husband Lucy Apsley received that praise of exceptions wherewith women
are now, and always will be, praised: "Mr. Hutchinson," she says,
"fancying something of rationality in the sonnet beyond the customary
reach of a she-wit, could scarcely believe it was a woman's."

He sought her acquaintance, and they were married. Her treasured
conscience did not prevent her from noting the jealousy of her young
friends. A generous mind, perhaps, would rather itself suffer jealousy
than be quick in suspecting, or complacent in causing, or precise in
setting it down. But Mrs. Hutchinson doubtless offered up the envy of
her companions in homage to her Puritan lover's splendour. His austerity
did not hinder him from wearing his "fine, thick-set head of hair" in
long locks that were an offence to many of his own sect, but, she says,
"a great ornament to him." But for herself she has some dissimulated
vanities. She was negligent of dress, and when, after much waiting and
many devices, her suitor first saw her, she was "not ugly in a careless
riding-habit." As for him, "in spite of all her indifference, she was
surprised (she writes) with some unusual liking in her soul when she saw
this gentleman, who had hair, eyes, shape, and countenance enough to
beget love in any one." He married her as soon as she could leave her
chamber, when she was so deformed by small-pox that "the priest and all
that saw her were affrighted to look at her; but God recompensed his
justice and constancy by restoring her."

The following are some of the admirable sentences that prove Lucy
Hutchinson a woman of letters in a far more serious sense than our own
time uses. One phrase has a Stevenson-like character, a kind of gesture
of language; this is where she praises her husband's "handsome management
of love." {1} She thus prefaces her description of her honoured lord: "If
my treacherous memory have not lost the dearest treasure that ever I