Monk, Hon. Mary

, daughter of Lord Molesworth, and wife to George Monk, esq. was celebrated for her poetical talents. She acquired by her own application a perfect knowledge of the Latin, Italian, and Spanish languages; and, from a study of the best authors, a decided taste for poetical composition. She appears to have written for her own amusement, rather than with any view to publication. Her poems were not printed till after her death, when they were published under the title of “Marinda; Poems and Translations upon several Occasions,” London, 1716, 8vo. A dedication’to Caroline, princess of Wales, was prefixed to them by lord Molesworth, the father of Mrs. Monk, who speaks of the poems as the production * c of the leisure hours of a young woman, who, in a remote country retirement, without other assistance than that of a good library, and without omitting the daily care due to a large family, not only acquired the several languages here made use of, but the good morals and principles contained in those books, so as to put them in practice, as well during her life and languishing sickness, as at the hour of her death; dying not only like a Christian, but a Roman lady, and becoming at once the grief and the comfort of her relations.“She died in 1715, at B^t 1. On her deathbed she wrote some very affecting verses to her husband, which are not printed in her works, but may be found in vol. II. of the” Poems of Eminent Ladies,“and in” Cibber’s Lives." ²