358 The Bluestockings [CH.
but, as these were insufficient, 250 more were printed a few months
later. It was issued by subscription, and the price was a guinea
in sheets. In her own copy were the names of no fewer than 1031
subscribers, and, since many copies were not claimed * by way of
compliment,1 Mrs Carter gained nearly a thousand pounds profit
Richardson's bill for printing the first impression amounted to
£67. 7s. Two further editions were printed in her life-time, and,
for many years, it remained a good selling book at a high price.
Epictetm gained for its author a European reputation. So far
afield as Russia, where, said Elizabeth Carter, 'they were only just
beginning to walk on their hind legs/ there appeared a notice of
the learned Englishwoman, and she was told that the Tsarina had
read it through with high approbation. After its publication, she
was regarded by the bluestocking circle with something akin to
awe, and it is almost a relief to find her intimates, Mrs Montagu
and Miss Talbot, jestingly referring to her ' uncle Epictetus/ or
writing of her as ' cousin-gerrnan to Xenophon/ while Walpole,
with his facile talent for bestowing unchristian names, frequently
calls her Mrs Epictetus Carter.
After Epictetus, Mrs Carter did not write anything more for
publication, though, in 17C2, Lord Bath persuaded her to publish
a small volume of poems that had been written at various times.
She gave such reluctant consent to this that Miss Talbot accused
her of thinking it * no small degradation from a quarto of Greek
Philosophy to dwindle into an eighteenpenny pamphlet of English
versa1 The dedication was to the earl of Bath, and, writes her
biographer, * is wholly unsullied by that flattery which is too often
a disgrace both to the author and the patron/ But this praise is
somewhat discounted, when, on the next page, he quotes a letter
from Mrs Carter, indicating that Lord Bath wrote the dedication
himself 1
For the remainder of her long life, Elizabeth Carter settled
down to the comfortable enjoyment of her fame on the modest
competence of which the profits from Epictetus were the foundation.
Her influential friends invested this money profitably; and, some
years later, when Mrs Montagu inherited her husband's fortune,
she allowed her friend £100 a year. Lord Bath did not leave her
an annuity, according to the expectation of many of the blue-
stockings ; but his heirs generously made good this deficiency by a
grant of £100 a year. During the summer months, she lived with
her father at Deal, or went on visits to her friends among the
great at their country houses. The winter she invariably spent in