could be every way equally admirable."

Lady Piers wrote the prologue to _The Unhappy Penitent_ in verses better
turned than might have been expected. She did not stint praise to her
young friend, whom she compares to the rising sun:--

"Like him, bright Maid, Thy great perfections shine
As awful, as resplendent, as divine!...
Minerva and Diana guard your soul!"

_The Unhappy Penitent_ is not a pleasing performance: it is amorous and
violent, but yet dull. Catharine's theory was better than her practice.
Nevertheless, it seems to have been successful, for the author some time
afterwards, speaking of the town's former discouragement of her dramas,
remarks that "the taste is mended." Later in 1701 she brought out at
Drury Lane her only comedy, _Love at a Loss_, dedicated in most
enthusiastic terms to Lady Piers, to whom "I owe the greatest Blessing
of my Fate," the privilege of a share in her friendship. _Love at a
Loss_ was made up of the comic scenes introduced into an old tragedy
which the author had failed to get acted. This is not a fortunate method
of construction, and the town showed no favour to Love at a Loss. The
first and only public section of Catharine Trotter's career was now
over, and she withdrew, a wayworn veteran at the age of twenty-two, to
more elevated studies.

When _Love at a Loss_ was published the author had already left town,
and after a visit to Lady Piers in Kent she now settled at Salisbury, at
the house of a physician, Dr. Inglis, who had married her only sister.
Her growing intimacy with the family of Bishop Burnet may have had
something to do with her determination to make this city her home. She