Serendipity language was by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made about a (lost) painting of Bianca Cappello by Giorgio Vasari by reference to a Persian fairy tale, "The Three Princes of Serendip". The princes, he told his correspondent, were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of". The name comes from "Serendip", an old name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon), hence "Sarandib" by Arab traders. It is derived from the Sanskrit "Siṃhaladvīpaḥ" (Siṃhalaḥ, Sri Lanka + dvīpaḥ, island).
Frances Seymour, Duchess of Somerset (1699–1754) of the Heart" (1737) was dedicated to the countess. According to Horace Walpole, Frances became interested in spiritualism, under Rowe's influence, following the death of her only son, George, who contracted smallpox in Bologna in 1744. After her husband's death in 1750, she lived her last years at Percy Lodge, where she died on 7 July 1754. She was buried with her son and husband in Westminster Abbey on 20 July. Frances Seymour, Duchess of Somerset (1699–1754) Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford ("née" Thynne; 10 May 1699 – 7 July 1754), later the Duchess of Somerset, was a British courtier