A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke
HERBERT, MARY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE,
Married Henry, Earl of Pembroke, in 1576, and lived in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First. She was the sister of Sir Philip Sydney, whose "Arcadia," from being dedicated to her, was always called by the author himself, "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia." A great encourager of letters, and a careful cultivator of them herself, she translated a tragedy from the French, called "Annius," in 1595; and is also supposed to have made an exact translation of the Psalms of David into English metre; and also wrote "A Pastoral Dialogue in Praise of Astræa." She died at her house in Aldersgate Street, London, September 25th., 1601. Osborn, in his "Memoirs of the Reign of King James," says, "She was that sister of Sir Philip Sydney to whom he addressed his Arcadia," and of whom he had no other advantage than what he received from the partial benevolence of fortune in making him a man, (which yet she did, in some judgments, recompense in beauty,) her pen being nothing short of his. But, lest I should seem to trespass upon truth, I shall leave the world her epitaph, in which the author doth manifest himself a poet in all things but untruth:—
"Underneath this sable hearse,
Lies the subject of all verse;
Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death! ere thou hast killed another.
Fair, and good, and wise as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee."
These lines were written by Ben Jonson.