ROWE (Elisabeth), an English lady, eminent for her excellent writings both in prose and verse, born at Ilchester in Somersetshire in 1647, was the daughter of worthy parents, Mr Walter Singer and Mrs Elisabeth Portnel. She received the first serious impressions of religion as soon as she was capable of it. There being a great affinity between painting and poetry, this lady, who had a vein for the one, naturally had a taste for the other. She was also very fond of music; chiefly of the grave and solemn kind, as best suited to the grandeur of her sentiments, and the sublimity of her devotion. But poetry was her favourite employment, her distinguishing excellence. So prevalent was her genius this way, that her prose is all poetical. In 1696, a collection of her poems was published at the desire of two friends. Her paraphrase on the xxxviii chapter of Job, was written at the request of bishop Ken. She had no other tutor for the French and Italian languages, than the honourable Mr Thynne, who willingly took the task upon himself. Her shining merit, with the charms of person and conversation, had procured her a great many admirers. Among others, it is said, the famous Mr Prior made his addresses to her. But Mr Thomas Rowe was to be the happy man. This gentleman was honourably descended; and his superior genius, and insatiable thirst after knowledge, were conspicuous in his earliest years. He had
formed a design to compile the lives of all the illustrious persons in antiquity omitted by Plutarch; which indeed he partly executed. Eight lives were published since his decease. They were translated into French by the abbe Bellenger in 1734. He spoke with ease and fluency; had a frank and benevolent temper, an inexhaustible fund of wit, and a communicative disposition. Such was the man, who, charmed with the person, character, and writings, of our authoress, married her in 1710; and made it his study to repay the felicity with which she crowned his life. Too intense an application to study, beyond what the delicacy of his frame would bear, broke his health, and threw him into a consumption; which put a period to his valuable life in 1715, when he was but just past the 28th year of his age. Mrs Rowe wrote a beautiful elegy on his death; and continued to the last moments of her life to express the highest veneration and affection for his memory. As soon after his decease as her affairs would permit, she indulged her inclination to solitude, by retiring to Frome in Somersetshire, in the neighbourhood of which place the greatest part of her estate lay. In this recess it was that she composed the most celebrated of her works, Friendship in Death, and the Letters Moral and Entertaining. She had been favoured with an uncommon strength of constitution; owing much, no doubt, to her exact temperance and calmness of mind, till about half a year before her decease, when she was attacked by a dangerous disemper. Yet she got the better of it, and recovered her usual health for some months; till one day she was seized with an apoplexy, and expired in 1737.