Note 83 — TO THE MEMORY OF LADY MILLAR.[83]

The late lady Millar, of Bath-Easton, near Bath, held an assembly at that elegant villa, once a fortnight during the Bath season. She rendered this meeting a poetical institution, giving out subjects at each assembly for poems to be read at the ensuing one.

The verses were deposited in an antique Etruscan vase, and were drawn out by gentlemen appointed to read them aloud, and to judge of their rival merits. These gentlemen, ignorant of the authors, selected three poems from the collection which they thought most worthy of the three myrtle wreaths, decreed as the rewards and honours of the day. The names of the persons who had obtained the prizes were then announced by lady Millar. Once a year the most ingenious of these productions were published. Four volumes have already appeared, and the profits been applied to the benefit of a charity at Bath; so that lady Millar’s institution was not only calculated to awaken and cultivate ingenuity, but to serve the purposes of benevolence and charity. It had continued about six years, and ceased with the death of its amiable patroness.—That event happened in July, 1781.