to the continent, she being then sixty-five years of age, and no longer very active. For several years afterwards, however, she travelled through various parts of England with her friend Miss Sharpe. In 1791 Mrs. Carter was introduced to Queen Charlotte at Lord Cremorne's house at Chelsea. In 1796 a certain Count de Bedée, a stranger to Mrs. Carter, published ‘Twelve Poems translated into French; Six in Prose and Six in Verse, selected from the works of Miss Eliza Carter, intitled Poems on several Occasions’ (London, 8vo). About nine years before her death she was attacked by an illness from which she never entirely recovered. In the summer of 1805, though her mental faculties remained unimpaired, her bodily weakness increased very much. In accordance with her annual custom, she went up to London for the winter, and on 19 Feb. 1806 died in her lodgings in Clarges Street, Piccadilly, in the eighty-eighth year of her age. She was buried in the burial-ground belonging to Grosvenor Chapel; and a monument was erected to her memory in Deal Chapel. She was never married. In 1807 her nephew and executor, Montagu Pennington, published her memoirs, in which were included the new edition of her poems before alluded to, some miscellaneous essays in prose, together with her ‘Notes on the Bible,’ and ‘Answers to Objections concerning the Christian Religion.’ In 1809 ‘A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catharine Talbot from the year 1741 to 1770, to which are added Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Vesey between the years 1763 and 1787’ (London, 8vo, 4 vols.), appeared, and in 1817 ‘Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu, between the years 1755 and 1800, chiefly upon Literary and Moral Subjects’ (London, 8vo, 3 vols.)
Mrs. Carter was more celebrated for the solidity of her learning than for any brilliant intellectual qualities; and it is as a Greek scholar and the translator of Epictetus that she is now best remembered. She used to relate with pleasure that Dr. Johnson had said, speaking of some celebrated scholar, that ‘he understood Greek better than any one he had ever known, except Elizabeth Carter.’ Her poems have ceased to be read and are not of very high order, the ‘Dialogue between the Body and the Mind’ being perhaps the most successful. Her letters display considerable vigour of thought, and now and then a transient flash of humour. Though by no means a woman of the world, she possessed a large amount of good sense, and, though more learned than her fellows, was a thoroughly sociable and amiable woman. Her acquaintance with Mrs. Montagu commenced at a very early period of their lives, and on the death of her husband in 1775 Mrs. Montagu settled an annuity of 100l. upon her friend. Among Mrs. Carter's other friends and correspondents were Burke, Reynolds, Richardson (who introduced her ‘Ode to Wisdom’ into his ‘Clarissa’), Savage, Horace Walpole, Bishops Butler and Porteus, Dr. Beattie, Hannah More, and most of the other literary characters of the time. Several portraits were taken of her by different artists; an engraving from a cameo by Joachim Smith will be found in the first volume of the ‘Memoirs’ (i. 501 note), and the National Portrait Gallery has a pleasing crayon drawing by Sir Thomas Lawrence.
[Pennington's Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter (2nd ed. 1808); Gaussen's A Woman of Wit and Wisdom 1906; Sir E. Brydges's Censura Literaria (1815), vii. 176–201, viii. 190–200, x. 277–95; Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vols. v. and viii.; Boswell's Life of Johnson (Croker, 1831); Chalmers's Biog. Dict. (1813), viii. 301–5; Gent. Mag. 1806, vol. lxxvi. pt. i. pp. 190–1; Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.), v. 141; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
CARTER, ELLEN (1762–1815), artist and book illustrator, was the daughter of Walter Vavasour of Weston in Yorkshire, and Ellen his wife, daughter of Edward Elmsall of Thornhill in the same county. She was born in 1762, and baptised at St. Olave's Church, York, on 16 May of that year. At an early age, though a protestant, she was placed in a convent at Rouen, with which her family had been connected for some generations. Though strongly affected by the surrounding influence of the Roman catholic religion, she never actually forsook her own religion, and after her return to her native country became well known for her piety and devotion to her church. In November 1787 she was married at Thornhill to the Rev. John Carter, then curate of that place, afterwards head-master of Lincoln grammar school, and incumbent of St. Swithin's in the same city. Mrs. Carter was devoted to artistic pursuits, and particularly excelled in drawing the human figure. She drew illustrations for the ‘Archæologia,’ the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ and other similar works. A print was published from a design by her, entitled ‘The Gardener's Girl,’ intended as a companion to Thomas Barker's ‘Woodboy.’ Her drawings are frequently met with in private collections. Her devotion to her art told on a constitution that was never strong, and the untimely death of her eldest son in the Peninsula gave her a shock from
