old, her health failed so rapidly that physicians said it was necessary for her to take a sea-voyage. A son of Mr. Wheatley's was going to England on commercial business, and his mother proposed that Phillis should go with him.

In England she received even more attention than had[90] been bestowed upon her at home. Several of the nobility invited her to their houses; and her poems were published in a volume, with an engraved likeness of the author. In this picture she looks gentle and thoughtful, and the shape of her head denotes intellect. One of the engravings was sent to Mrs. Wheatley, who was delighted with it. When one of her relatives called, she pointed it out to her, and said, "Look at my Phillis! Does she not seem as if she would speak to me?"

[90]

Still the young poetess was not spoiled by flattery. One of the relatives of Mrs. Wheatley informs us, that "not all the attention she received, nor all the honors that were heaped upon her, had the slightest influence upon her temper and deportment. She was still the same single-hearted, unsophisticated being."

She addressed a poem to the Earl of Dartmouth, who was very kind to her during her visit to England. Having expressed a hope for the overthrow of tyranny, she says:—

"Should you, my Lord, while you peruse my song,

Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,—

Whence flow these wishes for the common good,

By feeling hearts alone best understood,—

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate,

Was snatched from Afric's fancied happy state.

What pangs excruciating must molest,

What sorrows labor in my parent's breast!

Steeled was that soul, and by no misery moved,

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