Note 18 — MRS. DELANY.
Reading edition
To this highly-favoured latest friend she bequeathed two medallions of the King and Queen; one of the mosaic flowers from her botanical work; her own elegant copy of Waller’s lovely Saccharissa, from Vandyke, the original of which is still in the Waller Family, at Beaconsfield; and, finally, she closed her benign offerings by a verbal commission to her nephew, Mr. Barnard Dewes, to make over to the same person her noble edition of Theobald’s Shakespeare, in eight volumes quarto; kindly desiring him to say, that it was a tribute to the pleasure with which she had listened to that immortal Bard through the reading of the legatee.
Mr. Barnard Dewes sent the Saccharissa, preceded by the following invaluable words.
Copy from the Will of Mrs. Delany.
“I take this liberty that my much-esteemed friend may sometimes recollect a person, who was so sensible to her friendship, and who delighted so much in her conversation and works.”