none of the pieces are of very great length, and manifest no power therefore in regard to sustained effort, they display imagination, feeling, and originality of thought. Some of the writer's earlier productions might have been omitted without any injury to the collection."
ROWE, ELIZABETH,
Was the daughter of Mr. Walter Singer, a dissenting minister, and was born at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, September 11th., 1674. Her father possessed an estate near Frome, in that county; but he married And settled at Ilchester. Miss Singer gave early promise of genius, and began to write verses when she was only twelve, and also excelled in music and painting. She was very pious, and, at the request of Bishop Ken, wrote her paraphrase on the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. In 1696, she published a volume of poetry, entitled, "Poems on Several Occasions, by Philomela."
Her merit and personal attractions procured her many admirers, among whom was Prior the poet; but she married, in 1709, Mr. Thomas Rowe, and for five years lived with him very happily. He died in 1716, at the age of twenty-eight, and Mrs. Rowe retired to Frome, and spent the remainder of her life in the greatest seclusion. Here she composed most of her works; some of which were "Friendship in Death, or Letters from the Dead to the Living." The intention of this work is to impress the idea of the sours immortality, without which all virtue and religion, with their temporal and eternal consequences, must fall to the ground. About three years afterwards she published "Letters, Moral and Entertaining;" "The History of Joseph," a poem; and after her death, in 1736, the Rev. Dr. Warts, agreeably to her request, revised and published a work she left, called "Devout Exercises of the Heart, in Meditation and Soliloquy, Praise and Prayer."
She possessed a sweetness and serenity of temper that nothing Could ruffle, and great benevolence and gentleness of character. She was unassuming and lovely in her deportment; and her charities bordered on excess. She died February 20th., 1787, aged sixty-three.
Mrs. Rowe was exemplary in all her relations; but in her deportment as a wife and an author, she is worthy of especial regard. She felt it no disparagement to her mind, but rather an increase of glory, when she honoured her husband. Her esteem and affection appeared in all her conduct to Mr. Rowe; and by the most gentle and obliging manners, and the exercise of every social virtue, she confirmed the empire she had gained over his heart. She made it her duty to soften the anxieties, and heighten all the satisfactions, of his life. Her capacity for superior things did not tempt her to neglect the less honourable cares which the laws of custom and decency impose on the female sex, in the connubial state; and much less was she led by a sense of her own merit, to assume anything to herself inconsistent with that duty and submission which the precepts of Christian piety so expressly enjoin.
ROWENA,
According to Nennias, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and others, Rowena was the daughter of the Jutish Captain Hengist. who, summoned by the British king to assist him against his foes, found this country so much to his liking, that he resolved to establish himself in is
