Dedication 5 



writings, some denying me to he the true Authoress of 

 them ; for your Grace remembers well, that those books 

 I put out first, to the judgment of this censorious age, 

 were accounted not to be written by a woman, but that 

 some body else had writ and published them in my 

 name ; by which your Lordship was moved to prefix 

 an epistle before one of them in my vindication, wherein 

 you assure the world upon your honour, that what was 

 written and printed in my name, was my own ; and I 

 have also made known, that your Lordship was my onely 

 tutor, in declaring to me what you had found and 

 observed by your own experience ; for L being young 

 when your Lordship married me, could not have much 

 knowledge of the world ; but it pleased God to command 

 his servant Nature to indue me with a poetical and 

 philosophical genius, even from my birth ; for I did 

 write some books, in that kind, before I was twelve years 

 of age, which for want of good method and order, L would 

 never divulge. But though the world would not believe 

 that those conceptions and fancies which I writ, were 

 my own, but transcended my capacity, yet they found 

 fault, that they were defective for want of learning ; 

 and on the other side, they said L had pluckt feathers 

 out of the Universities ; which was a very preposterous 

 judgment. Truly, My Lord, I confess that for want of 

 scholarship, I could not express my self so well as 

 otherwise I might have done, in those philosophical 

 writings L published first ; but after L was returned 

 with your Lordship into my native cotmiry, and led a 

 retired country life, L applied my self to the reading of 

 philosophical authors, of purpose to learn those names 

 and words of art that are used in schools ; which at 

 first were so hard to me, that L could not understand them, 

 but was fain to guess at the sense of them by the whole 

 context, and so writ them down as I found them in those 



