age of twenty-one she published a very small
collection of poems, with a Greek motto from
Euripides, signifying that they were nothing.
She liked the morality of Mrs. Rowe's letters,
which are still to be found lying neglected on
old bookstalls, and wrote on the occasion of
her death, that it would be her own justest
pride,

                        My best attempt for fame,
   That joins my own to Philomela's name,

Philomela being Mrs. Rowe. She admired also
the poetry of Stephen Duck, the thresher,
patronised and pensioned by the Queen of George
the Second, and addressed him in lines which
begin

         Accept, O Duck, the Muse's grateful lay.

When about twenty years old there was
some prospect of a place at Court for her if
she understood the German of the reigning
family. She learnt German on this hint, but
did not go to Court, and for many years saw
London life only when visiting among her
relations. Afterwards she learnt Spanish and
Italian, some Portuguese, and even Arabic,
making for herself an Arabic Dictionary. She
had a taste also for geography, ancient of course,
knowing a great deal more of the geography of
Greece B.C. 1184, than of Middlesex in her
own time. But with all her work she had
passed a youth not without playfulness, and
she was throughout life heartily and cheerfully
religious, with a wholesome disrelish of
controversy, wherein she was wiser than her
father.

Surely the doctor's influence would have
sufficed to keep her zeal for study within
wholesome bounds. She was throughout life
an early riser, considering herself to be up
late if she was only up by seven. Her common
time of rising was between four and five.
Early to rise comes well enough after early to
bed; but we have Dr. Carter praising his
daughter in her girlhood for a virtuous resolution
not to study beyond midnight. The only
stand he made was against her use of snuff to
keep herself awake and abate headache. When
she was the worse for the want of it, he let
her have it; his protest failed against the
snuff, and was not made against the overwork
that made snuff necessary: and not snuff
only. Poor little Betsey Carter used also to
keep herself awake for night study by binding
a wet towel round her head, putting a wet
cloth to the pit of her stomach, and chewing
green tea and coffee. Be it observed,
nevertheless, that she did not kill herself. She lived
to the age of eighty-nine. But her
headaches were the penalty inflicted on her for
abridging hours of sleep.

Now, it is not just to the body to overcome
its fatigues habitually with snuff in the nose,
green tea-leaves in the mouth, a wet towel
round the head, and a wet cloth at the pit of
the stomach. But against all that, was here to
be set a placidly cheerful temper and a mind
well occupied. Elizabeth Carter, in her youth,
could get through nine hours' dancing with
enjoyment, and walk to it three miles and back
in a gale of wind. She studied astronomy, but
had not a soul above shirt-buttons, and made
her brother's shirts. It was suspected that her
love of study had produced a secret resolution
against marriage. She said, indeed, at eighty-
six, "Nobody knows what may happen. I
never said I would not marry;" and among
offers refused in her youth was one that
tempted her enough to make her hesitate while
her friends urged acceptance. If he had not
furnished evidence against himself by publishing
a few rather licentious verses, Elizabeth
would probably have taken to this suitor's
shirt-buttons, and had a livelier firstborn than
her translation of Epictetus. When she was
sixty-five years old, Hayley dedicated his Essay
on Old Maids to Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, as
"Poet, Philosopher, and Old Maid," an attention
which she did not gratefully appreciate,
because she disliked the temper of his essay.
Perhaps she was too fastidious. Punch himself
was in awe of her. She was not above going
to a puppet-show, but when she went to one at
Deal, "Why, Punch," said the showman, "what
makes you so stupid?" "I can't talk my own
talk," said Punch. "The famous Mrs. Carter
is here."

And how had the lady become famous?
Thus: Edward Cave, of the Gentleman's
Magazine, being an old friend of her father's,
admitted into his magazine occasional bits of
verse from her, signed Eliza. The first
appeared before she was quite seventeen years
old. Through Cave she made the acquaintance
of young Samuel Johnson upon his first coming
to London. Two or three months after his
first contribution to Cave's magazine had
appeared—it was a Latin alcaic ode—Dr. Carter
replied from the country to his daughter's letter
from town, "You mention Johnson; but this is
a name with which I am utterly unacquainted.
Neither his scholastic, critical, or poetical
character ever reached my ears." Johnson was
then aged nine-and-twenty and Miss Carter
twenty-one. It was in Cave's shop, as fellow-
contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine, before
either of them had tasted fame, that the
acquaintanceship began to which Elizabeth Carter
owes much of her fame. Writing to her
eighteen or twenty years after the beginning
of their cordial but ceremonious friendship,
Johnson said, "To every joy is appended a
sorrow. The name of Miss Carter introduces
the memory of Cave. Poor dear Cave! I
owed him much; for to him I owe that I have
known you;" and he subscribed himself her
most obedient and most humble servant, "with
respect, which I neither owe nor pay to any
other." At the age of twenty-two Miss Carter
had translated out of French the criticism of
De Crousaz upon Pope's Essay on Man, and
immediately afterwards translated also for Cave,
from the Italian of Algarotti, six dialogues for
the use of ladies upon Newton's philosophy of
light and colour. Samuel Johnson, then at
work for Cave, corrected the proofs for the
young lady, of whom the learned Doctor