No more, proud Gallia, bid the world revere
Thy learned pair, Le Fevre and Dacier;
Britain may boast this happy day unites
Two nobler minds in Hymen's sacred rites:
What they have sung, while all th' inspiring Nine
Exalt the beauties of the verse divine,
The former (humble critics of the strain)
Shall bound their fame, to comment and explain.
Mr. Rowe had not a robust natural constitution, which was also impaired by intense application. In the latter end of 1714, he appeared to labour under all the symptoms of a consumption. This fatal distemper, after having confined him for some months, put a period to his life, 1715, in his 28th year. He died at Hampstead. The elegy she wrote on his death, is deservedly ranked amongst the most admirable of her poetical works.
She expressed to the last moments of her life the highest veneration for his memory, and a particular regard and esteem for his relations; several of whom she honoured with a long and most intimate friendship. A short time before her death, she shewed how incapable she was of forgetting him, by shedding fresh tears at the mention of his name.
It was only out of regard to Mr. Rowe, that with his society she was willing to be at London during the winter season, and, as soon after his decease as her affairs would permit, she indulged her unconquerable inclination for solitude, by retiring to Frome, in Somersetshire, in the neighbourhood of which place the greatest part of her estate lay. When she forsook the town, she determined to return to it no more, but to spend the remainder of her life in an absolute retirement; yet on some few occasions she thought it her duty to violate
