(Letitia), a famous poetical genius, the daughter of Dr Van Lewin, a physician of Dublin, where she was born in 1712. She was married very young to the Rev. Matthew Pilkington, a poet also of no inconsiderable merit; and these two wits, as is often the case, lived very unhappily together. They were at length totally separated, on the husband accidentally discovering a gentleman in her bedchamber at two o'clock in the morning; a circumstance which she accounted for in a very unsatisfactory manner. The story is told at large in her Memoirs; where she says, "Lovers of learning, I am sure, will pardon me, as I solemnly declare it was the attractive charms of a new book, which the gentleman would not lend me, but consented to stay till I read it through, that was the sole motive of my detaining him." As there are not wanting some who form objections to the marrying learned wives, the chance of such literary appointments may perhaps be added to the list of them. After this unlucky adventure, Mrs Pilkington came to London; and having recourse to her pen for subsistence, through the means of Colley Cibber, she lived some time on the contributions of the great. She was however thrown into the Marshalsea for debt; and being set at liberty, opened a pamphlet shop. She raised at length a handsome subscription for her Memoirs; which are written with great sprightliness and wit, containing several entertaining anecdotes of dean Swift, with whom she was intimate, as well as many pretty little pieces of her poetry. This ingenious but unhappy woman is said at last to have killed herself with drinking, at Dublin, in 1750.