a more deadly specimen of virtuous and didactic tragedy. Catharine was
dreadfully disappointed, nor was she completely consoled by being
styled--by no less a person than Sophia Charlotte, Queen of
Prussia--"The Sappho of Scotland." She determined, however, to appeal to
readers against auditors, and when, two years later, after still further
revision, she published _The Revolution in Sweden_, she dedicated it in
most grateful terms to the Duke of Marlborough's eldest daughter,
Henrietta Godolphin.

How Miss Trotter came to be favoured by the Churchills appears from
various sources to be this. Her brother-in-law, Dr. Inglis, was now
physician-general in the army, and was in personal relations with the
General. When the victory at Blenheim (August 1704) was announced,
Catharine Trotter wrote a poem of welcome back to England. It is to be
supposed that a manuscript copy of it was shown by Inglis to the Duke,
with whose permission it was published about a month later. The poem
enjoyed a tremendous success, for the Duke and Duchess and Lord
Treasurer Godolphin "and several others" all liked the verses and said
they were better than any other which had been written on the subject.
George Burnet, who saw the Duke in Germany, reported him highly pleased
with her--"the wisest virgin I ever knew," he writes. She now hoped,
with the Duke's protection, to recover her father's fortune and be no
longer a burden to her brother-in-law. A pension of £20 from Queen Anne
gave her mother now a shadow of independence, but Catharine herself was
wholly disappointed at that "settlement for my life" which she was
ardently hoping for. I think that, if she had secured it, George Burnet
would have come back from Germany to marry her. Instead of that he sent
her learned messages from Bayle and from Leibnitz, who calls her "une
Demoiselle fort spirituelle."