, by Mr. Gwynnet, of the Middle Temple, son of a gentleman in Gloucestershire.  Upon his first discovering his passion to Corinna, she had honour enough to remonstrate to him the inequality of their fortune, as her affairs were then in a very perplexed situation.  This objection was soon surmounted by a lover, especially as his father had given him possession of the greatest part of his estate, and leave to please himself.  Mr. Gwynnet no sooner obtained this, than he came to London, and claimed Corinna’s promise of marriage:  But her mother being then in a very weak condition, she could not abandon her in that distress, to die among strangers.  She therefore told Mr. Gwynnet, that as she had not thought sixteen years long in waiting for him, he could not think six months long in expectation of her.  He replied, with a deep sigh, ’Six months at this time, my Corinna, is more than sixteen years have been; you put it off now, and God will put it off for ever.’—­It proved as he had foretold; he next day went into the country, made his will, sickened, and died April the 16th, 1711, leaving his Corinna the bequest of six-hundred pounds; and adds she, ’Sorrow has been my food ever since.’

Had she providentially married him, she had been secure from the insults of poverty; but her duty to her parent was more prevalent than considerations of convenience.  After the death of her lover, she was barbarously used:  His brother, stifled the will, which compelled her to have recourse to law; he smothered the old gentleman’s conveyance deed, by which he was enabled to make a bequest, and offered a large sum of money to any person, who would undertake to blacken Corinna’s character; but wicked as the world is, he found none so compleatly abandoned, as to perjure themselves for the sake of his bribe.  At last to shew her respect to the memory of her deceased lover, she consented to an accommodation with his brother,