Isabella's published works consist of a pastoral drama called "Mirtilla," written when she was very young, and of which she herself speaks slightingly at a later period of her life;—a volume of poems, some of which are declared by Italian critics to have much merit;—a collection of "Letters," (not real correspondence, unfortunately, but essays written for the press);—and lastly, some dialogues collected, as the title–page tells us, by "Francesco Andreini, comico geloso, detto il Capitano Spavento."
In a dedication of the "Letters" to the Duke of Savoy, she says, that they are the fruit of long vigils, and of hours snatched with difficulty from the avocations of her most laborious profession, and that her object in the composition of them was, as far as in her lay, to preserve her name from oblivion after death. With this view she has written some hundred and fifty little treatises on such subjects as "The force of friendship," "Of the constancy of women," "Lovers' prayers," "Prayers of an honourable lover," "Of jealousy," "Of marriage," "Of love and war," "Of lovers' suspicions," and the like.
Poor Isabella! How desperately she must have struggled during those long night hours, after the labours of the day, against weariness and want of rest, as she toiled on in pursuit of immortal fame!
A given number of hours on the treadmill would probably be deemed by most extant men far more endurable, than a similar number spent in reading the pages thus industriously put together. Nevertheless, if these sentences can help her on for a year or two more in her fight against oblivion, she is heartily welcome to the lift.
The dialogues are on similar themes, and of exactly similar quality. I have read one (being probably the only living man who has done so), between Palamedes and Cleopatra, entitled, "An amorous dispute respecting a fainting fit caused by love." It is truly wonderful to consider, that human beings, with minds similarly constituted to our own, did read these writings with admiration and delight! And when one looks on the long, long road that human intellect must have travelled over, since that was possible, one cannot but reflect on the probability, that a yet more extended career must lie before it.