At a crucial time in her life, Elizabeth Carter met Samuel Johnson, who seems to have provided her with an example of a scholar and writer who lived and worked in close touch with the real world but also with deep concern for ethical and religious standards. Although Samuel Johnson is not usually considered Elizabeth Carter's mentor, for there is insufficient documentary evidence to build a day-to-day picture of their contacts with one another, he was clearly a writer whom Elizabeth Carter admired deeply, and whom she always defended from criticism. They had admired each other's learning from the old days on the Gentleman's Magazine, when, as we have seen, they praised each other in print (Chapter 2 ). They were colleagues. Johnson gave advice about projects, and may have helped to correct the press of her translation of Algarotti (BL Add. 4254, fos. 19–68; Carter, Memoirs, i. 47 n. ).

In the first few months after Miss Carter's return to Deal she sent her compliments to Johnson in her letters to Cave. How the friendship was kept up from that point on we do not know, for the only letter we have from Samuel Johnson to Elizabeth Carter dates from 14 January 1756, when he wrote to ask her help with Anna Williams's benefit. The letter suggests that, although they did not keep in close touch, he would know when she was in London, for he explained that he had forgotten to ask her help earlier because she had not been in town. His feelings were tender. Edward Cave had died recently, and Johnson wrote, ‘Poor dear Cave I owed him much, for to him I owe that I have known you’, and he concluded with ‘respect which I neither owe nor pay to any other’ {Letters, i. 84–5).

In the years preceding this letter, there must have been contacts between Samuel Johnson and Elizabeth Carter when she happened to be in London. While the Rambler was appearing in 1750 and 1751, Catherine Talbot and Elizabeth Carter took a close interest in it. The women exchanged pieces which they had written, and discussed the suitability of their work for (p. 158 ) the Rambler. Evidently Miss Carter must have been seeing Johnson during this time, because Catherine Talbot suggested that Elizabeth was just the tactful person to tell Johnson that some of the words he used were too difficult. In any case, Carter's and Talbot's essays were among the very few pieces of writing not by himself which Johnson printed in the Rambler. Of particular interest is Carter's essay on religion versus superstition (No. 44) which states her personal philosophy that society should be considered as a training-ground for the discipline of the heart. Johnson also printed her satire of city life as No. 100, Talbot's essay on Sunday observances as No. 30, and some letters of Hester Mulso purporting to be from the fashionable world as No. 10. Richardson had felt that the modesty of women would prevent their appearing in the ‘Commonwealth of Letters’ {Selected Letters,234). Johnson's attitude was more welcoming. He was willing to help a number of women who were seriously interested in literary work and has been considered a ‘patron’ of women (Gae Annette Brack; Gae Annette Holladay and O. M. Brack, jun ).

Boswell, relying on the comments of Francis Barber, Johnson's servant, listed Elizabeth Carter as one of the friends who visited Johnson after the death of his wife on 17 March 1752 (Life (1934), i. 241–2). Catherine Talbot wrote to Elizabeth Carter about his sorrow, ‘he is in great affliction I hear, poor man, for the loss of his wife’ (Carter, Letters (1808), i. 297, 22 Apr. 1752). But Elizabeth was in Deal during that period and did not come to London until February 1753. The letter in 1756 may hark back to some consolation offered by letter and afterwards in person during the days of his sorrow. In any case, Johnson's tender, respectful stance towards Elizabeth Carter seems to have continued unchanged throughout his lifetime. His remark that ‘his old friend, Mrs Carter … could make a pudding, as well as translate Epictetus from the Greek, and work a handkerchief as well as compose a poem’ (Hill, Johnsonian Miscellanies, ii. 11) shows Johnson's adherence to the recommended model of the literary woman who maintains her domestic skills. However, since Carter accepted this point of view (although she did describe her efforts at cake-making and sewing shirts with some wry humour) and did not seem to have found slights in Johnson's attitudes towards women in general, (p. 159 ) her allegiance to him continued throughout his life. His admiration of her must have given her some pleasure, and some reinforcement of her dedication to the world of learning.

When Johnson stopped issuing the Rambler papers, Elizabeth Carter felt very angry at the ‘world’, especially at great and powerful people, who would not applaud and support ‘a genius who contributes all in his power to make them the rulers of reasonable creatures’ (Carter, Letters (1808), i. 296). Later on she defended him from the attacks of her friends. She urged that his personal eccentricities were unimportant, and stressed his extensive learning, strength of character, and moral integrity. She admired his powers both as a critical thinker and an argumentative writer: ‘I have lately been reading his notes on Shakespear. I will not undertake his defence as a commentator; but the work is valuable for many strokes of his own great, and refined, and delicate way of thinking.’ Elizabeth Carter went on to remark that Johnson had treated Bishop Warburton's work on Shakespeare more severely than other critics had:

Some of them have scratched his face with their nails, and others have pelted him with stones and brickbats, till he was black and blue; but the pen of Dr. Johnson, like the ethereal stroke of lightening, without any external mark of violence, has penetrated to his vitals. (Deal, 30 Nov. 1770, Letters (1817), ii. 94)

ALTHOUGH Johnson was in a financially difficult situation during the 1750s, he subscribed to the work by which Elizabeth Carter achieved reputation, some financial stability, and status. This work, a translation from the Greek of All the Works of Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher of the first century A D, was begun in 1749 as a private act of friendship, and converted by the assistance and encouragement of her friends into a successful publishing venture. Epictetus was one of the Roman Stoics whom the philosophes of the Enlightenment admired. Peter Gay wrote that ‘Epictetus touched minds as different as Frederick the Great, Immanuel Kant, and Jeremy Bentham’ (120).

As we have seen, Catherine Talbot was the pupil and friend of bishops. The Bishop of Oxford usually participated in family readings with Mrs Seeker, Catherine, and her mother. A frequent visitor was Martin Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, who was Mrs Seeker's brother. Although the men had classical (p. 160 ) educations and knew many languages, the women did not. Catherine knew French but the older women probably did not. Catherine explained to Elizabeth that their family readings had to be done in English. On 29 July 1745 Catherine reported that they were reading translations of Greek authors. Tor our family book we are reading Dion Cassius translated from Xiphilin; it is surely a great pity we have no better translations of most of the Greek historians'(Carter, Letters (1808), i. 67). She added that they had recently read a translation of Arrian's life of Alexander, ‘which was full of faults, and yet with all that disadvantage an admirable book, but few clever people will deign to employ themselves in making translations’ (Carter, Letters (1808), i. 68). In 1747 she was reading Pliny's Letters in translation, and complimenting the public spirit of good translators. It was at this time that she made the observation that the ‘common herd of translators are mere murderers’ (Carter, Letters (1808), i. 126). She seems to have been working up to asking Elizabeth to translate a classical text.

As we have seen, the growth of greater intimacy in the friendship of Elizabeth and Catherine came in the spring of 1748, when Elizabeth stayed in London for a long visit with her friend. Catherine Seeker died during this time. Elizabeth Carter tried to help her friend deal with her grief in person through the spring, and later by letter. Between November 1748 and April 1749 they were both in London again and some time before Elizabeth Carter went home she had promised to translate Epictetus for her friend.

Although Elizabeth Carter believed deeply that only Christianity offered true solace from life's unhappy events, she also believed that stoicism, though a pagan philosophy, helped people learn how to discipline themselves. Her willingness to translate Epictetus must have arisen from her feeling that she would be undertaking a task that would help her friend gain mental fortitude. On the other hand, Catherine, while appreciating the benefit the work might have for her, felt strongly that Elizabeth was wasting her life in the obscurity of Deal, and probably wished to encourage her to begin on a challenging project.

Young men were still being taught Latin and Greek in the universities. But many graduates did not retain their facility in (p. 161 ) using these languages, and translations of Greek and Latin works were much in demand by men and also by women interested in the classics. The teachings of Epictetus had been preserved by Arrian, his pupil, in two works: the Discourses, of which four books are extant, and the Enchiridion or Manual, a condensed aphoristic version of the main doctrines (Micropaedia, Ency. Brit.). As it happened, there was no translation in English of the complete works of Epictetus, although there were Latin and French translations, and there were English translations of the Enchiridion. Elizabeth Carter translated All the Works, consisting of the four books of Discourses, the Enchiridion, and Fragments.She worked with texts borrowed from Seeker and James ‘Hermes’ Harris, a well-known classical scholar, who also helped her with scholarly queries about the text.

Thomas Seeker certainly functioned as Elizabeth Carter's mentor, especially at the beginning of the project. Although John W. Draper, in his ‘Theory of Translation in the Eighteenth Century’, claimed that eighteenth-century translators in general were not concerned with accuracy, and adapted their texts to suit eighteenth-century tastes and attitudes, in this case both the translator and her mentor took the problems of translation seriously, debating in the course of her work how she could retain accuracy and yet transform the text into readable English. When Elizabeth Carter began her translation, she sent Seeker a few samples of her work. Catherine Talbot replied:

The Bishop of Oxford says your translation is a very good one; and, if it has any fault, it is only that of being not close enough, and writ in too smooth and too ornamented a style. Epictetus was a plain man, and spoke plainly; a translation that should express this would, he thinks, preserve more the spirit of the original, and give an exacter notion of it. (Carter, Memoirs, i. 163–4)

Catherine Talbot then enclosed a few examples of a hasty translation which Seeker had made, with the message that the Bishop had nothing more to say, ‘except that he much hopes you go on in a work you are so well fitted for, and for which I hope to be much the wiser.’

But these criticisms discouraged Elizabeth Carter and for a while she did not continue working on the translation. She (p. 162 ) could not find a level of style she felt happy with, and thought the translation should have more ‘ornaments’. But Talbot relayed the message that while the Bishop would be happy to hear her arguments, ‘unless you can prove to him that Epictetus wore a laced coat, he will not allow you to dress him in one.’ Then the Bishop added in his own handwriting: ‘Let me speak a word for myself: why would you change a plain, home, awakening preacher into a fine, smooth, polite writer, of what nobody will mind? Answer me that, dear Miss Carter’ (Carter, Memoirs, i. 165).

Elizabeth Carter continued to question how to maintain the sense of the author while presenting him in an easy and natural style. Seeker replied with a general statement on translation:

Arrian is not a commentator on Epictetus, as Simplicius is; but professes to exhibit his very conversations and discourses, as Xenophon doth those of Socrates: and a translator should represent him in our tongue, such as he appears in his own: not indeed copying the peculiarities of the language he speaks in, but still preserving his genuine air and character, as far as ever is consistent with making him rightly understood. (Carter, Memoirs, i. 166–7)

He agreed that what was obscure should be cleared up, and what was unsuitable might be softened. ‘But with proper exceptions of this kind, every ancient writer should, in common justice, be laid before the modern reader, if at all, such as he is.’ Seeker pointed out that Epictetus disapproved of the formal and professional style of philosophers of his own time. Therefore, it was important not to smooth his work:

And I am fully persuaded, that plain and home exhortations and reproofs, without studied periods and regular connections, in short, such as they might be supposed to come extempore from the fulness of the old man's good heart, will be more attended to and felt, and consequently give more pleasure, as well as do more good, than any thing sprucer that can be substituted in their room. I do not mean by all this to vindicate my own specimens. I confess myself to have bent the stick as strongly as I well could, the opposite way to yours. But I am content to divide the difference with you; which, perhaps, after we have both explained ourselves, will be no great one. Yet indeed, of the two, I think a rough and almost literal translation, if it doth but relish strongly of that warm and practical spirit, which to me is the characteristick of this book, infinitely preferable to the most elegant (p. 163 ) paraphrase, that lets it evaporate, and leaves the reader unmoved. (Carter, Memoirs, i. 168–9).

As Elizabeth proceeded with the translation, she sent portions up to London; both Catherine and her mother were enjoying the work, and Catherine wrote that ‘we’ copy them into a little book (Carter, Letters (1808), i. 209). Although Catherine was sharing the work with her mother, it is not clear who was doing the copying. Elizabeth was encouraged by Catherine's enthusiastic response. Catherine wrote:

What force, what life, what strength, and shortness of expression! What excellence of sentiment! What dignity and authority of reason, and common sense! And what an excellent reproof and lesson has the honest, plain old man given me, (thank you a thousand times for transmitting it.) Whenever I am seized with an impertinent, untimely fit of reformation, or with a splenetic dissatisfaction either with the company or tedious lowliness, methinks I hear his voice sounding in my ears—‘But you are wretched and discontented; be pleased, and make the best of every thing. Call society an entertainment and a festival.’ (Carter, Memoirs, i. 171–2)

At this point the Bishop said he had given Elizabeth all the advice he wished to, and left her to work on her own.

Elizabeth Carter carried on her translation during the next few years. She was living in Deal, and educating Henry in the classics for entry into university. In the spring of 1753 when she came to London, she stayed in lodgings near St Paul's, where the Talbots were now living, for Seeker, while still Bishop of Oxford, was now also Dean of St Paul's. Elizabeth spent much time with Catherine and Mrs Talbot; it was during this period that publication of her translation of Epictetus was proposed.

Catherine Talbot had been aware of her friend's insecure financial status for some time. It was probably for this reason that she had earlier been urging Elizabeth to marry. But as Elizabeth refused to marry, and refused to consider taking a position as governess to a member of the Royal family, an arrangement which had once been held out to her as a possibility, and which was again coming up for discussion, Catherine was afraid Elizabeth's future was very precarious. Elizabeth could always have a home with her father while he was alive; after his death her situation would be difficult. A couple of (p. 164 ) years earlier Catherine had noted in her journal the difficulties of another woman of letters of an earlier generation, Catherine Trotter Cockburn (1679–1749). Mrs Cockburn had been a prodigy, writing poetry, plays, and philosophical tracts as a young woman. After her marriage she had given up literature for the tasks of raising her family. Her husband, a clergyman, was not well off, and at times their circumstances were very difficult. In later life she returned to intellectual activities, and a collected edition of her works was being planned for her benefit when she did in 1749. this edition, with a life by Thomas Birch, was published in to volumes in 1751. Among the subscribers to this edition were Ralph Allen of Bath, the Earl of Bath, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Miss Carter of Deal, Edward Cave, the Bishop of Durham, Marchioness Grey, the Bishop of Colchester, various members of colleges at Cambridge, Revd Dr Lynch, Dean fo Canterbury, the Bishop of Oxford, the Duchess fo Portland, Mrs Talbot, Miss Talbot, Philip Yorke, and Charles Yorke.

On 13 May 1751 Catherine noted that she had been dipping into books while in a dull and listless state. She must have been looking into her edition of Mrs Cockburn's works, for she noted that Mrs Cockburn's writings had amused her and that she thought her a very good woman:

She was a remarkable Genius,& Yet how Obscure her Lot in Life! It seems grievous at first,& such Straitness of Circumstances as perplexes & Cramps the Mind, is surely a Grievance, but on consideration what Signifies Distinction & Splendour in this very Transitory State? Hereafter Every Good Heart Shall be Distinguished in Honour & Happiness. But methinks those who knew Such Merit did not do their Duty in letting it remain so Obscure. E: C: is her Superiour—Alas will not she live & die perhaps as Obscurely,& What Alas can I do to prevent it? (BL Add. 46690, fo. 7^r ″^v )

What she did to prevent Elizabeth Carter's obscure fate was to set in motion the project to publish.4// the Works of Epictetus by subscription.

Subscription publishing was a popular form of publication at that time. The author wrote up and printed proposals; the proposals were circulated to friends, neighbours, and assorted prominent people with whom the author or his or her friends (p. 165 ) might have contact. When a reasonable number of subscribers had been signed up, with payment of part or all of the cost, the work could go to press.

On 11 January 1755 Elizabeth Carter reported that she had at last got through Epictetus, ‘though not so free of blots and interlineations as I could have wished’ (Carter, Letters (1808), i. 375). Now she needed to prepare a short account of the stoical philosophy which was to precede the translation. Catherine Talbot had also asked for a life of Epictetus. In her reply (Deal, 5 Mar. 1755) Elizabeth Carter remarked that ′whoever that somebody or other is who is to write the Life of Epictetus, seeing I have a dozen shirts to make, I do opine, dear Miss Talbot, it cannot be V (Carter, Letters (1808), i. 382). But in fact she gathered together what materials she could and wrote it.

Preparation of the translation for publication did bring the friends into an intellectual dispute regarding what sort of notes and comments were to be included. As devout Christians, both Catherine Talbot and Elizabeth Carter were conscious of what they regarded as the limits of the pagan philosophy of Epictetus, which counselled emotional self-discipline and self-restraint, but of course did not provide Christian reliance based on the promise of a spiritual reward in the hereafter. Catherine pressed Elizabeth to disarm the possible pagan influences of Epictetus with notes on the superiority of the Christian religion. Elizabeth responded rather tartly that she did not think such a defence was necessary. However, Elizabeth was also corresponding with the Bishop about certain points in her translation (he had taken a month of his stay in the country while immobilized with gout to read it) and he too felt that the edition should be guarded with the ‘proper notes and animadversions’ that Catherine was asking for. Catherine felt that many might study Epictetus who would not look into the Bible, and, therefore, those readers should be directed to the Christian principles which were superior to stoicism, because they offered redemption (Carter, Memoirs, i. 195).

To Catherine Talbot's arguments for notes Elizabeth Carter replied that it had never occurred to her that so strict an author would be studied by ‘bad people’. One of the things Catherine Talbot worried about was that Epictetus seemed to find suicide (p. 166 ) acceptable. Elizabeth Carter was not certain that he had actually argued that suicide was allowable; if he had argued that way, she agreed that she found that view difficult to understand. But she could not agree with her friend that Epictetus had read, but not believed, the New Testament:

Though there is the utmost reason to think that Epictetus, as well as other philosophers since our Saviour, owed much more than they might be sensible of to the Gospel, I find a difficulty in persuading myself that he had ever seen the New Testament, or received any right amount of the Christian doctrine. The great number of Christians dispersed about the Roman empire might probably have rendered the New Testament phrases a kind of popular language; and a general illumination was diffused by the Gospel, by which many understandings might be enlightened which were ignorant of the source from whence it proceeded. (Carter, Memoirs, i. 201)

Miss Talbot reported that the Bishop thought this argument had much merit.

Elizabeth Carter respected the stoics because they believed in a supreme God and in a particular Providence, rejecting the idea of chance. She agreed that stoicism was inferior to Christianity because the stoics did not believe in personal existence in the hereafter, nor in rewards and punishments. They thought too highly of human nature, not perceiving the imperfect nature of man. Elizabeth Carter therefore acceded to the necessity for the notes which Catherine Talbot advocated. T am extremely obliged to the Bishop of Oxford and you for the admirable remarks you have been so good as to send me, and which, if the book is ever published, will make the most valuable part of it′ (Carter, Memoirs, i. 202–3). By May 1756 Elizabeth Carter was finishing the edition. She had transcribed Catherine Talbot's notes, except for one. She thought Catherine Talbot was too severe upon the ‘poor heathen’: Elizabeth Carter did not think it useful or appropriate to ‘depreciate the heathen morality’. She believed that

wise and good men in all ages, who sincerely applied their hearts to the discovery of their duty, cannot, I think be supposed in any very material instances to have failed, though they had neither a proper authority, nor could promise sufficient encouragements to qualify them for effectual instructors of the multitude of mankind. (Carter, Letters (1808), i. 400)

(p. 167 ) She believed that the case for Christianity could rest on its own advantages, without denigrating heathen morality.

When it appeared, therefore, the edition did have some of her friends' cautions which she originally argued against. She did provide an introduction which pointed out the shortcomings in the philosophy of Epictetus and other stoic philosophers compared to the superior truth and wisdom of Christianity. But she also defended Epictetus' work and viewpoint stoutly; that philosophy was very useful in the heathen world.

Their Doctrine of Evidence and fixed Principles, was an excellent Preservative from the Mischiefs, that might have arisen from the Scepticism of the Academics and Pyrrhonists, if unopposed: and their zealous Defence of a Particular Providence, a valuable Antidote to the atheistical Scheme of Epicurus.

The virtuous lives of some stoics helped to preserve their society from being absolutely dissolute, and strengthened the individuals who were subjects of arbitrary government (Epictetus, pp. xxv-xxvi). Despite her strong religious commitments, Elizabeth Carter's studies had taught her to look at cultures other than her own in a dispassionate way, and she managed to give an even-handed treatment of the value of Stoicism in the ancient world and its value in the present:

Even now, their Compositions may be read with great Advantage, as containing excellent Rules of Self-government, and of social Behaviour; of a noble Reliance on the Aid and Protection of Heaven, and of a perfect Resignation and Submission to the divine Will: Points, which are treated with great Clearness, and with admirable Spirit, in the Lessons of the Stoics; and though their Directions are seldom practicable on their Principles, in trying Cases, may be rendered highly useful in Subordination to Christian Reflexions. (Epictetus, p. xxvi)

As she finished her task, Elizabeth Carter expressed both awareness of the diversity of her duties, and relief at a new accession of freedom.

As soon as I have dispatched Epictetus to St. Paul's, Harry to the University, and finished my fifteen shirts, I comfort myself with the hopes of being at liberty to grow most delectably idle, to read what books I please, and run wild over hill and dale for the rest of the summer. (Carter, Letters (1808), i. 399)

(p. 168 ) For the next couple of years Elizabeth Carter was in London during the winter months while subscriptions were being solicited for the work. Although Elizabeth herself was very diffident about soliciting friends for subscriptions, they were evidently not deterred by such inhibitions. The Bishop of Oxford, the Bishop of Norwich, Sir George Oxenden, and other local dignitaries were all active on her behalf. Her father also pressed her, anxious that her name should be known as the translator, and urging her to think of the money: Tt is just that you should have some profit for your labor′ (Carter, Memoirs, i. 209).

In the end Carter counted 1,031 subscriptions (Memoirs, i. 208). The subscription list reflected a variety of supporters; the presence of nobility and a large number of bishops suggest the influence of the Bishop of Oxford. But there were also men and women who were simply relatives or friends of Carter in London and Kent. The list was headed by the Prince of Wales and the Princess Dowager of Wales, and included the Earl of Bath, Mrs Boscawen, Revd Mr Berkeley (presumably George), Mrs Berkeley (presumably his mother, Anne), Revd Dr Birch, FRS, the Bishops of Carlisle, Chester, Chichester, and Clogher, the Archbishop of Canterbury, James Carter of Devonshire Street, Revd Dr Dalton, Revd Dr Delany, Mrs Delany, Mrs Donnellan, Marchioness Grey, Samuel Johnson, MA, Lord Lyttelton, Revd Dr Lynch, Dean of Canterbury, his wife and daughters, Revd W. Mason, Mrs Mary Masters of Norwich, George Montagu, Mrs Montagu (presumably Elizabeth), Miss Mulso, Sir George Oxenden, the Bishop of Oxford, the Duchess of Portland, Mr Theophilus Rowe, Miss Sawbridge and Miss Catherine Sawbridge of Olontigh, Kent, Mrs Talbot and Miss Talbot at the Deanery of St Paul's, Mrs Under down of Deal, Kent, Mr James Vere of Bishopsgate Street, Merchant, the Archbishop of York, and Revd Dr Young, Rector of Welwyn. Several subscribers subscribed for more than one copy. The Bishop of Oxford subscribed for twelve copies; the Revd Dr Barnard, Master of Eton, for seven. There were also subscriptions from various Cambridge college libraries, as well as the libraries of St John's College, Oxford, and Eton College.

The venture turned out to be a profitable one. According to (p. 169 ) Elizabeth Carter's nephew, Montagu Pennington, printing was begun in June 1757 and completed by April 1758. The first edition, printed by Samuel Richardson, was a one-volume quarto of 505 pages with 34 pages of preliminary matter. A total of 1,018 copies was printed, but as these were insufficient for the subscription, 250 more were printed in July. The cost of the subscription was one guinea, with one-half to be paid before, one-half after publication. Expenses for printing were £67. Is.for the first 1,018 copies. Evidently the subscribers for multiple copies did not claim all their copies. Pennington believed that Elizabeth ^Carter made almost £1,000 from the translation (Carter, Memoirs, i. 207–8). The translation sold well, and kept up its price. Several years later Seeker (by then Archbishop of Canterbury) complained jokingly that a bookseller's catalogue was listing his sermons at half-price, but that Epictetus was still being priced high at 18 shillings (Carter, Memoirs, i. 208).

A twentieth-century translator and bibliographer of Epictetus, W. A. Oldfather, in 1927 called Elizabeth Carter's translation ‘a very respectable performance under any conditions, but for her sex and period truly remarkable’ (Oldfather, 15). For her contemporary readers and reviewers Elizabeth Carter's sex had also been important. Pennington claimed that some people could not believe she had done the work; they attributed it to her father or the Bishop (Carter, Memoirs, i. 212). But the reviewers took a more enlightened attitude. The Critical Review of August 1758 remarked that

whilst the ladies and lady-like gentlemen of this age employ their leisure hours in the reading of plays and romances, and three parts of the fashionable world confine all their knowledge within the narrow limits of a Circulating Library, it is not a little extraordinary to find a woman mistress of the Greek language, sounding the depth of antient philosophy, and capable of giving a faithful and elegant translation of one of the most difficult authors of antiquity. (149)

And the critic in the Monthly Review (June 1758) found the publication a sign that if women had

the benefit of liberal instructions, if they were inured to study, and accustomed to learned conversation—in short, if they had the same (p. 170 ) opportunity of improvement with the men, there can be no doubt that they would be equally capable of reaching any intellectual attainment. (588)

Comparisons were made with the seventeenth-century French woman scholar, Anne Dacier. Elizabeth was called the ‘English Dacier’ but in fact Elizabeth Carter's career was spasmodic and unproductive compared with the determined and consistent output of the Frenchwoman, who had worked alongside a scholarly husband (Farnham).

The publication of Epictetus made it possible for Elizabeth Carter to buy a house in Deal with a view of the sea. (The house had originally been two houses; Elizabeth and her father lived in separate quarters and met for meals.) Her financial independence was a modest one. A few years later, Lord Bath inquired of Mrs Montagu, by then a close friend of Elizabeth Carter, whether she thought Elizabeth might be interested in becoming a companion-governess to Sir Robert Rich's granddaughter. Mrs Montagu replied that her friend had already turned down a similar offer ‘from a Lady of the highest rank’. At that time Elizabeth had gently complained that her friends′ esteem for her was prompting them to apply for a situation for her which ‘no superiority of rank or fortune could justify’. She never complained of her circumstances, and thought it wrong of her friends ‘to suppose she would enter into a state of dependency to mend them’ (MO 4610, 11 Dec. 1763). In regarding Court life as involving much too great a degree of dependency, Carter was a clearer thinker than Fanny Burney, who accepted a dependent Court position a generation later. But Elizabeth Carter's father left her to her own judgement, while Burney's father urged her on.

This letter of Mrs Montagu to Lord Bath about a possible position for Carter gives us the clearest statement we have of Carter's financial situation. Mrs Montagu pointed out to Lord Bath that Revd Carter had ‘decent’ preferment, her brother had an estate of £500 a year, had married well, and was heir to his uncle, the merchant. Mrs Montagu explained that her friend ‘has £800 of her own [presumably what was left of her earnings after she bought her house], & her uncle has, I believe, kind intentions towards her.’ But her present income was small, and actually (p. 171 ) was only enough to maintain her in clothes. Later, her circumstances were improved by an inheritance of £1,300 from her uncle (MO 1438), an annuity of £100 from Mrs Montagu (Carter, Letters (1817), ii. 314–15), and an annuity of £100 settled on Carter by Mr and Mrs Pulteney, heirs of Lord Bath after his brother, General Putney (Carter, Letters (1817), i. 360–6; Montagu, ed. Blunt, i. 164).

As her nephew said, Elizabeth Carter's translation from the Greek, as the work of a woman, ‘made a great noise all over Europe’ (Carter, Memoirs, i. 212). In addition to greater financial resources, which enabled Elizabeth Carter to improve her living conditions and introduce some variety into her life, the publication of Epictetus brought her the friendship of Elizabeth Montagu. Mrs Montagu seems to have been taken by the composure and quiet dignity of this classically educated woman. Mrs Montagu worked, as she well knew how to do, to develop an intimate friendship with Elizabeth Carter. Her strong influence brought Carter out into a social life among people of literary interests and wealth. Lord Bath's letters to Mrs Montagu show his interest in and concern for Elizabeth Carter. It was he who insisted on the publication of her poems, and supported the work.

This slim volume of Poems on Several Occasions (1762) was Elizabeth Carter's last publication in her lifetime. After the first flush of poetic effort in her youth, Carter seems to have found it harder to write poetry. She had written poems to her women friends of the 1740s somewhat in the style of another woman poet, Katherine Philips. In ‘To Miss Lynch: Occasioned by an Ode Written by Mrs. Philips’, Elizabeth Carter paid tribute to Mrs Philips's writings on friendship:

• Sweet may her Fame to late Remembrance bloom,
• And everlasting Laurels shade her Tomb,
• Whose spotless Verse with genuine Force exprest
• The brightest Passion of the human Breast.
• (1762 edn., 16)

But while Philips had stressed her emotional ties to her friends, Carter addressed her friends in moral terms, urging them to detach themselves from the vanities of this world, and put their minds on the life hereafter.

(p. 172 ) In addition to poems from the 1738 collection, and the poems to her women friends of Canterbury, Elizabeth Carter also included in the 1762 collection other poems which are characteristic of her interests. On e was her ‘Ode to Wisdom’, a poem which Richardson had borrowed as a text for Clarissa to set to music, without knowing or consulting the author. (Carter's tart reproof is in Original Letters of Miss E. Carter and Mr. Samuel Richardson, 533–4.) Carter's tribute to mental beauty was considered as expressing her essential views. The poet finds Wisdom to be the gift of God:

• No more to fabled Names confin'd
• To Thee! Supreme, all-perfect Mind
• My Thoughts direct their Flight:
• Wisdom's thy Gift, and all her Force
• From Thee deriv′d, unchanging Source
• Of intellectual Light!
• (1762 edn., 89)

Another significant poem is that to her father, ‘Thou by whose fondness and paternal care’, in which she thanks him for encouraging her studies, and makes the point that he had left her free:

• Ne′er did thy Voice assume a Master's Pow'r,
• Nor force Assent to what thy Precepts taught;
• But bid my independent Spirit soar,
• In all the Freedom of unfetter'd Thought.
• (1762 edn., 63)

Elizabeth Carter had spent much of her life musing by the sea, and in two of her poems she uses the imagery of the sea to convey her feelings about human nature and about religious strivings. In ‘Written Extempore on the Sea-Shore’, she says:

• Thou restless fluctuating Deep,
• Expressive of the human Mind
• In thy for ever varying form,
• My own inconstant Self I find.
• How soft now flow thy peaceful Waves,
• In just Gradations to the shore:
• While on thy Brow, unclouded shines
• The Regent of the midnight Hour.
• (p. 173 ) Blest Emblem of that equal State,
• Which I this Moment feel within:
• Where Thought to Thought succeeding rolls,
• And all is placid and serene.

But the serenity of the ocean gives way to storms—those brought to the sea by Eurus, the god of the south-east wind, and to the breast of the poet by ‘rising sorrows’:

• Obscur'd thy Cynthia's Silver Ray
• When Clouds opposing intervene:
• And ev'ry Joy that Friendship gives
• Shall fade beneath the Gloom of Spleen.
• (1762 edn., 38–9)

A poem to Miss Talbot also uses the imagery of the sea-shore:

• How sweet the Calm of this sequester'd Shore,
• Where ebbing Waters musically roll:
• And Solitude, and silent Eve restore
• The philosophic Temper of the soul.
• (1762 edn., 70)

Here Carter anticipates the setting of Arnold's ‘Dover Beach’. But in her poem the sunset and calm sea convey feelings of serenity which encourage the poet ‘to chear the Soul with more than mortal Views’. She asks her friend to come and share with her the joys of anticipating heaven.

A poem addressed to her sister Margaret, ‘Ah! why with restless, anxious search explore’, deals with Margaret's anxious concern with death; the poet assures her that she must submit to God and let what must die, die.

Elizabeth Carter's view of friendship was that she and her friends were fellow-travellers on a journey through life, during which their most important mission was to follow virtue; for doing so, they would be rewarded in heaven. Above all she looked forward to a renewal of her friendships in the hereafter. She wrote several poems in which watches are emblems of fleeting time, as in ‘To Miss Burton: On a Watch’:

• While this gay Toy attracts thy Sight,
• Thy Reason let it warn;
• (p. 174 ) And seize, my Dear, that rapid Time
• That never must return.
• (1762 edn., 56)

Several of Elizabeth Carter's poems are addressed to other close friends of the bluestocking circle. A poem to Mrs Montagu, ‘Where are those Hours, on rosy Pinions borne’, recalls the pleasure of past days of friendship; those days have been replaced by stormy ones. But the hours of friendship will live on in heaven. Her poem to the Earl of Bath reviews his days as a powerful statesman, but assures him that every stage of life has its task:

• With calm Severity, unpassion'd Age
• Detects the specious Fallacies of Youth:
• Reviews the Motives, which no more engage,
• And Weights each Action in the Scale of Truth.
• (1762 edn., 77)

After her death her nephew reprinted her poems from a manuscript corrected by the author; he presented them in chronological order with the names of the recipients of the poems, which had been left blank earlier, filled in.¹ Now published were a few poems Carter had left in manuscript, among them two poems from the 1740s in which she mourned the death of a male friend abroad, another to Miss Hill (1749) speaking of the collapse of all the poet's dreams, and poems written after 1762, mainly poems of friendship. Among these is a poem to Mrs Vesey (1766) in which Carter reassures her friend that life is eternal. Another poem to Mrs Montagu, ‘No more my friend, pursue a distant theme’, muses on Winchester Cathedral, which they visited together, and which becomes a symbol of the chaos of history:

• While pensive wandring o'er this equal scene,
• Where blended sleep the humble and the great,
• Let Wisdom whisper to our souls how vain
• The short distinctions of our mortal state.
• O blest with ev'ry talent, ev'ry grace,
• Which native fire, or happy art supplies,

• How short a period, how confin'd a space
• Must bound thy shining course below the skies!
• (p. 175 ) For wider glories, for immortal fame,
• Were all those talents, all those graces giv′n:
• And may thy life pursue that noblest aim,
• The final plaudit of approving heav′n.
• (Carter, Memoirs, ii. 114–17)

Elizabeth Carter's poems are interesting as the work of a woman who wrote as a private person with deep religious feeling. Her moods and settings vary; she may speak of sadness at an oratorio, or serenity at the seaside. She wrote a few humorous poems. She tried a variety of metres and forms: four-stress lines, five-stress lines, couplets, and irregular odes. Her diction is sometimes imprecise; she uses the conventional phrases of eighteenth-century poetry without much care, and in some cases her sense of the sounds of her poems seems to be vague. But sometimes she expresses genuine personal feeling in vital language, and she conveys to her reader a sense of her joy and ease in friendship, her strong idealism, and her deep religious faith.

After the success of Epictetus, Elizabeth Carter established a pleasant kind of life within her financial constraints. In summer, autumn, and early winter she was usually in Deal, where she maintained those relationships with family members and neighbours which were important to her. She did a great deal of walking, reading, and study. She taught herself new languages, such as Portuguese and Arabic. In the London season (usually January to May) she was in town, in lodgings at Clarges Street. During some of those years her life was invested in giving others emotional support: Catherine Talbot during her illness in 1759; Mrs Montagu after the death of Lord Bath (1764). Elizabeth Carter had earlier accompanied Mr and Mrs Montagu and Lord Bath on a trip to Spa, but ill health had spoiled the trip for her. In later years Carter was very much a part of the bluestocking circle, the woman who lent it the aura of solid learning and religious piety. Sometimes the Duchess of Portland sent her coach for her, and Carter was a guest in company with the Duchess and other friends at Mrs Delany's. On 20 April 1781, James Boswell recorded a very happy occasion; it was the first dinner-party Mrs Garrick had given after her husband's death on 20 January 1779. In addition to Boswell, the guests were Hannah More, Frances

(p. 176 ) Boscawen, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Dr Burney, Dr Johnson, and Elizabeth Carter (Life (1934), iv. 96).

The translation had established Carter economically and socially, but it did not lead to any other large projects. Publication as a form of self-exposure made Carter uncomfortable, and she published nothing after her book of poems. She essentially had two periods of productivity which showed a similar pattern. During both periods, the one in London when she was a young woman, and the period of the 1750s and early 1760s, she became involved in intellectual activities and worked and published, but this involvement was followed by a period of withdrawal. Her virtues and her learning brought her reputation and respect, but praise did not build the sort of consistent confidence and determination which would have been necessary to overcome her personal scruples against putting herself into the public sphere more often by further publication.