impossible for her to do to herself.

These pages will, however, contain a statement of the chief events of
the lives of Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe; and although most of them
are mentioned in her Memoir, they are so frequently interrupted by
anecdotes and reflections, as well as by accounts of places and
ceremonies, that it is often difficult to follow her. This article may
then be considered as the outline of a picture, which is filled up by
a far abler and more pleasing artist; or, perhaps, it bears a nearer
resemblance to the graphic references which generally accompany the
descriptions of paintings, for the purpose of illustrating them.

The genealogy of the Fanshawe family is so fully stated in the Memoir,
that it is not requisite to allude to the subject, farther than to
observe, that Sir Richard was descended from an ancient and
respectable house; that many of its members filled official situations
under the Crown, and were honoured with Knighthood; that he was the
fifth and youngest son of Sir Henry Fanshawe, of Ware Park, in
Hertfordshire, Knight, by Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Smythe, Esq.,
Farmer of the Customs to Queen Elizabeth, the younger son of an
ancient Wiltshire family, and ancestor of the Viscounts Strangford;
and that his eldest brother was raised to the peerage by the title of
Viscount Fanshawe, of Dromore, in Ireland.

Sir Richard Fanshawe was born at Ware Park, in June 1608, and was
baptized on the 12th of that month. His father having died in 1616,
when he was little more than seven years old, the care of his
education devolved upon his mother, who placed him under the
celebrated schoolmaster, Thomas Farnaby; and in November 1623 he was
admitted a Fellow-commoner of Jesus College, Cambridge, where he is