It is certainly true, that when a woman happens to have more understanding than her husband, she should be very industrious to conceal it; but it is like wise true, that the natural vanity of the sex is difficult to check, and the vanity of a poet still more difficult:  wit in a female mind can no more cease to sparkle, than she who possesses it, can cease to speak.  Mr. Pilkington began to view her with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, and in this situation, nothing but misery was likely to be their lot.  While these jealousies subsisted, Mr. Pilkington, contrary to the advice of his friends, went into England, in order to serve as chaplain to alderman Barber during his mayoralty of the city of London.

While he remained in London, and having the strange humour of loving his wife best at a distance, he wrote her a very kind letter, in which he informed her, that her verses were like herself, full of elegance and beauty[1]; that Mr. Pope and others, to whom he had shewn them, longed to see the writer, and that he heartily wished her in London.  This letter set her heart on flame.  London has very attractive charms to most young people, and it cannot be much wondered at if Mrs. Pilkington should take the only opportunity she was ever likely to have, of gratifying her curiosity:  which however proved fatal to her; for though we cannot find, that during this visit to London, her conduct was the least reproachable, yet, upon her return to Ireland, she underwent a violent persecution of tongues.  They who envied her abilities, fastened now upon her morals; they were industrious to trace the motives of her going to London; her behaviour while she was there; and insinuated suspicions against her chastity.  These detracters were chiefly of her own sex, who supplied by the bitterest malice what they wanted in power.

Not long after this an accident happened, which threw Mrs. Pilkington’s affairs into the utmost confusion.  Her father was stabbed, as she has related, by an accident, but many people in Dublin believe, by his own wife, though some say, by his own hand.  Upon this melancholy occasion, Mrs. Pilkington has given an account of her father, which places her in a very amiable light.  She discovered for him the most filial tenderness; she watched round his bed, and seems to have been the only relation then about him, who deserved his blessing.  From the death of her father her sufferings begin, and the subsequent part of her life is a continued series of misfortunes.

Mr. Pilkington having now no expectation of a fortune by her, threw off all reserve in his behaviour to her.  While Mrs. Pilkington was in the country for her health, his dislike of her seems to have encreased, and, perhaps, he resolved to get rid of his wife at any rate:  nor was he long waiting for an occasion of parting with her.  The story of their separation may be found at large in her Memoirs.  The substance is, that she was so indiscreet as to permit a gentleman