Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/795

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OF CELEBRATED WOMEN.
781

It was a pity that her talents should have been thrown away on that species of writing. Her novels are all founded on facts, relative to people in the French court. The French stile was not so good then as it was afterwards, and her writings have much tedious minutia of description, but her fancy was brilliant and her sentiments pure and noble. Besides l'Illustre Bassa, Cyrus, Clelia, &c. she published two volumes of the speeches of illustrious women. Celinte, Mathilde, and Le Promenade de Versailles, were shorter than her first romances, and more near the modern novel. Her discourse on glory, in 1671, won the first prize of eloquence in the French academy. She preserved her powers, her wit and vivacity, to the last, and bore with patience violent pains from a rheumatic affection in her knees. She died as she had lived, with modest hope and piety.

F. C. &c.


SEGUIER (ANNE DE), a French Poetess, Wife of Duprat, Baron de Thiern,

By whom she had two daughters, educated at the court of Henry III. and famous for their learning and knowledge, as well as for that virtue which they inherited from their mother.

F. C.


SEMIRAMIS, the most extraordinary Woman of Antiquity,

Was the wife of an officer in the army of Ninus, king of

Assyria,