often.  Think on’t, and let me know what you resolve?  My lady has writ me word that she intends very shortly to sit at Lely’s for her picture for me; I give you notice on’t, that you may have the pleasure of seeing it sometimes whilst ’tis there.  I imagine ’twill be so to you, for I am sure it would be a great one to me, and we do not use to differ in our inclinations, though I cannot agree with you that my brother’s kindness to me has anything of trouble in’t; no, sure, I may be just to you and him both, and to be a kind sister will take nothing from my being a perfect friend.

Letter 17.—­Lady Newcastle was Margaret Duchess of Newcastle.  “The thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle,” as Elia describes her.  She was the youngest daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, and was born at Colchester towards the end of the reign of James I. Her mother appears to have been remarkably careful of her education in all such lighter matters as dancing, music, and the learning of the French tongue; but she does not seem to have made any deep study of the classics.  In 1643 she joined the Court at Oxford, and was made one of the Maids of Honour to Henrietta Maria, whom she afterwards attended in exile.  At Paris she met the Marquis of Newcastle, who married her in that city in 1645.  From Paris they went to Rotterdam, she leaving the Queen to follow her husband’s fortunes; and after stopping at Rotterdam and Brabant for short periods, they settled at Antwerp.

At the Restoration she returned to England with her husband, and employed her time in writing letters, plays, poems, philosophical discourses, and orations.  There is a long catalogue of her works in Ballard’s Memoirs, but all published at a date subsequent to 1653.  However, from Anthony Wood and other sources one gathers somewhat different details of her life and writings; and the book to which Dorothy refers here and in Letter 21, is probably the Poems and Fancies, an edition of which was published, I believe, in this year [1653].  Many of her verses are more strangely incomprehensible than anything even in the poetry of to-day.  Take, for instance, a poem of four lines, from the Poems and Fancies, entitled—­

          THE JOINING OF SEVERAL FIGUR’D ATOMS MAKES
          OTHER FIGURES.

          Several figur’d Atoms well agreeing
          When joined, do give another figure being. 
          For as those figures joined several ways
          The fabrick of each several creature raise.

This seems to be a rhyming statement of the Atomic theory, but whether it is a poem or a fancy we should find it hard to decide.  It is not, however, an unfair example of Lady Newcastle’s fantastic style.  Lady Newcastle died in 1673, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,—­“A wise, witty, and learned Lady, which her many books do well testify.”