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Title: The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760

Author: Myra Reynolds

Release date: September 3, 2015 [eBook #49867]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LEARNED LADY IN ENGLAND, 1650-1760 ***

  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

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  A superscript is denoted by ^; for example, w^{ch} or y^e.

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
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Vassar Semi-Centennial Series


  ELIZABETHAN TRANSLATIONS FROM THE ITALIAN. By MARY AUGUSTA SCOTT,
  Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1876), Professor of English Literature in
  Smith College.

  SOCIAL STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By LAURA J. WYLIE, Ph.D.
  (A.B. Vassar, 1877), Professor of English in Vassar College.

  THE LEARNED LADY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. By MYRA REYNOLDS,
  Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1880), Professor of English Literature in
  Chicago University. [_In preparation._]

  THE CUSTOM OF DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENT IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS. By
  ORIE J. HATCHER, Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1888), Formerly Associate
  Professor of Comparative Literature in Bryn Mawr College. [_In
  preparation._]

  INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF VARIABLE STARS. By CAROLINE E.
  FURNESS, Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1891), Professor of Astronomy in
  Vassar College.

  MOVEMENT AND MENTAL IMAGERY. By MARGARET FLOY WASHBURN, Ph.D.
  (A.B. Vassar, 1891), Professor of Psychology in Vassar College.

  BRISSOT DE WARVILLE: A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF THE FRENCH
  REVOLUTION. By ELOISE ELLERY, Ph.D. (A.B. Vassar, 1897),
  Associate Professor of History in Vassar College.


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK




THE LEARNED LADY IN ENGLAND

1650-1760




[Illustration: LADY JANE GREY

From an engraving in Edmund Lodge's _Portraits of Illustrious
Personages of Great Britain_ London, 1823, Vol. II]




  Vassar Semi-Centennial Series

  THE LEARNED LADY
  IN ENGLAND

  1650-1760

  BY

  MYRA REYNOLDS

  _Professor of English Literature in the University of Chicago_

  WITH PORTRAITS

  [Illustration: (Publisher's colophon)]


  BOSTON AND NEW YORK

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

  The Riverside Press Cambridge

  1920




  COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY MYRA REYNOLDS

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




  PUBLISHED IN HONOR OF THE
  FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
  OF THE
  FOUNDING OF VASSAR COLLEGE
  1865-1915




  TO
  E. E. L.




CONTENTS


  I. LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650                  1
      1. Prefatory Statement                                1
      2. Period of Henry VIII and Elizabeth                 4
      3. Period from 1603 to 1650                          23
      4. Schools for Girls before 1660                     37

  II. LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760          46
      1. An Introductory Group in the Years 1650-1675      46
      2. The Century following the Restoration             81
          Actresses                                        81
          Artists                                          84
          Authors                                          88
          Writers on Practical Subjects                    89
          Writers on Religion and Theology                 92
          Writers on Practical Beneficence                118
          Dramatic Writers                                127
          General Learning and Literary Work              137

  III. EDUCATION                                          258
      1. Boarding-Schools for Girls                       258
      2. Charity Schools                                  268
      3. Higher Education                                 271

  IV. MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN IN SOCIAL AND
      INTELLECTUAL LIFE                                   316

  V. SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE LEARNED LADY
     IN COMEDY                                            372

     SUMMARY                                              420

     BIBLIOGRAPHY                                         457

     INDEX                                                477




ILLUSTRATIONS


  LADY JANE GREY                               _Frontispiece_

  THE FAMILY OF SIR THOMAS MORE                            10

  MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE                        22

  ANNE CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND
  MONTGOMERY                                               32

  MARY WARD                                                38

  MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE                 46
  From Horace Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_

  MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE                 52
  From _The Lives of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle,
  and of his Wife, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle_

  MRS. KATHERINE PHILIPS                                   56

  MRS. LUCY HUTCHINSON AND HER SON                         70

  LADY FANSHAWE                                            74

  MRS. ANNE KILLIGREW                                      86

  MRS. APHRA BEHN                                         130

  ELIZABETH ELSTOB                                        170

  THE SUPPOSED EDITORS OF _THE FEMALE SPECTATOR_,
  BY MRS. ELIZA HAYWOOD                                   216

  MISS ELIZABETH CARTER                                   256

  MRS. BATHSUA MAKIN                                      276




THE LEARNED LADY IN ENGLAND




CHAPTER I

LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND BEFORE 1650


1. PREFATORY STATEMENT

The theme to which this volume is specifically limited is the
position and achievements of learned women in England in the period
between 1650 and 1760. But before entering upon this detailed
study it seems desirable to give a preliminary sketch of the work
of learned women in England before 1650. In such a sketch it is,
indeed, a temptation to go farther back along the path of history
than a single volume would allow. It is difficult, for instance,
to avoid some account of the women of genius notable in the great
days of Greece and Rome.[1] More fascinating still would be a close
study of the learned nuns of the Middle Ages.[2] St. Radegunde,
Abbess of Poitiers, a poet of considerable distinction; St. Hilda,
who governed her double monastery at Whitby so successfully as to
put it "in the forefront of intellectual agencies in Great Britain";
the group of learned nuns who corresponded with St. Boniface, chief
among them being St. Lioba, who made of her convent at Bischopsheim,
Germany, "the most important educational center in that part of
Europe"; Hroswitha of Gandersheim, whose seven dramas "caused the
tragic muse to emerge once more from the midnight gloom of the Middle
Ages";[3] St. Hildegard, "the most voluminous woman writer of the
Middle Ages"; St. Herrad, author of an encyclopædic work entitled
_Hortus Deliciarum_, or _Garden of Delight_--these are but a few of
the women whose lives and works offer a field for profitable and
interesting investigation.

Emily James Putnam, in her acute study, _The Lady_, says of this
convent life:

  No institution of Europe has ever won for the lady the freedom
  and development that she enjoyed in the convent in the early
  days. The modern colleges for women only feebly reproduce it,
  since the college for women has arisen when colleges in general
  are under a cloud. The lady-abbess, on the other hand, was part
  of the two great social forces of her time, feudalism and the
  Church. Great spiritual rewards and great worldly prizes were
  alike within her grasp. She was treated as an equal by men of
  her time as is witnessed by letters we still have from popes
  and emperors to abbesses. She had the stimulus of competition
  with men in executive capacity, in scholarship, and in artistic
  production, since her work was freely set before the general
  public: but she was relieved by the circumstances of her
  environment from the ceaseless competition in common life of
  woman with woman for the favor of the individual man. In the
  cloister of the great days, as on a small scale in the college
  for women to-day, women were judged by each other as men are
  everywhere judged by each other, for sterling qualities of head
  and heart and character.[4]

From mediæval poems and romances also come glimpses, tantalizingly
brief and casual, to be sure, yet glimpses indicative of a tendency
to count learning as one of the possible charms of a heroine.[5] The
delightful lady in _Cursor Mundi_, who was described as "learnyd,
ware and wise," was also said to be "of much price lovéd." A later
maid, likewise of "grete prys," could vie with a modern college girl
in the variety and extent of her knowledge:

      Wyse sche was and curtes of mowthe,
      All the vii arse sche cowthe.
      She had maystures at hur honde,
      The wysest men of that londe,
      And taght hur astronomye,
      Arsmetryck and gemetrye.
      That mayde was of grete prys
      For sche was bothe warre and wyse.[6]

In _Floris and Blanchefleur_, Floris refused to study unless
Blanchefleur was taught with him, and she prospered so at her books
that her lore was a wonder to all. When she and Floris had been in
school five years together, they knew Latin and could write well on
parchment. When Floris went to visit his aunt she set him to learn
many things, as other children did, "bot maydons and grome."[7] The
wife of Sir Bevis of Hamtoun was taught "fysik and sirgerie" by great
masters from Bologna.[8] Melior, the fair mistress of Partonope of
Blois, since she was the only heir to the kingdom, was sent to school
that she might get great wisdom. She says, "A hundred mastres I had
and mo," and adds that God graciously inclined her to learning so
that she came to know "the seven sciences" perfectly. She was also
trained in herbs and "phisike," in "Divinite and Nygromancy."[9]
Thaise, in _Apollonius of Tyre_, combined the "wisdom of a clerk" with

                      every lusti werk,
      Which to a gentlewoman longeth.

      She was wel kept, sche was wel loked
      Sche was wel tawht, sche was wel boked
      So wel sche spedde hir in hire yowthe
      That sche of every wisdom cowthe.[10]

Medea, in Lydgate's _Troy Book_, had so passionate a desire for
knowledge that she became in all the "artis called liberal" as expert
and knowing as the best. She was powerful in logic, astronomy, and
necromancy.[11]

But the highly prized ladies of romance, the abbesses with all their
pomp and influence, the women poets, philosophers, and orators of
Greece and Rome, all lose interest when compared with the story of
the learned women in Italy during the Renascence. When we come to
the actual flowering time of their genius the list is so long as to
make selection difficult. "Never in history," says Mozans, "had they
greater freedom of action in things of the mind; never were they,
except probably in the case of the English and German abbesses of the
Middle Ages, treated with more marked deference and consideration
or fairness; never were their efforts more highly appreciated or
more generously rewarded.... Everywhere the intellectual arena was
open to them on the same terms as to men. Incapacity and not sex was
the only bar to entrance."[12] When the great Cardinal Bembo said,
"Little girls should learn Latin; it completes their charm," he was
expressing the attitude of the best Italian scholars towards learning
for women. Intellectual attainments were not only counted appropriate
for women, but they were recognized as a distinct added attraction.
Every city of importance had women whose renown was a source of civic
pride. Women not only studied under tutors, but they apparently
attended classes in the great universities, and even occupied
important chairs in the most distinguished faculties.[13]

The outcome of a general investigation along the lines indicated
would doubtless go to prove that in all civilized nations, in all
ages of their progress, there have been individual women who by
force of native endowment and through some favorable conjunction of
circumstances, have risen into prominence in realms not ordinarily
open to the women of their time, and that there have been various
interesting epochs when women have responded in fairly large numbers
to some exceptional intellectual stimulus.


2. PERIOD OF HENRY VIII AND ELIZABETH

The first woman author in the English language is probably Juliana
Barnes (or Berners), whose delight in hunting, hawking, and fishing,
along with a surprising amount of technical knowledge on these
subjects, led her to write, in 1481, a book for "the gentill men and
honest persones" whose tastes coincided with hers. But this lady was
prioress of Sopewell Nunnery and comes under the list of learned
nuns.[14] Genuine interest in books on the part of women in secular
life in England received one of its earliest manifestations in the
will of the Duchess of Buckingham who left to her daughter-in-law,
Margaret, the Countess of Richmond,[15] "a book of English, being
a legend of Saints; a book of French, called Lucun; another book
of French, of the Epistles and Gospels; and a Primmer with clasps
of silver gilt, covered with purple velvet." This legacy was an
important recognition of the literary tastes of the Countess of
Richmond who had, says Ballard, "a fine library stored with Latin,
French and English books, not collected for ornament, or to make a
figure (as is frequently the case) but for use." The Countess knew
French and had some knowledge of Latin. She also entered the field
of authorship, publishing before 1509 _The mirroure of golde for the
sinfull soule_, "translated at Parice out of Laten into Frenshe ...
and now of late translated out of Frenshe into Englishe by the right
excellent Princess Margaret." This right noble Margaret was likewise
a patroness of literature and a guardian of learning. She established
lectureships in divinity, maintained scholarships for poor students,
founded two colleges, and in other ways manifested her interest in
the progress of education.

The Countess of Richmond as a lover of books, as a translator of
religious works, and particularly as an intelligent and ardent
patron of learning, foreshadowed feminine activities of a later
day. But the learned lady as a recognized factor in social life had
no real place in England till the time of Henry VIII. Renascence
ideas concerning the education of women came into England from
Spain through Catherine, the first wife of Henry VIII. She was in
England from 1501 to 1531. Under the influence of her mother, Queen
Isabella,[16] she had been given remarkable educational advantages.
Queen Isabella was interested in all that pertained to learning.
She was a collector of books and contributed important accessions
to Spanish libraries. She knew several modern languages and had a
"critically accurate" knowledge of Latin. Learning for women was
encouraged at her court. The queen had herself a lady teacher,
Beatrix Galindo, who was professor of rhetoric at the University
of Salamanca, and who was called, for her knowledge of the Latin
language, _La Latina_. Other learned ladies of Spain were doubtless
known at the court, as Francisca de Lebrixa who often took the place
of her father, professor of history in the University of Alcala;
or Doña Maria Pacheco de Mendoza and her sister, who are mentioned
by Mr. Foster as the parallels of Sir Thomas More's daughters in
England.[17] In this eager, ambitious, intellectual atmosphere
the daughters of Isabella were brought up. She gave them personal
instruction, and secured for them foreign teachers of eminence.
Erasmus said that Catherine had been happily reared on letters from
her infancy, that she loved literature, and that she was _egregie
docta_. In the English court Queen Catherine's influence was all
on the side of learning. Mr. Watson says that all the treatises on
the education of women that appeared in England between 1523 and
1538 were under the spell of Catherine.[18] In the education of her
own daughter, the Princess Mary, she kept to the traditions of the
Spanish court and secured the most learned tutors for the young girl.
Dr. Lynacre wrote for the child Princess a _Rudiments of Grammar_.
His successor was Juan Luis Vives, who came to England in 1523 on the
invitation of Henry VIII. Whether Vives actually taught the Princess
or not, he wrote, in 1523, as director of her studies, two Latin
treatises, both dedicated to Queen Catherine. The first of these,
_De Institutione Fæminæ Christiannæ_, was translated into English
by Richard Hyrde before 1528 (though not printed till 1540) under
the title, _The Instruction of a Christian Woman_. Hyrde dedicated
his translation to Catherine because of her gracious zeal "to the
virtuous education of the womankind of this realm." Vives's second
treatise, _De Ratione Studii_, an account of the studies appropriate
for a young girl, appeared in 1524, and many editions are listed.
Still another treatise is by subject-matter and chronology closely
connected with the two essays by Vives. In 1524 there appeared a
translation by Margaret Roper of Erasmus's _Treatise on the Lord's
Prayer_. The Introduction was by Mr. Hyrde, and its importance is
indicated by Mr. Watson when he calls it "the first reasoned claim of
the Renascence period, written in English, for the higher education
of women." These treatises by Vives and Hyrde have much in common
and they express the most advanced contemporary ideas on woman's
education. That the place of woman is in the home is emphatically
stated. Housewifery is imperative. Vives has a charming passage on
the handling of wool and flax, "two crafts yet left of that old
innocent world," crafts of which no woman, be she princess or queen,
may be rightly ignorant.[19] Almost equal in quaint interest is
his defense of the kitchen: "Nor let nobody loathe the name of the
kitchen: namely, being a thing very necessary, without the which
neither sick folks can amend nor whole folks live." The lady should
also be mistress of a closet of medicaments which she must be able to
administer with skill. Occupations that involve any sort of publicity
are counted inappropriate for women, hence Vives gives "no license
to a woman to be a teacher."[20] The essential feminine virtues are
piety and modesty. Obedience to parents and to husbands is enjoined.
This obedience, if born of inner concord, might be a voluntary and
ideal thing. The mother of Vives is given as an example of the true
wifely attitude: "My mother Blanche when she had been fifteen years
married unto my father, I could never see her strive with my father.
There were two sayings that she had ever in her mouth as proverbs.
When she would say she believed well anything, then she used to
say, even as though Luis Vives had spoken it. When she would say
that she would [wished] anything, she used to say, even as though
Luis Vives would it."[21] In all these points Vives and Hyrde were
quite in accord with their age. The new element in their creed was
that learning could make women more attractive, companionable, and
efficient in these home relationships.[22] Hyrde considers the man
that "had leaver have his wife a fool than a wise woman" as "worse
than twice frantic." Maids must be good, says Vives, but learning
will fortify them and make them more truly good. In fact, according
to Vives and Hyrde, there are no bounds to be set to the learning of
women except those involved in the one general prescription that all
their studies must tend to the development of character. Romances,
for instance, are forbidden because they give false ideals, while
ethical and religious books are strongly commended.[23]

The Princess Mary was too young to know the significance of the
essays in her behalf, but she profited by the training accorded her.
When she was but nine she was addressed by commissioners from Holland
in the Latin tongue and responded in the same language "with as much
assurance and facility as if she had been twelve years of age."[24]
Her parents were proud of her achievements and planned to have her
learn modern languages. Later in life, at the solicitation of Queen
Catherine Parr, she translated Erasmus's _Paraphrase on the Gospel of
St. John_, and her work was highly praised.

The example set at court was followed in many noble families. There
is in the realm of education no single picture more entertaining
and attractive than that of Sir Thomas More and his daughters. Our
knowledge of this family comes from various sources, the chief of
which are a description written by Erasmus in a letter to John Faber,
and the letters written by Sir Thomas to the tutors and to his
daughters, especially to his daughter Margaret.[25] Sir Thomas could
not see why learning was not as suitable for girls as for boys. In a
letter to Gunnel he wrote:

  Neither is there anie difference in harvest time, whether it was
  man or woman, that sowed first the corne: for both of them beare
  name of a reasonable creature equally, whose nature reason only
  doth distinguish from bruite beastes, and therefore I do not
  see why learning in like manner may not equally agree with both
  sexes; for by it, reason is cultivated, and (as a fielde) sowed
  with wholesome precepts, it bringeth excellent fruit. But if the
  soyle of woman's braine be of its own nature bad, and apter to
  beare fearne then corne (by which saying manie doe terrifye women
  from learning) I am of opinion therefore that a woman's witt
  is the more diligently by good instructions and learning to be
  manured, to the ende, the defect of nature may be redressed by
  industrie.[26]

In describing the ideal wife he said: "May she be learned, if
possible, or at least capable of being made so,"[27] and he gave
the same training to Margaret and her sisters as to his son John.
The fame of these daughters went far. Symon Grinæus, in dedicating
his Plato to John, speaks of the young man's sisters as those "whom
a divine heat of the spirit, to the admiration and a new example
of this our age, hath driven into the sea of learning so far, and
so happily, that they see no learning to be above their reach, no
disputation of philosophy above their capacity."[28] Margaret, the
daughter "most like her father both in favour and wit," and "a rare
woman for learning, sanctity, and secrecy,"[29] was especially the
source of his pride. His delight in her overflows in his charming
response to a letter from her asking for money: "You aske monye,
deare Megg, too shamefully and fearefully of your father, who is
both desirous to giue it you, and your letter hath deserued it,
which I could find in my heart to recompence, not as Alexander did
by Cherilus, giuing him for every verse a Philipine of golde; but if
my abilities were answerable to my will, I would bestowe two Crownes
of pure golde for euery sillable thereof."[30] He found her Latin
letters written in so pure a style that "Momus, his censure though
never so teastie," could find no fault in them. Sir Thomas took
occasion to show these letters and other compositions by Margaret to
the Bishop of Exeter and to Reginald Pole, both good judges of any
literary performance; and Margaret's attainments seemed to both "as a
miracle." Of Mr. Pole's amazement Sir Thomas wrote:

  I could scarce make him believe, but that you had some help
  from your maister, until I told him seriously that you had not
  only never a maister in your house, but also never another man,
  that needed not your help rather in writing anie thing, than
  you needed his. In the mean time I thought with myself how true
  I found that now, which once I remember I spoke unto you in
  jeaste, when I pittied your hard happe, that men that read your
  writings would suspect you to have had help from some other man
  therein; which would derrogate somewhat from the praises due to
  your workes; seeing that you of all others deserve least to have
  such a suspition had of you, for that you never could abide to be
  decked with the plumes of other birds.[31]

But sweet Meg is praised because she studies for love of learning,
not for fame, and contents herself with her husband and father as a
sufficient audience. When Margaret married the best wish her father
could make was that her children should be most like to herself,
"except only in sex," yet he adds that a daughter who could imitate
her mother's learning and virtues would be of more worth than "three
boys."[32]

[Illustration: THE FAMILY OF SIR THOMAS MORE

Hans Holbein pinxit. W. Parsons sculp. 1815

From an engraving in _Effigies Poeticae_, London, 1824, Vol. II]

Margaret had three sons and two daughters and she took the same care
of their education as had been taken of hers. Dr. John Morwen, a
noted Greek scholar, was preceptor in Greek and Latin to her daughter
Mary. Other tutors were Dr. Cole and Dr. Christopherson, also famous
for Greek. Mary seems to have followed in her mother's footsteps so
far as attention to learned pursuits is concerned, but without her
mother's ability and charm. Her Latin orations were, however, so much
admired that her tutor, Dr. Morwen, translated them into English. Sir
Thomas More's other daughters, Elizabeth Dancy (b. 1509) and Cecilia
Heron (b. 1510), and Margaret, a talented kinswoman who married her
tutor, Dr. John Clement, in 1531, were given the same educational
advantages as Margaret. A characteristic eulogy of the three sisters
was by Mr. John Leland, its Latin being thus Englished in Ballard's
_Memoirs_:

      Forbear too much t' extoll, great Rome, from hence,
      Thy fam'd Hortensius' Daughter's Eloquence;
      These boasted names are now eclips'd by Three
      More learned Nymphs, Great More's fair Progeny;
      Who over-pas'd the Spinster's mean Employ;
      The purest Latin Authors were their Joy;
      They loved in Rome's political Style to write,
      And with the choicest Eloquence indite,
      Nor were they conversant alone in these,
      They turn'd o'er Homer and Demosthenes;
      From Aristotle's Store of Learning too
      The mystic Art of Reasoning well they drew.
      Then blush you Men if you neglect to trace
      These Heights of Learning which the Female grace.[33]

Erasmus and Sir Thomas More were close friends and it was through
this friendship that Erasmus was converted to the idea of advanced
studies for women. In his _The Abbot and the Learned Woman_,
Magdalia defends learning against the Abbot Antronius. The monk uses
the well-worn argument that woman's place is in the home, that it is
her business to conduct the affairs of the family and to instruct the
children. Magdalia does not contest this position, but urges that so
weighty a business needs all possible wisdom and that through books
she gains wisdom. In a sharp attack on the ignorance of the monks she
says: "In Spain and Italy there are not a few women belonging to the
noblest families who are a match for any man. In England there are
the Mores; in Germany the Pirckheimers and the Blaurers. And if you
don't take care, it will soon come to this, that we shall preside in
the schools of divinity, preach in the churches, and take possession
of your mitres.... If you go on as you are doing it is more likely
that the geese will begin to preach than that such dumb shepherds as
you will be any longer endured."[34] Antronius is reduced to the weak
argument that popular opinion does not favor Latin for women, and
Magdalia closes the discussion with the classic defense of new ideas:
"Why do you tell me of popular opinion, which is the worst example
in the world to be followed? What have I to do with custom, that is
the mistress of all evil practices? We ought to accustom ourselves to
the best things, and by that means that which was uncustomary would
become habitual, and that which was unpleasant would become pleasant,
and that which seemed unbecoming would look graceful."[35]

The daughters of Sir Thomas More were not the only girls trained
in the best learning of the day. Another important family where
particular stress was laid on the education of the daughters was
that of Sir Anthony Coke, one of the tutors of King Edward VI.[36]
Mildred, the eldest daughter (1526-1589), who married Lord Burleigh,
was celebrated for her knowledge of Latin and Greek. Two other
daughters, Elizabeth, Lady Russel (b. _cir._ 1529), and Katharine,
Mrs. Killigrew (b. _cir._ 1530), had fine natural abilities and
a learned education, and were distinguished both socially and
intellectually. But the most noted of the sisters was Anne (b. _cir._
1527), who married Sir Nicholas Bacon, and became the mother of two
remarkable sons, Anthony Bacon, and Francis Viscount St. Albans,
the great Lord Bacon. She was said to be "exquisitely skilled in
the Greek, Latin, and Italian tongues." In 1550 she translated
twenty-five sermons from the Italian. In later life she did a much
more important piece of translation. Bishop Jewel had written in
Latin _An Apology for the Church of England_. The book had made
so great a stir that an English translation seemed desirable and
Lady Bacon undertook the task. She sent her translation to the
Archbishop and to the author, with a letter written in Greek, that
they might correct any errors, but they found it so accurate that
they changed not the least word. In 1564 the Archbishop had the book
published without consulting Lady Bacon because he said he knew her
modesty would be abashed by any such publicity. He praised her clear
translation saying that she "had done honour to her sex and to the
degree of ladies." Lady Bacon was associated with her father in his
duties as tutor to Edward VI. She also conducted the early education
of her sons and they owed much to her wise care and great ability.
Sir Anthony Coke believed that women should be educated on the same
lines as men, and that they were quite as capable of acquiring
knowledge, and his own daughters brilliantly sustained this theory.

A third distinguished family in which the daughters were liberally
educated was that of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. Three of
them, Anne, Margaret, and Jane, were joint authors of _A Century of
Distichs upon the Death of Queen Margaret of Navarre_, printed in
1550 and later translated into Greek, French, and Italian.[37] Henry
Fitz Allan, Earl of Arundel, had both his daughters well trained
in the classics and they had the advantage of the notable library
he had collected. The eldest, Lady Joanna Lumley[38] (d. 1576),
translated four of the _Orations_ of Isocrates from Greek into
Latin, and the _Iphigenia_ of Euripides from Greek into English.
Most of her writings were dedicated to her father. Her manuscripts
were preserved in his library and so passed into royal possession
in the time of James I. Another learned lady was Mary, Countess of
Arundel.[39] She translated from Greek and Latin and collected a book
of similes from Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, and other classic authors.
She, too, dedicated her works to her father, Sir Thomas Arundel.
Sir Thomas Parr, "following the example of Sir Thomas More and
other great men," bestowed on his daughter Catherine[40] a learned
education, as "the most valuable addition he could make to her other
charms." She was interested in all matters pertaining to learning,
and successfully used her influence with the King in behalf of the
universities. She wrote a letter in Latin to the Princess Mary to
induce her to translate Erasmus's _Paraphrase of St. John_, and wrote
many psalms, prayers, and meditations, beside _Queene Katherine
Parre's lamentation of a sinner_, published in 1548. Jane, Countess
of Westmoreland, was placed by her father, the Earl of Surrey, under
the tuition of Mr. Fox, the Martyrologist, who reported her skill in
Latin and Greek as such "that she might well stand in competition
with the greatest men of that age."[41]

Most interesting and most pathetic of all the young women known
for learning in Tudor times was Lady Jane Grey.[42] Ascham, in
a well-known passage in _The Scholemaster_ (1570), describes an
interview he had with her at Bradgate where she was pursuing her
studies under John Aylmer, her tutor. This was in 1550 when Lady Jane
was but thirteen.

  Before I went into _Germanie_, I came to Brodegate in
  Le(i)cestershire, to take my leaue of that noble Ladie _Iane
  Grey_, to whom I was exeding moch beholdinge. Hir parentes,
  the Duke and Duches, with all the houshold, Gentlemen and
  Gentlewomen, were huntinge in the Parke; I founde her, in her
  Chamber, readinge _Phædon Platonis_ in Greeke, and that with as
  moch delite, as som ientlemen wold read a merie tale in _Bocase_.
  After salutation, and dewtie done, with som other taulke, I asked
  her, whie she wold leese soch pastime in the Parke! smiling
  she answered me; I wisse, all their sporte in the Parke is but
  a shoadoe to that pleasure, that I find in _Plato_: Alas good
  folke, they neuer felt what trewe pleasure ment. And howe came
  you Madame, quoth I, to this deepe knowledge of pleasure, and
  what did chieflie allure you vnto it: seinge, not many women, but
  verie fewe men haue attained thereunto. I will tell you, quoth
  she, and to tell you a troth, which perchance ye will meruell
  at. One of the greatest benefites, that euer God gaue me, is,
  that he sent me so sharpe and seuere Parentes, and so ientle a
  scholemaster. For when I am in the presence of either father or
  mother, whether I speake, kepe silence, sit, stand, or go, eate,
  drinke, be merie, or sad, be sowyng, plaiyng, dauncing, or doing
  anie thing els, I most do it, as it were, in soch weight, mesure,
  and number, euen so perfitelie, as God made the world, or else I
  am so sharplie taunted, so cruellie threatened, yea presentlie
  some tymes with pinches, nippes, and bobbes, and other waies,
  which I will not name, for the honor I bear them, so without
  measure mis-ordered, that I think my selfe in hell, till tyme
  cum, that I must go to _M. Elmer_, who teacheth me so ientlie,
  so pleasantlie, with soch faire allurements to learning, that
  I thinke all the tyme nothing, whiles I am with him. And when
  I am called from him, I fall on weeping because, what soeuer
  I do els, but learning, is ful of grief, trouble, feare, and
  whole misliking unto me: And thus my booke, hath bene so moch
  my pleasure, and bringeth dayly to me more pleasure and more,
  that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in vere deede be but
  trifles and troubles vnto me. I remember this talke gladly, bothe
  bicause it is so worthy of memorie, and bicause also, it was the
  last talke that euer I had, and the last tyme, that euer I saw
  that noble and worthie Ladie.

Mr. Elmer said she understood perfectly both kinds of philosophy,
and could express herself very properly at least in the Latin and
Greek tongues. Sir Thomas Chaloner said that she was "well versed in
Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, French and Italian," that she "played well
on instrumental music, writ a curious hand, and was excellent at
her Needle." Ballard quotes a contemporaneous opinion that she was
superior to King Edward VI in learning and in the languages. "If her
fortunes [says he] had been as good as her bringing up, joyned with
fineness of wit: undoubtedly she might have seemed comparable not
only to the house of the Vespasians, Sempronians, and mother of the
Gracchies; yea, to any other women besides that deserveth high praise
for their singular learning; but also to the university men, which
have taken many degrees of the Schools."

So far as accessible records go it was only in royal or noble
families that a learned education was counted suitable for women. It
is rare indeed to come upon an account like that of Elizabeth Lucar
(1510-1537), the daughter of a Mr. Paul Withypoll, and the wife of a
merchant-tailor, Mr. Lucar. In her accomplishments she seems to have
vied with the best ladies in the land. She was excellent in music,
being able to play on the viol, the lute, and the virginal, and she
could sing in various tongues.

      She wrought all Needle-works that Women exercise,
      With Pen, Frame, or Stoole, all Pictures artificial,
      Curious Knots, or Trailes, what fancy could devise,
      Beasts, Birds, or Flowers, even as things natural.

She wrote "three manner hands," was especially cunning in accounts
and "Algorism" (Arithmetic), and she could speak, write, and
read Latin, Spanish, and Italian, and she "won the garland" in
English.[43] Our knowledge of Elizabeth Withypoll's rare attainments
comes by chance from the information on her monument. Probably there
were other highly educated women in the wealthy middle classes but
their learned tastes were not counted worthy of any definite record.

In addition to the many instances of girls trained in the best
learning of their times during the first half of the sixteenth
century, we have striking contemporary testimony as to the prevalence
of the custom, and the high esteem in which such learning was held.
Richard Mulcaster (1530-1611), first head-master of a school founded
by the Merchant Taylors' Company in 1561, in discussing principles
of education, expressed advanced ideas concerning the ability and
training of girls.[44] He declared himself "for them toothe and
naile." He says that their "natural towardnesse" is such that they
should be well brought up, and he summarizes the elements of this
training. A young gentlewoman is thoroughly educated, he says, if she
can "reade plainly, and distinctly, write faire and swiftly, sing
cleare and sweetly, play wel and finely, understand and speak the
learned languages, and the tongues also which the time most embraseth
with some logicall helpe to chop, and some rhetoricke to brave." And
he asks whether it is likely that the children of a woman so trained
will be "eare a whit the worse brought up" for this learning. The
places wherein girls may study may be at home with tutors or they may
go forth to the elementary school. And the teacher may be either a
man or a woman. Mulcaster was himself in favor of sending girls to
the public grammar schools, and even to the universities, but he said
it was "a thing not used" in his country, there was no "president"
therefor. But he is enthusiastic about the attainments of women.
In languages, he says, "they compare favourably with our kinde in
the best degree." Some of them are so excellently trained and so
rarely qualified that they could be preferred to "the best Romaine
or Greekish paragones be they never so much praised: to the Germaine
or French gentlewymen by late writers so wel liked: to the Italian
ladies who dare write themselves and deserve fame for so doing."

Nicholas Udall, in 1548, in a Preface to Princess Mary's translation
of the _Paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John_ by Erasmus, comments
on the great number of noble women at that time in England given not
only to human sciences and strange tongues, but

  also so throughly expert in the Holy Scriptures that they were
  able to compare with the best writers as well in enditeing and
  penning of Godly and fruitful treatises to the instruction
  and edifying of realmes in the knowledge of God, as also in
  translating good books out of Latin or Greek into English....
  It was now no news in England to see young damsels in noble
  houses and in the courts of princes, instead of cards and other
  instruments of idle trifling, to have continually in their hands
  either psalms, homilies, or other devout meditations ... and
  as familiarly both to read or reason thereof in Greek, Latin,
  French or Italian, as in English. It was now a common thing to
  see young virgins so trained in the study of good letters, that
  they willingly set all other vain pastimes at naught for learning
  sake. It was now no news at all, to see Queens and ladies of most
  high estate and progeny, instead of courtly dalliance, to embrace
  virtuous exercises of reading and writing, and with most earnest
  study both early and late, to apply themselves to the acquiring
  of knowledge.[45]

Puttenham, in his _Arte of English Poesie_ (1589), indicates the
prevalence of women poets in the sixteenth century when he says:

  Darke word or doubtfull speach are not so narrowly to be looked
  vpon in a large poeme, nor specially in the pretie Poesies and
  deuises of Ladies and Gentlewomen-makers, whom we would not haue
  too precise Poets least with their shrewd wits, when they were
  maried they might become a little too fantasticall wiues.[46]

One of the influential foreign books of the first half of the
sixteenth century was Baldasar Castiglione's _Il Cortegiano_, written
in 1514, published in 1528, and translated into English in 1561 by
Thomas Hoby. The book is a conversation supposed to take place in the
drawing-room of the Duchess of Urbino, with the Duchess, her friend
Emilia Pia, Pietro Bembo, Bernardo Bibbiena, Giuliano de Medici, and
others, among the speakers. In the chapter on the attributes of the
perfect Court Lady, Count Gaspar Pallavicino says, "Since you have
given women letters and continence and magnanimity and temperance I
only marvel that you would not have them govern cities, make laws,
and lead armies, and let the men stay at home to cook or spin."[47]
Giuliano de Medici replies, laughing, "Perhaps even that would not be
amiss." There follows a discussion of woman as essentially imperfect,
an accident or mistake of nature, and consequently of less dignity
than men and not capable of those virtues to which men attain. But
the Magnifico held the doctrine that physical weakness does not
constitute inferiority, and that mentally women are equal to men:
"All the things that men can understand the same can women understand
too; and where the intellect of the one penetrates there also can
that of the other penetrate."

It is but natural that the praise of learning for women should extend
through the reign of Elizabeth. The Queen herself was an admirable
linguist. She spoke and wrote Latin with ease; she was a student
of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon; and she made translations into
English from French and Italian, even translating from Latin into
Greek. According to Ascham she read more Greek every day than some
Prebendaries read Latin in a week, and bestowed more regular hours
on learning than six of the best given gentlemen in the court. It
was also in accordance with the ideals of the age that the Queen
should wish to shine as a poetess. Dyce, in his _Specimens of British
Poetesses_, says that except for the speech of the Chorus in the
_Hercules Acteus_ of Seneca (printed in Park's edition of Walpole's
_Royal and Noble Authors_) he gives, and for the first time in
collected form, all the poems by this "Flower of Troynovant." It is
all occasional verse, such as a sonnet on that lovely "daughter of
debate," Mary Queen of Scots, a _Rebus_, an _Epitaph_, and a few
other stanzas. One little poem beginning

      I grieve but dare not show my discontent,

with much that is conventional in expression, seems yet to have a
genuine note of personal feeling. Taken as a whole the brief sum of
the Queen's verse indicates no poetic aptitude. It merely goes to
show that verse writing was counted an agreeable accomplishment, and
one to be cultivated by a queen.

Probably the most highly gifted woman during Elizabeth's reign
was Jane Weston (1582-1612).[48] And she was of high repute. When
Evelyn went to dine with Lord Cornbury at Clarendon House (December
20, 1668) to see the new house "now bravely furnished, especially
with the pictures of most of our ancient and modern wits, poets,
philosophers, famous and learned Englishmen," he greatly commended
his lordship's collection, but suggested additional names of the
learned. Among these new names were Lady Jane Grey and Elizabeth
Jane Weston. In _Numismata_ Evelyn praised Jane Weston's Latin poem
on typography. Farnaby "ranked her with Sir Thomas More and the best
Latin poets of the day." She was reputed to speak and write English,
Greek, German, Latin, Italian and Czech. John Philips praised her
in his _Theatrum Poetarum_. "Weston's fair daughter," "the tenth
muse," "the fourth grace," received, indeed, very high contemporary
English recognition, and even more extravagant praise came from
foreign critics. Her collected works were published in 1602 by Georg
Martin von Baldhoven at his own cost. At the end of the book there
was a list of learned women beginning with Deborah and ending with
Elizabeth Weston.

The only woman before 1603 in Aubrey's _Lives_, besides the Countess
of Pembroke, was Elizabeth Danvers. His notes on her are: "A great
politician; great witt and spirit, but revengefull. Knew how to
manage her estate as well as any man; understood jewells as well
as any jeweller." He calls her "an Italian," probably because she
understood that language, and he says "she had prodigious parts for a
woman." Her learning was certainly unusual, for "she had Chaucer at
her fingers' ends." The only date given for her is 1568, the year in
which her son, Sir Charles Danvers, was born.[49]

To show that Scotland was not unrepresented, mention may be made of
Elizabeth Melville, supposed to be identical with Elizabeth Colville,
Lady Colville of Culross. In 1599 Alexander Hume dedicated to her his
_Hymns_, or _Sacred Songs_, and he says of her: "I know ye delite in
poesie yourselfe; and as I vnfainedly confes, excelles any of your
sexe in that art, that ever I heard within this nation. I have seene
your compositions so copious, so pregnant, so spirituall, that I
doubt not but it is the gift of God in you."[50] The one poem by
which she is known, _Ane Godlie Dreame compylit in Scottish Meter by
M. M. (Mistress Melville) Gentlewoman in Culross, at the request of
her freindes_, was published in 1603. It appeared again in a volume
of _Various Poetry_ in 1644, and in David Laing's _Early Metrical
Tales_ in 1826. Dyce gives a few stanzas in his _Specimens_. The poem
is a Bunyan-like narrative in which the horrors of hell are painted
with a vigorous brush. In fact hell is made so distinct that even the
mitigating and finally saving presence of Christ as guide can hardly
soften the pictures of "puir damnit saullis ... frying wonder fast in
flaming fire."[51]

The one lady of Elizabethan days whose fame justly exceeds that of
any of her predecessors is Mary Sidney (1561-1621),[52] sister of
Sir Philip Sidney. At sixteen she married Henry Herbert, Earl of
Pembroke, and the twenty-four years of her married life were passed
at his estate, Wilton House, in Wiltshire. Her brother Philip was
often at Wilton and her more important literary accomplishments are
closely bound up with his work. It was at Wilton that he wrote _The
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_ which he dedicated to his "dear ladie
and sister." The brother and sister translated together the whole
book of Psalms into English verse. Psalms 44-150 are attributed
to Lady Pembroke. In 1592 she published two translations from the
French, Du Plessis Mournay's _Le Excellent Discours de la Vie et de
la Mort_; and Robert Garnier's _Marc Antonie_, a tragedy. Before 1600
she had also translated _The Triumph of Death_ from the Italian.
In 1593 she brought out her brother's _Arcadia_ on which she had
done most careful editorial work. She had also a taste for science.
Aubrey, in his _Brief Lives_, says of her: "She was a great chymist,
and spent yearly a great deale in that study.[53] She kept for her
laborator in the house Adrian Gilbert (vulgarly called Dr. Gilbert),
half brother to Sir Walter Ralegh, who was a great chymist in those
dayes.... She also gave an honourable pension to Dr. Thomas Mouffett,
who hath writ a booke _De insectis_. Also one ... Boston, a good
chymist ... who did undoe himself by studying the philosopher's
stone."

But while Lady Pembroke takes undoubtedly a high rank as translator
and editor, her fame does not rest chiefly on this work. When
Nicholas Breton compared her to the Duchess of Urbino he brought
forward her essential claim to distinction, which is that she
understood, valued, and befriended the literati of her day. Aubrey
says: "In her time Wilton House was like a College, there were so
many learned and ingeniose persons. She was the greatest patronesse
of witt and learning of any lady in her time." The most extravagant
eulogies were addressed to her from girlhood to old age. No such
chorus of praise had been accorded any other woman except the queen.
But it must be noted that this adulation is mainly for Lady Pembroke
as the patroness of letters. Only incidentally are her own scholastic
attainments commended. It was as a lover of wit and learning, as a
dispenser of favors, that Lady Pembroke, the typical great lady of
Elizabethan days, expressed her interest in learning, rather than
as herself a scholar; and it was as an intelligent and open-handed
patroness that she received highest recognition.

Wotton, about a century later, gives the following summary of the
learning of this period: "It was so very modish, that the fair Sex
seemed to believe that _Greek_ and _Latin_ added to their Charms:
and _Plato_ and _Aristotle_ untranslated, were frequent ornaments of
their Closets. One would think by the Effects, that it was a proper
Way of Educating of them, since there are no Accounts in History of
so many truly great Women in any one age, as are to be found between
the years 15 and 1600."[54]

[Illustration: MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE

From an engraving in Horace Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_,
London, 1806]

Though Wotton counts the century as one period, a closer study of
dates shows that most of the learned women of the century belong in
the first half of it, or at least obtained their education in the
first half of it. The woman most noted for classical attainments
during Elizabeth's reign was Lady Bacon. Her sisters also were of
considerable importance intellectually, and they lived well into the
reign of Elizabeth. But their education and their establishment as
women of exceptional learning belong before the coming of Elizabeth
to the throne.

Miss Weston's learning is unquestioned, but it can hardly be credited
to England. She lived much abroad, her works were published in
Holland, and the praise accorded her in England was but an echo of
the eulogies uttered by foreign critics. In spite of Queen Elizabeth
and Lady Mary Sidney, and Lady Bacon and Jane Weston, it becomes
apparent by a study of dates and names that there were in Elizabeth's
reign fewer eulogies of liberal education for girls and fewer records
of women distinguished by learning than in the preceding period. In
point of fact, when we speak of the sixteenth century as a century of
learned women, the emphasis should be on the first sixty years of the
century.


3. PERIOD FROM 1603 TO 1650

With the death of Elizabeth we come practically to the end of the
favor accorded learned women. The changed tone of public opinion may
be fairly indicated by a few scattered utterances from contemporary
poems and essays.

Sir Thomas Overbury, in his _Characters_ (1614), describes "A Good
Woman" as one "whose husband's welfare is the business of her
actions." Her chief virtue is that "Shee is Hee." In _A Wife_ he says
that "Books are a part of Man's Prerogative." He praises a "passive
understanding" in women and deprecates learning since

      What it finds malleable it maketh frail
      And doth not add more ballast, but more sail.

Powell, in _Tom of All Trades_ (1631), is emphatic in his plea
for the domestic as against the learned lady: "Let them learne
plaine workes of all kinds, so they take heed of too open seaming.
Instead of Song and Musicke, let them learn Cookerie and Laundrie.
And instead of reading in _Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia_, let them
reade the grounds of good huswifery. I like not a female Poetresse
at any hand."[55] William Habington, in _Castara_ (1634), a series
of poems in honor of Lucy Herbert, his wife, gave a comprehensive
description of the ideal wife's attitude towards her husband: "Shee
is inquisitive onely of new wayes to please him, and her wit sayles
by no other compass then that of his direction. Shee lookes upon
him as Conjurers upon the Circle, beyond which there is nothing but
Death and Hell; and in him shee beleeves Paradice circumscrib'd. His
vertues are her wonder and imitation; and his errors, her credulitie
thinkes no more frailtie, then makes him descend to the title of
Man."[56] Richard Brathwait, in _The English Gentleman_, comments
with apparent approval on the ancient seclusion of women. He says,
"_The Ægyptians_, by an especiall decree (as _Plutarch_ reports)
injoined their Women to weare no shooes, because they should abide
at home. The _Grecians_ accustomed to burne, before the doore of the
new married, the axletree of that coach, wherein she was brought to
her husbands house, letting her understand that she was ever after to
dwell there."[57]

Sir Ralph Verney said of his own daughter: "Pegg is very backward....
I doubt not but she will be schollar enough for a Woeman." With
regard to little Nancy Denton he wrote: "Let not your girl learn
Latin nor short hand: The difficulty of the first may keep her from
that vice, for soe I must esteem it in a woeman; but the easinesse
of the other may be a prejudice to her; for the pride of taking
sermon noates hath made multitudes of women unfortunate." Miss Nancy
was quite in advance of her godfather in her conception of the
studies appropriate for her. She wrote to him: "I know you and my
coussenes wil out rech me in french, but i am a goeng whaar i hop
i shal out rech you in ebri grek and laten." Sir Ralph answered:
"I did not think you had been guilty of soe much learning as I see
you are; and yet it seems you rest unsatisfied or else you would
not threaten Lattin, Greeke, and Hebrew too. Good sweet harte bee
not soe covitous; beleeve me a Bible (with y^e Common prayer) and a
good plaine cattichisme in your mother tongue being well read and
practised, is well worth all the rest and much more sutable to your
sex; I know your Father thinks thise false doctrine, but be confident
your husband will bee of my oppinion. In French you can not be too
cunning for that language affords many admirable books fit for you
as Romances, Plays, Poetry, Stories of illustrious (not learned)
Woemen, receipts for preserving, makinge creames and all sorts of
cookeryes, ordring your gardens and in Breif, all manner of good
housewifery."[58]

The general opinion was quite in accord with Luther when he said:
"Women should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and
bring up children";[59] or, at the best, with Milton's "He for God
only, she for God in him."[60]

Mr. Baldwyn, it is true, in 1619, in his _New Help to Discourse_,
praises England as the place where women had the greatest
prerogatives. In England, he says, women "are not kept so severely
submiss" as in France, nor so jealously guarded as in Italy.
"England is termed by foreigners the Paradise of Women as it is by
some accounted the Hell of horses and the Purgatory of Servants.
And it is a common byword among the Italians that if there were a
bridge built over the narrow seas all women in Europe would run into
England."[61] But this favorable opinion must be discounted as being
a retrospective estimate based mainly on the attitude towards women
in the sixteenth century; and further, as being an Englishman's
attempt to exalt English as against continental customs.

Of more curious interest is the ingenious attempt of the Bishop of
London to interpret the account of the creation of Eve from Adam's
rib as an intention on the part of the Creator to teach the equality
of woman with man. The Bishop says: "The species of this bone is
exprest to be _costa_, a rib, a bone of the side, not of the head: a
woman is not _domina_, the ruler; nor of any anterior part; she is
not _prælata_, preferred before the man; nor a bone of the foote;
she is not _serva_, a handmaid; nor of any hinder part; she is not
_post-posita_, set behind the man; but a bone of the _side_, of a
middle and indifferent part, to show that she is _socia_, a companion
to her husband. For _qui jungunter lateribus, socii sunt_, they that
walke side to side, cheeke to cheeke, walke as companions."[62]

One book definitely in honor of the ladies came out rather late
in the period. This was Charles Gerbier's _Elogium Heroinum. The
Ladies' Vindication: or, The Praise of Worthy Women._ The threefold
dedication to the Princess of Bohemia, "whose marvellous wisdom and
profound knowledge in Arts, Sciences, and Languages, is admired by
all men," to the Countess Dowager of Claire, "a Patroness of the
Muses, a general Lover of the Languages, and Knowledge"; and to the
"Vertuous Accomplisht Lady Anne Hudson," is justified by the three
principles in natural philosophy, the three theological virtues,
and the three graces. "Woman," says Mr. Gerbier, "is capable of
as high improvement as man," an assertion which he proceeds to
establish by the following arguments: "Does not _Sophia_ signify
wisdom? Are not Faith, Hope and Charity represented as Women? Are not
the Seven Liberal Arts exprest in Women's Shapes? Are not the Nine
Muses Daughters of Jupiter? Is not Wisdom called the Daughter of the
Highest?" His list of worthy women begins with the Queen of Sheba who
disputed with Solomon, goes enthusiastically through the famous dames
of Greece and Rome, including the Muses and the Sibyls, and touches
upon later learned women such as "Christine de Pisan, Margaret of
Vallois, Lady Jane Grey, the Countess of Pembroke, the daughters of
Sir Anthony Cooke," and a few other outstanding personages of Tudor
times. Praise so heterogeneous and uncritical was perhaps of little
value, but such as it is, it stands alone in England in the period
between Elizabeth and Charles II as a defense of learned women. And
no defense or protest comes from the pen of a woman.

It should, however, be noted that in European countries women were
more vitally concerned in their own destinies. Between 1600 and 1641
there appeared at least three significant books by women dealing
with the intellectual emancipation of their sex. The earliest of
these came from Italy in 1608 with a second edition in 1621. It was
written by a young Venetian widow, Lucrecia Marinelli (1571-1653),
and was entitled _Della notabilità e della eccellenza delle donne
e dei difetti degli uomini_. A second and better known book was by
Marie de Jars, the _fille d'alliance_ of Montaigne, usually known as
Mlle. de Gournay.[63] Her book, entitled _L'Egalité des Hommes et des
Femmes_, appeared in 1604 when "the Pride of Gournay," "the French
Siren," as she was called, had become well known in the cultivated
circles of Paris through her definitive edition of Montaigne's
works in 1595. Mlle. de Gournay's thesis as to the dignity and
capacity of women is established by divine authority and by citations
from the church fathers and ancient philosophers. She follows up
these expressions of opinion by a thorough résumé from sacred and
profane history of the women who have worthily held high places. M.
Feugère[64] voices what must be the opinion of any modern reader
when he says that _L'Egalité_ would be _plus piquant_ without the
pedantic form in which it is cast, without _les citations fréquentes
et les raisonnements scholastiques qui le surchargent_. But however
cumbersome we may find her method, it apparently suited her public,
for the book was enthusiastically received.

The third and by far the most important book on the position and
desirable training of women was by Anna van Schurman of Utrecht.
The extremes to which Mlle. de Gournay carried her doctrines were
distasteful to Anna van Schurman, yet many of her ideas were
doubtless based on the work of her French predecessor, _la mère
du féminisme moderne_. Anna van Schurman's book was translated
into English and had a direct influence on the progress of English
educational ideals for women. It is taken up in detail later in this
discussion.

The low estimate of learning, in the first half of the seventeenth
century, as an appropriate pursuit for women, had as its natural
outcome a great decrease in the number of women who devoted
themselves to any form of scholarship. The names that remain to us
from this period as in any way connected with literature or learning
form a singularly inchoate list, interesting, for the most part,
because of the oddities it represents rather than because of any
solid achievements. Of considerable importance are several ladies
in the early years of the Stuarts who followed in the footsteps of
Lady Pembroke as patronesses of learning. The first of these was
Lady Bedford, who held her "graceful and brilliant little court"
at Twickenham Park between 1608 and 1618. Daniel, Drayton, Donne,
and Jonson were among those who celebrated her munificence. Though
Lady Bedford wrote verses she had no pronounced literary pursuits
of her own. Her "considerable and varied learning" went preferably
along antiquarian and horticultural lines. She collected medals
and pictures, and she designed a garden highly praised by Sir
William Temple. She is of importance chiefly because, in an age
when learning lived only as it found patrons, she was magnificent
in her hospitality to the poets.[65] Lady Mary Wroth was a niece
of Lady Pembroke and carried on the traditional family attitude
towards poets. Jonson's _Alchemist_ (1610) was dedicated to her, and
Chapman's _Iliad_ (1614) had a prefatory sonnet addressed to her.
She wrote _The Countess of Montgomerie's Urania_ (1621), in four
books, a work modeled on her uncle's _Arcadia_. A third patroness was
Elizabeth Spencer, wife of Sir George Carey. She was a kinswoman of
Edmund Spenser and he commemorated her for "the excellent favors" she
had granted him.

One of the most notable young women of the time of James I was
Elizabeth Jocelyn (1596-1622). She was brought up by her grandfather,
William Chaderton, Bishop of Lincoln. He was a friend of Sir
Anthony Coke and Lord Burleigh and naturally shared their ideas as
to education. The quick wit and remarkable memory of this little
granddaughter greatly pleased him and he took the utmost pains with
her education, training her carefully in "languages, history, and
some arts," but principally in "studies of piety." She died nine days
after the birth of her first child to whom she left _The Mother's
Legacie to her Unborne Childe_. The third edition came out in 1625,
an incorrect impression in 1684, and a reprint of the 1625 edition in
1852.[66] The little book contains a letter to her husband in which
she indicates her wishes in case the child should be a girl:

  I desire her bringing up to bee learning the Bible, as my sisters
  doe, good housewifery, writing and good workes: other learning a
  woman needs not; though I admire it in those whom God hath blest
  with discretion, yet I desired not so much in my owne, having
  seene that sometimes women have greater portions of learning than
  wisdome, which is of no better use to them than a main saile to a
  flye-boat, which runs under water. But where learning and wisdom
  meet in a vertuous disposed woman, she is the fittest closet of
  all goodnesse. She is, indeed, I should but shame myself, if I
  should goe about to praise her more. But, my dear, though she
  have all this in her, she will hardly make a poore man's wife:
  Yet I leave it to thy will. If thou desirest a learned daughter,
  I pray God give her a wise and religious heart, that she may use
  it to his glory, thy comfort, and her owne salvation.

Nearly all of the book is given up to cautions and plans for a
boy's education. And for boy or girl there is great emphasis on
religion, on attending services, reading the Bible, and keeping up
habits of daily devotion. Of the prayers definitely recommended,
one for morning is one hundred and eighty lines, and one suitable
for all times is three hundred and fifty-nine lines. In the brief
portion addressed directly to the girl, "Devout Anna, Just Elizabeth,
Religious Ester, and Chaste Susanna" are held up as exemplars.
Self-effacement seems the chief duty enjoined on the girl: "If
thou beest a Daughter, remember thou art a Maid, and such ought
thy modesty to bee, that thou shouldst scarce speak, but when thou
answerest." The book was deservedly popular because it was so genuine
in its forecast of sorrow, so pathetically eager in plans and hopes
for her husband and child. No other work so personal and human in its
appeal comes to light in this period.

There are during the first half of the century a few books by women
on practical subjects. They could hardly take rank as learned
productions, but they are significant as early attempts on the part
of women to put into some sort of readable form, and to print for
the instruction of other women, the wisdom garnered through years of
experience. One of these books appeared in 1628 and was entitled _The
Countess of Lincoln's Nurserie_.[67] The Countess was the mother
of seven sons and nine daughters and wrote this little treatise
particularly for the guidance of her daughter-in-law Bridget. It
is described as "a well-wrote piece full of fine arguments, and
capable of convincing anyone that is capable of conviction, of the
necessity and advantages of mothers nursing their children." A
second book transmitted information of another sort. Before 1651
Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent (1581-1651), the granddaughter of
Bess of Hardwick, wrote or compiled _A Choice Manuall, or Rare and
Select Receipts in Physick and Chyrurgery_. A second part, entitled
_A True Gentlewoman's Delight Wherein is contained all manner of
Cookery_, reached its nineteenth edition in 1687. _The Legacie_,
the _Nurserie_, the _Choice Manuall_, were the direct outcome of
interests considered appropriate for women, and such publicity as
they involved would not be challenged.

Letter-writing is also a realm ascribed without question to women,
and when chance has rescued from oblivion any group of their letters,
social history has been thereby enriched. The earliest Englishwoman,
any large number of whose letters have been preserved and published,
is Lady Brilliana Harley (1600-43) who wrote to her son Edward while
he was at Oxford in the years 1638-40. She was a woman of pronounced
religious and political opinions, observant, domestic, and with
a ready pen for picturesque detail, and her letters are of more
interest than most of the contemporary published work.[68]

A few women have more directly to do with learning than those already
mentioned. Occasionally in some great family Tudor traditions were
maintained. Margaret, Countess of Cumberland (1560-1616), for
instance, held to the idea that maidens of noble houses must be nobly
educated, and she induced the poet Daniel to live at Skipton Castle
as tutor to Anne, her nine-year-old daughter. Bishop Rainbow, who
knew the family well, gives the following account of Anne:

  She could discourse with virtuoso's, travellers, scholars,
  merchants, divines, statesmen, and with good housewives in any
  kind: insomuch that a prime and elegant wit, Dr. Donne, well seen
  in all human learning ... is reported to have said of this lady,
  in her younger years to this effect; that she knew well how to
  discourse of all things from predestination to slea-silk. Meaning
  that although she was skilful in her housewifery, and such things
  in which women are conversant, yet her penetrating wit soared
  up to pry into the highest mysteries, looking at the highest
  example of female wisdom. Although she knew _Wool_ and _Flax_,
  fine _Linen_ and _Silk_, things appertaining to the spindle and
  the distaff: _yet she could open her mouth with wisdom_.... If
  she had sought fame rather than wisdom, possibly she might have
  been ranked among those wise and learned of her sex, of whom
  _Pythagoras_ or _Plutarch_, or any of the ancients have made such
  honourable mention.[69]

A portrait of Anne at thirteen represents the books supposedly read
by her under her tutor, Mr. Daniel, and her governess, Mrs. Ann
Taylor, whose heads appear in the picture. The books are "Eusebius,
St. Augustine, Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Godfrey of Boulogne,
The French Academy, Cambden, Ortelius, and Agrippa on the Vanity of
Occult Sciences."[70]

[Illustration: ANNE CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF DORSET, PEMBROKE AND
MONTGOMERY

From an engraving in Pennant's _Tour in Scotland_, 1790, Part II]

At nineteen Anne married the Earl of Dorset. Her second marriage,
in middle life, was to Philip Herbert, Fourth Earl of Pembroke and
Montgomery. In alliance with these noble houses she was extremely
unhappy. In her Journal she says: "The marble pillars of Knowle in
Kent and Wilton in Wiltshire, were to me often times but the gay
arbor of anguish. A wise man, that knew the insides of my fortune,
would often say, that I lived in both these my lords' great families
as the river Roan runs through the lake of Geneva, without mingling
its streams with the lake; for I gave myself up to retiredness
as much as I could and made good books and virtuous thoughts my
companions."[71] A portrait, belonging to this period of middle life,
indicates as the books then most favored, "the Bible, Charron on
Wisdom and pious treatises." Lady Pembroke's pursuit of abstract
and theological learning was, however, largely the outcome of her
repressed and unhappy life. On her second widowhood, in 1650, she
forsook learning and gave free reign to her "master-passion for
bricks and mortar." But most of this energetic work, during which she
rebuilt or restored her six castles and several churches, belongs
after the Restoration. As a woman of affairs Lady Pembroke made a
remarkable impression on her age. Bishop Rainbow, who says she had
"a clear soul shining through a vivid body," emphasizes also "her
great understanding and judgment." Pennant, in his _Tour_, said
that she was regarded as "the most eminent character of her times,
for intellectual accomplishments, for spirit, magnificence, and
benevolence."

Another lady who carried over into this period the liberal training
of Tudor days was Elizabeth Tanfield (1585-1639), who, at the age of
fifteen, married Henry Carey, later Viscount Falkland. Our knowledge
of her very interesting life and character is derived mainly from a
_Life_ written by one of her daughters. She was a lover of books from
her childhood and learned languages--French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew,
and Transylvanian--practically without a teacher. Her daughter said
of her:

  When she was but four or five years old they put her to learn
  French, which she did about five weeks, and not profiting at all
  gave it over; after, of herself, without a teacher, whilst she
  was a child she learned French, Spanish and Italian; ... she
  learned Latin in the same manner.... Hebrew she likewise, about
  the same time, learned with very little teaching.... She then
  learned also of a Transylvanian his language, but never finding
  any use of it forgot it entirely. She read so incessantly at
  night that her mother forbade the servants to give her candles.
  But she bought candles at half a crown apiece of the servants and
  at twelve was £100 in their debt, a debt which she paid on her
  wedding day.

Her work as an author began early, for her first play was written
about the time of her marriage. It was dedicated to her husband. A
second play, _The Tragedy of Mariam the Faire Queene of Jewry_, was
written when she was eighteen or nineteen, though not printed till
1613.[72] She was early recognized as one of the most intellectual
women of her time. In 1612 she was one of the three "Glories of
Women" to whom John Davies dedicated his _Muses Sacrifice_. Later, in
1633, the publisher of Marston's Works dedicated them "To the Right
Honourable the Lady Elizabeth Carey, Viscountess Falkland," because
she was so "well acquainted with the Muses." That Lady Falkland's
appetite for learning never abated is apparent from her daughter's
testimony:

  She had read very exceedingly much: poetry of all kinds ancient
  and modern in several languages, all that ever she could meet;
  history very universally, especially all ancient Greek and Roman
  histories; all chronicles whatsoever of her own country, and
  the French histories very thoroughly: of most other countries
  something, though not so universally, of the ecclesiastical very
  much, most especially concerning its chief pastors. Of books
  treating of moral virtue or wisdom (such as Seneca, Plutarch's
  _Morals_, and natural knowledge, as Pliny, and of late ones, such
  as French, Mountaine, and English, Bacon) she had read very many
  when she was young. Of the fathers and controversial writers on
  both sides a great deal even of Luther and Calvin.[73]

Lady Falkland was converted to Catholicism in 1605 and she devoted
all her learning to the service of the Church. She translated
Cardinal Perron's _Works_ and wrote lives of the saints in verse.

Lady Falkland's son Lucius married Letice Morrison, another "undue
lover of books," who abridged herself of sleep that the hours of
reading might be prolonged. This daughter-in-law of Lady Falkland
was not only eager for learning, but she had independent views along
social lines. One of her schemes was the foundation of houses "for
the education of young gentlewomen and the retirement of widows with
the belief that through such houses learning and religion might
flourish more than heretofore in her own sex." Her early death in the
time of the Civil War frustrated her plans, but they have an especial
interest as forecasting the ideas set forth by Mary Astell later in
the century.[74]

Anna Hume, the daughter of David Hume, was carefully educated by her
father at Godscroft, a property to which he retired that he might be
unmolested in his devotion to literature. Anna joined in his pursuits
with eagerness and intelligence, and after his death she did much
to complete his work. In 1644 she superintended the publication
of his _History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus_. She
translated Latin poems, and in 1644 she also published _The Triumph
of Love, Chastity and Death_, translated from Petrarch. Drummond
of Hawthornden speaks highly of her learning and of her "rare and
pregnant wit."

Esther Kello (1571-1624) is often spoken of as one of the notable
women of the Stuart period. Her works were counted worthy gifts for
kings, and are preserved in royal libraries. Calligraphy was one of
the fine arts in the seventeenth century. To write many different
hands, to make flourishes, to decorate margins, to illuminate
titles and capital letters, to make elaborate head or tail pieces
to chapters, and to write the alphabets of many languages, were
the elements of this art. No other accomplishment was so often
advertised.[75] It was in this art that Esther Kello excelled. _Les
Proverbes de Salomon_ (1599), written in forty hands, and with all
possible ornamental detail, was one of her most famous books. It was
preserved in "Bodley's Library." In exactness, fineness, and beauty
her books are said to rival the old illuminated manuscripts.[76]

There was published in 1630 a twelve-page tract entitled _A Chain
of Pearl, or a Memorial of the Peerless Graces and heroic Virtues
of Queen Elizabeth, of glorious memory, composed by the noble lady,
Diana Primrose_. The Pearls of the Chain are Religion, Chastity,
Prudence, Temperance, Clemency, Justice, Fortitude, Science,
Patience, and Bounty. A preliminary address to the author by one
Dorothy Berry greets Diana as "the _Prime-rose_ of the Muses nine."
The Pearls are in the style of exaggerated compliment always
associated with the name of Queen Elizabeth, but they could not have
been inspired by any interested motives, for Elizabeth had been dead
nearly a generation when they came from the press. Save the date of
publication I have no facts about either Diana Primrose or Dorothy
Berry. Perhaps their youth was spent during the "blest and happy
years" when the Heroine they praised was on the throne.

      She, she it was that gave us golden days,
      And did the English name to heaven raise.

If so, and if they wrote when trouble was brewing between the King
and the people, we can well understand the ardor of Diana Primrose's
eulogy of the days when the Prince and People agreed "in sacred
concord and sweet sympathy."

A very curious book is by Mary Fage. It is entitled _Fame's Roule_
and appeared in 1637.[77] It is a collection of the most ingenious
anagrams and acrostics on the names of four hundred and twenty
persons of the "hopeful posterity" of Charles I. John Weymes, for
instance, is anagrammed into "Show men joy" and John Hollis into "Oh!
on my hills." The amplification of the anagram is mainly compliment
with now and then a trace of exhortation. This was an age when
playing with words gave undoubted pleasure, but four hundred and
twenty anagrams on royal names would seem an undue tax on even the
most agile manipulator of the alphabet.

Katherine Chidley wrote and spoke on questions of Church and State.
In 1641 she published a quarto volume entitled _The Justification
of the Independent Churches of Christ_, in which she maintained
that the congregations of the Saints should receive "no direction
in worship from any other than Christ their head and lawgiver." She
is described as "a most violent independent who talked with so much
bitterness and with so clamorous a tongue as to vanquish opposing
divines, and who wrote as furiously in behalf of her cause as if she
were the Amazonian Queen in defence of the Trojans."

A literary oddity of the Cromwell period, a fertile writer whose
half-mad and often unintelligible prophetic writings yet came true
often enough to secure her a troublesome reputation as a "Cunning
Woman," was Lady Eleanor Davies, the wife of Sir John Davies of
Hereford. She was twice married and both husbands had burned her
manuscripts, but finally, in 1651, there was printed a pamphlet, _The
Restitution of Prophecy; that Buried Talent to be revived. By the
Lady Eleanor._[78] The Lady Eleanor was as devoted to anagrams as was
Mary Fage. The change of Eleanor Davies into "Reveal O Daniel" was
her mystic authorization as a prophet, until some wit shattered her
anagram by producing "Never so mad a lady."


4. SCHOOLS FOR GIRLS BEFORE 1660

Of schools for girls during the period before 1660 we get but vague
hints. John Whitgift, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1583,
protested against having schools for "maiden children" within the
precincts of the church. And he added in a note, "Especially seeing
they may have instruction by women in the town."[79] In the statutes
of Harrow School, made in 1590, there is a statement to the effect
that "no girls shall be received or taught," hence the subject had
at least been under discussion.[80] _Love's Labour's Lost_ seems
to indicate that Holofernes taught girls as well as boys,[81] and
Helena comments on the "school-days' friendship" between her and
Hermia.[82] But these references belong to late Elizabethan times and
are too indefinite to serve as evidence.

The best-known schools for girls in the first half of the seventeenth
century were apparently religious in origin. One of these is the
"Institute" founded by Mary Ward (1585-1645).[83] She was a brilliant
and beautiful young Catholic who made it the aim of her life to
influence young women to an acceptance of the Catholic faith. This
she endeavored to accomplish through educational agencies. It was
her plan to have an organization of uncloistered nuns who should not
wear habits, who should be free to come and go, and who should adapt
themselves in manner and dress to their surroundings in such ways as
might be most advisable in the pursuance of their spiritual aims.
Conditions in England made it useless to attempt such a school or
community there. So the first establishment of the Institute was at
St. Omer. This was in 1609. Five gentlewomen crossed the sea at that
time with Mary Ward. The one she loved and trusted most was Winifred
Wigmore, a descendant of the Throgmortons of Warwickshire, and so
well educated that she spoke five languages fluently. She had a keen
intellect, was wise, sympathetic, courageous, and very devout. Mary
Poyntz, "gifted with all that can be most highly esteemed in person,
birth or fortune," the youngest of the group, was scarcely sixteen
when she cast her lot in permanently with Mary Ward. Of Jane Browne,
Catharine Smith, and Susanna Rookwood fewer details are given. Later
on Miss Ward was joined by Barbara Babthorpe, "highly educated and
very well read ... with a striking gift of eloquence," and by her
own sister Barbara Ward. Each of these ladies had a companion, so it
was quite a household that assembled at St. Omer, and they entered
at once upon the life they had planned. They practiced rigid
self-denial, living on one meal a day and sleeping on straw beds, and
submitting themselves to other austerities. Their time was given over
to good works, especially to education. They established a school for
French and English girls, receiving the English girls as boarders.
In 1612 Miss Ward said that they had already received two nieces of
the Earl of Shrewsbury, and another young lady from the family of the
Earl of Southampton, and that many Catholic nobles were planning to
send their daughters to be brought up in the Faith and good manners,
by the ladies of St. Omer.

[Illustration: MARY WARD

From an engraving in _The Life of Mary Ward_, by Mary Elizabeth
Chambers of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin]

The Institute finally received the sanction of the pope and was
successful in various countries. But Miss Ward's efforts to establish
it in England in 1638 met with so much hostility that she was
obliged to carry on her work secretly and by subterfuge, changing
the location of her little band of followers from time to time as
suspicion centered upon them. The Institute was finally broken up
by the Puritans in 1642. Little is known of the actual work of the
school. The members of the Institute were always so anxious and
harried that there could have been no really systematic instruction
except in the articles of faith. There are in the Convent of the
Institute at Augsburg fifty large oil paintings dating from the
seventeenth century, and representing events in its history. In these
pictures Mary Ward's life is seen to be one of dramatic interest from
her childhood to her death. And her personality is one of compelling
charm. She was a heroine and a pioneer, an executive of first-rate
ability, an extremely acute woman of business, and yet without loss
of the graces and amenities of human intercourse. The St. Omer school
shows genius. Within the limits of her church she was promulgating
ideas the full fruition of which would not come for many years. She
believed that sound mental training would establish women in their
faith, and that women, if given opportunity and education, would
prove to have powers not generally ascribed to them. To establish a
school on this basis was an enterprise bolder, more original, and
more hazardous than was the opening of the first colleges for women
in America.

Another religious school was that known as Little Gidding,[84]
founded by Nicholas Ferrar (1592-1637). The life of Ferrar is one
of great interest. He was a man of wide experience. He had known
academic life at Cambridge, he had traveled in Holland, Germany,
Italy, and Spain, he had conducted extensive business enterprises
in connection with the Virginia Company, and had taken an important
place in political life as a member of Parliament. But while
still under forty he turned definitely to a life of religious
sequestration. He and his mother bought the Manor of Little
Gidding in Huntingdonshire in 1624 and there they set up the new
establishment. He was joined by his brother John with his wife and
three children, and by Mrs. Collet, his favorite sister, with her
husband and sixteen children. To the children of these two families
were added such children of the neighboring gentry as cared to come.
In this household the girls were carefully educated. They had one
master in Music, one in Arithmetic and Writing, one in English and
Latin. They formed themselves into a little society called "The
Academy" which had regular meetings for discussion of topics set for
them. They took fanciful names, and had many quaint and elaborate
little formalities. The topics discussed by "Patient" and "Cheerful"
and "Moderator" and "Visitor," and even by little four-year-old
"Humble," were nearly always religious or ethical, and the purpose
of the discussions was always moral improvement. So strong was the
religious element, so rigid were the forms of fasting, feasting, and
worshiping, that the school came under suspicion as a Protestant
nunnery. In 1641 it was attacked in a pamphlet entitled _The Armenian
Nunnery, or a Brief Description and Relation of the newly erected
Monasticall Place called the Armenian Nunnery at Little Gidding_.

The school at Little Gidding has had its fame as a religious
organization perpetuated in Mr. Shorthouse's _John Inglesant_,
but it is even more famous in the annals of fine book-binding. It
was the belief of Nicholas Ferrar that every one should be taught
some hand-work, and he determined upon book-binding as a part of
the regular school work at Little Gidding. Dr. Jebb says that "a
Cambridge book-binder's daughter that bound rarely" was procured as
an instructor. She came, he says, either from the University printers
themselves or from some Cambridge bindery which they patronized where
she herself had been trained. She brought some of her own stamps with
her, and some of her own ideas as to how they should be arranged.

Even this activity was the handmaid of religion, and was, indeed,
probably undertaken primarily in order to preserve the concordances
of the four gospels so carefully worked out by Nicholas Ferrar.
The girls learned to do all the mechanical parts with extreme
nicety, joining the many tiny slips and putting in the illustrative
engravings with great deftness. The name of the binder is not usually
given in the book, but there is one exception. A book bound by the
youngest of the workers bears the inscription:

  Thanks be to God.
  Done at Little Gidding. Anno Domino 1640
  by Virginia Ferrar, an. 12.[85]

The curious little "histories" composed by "The Academy" were written
out in three manuscript volumes and bound. They have been lately
acquired by the British Museum. "The volumes measure 13½ x 9 inches
and are bound in black morocco, with a small double gold line running
along the edge, finished with a little ornamental spray at each
corner." The Concordances were more sumptuous. The _Bibliographica_
gives full-page colored illustrations of these fine bindings and says
of them:

  The beautiful effect which Mary Collet, who seems to have done
  much of the binding herself, was able to produce by different
  arrangements of the stamps I have described shows that she was
  undoubtedly a lady of much taste and originality ... and it may
  fairly be considered that the velvet-bound volumes, of great
  size, gorgeous in color and rich in decoration, which were
  eventually produced under her supervision, must take the highest
  rank among amateur decorative book-bindings.

  Unequalled in size, original in design, and rich in execution,
  these volumes must be seen to be appreciated; then indeed the
  expressions which Charles I used concerning them, which sound
  extravagant, can be well understood. Although much faded, and
  sometimes re-backed and the sides relaid, with the silken ties
  all gone, enough of their old magnificence still remains to make
  us feel that we should indeed be proud that English binders could
  have produced such works.[86]

Aside from these religious schools, which were very small, there were
undoubtedly some fashionable boarding-schools, such as Mrs. Salmon's
school in Hackney where Katherine Fowler went.[87] Another fully
organized private school at Hackney was that kept by Mrs. Perwick in
1643, where as many as eight hundred girls had been educated.[88] The
existence of a school for girls in Richmond is shown by a curious
document found among a large number of miscellaneous papers in
Warwickshire. It is entitled "Account for Peggy's Disbursements since
her going to schoole at Richmond, being in Sept. 1646":

                                                              _s. d._

  Payd for a louehood                                          2. 6

  For carriing the truncke to Queenhive                        0. 8

  For carriing it to Hammersmith                               1. 0

  Payd for two pair of shoes                                   4. 0

  Payd for a singing booke                                     1. 0

  Given to M^{rsis} Jervoises mayd                             1. 0

  Payed for a hairlace and a pair of showstrings               1. 0

  For an inckhorne                                             0. 4

  For faggots. 2_s._8_d._; and cleaving of wood, _12d._        3. 8

  For 9^{li} of soape 2_s._ 4_d._; and starch 4_d._            2. 8

  For hooks and a bolte for the doore                          0. 9

  For sugar and licorich                                       1. 4

  For silke and thread                                         0. 6

  For 3^{li} of soape, 11_d._; and starch 4_d._; and carrying
  letters 6_d._                                                1. 9

  For 3^{li} of soape, 12_d._; and starch 4_d._                1. 4

  For sugar, licorich and coultsfoot                           1. 6

  For a necklace, 12_d._; for a m. of pins, 12_d._             2. 0

  For a pair of cands (candles?) 6_d._; for muckadine 4_d._;
  for wormsend (worsted), 2_d._                                1. 0

  For shostrings, 6_d._; for going on errands, 6_d._           1. 0

  For 3^{li} of soape, 12_d._; for starch 4_d._; thread and
  silk 4_d._                                                   1. 8

  For a bason, 4_d._; for carrying letters, 6_d._; for
  tape 4_d._                                                   1. 2

  For soape, 12_d._; for starch, 4_d._; for going on errands,
  6_d._                                                        1.10

  For a pair of pattins, 16_d._; for three pair of shoes,
  6_s._                                                        7. 4

  For callico to line her stockins, 2_d._; for showstrings
  4_d._                                                        0. 6

  For 3^{li} of soape, 12d.; for a pint of white wine 4d.      1. 4

  For ale, 3_d._; for 1/2^{li} of sugar, 8_d._                 0.11

  For a m. of pins, 12_d._; for a corle and one pair of
  half-handed gloves, 8_d._                                    1. 8

  Given to the writing mr.                                     2. 6

  For silke, 12_d._; for silver for the tooth-pick case,
  4_d._                                                        1. 4

  For a sampler, 12_d._; for thread, needles,
  paper, pins, and parchment, 30_d._                           3. 6

  For a pair of shoes, 2_s._ 2_d._; for ribbon, 3_d._          2. 5

  For soape, 12_d._; for starch, 4_d._; for carriing a letter,
  4_d._                                                        1. 8

  To the waterman bringing the (box?) to Richmond              1. 0

  For shoestrings, 6_d._; for purge, 18_d._                    2. 0

  For bringing the box from Richmond                           1. 0

  For a coach from Fleetestreete                               1. 0

  For wood to this time                                       15.10
                                                             ------
  Totall of disbursements to this 15th day of Aprill, 1647
  is                                                       £3.18.5[89]

Peggy's clothing and her board and tuition must have been paid for
by her father. The accurate little list represents only her personal
and incidental expenses. The writing-master's fee, the purchase of an
inkhorn, a singing-book, and materials for a sampler are the only
suggestions that Peggy was being educated. But several of the items
are indicative of general school conditions. For instance, if a girl
had a fire she evidently had to pay extra for it, Peggy's largest
single item being for wood, "cleaving of wood," and "faggotts." The
next largest sum goes for "soape" and starch. Peggy apparently did
her own laundry, or at least bought the materials used; and she
bought them in amounts suggestive of disproportionate emphasis on
clean linen. In clothing the most surprising purchase is of six pairs
of shoes and one pair of "pattins" in six months. It is a pity we
have not the letters for the carrying of which Peggy paid ten pence.
They might serve to throw light on her expense account.

In May, 1649, Evelyn records in his _Diary_, "Went to Putney by
water, in the barge with divers ladies, to see the schools, or
Colleges, of the young gentlewomen." These Putney schools may have
been under the charge of Mrs. Makin. In that case they were the
forerunners of the more advanced school she established at Tottenham
High Cross in 1673.

One interesting point occurs in the foundation of a school for boys
by Balthasar Gerbier in 1648. This school was an academy wherein
the sons of noble families could be taught classics, mathematics,
drawing, painting, carving, music, behavior, etc. The novel element
in the school is Gerbier's advertisement December 21, 1649, in which
he says that ladies are to be admitted to his lectures.[90]

If girls were educated at all during the period from 1603 to 1660
it must have been, in the main, at home under parents and tutors.
But even of such education the records are meager. Little Gidding
was practically a home school, but it stands as an isolated attempt.
The few little pictures of more secular home education that have
been by chance preserved to us indicate no very valuable training.
Mrs. Alice Thornton (1626-1707), Lady Anne, daughter of the Earl of
Strafford, and Lady Arabella Wentworth, were brought up in Ireland
and were given "the best education that Kingdome could afford." They
were taught to write and speak French; singing, dancing, playing on
the lute and theorboe, and such other accomplishments as "working
silkes, gummework, sweetmeats, and other sutable huswifery" such as
was necessary for girls of their social position.[91]

We get some further light from autobiographical sketches by the
Duchess of Newcastle,[92] Lady Fanshawe,[93] and Mrs. Hutchinson,[94]
women whose mature work belongs in the Restoration period or not many
years before it, but whose childhood and early youth belong in the
period under consideration, and serve in a measure to illustrate its
methods. The educational advantages afforded these young daughters
of the best families were like those of an eighteenth-century
finishing-school, and were far removed from the stern mental
discipline in the school of Sir Thomas More.




CHAPTER II

LEARNED LADIES IN ENGLAND FROM 1650 TO 1760


1. AN INTRODUCTORY GROUP IN THE YEARS 1650-1675

The brief running summaries in the preceding chapter have perhaps
served to bring into prominence two sharply contrasted periods.
The first half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the
seventeenth seem even more than a hundred years apart in tone and
temper. We turn from the eager intellectual life of many women in the
Tudor period, from their full and rich opportunities, and we find
that in the time of the earlier Stuarts there were very few women who
took any pride in learning, that there was little or no provision at
home or in schools for any but the most desultory sort of education
for girls, and that there were practically no formulated ideals or
theories of intellectual advancement for women. But at the close of
this barren half-century we come upon what may be considered the real
beginnings of the modern work of women. This era of development may
be appropriately introduced by the presentation of several women who,
while in no sense cohering into a group, are yet alike in that their
home education belongs in the reign of Charles I, that later they had
the stern training incident on Civil War conditions, and that their
published work belongs before 1675.


[Sidenote: Margaret Lucas, the Duchess of Newcastle (1624-1674)]

The most talked-of learned lady of the Restoration period was the
Duchess of Newcastle.[95] She was brought up by her mother, who was
left a widow with a great fortune and a family of eight children when
Margaret was an infant. The Duchess in her _Autobiography_ describes
a family life conducted with splendor and luxury. She comments
on the elaborate attendance, the rich and costly garments, the many
pleasures, secured for the children by the industrious care and
tender love of their mother. It was a bright, gay, free, affectionate
home life. But we get only slight indications of any educational
advantages. "As for tutors, although we had for all sorts of vertues,
as singing, dancing, playing on musick, reading, writing, working,
and the like, yet we were not kept strictly thereto, they were rather
for formality than benefit, for my Mother cared not so much for our
dancing and fidling, singing and prating of severall languages, as
that we should be bred virtuously, modestly, civilly, honourably and
on honest principles." None of these opportunities met Margaret's
needs. She says she had a natural stupidity in learning foreign
tongues, cared little for music, disliked needlework, found cards
and games tiresome, and dancing frivolous. Apparently the freedom
of the family life left her at liberty to follow her real interests
which were in the main intellectual. Here she had the sympathetic
aid of her brother, Lord Lucas. The precocious development of her
mind is shown by the fact that at twelve she had written a book on a
philosophical subject.

[Illustration: MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE

From an engraving in Horace Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_,
London, 1806]

At eighteen she was appointed maid of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria
and accompanied her to France. There, at twenty, she became the
second wife of the Duke of Newcastle, a nobleman thirty-two years
older than herself, but who was, she says, "the onely Person I ever
was in love with." She was with him during the trying years of his
absence from England and it was during this difficult and tedious
period that literature became her resource. Her publications began
with _Philosophical Fancies_ in 1653 and closed with _Grounds of
Natural Philosophy_ in 1668, during which period she wrote nearly
twelve folio volumes. The portions of her work concerning which she
felt the greatest measure of self-congratulation were her studies in
natural philosophy. Her _Philosophical Fancies_ of 1653 was expanded
in 1655, and in 1663 received its final form as _Philosophical and
Physical Opinions_. Of all her books this was "her best beloved and
favourite." But the quality on which she chiefly prides herself is
the very one that nullifies her work. Originality is her great boast,
an originality so pronounced as to refuse to base its deductions on
the writings of previous thinkers. Her husband substantiates her
claim. He says that all her philosophical fancies are spun out of
her own brain, and that, if she does not use the technical terms of
philosophers, it is because her language is her own too. She has
scorned to talk with any "profest scholar" to learn his phraseology.
"She did never impe her high-flying Phancies, with any old broken
Fethers out of any university."[96] She says herself that she could
never "afford board-room to other people's ideas lest the legitimate
offspring of her own brain should be crowded out."[97] In Part IV,
"On the Motion of the Bodie," we find that the Duchess has never
studied anatomy, but this apparent disqualification does not prove
inhibitory. In _An Epistle to the Reader_ she explains the situation:

  I am to be pardoned, if I have not the names and tearms that
  the Anatomists have or use; or if I have mistaken some parts in
  the body, or misplaced any: for truly I never read of Anatomie,
  nor never saw any man opened, much less dissected, which for my
  better understanding I would have done; but I found that neither
  the caurage of nature, nor the modesty of my sex would permit
  me. Werefore it would be a great chance, even to a wonder I
  should not erre in some; but I have seen the intrals of beasts,
  but never as they are placed in their bodies, but as they are
  cut out to be drest ... which intrals I have heard are much like
  mans, especially a hogs, so that I know man hath a brain, a
  heart, a stomach, liver, lights, spleen, and the like; yet these
  I never viewed with a curious and searching eye, but as they
  have laien in some vessels; and as for bones, nerves, muscels,
  veines and the like, I know not how they are placed in the body,
  but as I have gathered several times from several relations, or
  discourses: here a bit and there a crum of knowledge, which my
  natural reason hath put together.[98]

From any modern standpoint of scientific excellence the inaccuracy
and amazing self-confidence of these studies render them worse than
futile. But it was not ignorance that was charged against the Duchess
by her critics. The experimental method was having its triumphs, but
doubtless a good deal of the scientific writing of the first half
of the century was marked by a dogmatic tone and an uncertainty as
to facts, so the Duchess was not attacked on that score. The common
report that irritated the Duke of Newcastle to a spirited defense of
his wife was that she could not have written these books, for "no
lady could understand so many hard words." The Duke takes up various
kinds of hard words such as terms of divinity, philosophy, astronomy,
and geometry, and shows that natural wit, common sense, and some
observation could compass most of them. He gives the following
account of the way he and the Duchess acquired a medical vocabulary:
"But would you know the great Mystery of these Physical terms, I am
almost ashamed to tell you; not that we have been ever sickly, but
by melancholy often supposed ourselves to have such diseases as we
had not, and learned Physitians were too wise to put us out of that
humour, and so these terms cost us much more than they are worth, and
I hope there is nobody so malicious as to envie us our bargain."[99]
At the end of his Preface the Duke comes to what he considers the
real cause of the aspersions on his Lady's books: "But here's the
crime, a Lady writes them, and to intrench so much on the male
prerogative, is not to be forgiven." The Duchess, in her _Address to
the Two Universities_, recurs to this idea. She hopes her book may be
received

  for the good incouragement of our sex, lest in time we should
  grow irrational as idiots, by the dejectednesse of our spirits,
  through the carelesse neglects, and despisements of the masculine
  sex to the effeminate, thinking it impossible we should have
  either learning or understanding, wit or judgement, as if we
  had not rational souls as well as men, and we out of a custom
  of dejectedness think so too, which makes us quit all industry
  towards profitable knowledge ... so as we are become like worms
  that only live in the dull earth of ignorance, winding ourselves
  sometimes out, by the help of some refreshing rain of good
  educations which seldom is given us; for we are kept like birds
  in cages to hop up and down in our houses ... we are shut out of
  all power, and Authority by reason we are never imployed either
  in civil nor marshall affaires, our counsels are despised, and
  laught at, the best of our actions are troden down with scorn,
  by the over-weaning conceit men have of themselves and through a
  despisement of us.[100]

But she presents her book with some confidence to the universities as
places where are to be found right judgment and respectful civility.
And at any rate she would rather "lie intombed under the dust of an
University" than be "worshipped by the Vulgar as a Deity."

One of the Duchess's most curious books is _Orations of Divers Sorts
accommodated to Divers Places_. Among the "orations" is a "collection
of speeches for a convivial meeting of country gentlemen in a market
town, ending with 'a speech of a quarter-drunk gentleman,' and 'a
speech of a half-drunk gentleman.' Another little collection headed
'Female Orations' reports the speeches delivered at a meeting of
women on the great question of combining together to make themselves
'as free, happy, and famous as men.'"[101]

When the Duke and Duchess returned to England after the Restoration
they lived for the most part at one of their country estates,
but they made occasional visits to London. It was then that the
Duchess's beauty, wealth, eccentric dress and manners, and literary
and scientific pretensions made her a conspicuous and, to some, a
ridiculous figure. Sir Walter Scott, in _Peveril of the Peak_,[102]
makes Charles II say of the Duchess, "Her Grace is an entire
raree-show in her own person--a universal masquerade--indeed a sort
of private Bedlam hospital"; and this sums up the attitude that found
expression in the phrase, "Mad Madge of Newcastle." In 1653 Dorothy
Osborne wrote to Sir William Temple: "Let me ask you if you have
seen a book of poems newly come out, made by my Lady Newcastle? For
God's sake if you meet with it send it to me; they say 't is ten
times more extravagant than her dress. Sure, the poor woman is a
little distracted, she could never be so ridiculous as to venture at
writing books, and in verse too." A little later she wrote: "You need
not send me Lady Newcastle's book at all, for I have seen it, and am
satisfied that there are many soberer people in Bedlam."[103] Mrs.
Evelyn called on the Duchess in 1667 and wrote to Mr. Bohun:

  I was surprised to find so much extravagancy and vanity in any
  person not confined within four walls. Her habit particular,
  fantastical, not unbecoming a good shape, which truly she may
  boast of. Her face discovers the facility of her sex, in being
  yet persuaded it deserves the esteem years forbid, by the
  infinite care she takes to place her curls and patches. Her mein
  surpasses the imagination of poets, or the descriptions of a
  romance heroine's greatness: her gracious bows, seasonable nods,
  courteous stretching out of her hands, twinkling of her eyes, and
  various gestures of approbation, show what may be expected from
  her discourse, which is as airy, empty, whimsical and rambling
  as her books, aiming at science difficulties, high notions,
  terminating commonly in nonsense, oaths, and obscenity.[104]

On May 30, 1667, the Duchess made a formal visit to the Royal
Society, and Pepys says she was all admiration at the fine
experiments they showed her, but he did not hear her say anything
that was worth hearing. There had been much objection to admitting
her to the rooms of the Society, some of the members fearing that the
town would be "full of ballads of it," but the visit seems to have
passed off mildly and with the respectful observance to which she was
accustomed.

[Illustration: MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE

From an engraving in _The Lives of William Cavendish, Duke of
Newcastle, and of his wife Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle_, edited by
Mark Antony Lower, London, 1872]

In spite of the stream of private criticism already indicated, the
almost unmixed adulation of which the Duchess was the subject is
indicated by the _Letters and Poems, in Honour of the incomparable
Princess Margaret, Dutchess of Newcastle_, published in 1676, two
years after her death. In her lifetime, too, the praise was equally
extravagant. Resounding Latin titles, such as _Illustrissima
Heroina_, _Excellentissima Dux_, _Eminentissima Princeps_, came to
her from high sources. The Rector Magnificus of the University of
Leyden called her not only _Princeps fæminini sexus_, but _Princeps
terrarum_. And the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge in a complimentary
address said that the great women of old could not contend with her
for the palm of learning, but rather would they, with bent knee,
adore this _solam Margaretam Consumatissimam Principem_. Even so sane
a man as Evelyn wrote her a most flattering letter when she sent him
her works in 1674. Beginning with Zenobia he assembled the great
women of ancient times, the learned ladies of more modern days in
France, Spain, Italy, and Holland, and concluded with

  Mary de Gournay, & the famous Anna M. Schurman: and of our owne
  country, Queene Elizabeth, Queene Jane, the Lady Weston, Mrs.
  Philips our late Orinda, the daughters of S^r Tho: More; the
  Queene Christina of Sweden, & Elizabeth, daughter of a queen also
  to whom the renowned Des Cartes dedicated his learned worke, &
  the profound researches of his extraordinary talent. But all
  these, I say, sum'd together, possesse but that divided, which
  yr Grace retaines in one; so as Lucretia Marinella, who writ a
  book (in 1601) _dell' Excellenzia delle Donne, con difetti è
  mancamenti de gli huomini_, had no neede to have assembled so
  many instances and arguments to adorne the work, had she lived
  to be witnesse of Margarite, Dutchess of Newcastle, to have read
  her writings, & to have heard her discourse of the science she
  comprehended.[105]

Praise could hardly go further.

The best modern judgment discards the encomiums, but yet gives the
Duchess a fairly high place. Sir Egerton Brydges, the editor of her
_Autobiography_, says:

  That the Duchess was deficient in a cultivated judgment; that
  her knowledge was more multifarious than exact; and that her
  powers of fancy and sentiment were more active than her powers
  of reasoning, I will admit; but that her productions, mingled as
  they are with great absurdities, are wanting either in talent or
  in virtue, or even genius, I cannot concede.[106]

The Duchess was buried in Westminster Abbey with this inscription on
her monument:

  Here lies the loyal Duke of Newcastle and his Duchess, his second
  wife, by whom he had no issue. Her name was Margaret Lucas,
  youngest sister to Lord Lucas of Colchester, a noble family, for
  all the brothers were valliant, and all the sisters virtuous.
  This Duchess was a wise, witty, and learned Lady, which her many
  books do well testify; She was a most virtuous, and loving,
  and careful wife, and was with her Lord all the time of his
  banishment and miseries; and when they came home never parted
  with him in his solitary retirements.

The two books by the Duchess that one would not willingly let die
are her _Life_ of her husband and her _Autobiography_. These are
of permanent value as pictures of the life of a great, rich family
like that of her girlhood home, and the straitened life in exile,
with the later affluent and splendid life of a noble high in royal
favor such as was the Duke of Newcastle. All the personal portions of
both books are told with an air of genuineness, a naïveté, that make
delightful reading. The Duchess summed up her life as that of a woman
"honourably born, carefully bred, and nobly married to a wise man,"
and it was out of these happy domestic relations that her best work
came.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Katherine Philips (1631-1664)]

Contemporary with the Duchess of Newcastle was Katherine Fowler,
better known as Mrs. Katherine Philips, and better still as the
"Matchless Orinda." She was the daughter of John Fowler, "an eminent
merchant in Bucklersbury," and Katherine Oxenbridge. Aubrey gives a
quaint account of her precocious childhood as it was described to him
by "her cosen Blacket who lived with her from her swadling cloutes
till eight, and taught her to read." Aubrey says: "When a child she
was mighty apt to learn, and ... she had read the Bible through
before she was full four yeares old; she could have sayed I know not
how many places of Scripture and Chapters. She was a frequent hearer
of sermons; had an excellent memory and could have brought away a
sermon in her memory."[107]

Her further education was carried on at Hackney at the school of
"Mris Salmon, a famous schoolmistress, Presbyterian.... Loved poetrey
at schoole, and made verses there. She takes after her grandmother
Oxenbridge ... who was an acquaintance of Mr. Francis Quarles, being
much inclined to poetrie herself." As a child Katherine evidently was
as ardent a Presbyterian as her school-mistress and her Oxenbridge
ancestors. "She was very religiously devoted when she was young;
prayed by herself an hower together, and tooke sermons verbatim when
she was but ten yeares old.... She was when a child much against
the bishops, prayd to God to take them to him, but afterwards was
reconciled to them. Prayed aloud, as the hypocritical fashion then
was, and was overheared."

At sixteen she married Mr. James Philips, Esquire, of Cardigan
Priory, Wales. Her published work includes numerous brief poems,
most of them of a personal nature, two plays translated from the
French, and several letters to Sir Charles Cotterell. This is rather
scanty productivity to serve as a basis for the great vogue Mrs.
Philips certainly had, nor to the modern reader does the quality of
the work sufficiently account for the enthusiasm it excited. Yet we
have abundant testimony that the last ten years of her life were made
brilliant by praise from the most authoritative sources. Sir Charles
Cotterell, her intimate friend and the editor of her _Works_, said
of her: "We might well have call'd her the English Sappho, she of
all the Poets of former Ages, being for her Verses and her Virtues
both, the most highly valued; but she has call'd herself ORINDA, a
name that deserves to be added to the Muses, and to live with honour
as long as they. Were our language as generally known to the world,
as the Greek and Latin were anciently, or as the French is now, her
Verses could not be confined within the limits of our Islands, but
would spread themselves as far as the Continent has Inhabitants, or
as the Seas have any Shore." Something must be allowed here for the
enthusiasm of a friend and an editor, but other estimates were almost
as extreme. The Earl of Orrery had thought that the high praise of
her poems at court must be exaggerated, but when he came to know
her and her writings the court eulogies were to him but "Imperfect
Trophies," and he exclaimed, "If there be Helicon, in Wales it is."
Henry Lawes and Dr. Coleman, the best composers of the day, set some
of her poems to music. Cowley in two poems to her praised her for her
spirit "so rich, so noble, and so high," her "inward Virtue," her
"well-knit Sence," and for her poems in which were united all the
excellences of both sexes. When her translation of _Pompey_ appeared
in the Smock-Alley Theater, Dublin, the Earl of Roscommon wrote the
Prologue and Sir Edward Dering the Epilogue, and the success of the
play was assured by the enthusiastic support of the aristocracy of
Dublin. In 1659 Jeremy Taylor dedicated to her his _Discourse of the
nature, offices and measures of friendship_. Though she does not
exactly fulfill the prophecy of Mr. Thomas Rowe, that "Orinda should
be an ever-glorious name to ages yet to come," yet her fame was by no
means confined to her own brief day. We hear echoes of it far down in
the eighteenth century. The highest praise that could be given to any
woman poet was to bracket her with Orinda.

By the nineteenth century her vogue was almost extinct, but chance
appreciation came from an unexpected quarter. Keats wrote to Reynolds
in September, 1817:[108]

  The world, and especially our England, has, within the last
  thirty years, been vexed and teased by a set of Devils, whom
  I Detest so much that I almost hunger after an Acherontic
  promotion to a Torturer, purposely for their accomodation. These
  devils are a set of women, who having taken a snack or Luncheon
  of Literary scraps, set themselves up for towers of Babel in
  languages, Sapphos in Poetry, Euclids in Geometry, and everything
  in nothing. Among such the name of Montague has been preëminent.
  The thing has made a very uncomfortable impression on me. I had
  longed for some real feminine Modesty in these things, and was
  therefore gladdened in the extreme on opening the other day, one
  of Bailey's Books--a book of poetry written by one beautiful Mrs.
  Philips, a friend of Jeremy Taylor's and called "The Matchless
  Orinda"--you must have heard of her, and most likely read her
  Poetry--I wish you have not, that I may have the pleasure of
  treating you with a few stanzas.

Whereupon he quotes the ten stanzas written by Orinda on parting
with her friend "Rosania," a poem of genuine feeling and quaintly
charming in expression. "In other of her poems," says Keats, "there
is a most delicate fancy of the Fletcher kind--which we will con over
together."

[Illustration: MRS. KATHERINE PHILIPS

"From an original Picture in the Collection of her Grace the Dutchess
of Dorset." Drawn by J. Thurston. Engraved by W. Finden. From an
engraving in _Effigies Poeticae_. London, 1824]

Thus the magic of Orinda's name reasserts itself, and she is again
praised as a lady of "delicate fancy," "feminine modesty," and
unmatched in friendship. A reintroduction to a general public was
given by Mr. Gosse's delightful essay in _Seventeenth Century
Studies_ (1885). And in 1904 a selection from her poems was published
with an acute "Appreciation."

In her own day Orinda was not only prized as a poet, but she was
considered the highest example, the prophet and expounder, of true
friendship. Much of her verse was called forth by her Society of
Friendship. The chief members of this circle were "Antenor" (Mr.
Philips), "Lucasia" (Miss Anne Owen), "Rosania" (Miss Mary Aubrey),
"Regina" (Mrs. John Collier), "Palæmon" (Jeremy Taylor), "Silvander"
(Sir Edward Dering), "Policrite" (Lady Margaret Cavendish),
"Celimena" (Miss E. Boyl), "Cassandra" (Mrs. C. P., her dear sister),
and "Critander" (Mr. J. B.). "Ardelia," "Phillis," and "Pastora"
remain unidentified. There were doubtless others in the circle,
but these we know because they all received poetical tributes from
Orinda. There were over thirty-five private individuals intimately
addressed in her poems.

It is undoubtedly the personal character of her poems that secured
her so wide and favorable an audience while her writings were still
in manuscript and known only as they passed from hand to hand. Each
person addressed was the center of a new circle of readers. But the
intimacy of the poems is one reason for the actual agony Orinda
suffered when an unauthorized edition of her poems appeared in 1662.
"Their Names expos'd in this Impression without their leave" was the
burden of her grief. And she was likewise injured in her modesty. The
publication seemed to put her in the position of a woman bold and
masculine enough to send her writings into the world. A thousand
pounds, she says, would not have bought her consent. To Sir Charles
Cotterell she wrote:

  To me (Sir) who never writ any line in my life with any intention
  to have it printed.... This is a most cruel accident, and hath
  made so proportionate an impression upon me, that really it hath
  cost me a sharp fit of sickness since I heard it.

If the garbled version makes a true version a necessary reparation
of the misfortune she will yield, "but with the same reluctancy as I
would cut off a Limb to save my Life."

  I am so far from expecting applause for anything I scribble, that
  I can hardly expect pardon; and sometimes I think that employment
  so far above my reach, and unfit for my Sex, that I am going to
  resolve against it for ever; and could I have recovered those
  fugitive Papers that have escaped my hands, I had long since made
  a sacrifice of them all. The truth is, I have an incorrigible
  inclination to that folly of riming, and intending the effects of
  that humour, only for my own amusement in a retir'd life; I did
  not so much resist it as a wiser woman would have done.[109]

She had been planning a visit to London, but she wrote in despair to
Dorothy Osborne (then Mrs. Temple):

  I must never show my face there or among any reasonable people
  again, for some dishonest person hath got some collection of my
  Poems as I heare, and hath deliver'd them to a Printer who I
  heare is just upon putting them out and this hath soe extreamly
  disturbed me, both to have my private folly so unhandsomely
  exposed and ye belief that I believe the most part of ye world
  are apt enough to believe yt I connived at this ugly accident
  that I have been on ye rack ever since I heard it, though I have
  written to Col. Jeffries who first sent me word of it to get ye
  Printer punished, the book called in, and me someway publicly
  vindicated yet I shall need all my friends to be my champions
  to ye criticall and mallicious that I am soe innocent of this
  pittiful design of a knave to get a groat that I never was more
  vexed at anything and yt I utterly disclaim whatever he hath so
  unhandsomely expos'd. I know you have goodness and generosity
  enough to doe me right in your company and to give me your
  opinion too how I may best get this impression supressed and
  myself vindicated and therefore I will not beg your pardon for
  troubling you with this impertinent story.[110]

Her pride of authorship would, however, almost certainly have
triumphed over her modesty if she could have lived to see the
sumptuous volume with its bravery of eulogistic verse in which Sir
Charles Cotterell enshrined her work. Her letters to him, under the
title _Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus_, were published in 1705 and
add distinctly to her fame.

On the whole, Orinda becomes a personage to us and an agreeable one.
There is a note of sincerity through even her most unrestrained
poems; the ardor of her affections is unmistakable; her loyalty to
the King, to her friends, to her ideas, is genuine. She does not
labor compliments. Her praise pours forth from the abundance of her
feeling. Perhaps one reason for her ready popularity was that she
aroused no antagonisms. Though a literary woman there was nothing
about her that was masculine, strident, or assertive. Her outlook on
life was gracious and tolerant. She loved simplicity and retirement
and was never dazzled by wealth or titles.

At any rate, there is one interesting and significant fact about her
and that is her success. It was a kind of success new in English
literary history. A woman without any commanding advantages of birth
or fortune, only moderately good-looking, without any compelling
fascination, unstimulated by parental or tutorial ambitions, with but
the scantiest schooling, married to an ordinary, rather dull man;
a virtuous, sane, orderly, thrifty woman, excellent in business,
housewifely, with no eccentricities, simply follows her feelings in
friendship and the bent of her mind towards authorship, and attains
in a few years a position notably high.


[Sidenote: Mary North (d. 1662)]

Two interesting young women who belong chronologically to this group
are not exactly learned ladies, but they had intellectual piquancy
and alertness. One of them, Mary North, was the eldest of the
fourteen children of Dudley, the fourth Lord North. The mother of
this large family was evidently a remarkable woman. Her son Roger
says of her: "The Government of us was In generall severe, but
tender; our mother maintained her authority, and yet condiscended to
Entertain us. She was learned (for a lady) and Eloquent. Had much
Knoledg of History and readyness of witt to express herself, in the
part of Reproof, wherein she was fluent and pungent.... But without
occasion given to the Contrary, she was debonair, familiar, and very
liberall of hir discourse to entertain all." This combination of the
pungent and the debonair made an effective family discipline, for it
was said that there was not a son or daughter whose abilities were
not of a very high order, and that the daughters were hardly less
cultured than their brothers. And of this group Mary was, says Roger,
"by far the most brilliant--a woman of real genius." A charming
picture is given of the ladies of the North family, gathered together
according to the custom of the time for endless tasks of tapestry
and embroidery, listening entranced to Mary who recited romances for
hours together, giving not only the story, but the conversations,
the substance of letters, and the general reflections. She had "a
superiour wit, a prodigious memory, and was most agreeable." "She
instituted a sort of order of the wits of her time and acquaintance,
whereof the symbol was a sun with a circle touching the rays,
and upon that in blue ground were wrote αὐτάρκης in proper Greek
characters, which her father suggested. Divers of these were made in
silver and enamel, but in embroidery plenty, which were dispersed to
those wittified ladies who were willing to come into their order;
and for a while they were formally worn, until the foundress fell
under the government of another, and then it was left off."[111] Mary
North was married to Sir William Spring of Pakenham and died in 1662
in her twenty-fourth year. Her feminine "Order of Intellect," her
quaint badge, "the symbol of a community of taste and interest in
literature, science, and art,"[112] offer an attractive and hopeful
prospect. It was an inconspicuous little organization, springing up
gayly and spontaneously, and its scope of learning may not have gone
beyond the French romances the gifted young leader knew by heart, but
it was at any rate an association of young women with some pronounced
literary aspirations and tastes, and as such it stands out alone, a
charming picture set in the framework of the anxious years before the
Restoration.


[Sidenote: Dorothy Osborne, Lady Temple (1627-1694)]

When Dorothy Osborne had been Lady Temple some years her husband
wrote from London a "sweet scrip full of reproaches" at the
businesslike tone and brevity of her letters. She answered with a
touch of her old sauciness: "Pray what did you expect I should have
writ, tell me that I may know how to please you next time. But now I
remember me you would have such letters as I used to write before we
were marryed, there are a great many such in your cabinet yt I can
send you if you please, but none in my head I can assure you."[113]

The love letters thus preserved in Sir William Temple's cabinet
have had a narrow escape from oblivion. They were found among the
Temple papers when Mr. Courtenay was preparing his elaborate _Life
of Sir William Temple_, and forty-two extracts from the letters were
put by Mr. Courtenay apologetically in an appendix. He could not
be sure that they would not seem trivial in comparison to matters
of state. This book was published in 1836. Macaulay reviewed it
in the _Edinburgh Review_ for October, 1838, and took occasion to
give a vivid sketch of Dorothy and her lover. Macaulay's article
led Mr. Edward Abbot Parry to read Courtenay's extracts from the
letters and to weave them together into a kind of story, which was
published in April, 1886, in _The English Illustrated Magazine_. This
magazine fell into the hands of Mrs. S. R. Longe who had had access
to the original letters and had copied them with minute accuracy.
These letters were offered to Mr. Parry for publication and were
accordingly brought out, though with omissions, in 1888.[114] In
1903 the letters were published in full. Thus, after escaping the
vicissitudes of nearly two and a half centuries, these letters became
a delight accessible to all.[115]

When Dorothy was twenty-one she went with her brother to France. At
the Isle of Wight they were joined by young Mr. William Temple who
promptly fell in love with Dorothy because of the spirited way she
met a difficult situation. Her brother had written on the window pane
at the inn some phrases objectionable to the Puritans, and the whole
party was arrested. Then Dorothy, relying upon the general chivalrous
attitude towards women, took the blame upon herself, and they were
set free. The courtship thus begun was destined to last seven years.
There were few meetings and the correspondence was carried on with
all possible secrecy, for both the Osbornes and the Temples had
other plans for the young people. It was a difficult seven years for
Dorothy. The Osbornes lived at Chicksands Priory in Bedfordshire,
a lonely and not very interesting region. Dorothy's mother died
in 1650. After a long illness, during which she was his constant
attendant, her father died in 1654. During these years her brother
was the only one of the family with her in the strange old house. And
from him came her chief trial, for it was the effort of his life to
see her well married. Young men, middle-aged men, old men, aspired
to be Mistress Dorothy's "servants." The ancient Priory saw a train
of lovers sent away unsatisfied. Dorothy gave all sorts of reasons
for her fastidious and critical attitude towards her suitors--all
reasons but the real one. Mr. Temple had no assured income, Dorothy
but a small dowry, and no families in their rank of life could be
expected to sanction so imprudent a choice. In the meantime silence
and faithfulness was the only resource of the impecunious lovers. It
was a hard fate, but not without compensations for later generations,
for if they had married happily on coming out of France there would
have been no bundle of letters in the old cabinet at Sheen.

There are various indications that Dorothy had numerous
correspondents. That they did not save her letters is our great
loss, for we can imagine few more delightful ways of being inducted
into the life of the times than through the letters of Mistress
Dorothy. The "Matchless Orinda" was one of her correspondents, but
only one letter arising out of this friendship has been preserved.
It may justly be quoted entire because it serves to unite the two
most interesting women of the time, and because it shows how Mrs.
Philips, in the plentitude of her fame, with Dublin dramatic triumphs
fresh upon her, with the aristocracy of London adding leaves to her
laurel crown, courted the quiet Mrs. Temple living the most retired
and domestic of lives at Sheen. This letter has the further pathetic
interest of being one of the last Orinda wrote, for when she reached
London on this visit she had so longed for she fell a victim to that
most dreaded scourge, the small-pox:

  _Deare Madam_,--You treat me in your letters so much to my
  advantage and above my merit that I am almost affray'd to tell
  you how exceedingly I am pleased with them lesst you should
  attribute yt contentment to ye delight I take in being praised
  whereas I am extreamely deceived if that be ye ground of it,
  though I confess it is not free from vanity. I can not choose
  but be proud of being owned by soe valuable a person as you are,
  and one whom all my inclinations carry me to honour and love at
  a very great rate, and you will find by the trouble I last gave
  you of this kind how impossible it will be for you to be rid of
  an importunity which you have much encourag'd and how much your
  late silence alarm'd one yt is soe much concern'd for ye honour
  you doe her in allowing her to hope you will frequently let her
  know she hath some room in ye particular favour, I hope you
  have pardon'd me that complaint and allow'd a little jealousy
  to that great passion I have for you and that I shall with some
  more assurance come to thank you for this last favour of 12th
  instant, and must beg you to believe that if my convent were in
  Cataya and I a recluse by vow to it, yet I should never attain
  mortification enough to be able willingly to deny myself the
  great entertainment of your correspondance, which seems to remove
  me out of a solitary religious house on ye mountains and place
  me in the most advantageous prospect upon both court and town
  and give me right to a better place than of either, and that
  madam is your friendship, which is so great a present, that there
  is but one way to make it more valuable and yt is by making it
  less ceremonious and by using me with a freedom that may give me
  more access into your heart and this beg from you with a great
  earnestness, and will promise you that whatsoever liberties
  of that kind you allow me, yt I will never so much abase that
  goodness as to press mine own advantages further than you shall
  permit or lessen any of the respect I ow you, by the less formal
  approaches I desire to make to you who though I esteem above most
  of the world yet I love yet more.[116]

Orinda was a letter-writer of no mean ability herself, but she wrote
with something of a professional tone, and possibly with an eye to
numerous readers. It was only Dorothy that could make town and court
live again. Macaulay's philippics against "the dignity of history"
and his eulogy of the social value of such letters as Dorothy's must
find approval from every one who tries to revivify a forgotten era.
Dorothy was an acute observer. If the novel of domestic life had
been in existence in her day she would have found the natural place
for her clever and slightly caustic pen. The successive suitors and
various dull visitors at Chicksands could have had little suspicion
of the merry and facile wit that was serving up their oddities for
the amusement of her lover. Furthermore, Dorothy was an inveterate
reader, and a reader with mental reactions, an independent judgment,
and a skill in witty comment. The general tone of the letters is a
delightful mixture of humor, tenderness, and coquetry. No writing
of the time was more unaffectedly human. And there were counsels of
prudence and of good sense, bits of worldly wisdom and penetrating
knowledge of human foibles. And with it all was the charm of style.
When Mr. Temple wishes to know how she spends her day she outlines
the slow-moving hours and closes with this delicate picture of
evening:

  The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six
  or seven o'clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the
  house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, and
  sit in the shade singing of ballads. I go to them and compare
  their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I
  have read of, and find a vast difference there: but, trust me,
  I think these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them
  and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in
  the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly when
  we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and
  spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as
  if they had wings to their heels. I, that am not so nimble, stay
  behind; and when I see them driving home their cattle, I think
  't is time for me to return too. When I have supped, I go into
  the garden, and so to the side of a small river that runs by it,
  when I sit down and wish you were with me (you had best say this
  is not kind neither). In earnest, 't is a pleasant place, and
  would be much more so to me if I had your company. I sit there
  sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and were it not for some
  cruel thoughts of the crossness of our fortunes that will not let
  me sleep there, I should forget that there were such a thing to
  be done as going to bed.[117]

Dorothy's easy, natural tone was quite in accord with her theory of
letter-writing. She writes to Mr. Temple:

  All letters, methinks, should be free and easy as one's
  discourse, not studied like an oration, nor made up of hard words
  like a charm. 'T is an admirable thing to see how some people
  will labour to find terms that will obscure a plain sense, like
  a gentleman I knew who would never say "the weather grew cold,"
  but that "winter begins to salute us." I have no patience for
  such coxcombs, and cannot blame an old uncle of mine who threw
  the standish at his man's head because he writ a letter for him,
  where instead of saying (as his master bid him) that "he had the
  gout in his hand" he said "that the gout would not permit him to
  put pen to paper." The fellow thought he had mended it mightily,
  and that putting pen to paper was much better than plain writing!

How in 1652-54 did Dorothy escape the grand style? She was steeped in
romances and she read Jeremy Taylor with delight. But there are no
preciosities, no attempted elaborateness or ornamentation or splendor
in her style. She might have written after the moderns had won their
victory so direct and straightforward is her speech. But the infinite
charm of her letters belongs to no age. It is the expression of a
personality.

We cannot leave Dorothy Osborne's letters without feeling defrauded
that there are so few of them. After their marriage in 1655 the
Temples lived five years in Ireland. Sir William's importance in
state affairs led to a later residence in Brussels and at The Hague.
After 1681 they lived in retirement at Moor Park and Swift and Stella
were of their household. What opportunities for letters if Dorothy
had only been as indefatigable as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu! But
except for a few personal notes from Sheen in 1665-67, Dorothy fades
from our sight. Did accumulated sorrows sap her energy and dim her
joyous courage? She had nine children. Seven of them died in infancy.
Her daughter died of small-pox. Her son committed suicide because of
fancied inability to perform a diplomatic mission. It is said that
at some time during the years 1689-94 Queen Mary and Dorothy kept up
a continuous correspondence. If such letters were written there is
now no trace of them. The latest published letter from Dorothy is in
1689 in response to some expression of condolence for the death of
her son. It is difficult to recognize in this subdued and dignified,
almost cold and stately lady, the sparkling and mischievous Dorothy
of the earlier letters.


[Sidenote: Lady Pakington (d. 1679)]

Just about contemporary with Mrs. Philips and the Duchess of
Newcastle was a remarkable woman of quite another type. This was
Lady Pakington, the daughter of Lord Coventry. If, as was long
supposed, she wrote the series of books of which _The Whole Duty of
Man_ was one, that fact would place her very high in the ranks of
seventeenth-century authors. With the consensus of expert opinion
now against the ascription of these books to her, she yet holds an
important place among learned women.[118] Dr. George Hickes, whose
deanery was near Westwood, the home of Sir John Pakington, and who
was intimate with the family, in the Preface to his _Thesaurus_ which
was inscribed to Sir John, gives a "character" of Lady Pakington
in which he says she was trained in her youth by "the excellently
learned Sir Norton Knatchbull," and that later in life she was
mistress of all the learning, good judgment, sound thinking, and
piety necessary to have been the author of the famous _Whole Duty
of Man_. He says that noted divines declared her as learned in the
history of pagan and Christian systems of thought as were they
themselves; and that she knew concerning the antiquities of her own
county "almost as much as the greatest proficients in that kind of
knowledge." Especially did Dr. Hickes comment on her "talent for
speaking correctly, pertinently, clearly, and gracefully," and on
"her evenness of style and consistent manner of writing." No woman
of the period came nearer being the tutelary deity of a coterie
than did Lady Pakington. Her loyalty to the Church of England and
to the Stuart cause made of her beautiful home at Westwood during
the Protectorate a natural resort for royalist divines. Dr. Hammond,
Bishop Fell, Bishop Morley, Bishop Pearson, Bishop Henchman, Bishop
Gunning, were among those whose friendship and esteem she had
acquired by her "great virtues and eminent attainments in knowledge."
Before the Restoration she held a kind of Church of England salon,
and though most of the men who frequented it were given benefices
by Charles II and so scattered through England, Lady Pakington, by
letter and occasional personal intercourse, kept up the friendships
of the earlier days, through the nineteen years that she lived after
the Restoration. And even if she did not write _The Whole Duty of
Man_ (1657) and the series that followed it, these books arose from
the discussions held at Westwood.


[Sidenote: Mary Boyle, the Countess of Warwick (1624-1678)]

The Countess of Warwick is best known from her _Diary_, her
_Autobiography_, and the sermon preached at her funeral by Dr.
Anthony Walker, rector of Fyfield in Essex. The _Diary_ was
kept from July, 1666, till 1678. The part from 1666 to 1672 was
published in 1847 by the Religious Tract Society with a memoir. The
remainder is among the manuscripts in the British Museum.[119] Her
_Autobiography_, under the title, _Some Specialties in the Life
of M. Warwicke_, was published by the Percy Society in 1848.[120]
Dr. Walker's sermon, entitled _The Virtuous Woman found, her loss
bewailed, and character exemplified_, etc., was published in 1678 and
1687.[121]

Mary Boyle was married to Mr. Rich, afterwards Earl of Warwick, when
she was but fifteen. Her life before that time she thus describes:
"I was married into my husband's family, as vain, as idle, and as
inconsiderate a person as possible, minding nothing but curious
dressing and fond and rich clothes, and spending my precious time
in nothing else but reading romances, and in reading and seeing
plays, and in going to court, and Hide Park and Spring Garden; and
I was so fond of the court, that I had taken a secret resolution
that if my father died, and I was mistress of myself, I would become
a courtier."[122] But by the time she was twenty-one a complete
change was manifest. She became exceedingly devout. There is no more
romance reading. The books on her chosen list are "St. Bernard,
George Herbert, Jeremy Taylor, Baxter, Samuel Rutherford Clarke, the
_Confessions_ of St. Augustine, John Janeway's _Dying_, Foxe's _Book
of Martyrs_, Cayley's _Glimpses of Eternity_."[123] Her writing was
all religious in tone. Rules for a Holy Life, Occasional Meditations,
and Pious Reflections were among the topics she found most congenial.
The _Specialties in the Life of M. Warwicke_ shows the intensity of
her struggle after spiritual perfection and her genuine aloofness
from the gay and splendid scenes in which her rank compelled her
to bear a part. The most ordinary occurrences, such as "lighting
many candles at once," or "drawing the window-curtains to prevent
the sun's putting out the fire," suggested pious reflections. At a
glorious banquet at Whitehall "the trumpets sounding in the midst
of all that great show" put mortifying thoughts into her mind and
made her consider "what if the trump of God should now sound?" In
a meditation entitled "Upon looking out of my window at Chelsea,
upon the Thames," her delight in the sweet river when it is calm and
serene, and her dislike of it--so that she shut her window and ceased
to look--when it was rough, is moralized into the charm of calm and
patient people as against those of turbulent passions.[124]

Lady Warwick's writings exhibit none of the joyous or fervent aspects
of religion. In the midst of domestic trials, surrounded by an alien
life, she was steadily tutoring her own heart, subduing her sins,
following a high ideal. Dr. Walker in his sermon gives an example
of seventeenth-century pulpit oratory in his effort adequately to
praise this great lady, as conspicuous for goodness as for her rank
and wealth: "An hundred mouths, and a thousand tongues though they
all flowed with nectar, would be too few to praise her." "Oh," he
exclaims, "for a Chrysostom's mouth, for an angel's tongue, to
describe this terrestrial seraphine; or a ray of light condensed into
a pencil, and made tactile, to give you this glorious child of light
in _viva effigie_."


[Sidenote: Lucy Apsley, Mrs. Hutchinson (1620-?)]

That Lucy Hutchinson had written a life of her husband was known
by many people and there were frequent requests in the eighteenth
century that so valuable a historical document should be made
accessible to the public. Mrs. Catherine Macaulay was one of those
urgent in this matter, but without avail.[125] It was not till the
manuscript came into the possession of the Reverend Julius Hutchinson
that it was published. After the first edition in 1806 three editions
appeared in four years. Some other writings besides the _Memoirs_
were found among the papers of Mrs. Hutchinson. Of these the precious
_Autobiography_ was but a fragment. It not only closed abruptly, but
leaves had been torn out. But from what remains we get one of the
few accounts of the home education of girls in the first half of the
seventeenth century. Her father and mother, extremely glad to welcome
a girl after three sons, "applied all their cares and spared no cost"
in her education. She describes this education as follows:

  By the time I was four years old I read English perfectly, and
  having a great memory, I was carried to sermons; and while I was
  very young could remember and repeat them exactly, and being
  caressed, the love of praise tickled me, and made me attend more
  heedfully. When I was about seven years of age, I remember I
  had at one time eight tutors in several qualities, languages,
  music, dancing, writing and needle-work; but my genius was quite
  averse from all but my book, and that I was so eager of, that
  my mother, thinking it prejudiced my health, would moderate me
  in it; yet this rather animated me than kept me back, and every
  moment I could steal from my play I would employ in any book I
  could find, when my own were locked up from me. After dinner and
  supper I still had an hour allowed me to play, and then I would
  steal into some hole or other to read. My father would have me
  learn Latin, and I was so apt that I outstripped my brothers who
  were at school, although my father's chaplain, that was my tutor
  was a pitiful dull fellow. My brothers, who had a great deal of
  wit, had some emulation at the progress I made in my learning,
  which very well pleased my father; though my mother would have
  been contented if I had not so wholly addicted myself to that
  as to neglect my other qualities. As for music and dancing, I
  profited very little in them, and would never practise my lute or
  harpsichords but when my masters were with me; and for my needle
  I absolutely hated it. Play among other children I despised, and
  when I was forced to entertain such as came to visit me, I tired
  them with more grave instructions than their mothers, and plucked
  all their babies to pieces, and kept the children in such awe,
  that they were glad when I entertained myself with elder company;
  to whom I was very acceptable, and living in the house with many
  persons that had a great deal of wit, and very profitable
  serious discourses being frequent at my father's table and in my
  mother's drawing-room, I was very attentive to all, and gathered
  up things that I would utter again, to great admiration of many
  that took my memory and imitation for wit. It pleased God that,
  through the good instructions of my mother, and the sermons she
  carried me to, I was convinced that the knowledge of God was the
  most excellent study, and accordingly applied myself to it, and
  to practise as I was taught. I used to exhort my mother's maids
  much, and to turn their idle discourses to good subjects: but I
  thought, when I had done this on the Lord's day, and every day
  performed my due tasks of reading and praying, that then I was
  free to anything that was not sin.[126]

[Illustration: MRS. LUCY HUTCHINSON AND HER SON

From an engraving in _Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson_,
1808]

Elsewhere she notes other elements of her education. She says that as
soon as she was weaned, a Frenchwoman was taken to be her dry-nurse
and she was taught to speak French and English together. At the
siege of Nottingham Castle Mrs. Hutchinson is represented as acting
the part of a surgeon. This knowledge may doubtless be referred to
instructions by her mother. Sir Allen Apsley, Lucy's father, was
lieutenant of the Tower of London during her youth, and Mrs. Apsley
was very generous and humane to the prisoners. Her daughter says of
her:

  What my father allowed her she spent not in vanities, although
  she had what was rich and requisite upon occasions, but she
  laid most of it out in pious and charitable uses. Sir Walter
  Raleigh and Mr. Ruthin being prisoners in the Tower, and
  addicting themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make rare
  experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor
  prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments,
  and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to
  seek physicians. By these means she acquired a great deal of
  skill, which was very profitable to many all her life.[127]

The love story of Lucy Apsley and Colonel Hutchinson is curiously
interwoven with her learning. When Lucy was sixteen her mother took
her into Wiltshire in pursuance of a contemplated marriage contract
and left a younger sister at a house where she was "tabled for the
practice of her lute." Mr. Hutchinson, "tabled" at the same house,
was attracted by the vivacious child, and frequently accompanied her
when she went over to her mother's house. On one of these occasions
he saw some Latin books and was much interested to find that they
belonged to Lucy. Then he heard that this Lucy was "reserved and
studious," then that she composed songs above "the ordinary reach
of a she-wit," then that she had "sense above the rest," but that
she "shunned the converse of men as a plague." Strangely enough,
these accounts, or some magic, or the hand of Providence, plunged
Mr. Hutchinson into the despairs and ardors of love even before he
had seen the lady. On her return, the proposed marriage contract
not having been completed, he daily frequented her mother's house,
and for six weeks "in the sweet season of the spring" they had
opportunity for converse with each other. During this period some
envious ladies endeavored to break the friendship by telling him that
Lucy neglected her dress and all womanish ornaments, giving herself
up wholly to study and writing. But since his love had owed its
inception to a sight of her Latin books, and had been stimulated by
hearing her poetry, these insinuations did not interfere with what
his wife calls "a more handsome management of love than the best
romances describe."[128]

Somewhat later Lucy Hutchinson's love of learning led her to at least
a slight knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. That she kept up her Latin
is shown by the fact that she translated part of the _Æneid_. In
her early married life she found scholastic means to mitigate the
monotony of the needlework she loathed. Out of a "youthful curiosity
to understand things she had heard so much of at second-hand" she
translated six books of _Lucretius_ into verse, accomplishing this
task, she says, "in a room where my children practised the several
qualities they were taught with their tutors, and I numbered the
syllables of my translation by the threads of the canvas I wrought
in, and set them down with a pen and ink that stood by me."

There was not, however, in Mrs. Hutchinson's life much opportunity
for scenes so domestic as this. She was married to Mr. Hutchinson
in 1638. By 1642 her husband was definitely committed to the side
of the Puritans, and the rest of their life till his death in 1664
was one of anxiety, conflict, and baffled high endeavor. But it was
also a life of achievement and excitement, and constantly sweetened
and stimulated by extraordinary affection between husband and wife.
When at his death she retired to the family home at Owthorpe the days
must have looked very blank and empty to the heroine of Nottingham
Castle. Not even the care of her eight children could keep her mind
from dwelling on the past. The message her husband sent her from
his death-bed in the prison, "Let her, as she is above other women,
show herself, on this occasion, a good Christian, and above other
women,"[129] helped her to restrain extreme signs of grief, but her
heart and mind were with him. And the mechanic exercise that dulled
her grief was the writing of his _Life_. She had kept a rough sort
of diary and this was the basis for the longer work. The writing
was done between 1664 and 1671 when Mrs. Hutchinson herself died.
The work was addressed "To my Children" and its purpose was to make
them know the character and deeds of their father. But the narrative
goes much farther than that. It is a minute account of the persons
and events of that portion of the Civil War especially connected
with Nottingham. She writes as an eye-witness and a participant.
She wields a pen vigorous, racy, and unafraid. She had a genius
for picturesque characterization, and her scornful descriptions of
cowards and traitors are veiled by no feminine softness of phrase.
When describing such treacherous members of the Parliament Party as
Charles White and Chadwick and his wife her vocabulary of abuse is
unstinted. But she is equally fluent in her account of heroes such as
Colonel Thornhagh. The intrigues, the factions, the cross-currents,
within the Puritan Party are as minutely analyzed and laid open as
is the general contest between King and Parliament. Furthermore, the
book is readable from beginning to end. It moves with the rapidity
of a novel of adventure. Mr. A. H. Upham[130] has analyzed Mrs.
Hutchinson's work to show that it was probably suggested by the
Duchess of Newcastle's _Life_ of her husband, and that, further,
the general plan and even the choice of detail were guided by the
Duchess's _Memoir_. The _Life_ of the Duke of Newcastle, though
not published till 1667, was written in 1665, and since the two
families were neighbors, and knew each other well, it might easily
be that Mrs. Hutchinson was acquainted with the work of the Duchess
in manuscript. This ingenious theory is maintained by citations of
passages showing numerous similarities. But the fact remains that
Mrs. Hutchinson's _Memoir_ moves forward as from the force of an
original impulse, nobly religious, shrewd, caustic, affectionate, and
naïve. It was, in subject-matter and style, a notable achievement,
and while succeeding in the amplest measure in its purpose of
exalting Colonel Hutchinson's memory, quite as deservedly gives to
Mrs. Hutchinson her own unsought and higher pinnacle of fame.


[Sidenote: Ann Harrison, Lady Fanshawe (1625-1680)]

A few years before her death Lady Fanshawe wrote for her son a
narrative of her life. Of her own education she says: "Now it is
necessary to say something of my mother's education of me, which was
with all the advantages that time afforded, both for working all
sorts of fine works with my needle, and learning French, singing,
(the) lute, the virginals, and dancing; and, notwithstanding I
learned as well as most did, yet I was wild to that degree that
the hours of my beloved recreation took up too much of my time;
for I loved riding in the first place, and running, and all active
pastimes; and in fine I was what we graver people call a hoyting
girl. But to be just to myself I never did mischief to myself or
other people, nor one immodest action or word in my life; but
skipping and activity was my delight. But upon my mother's death
and as an offering to her memory I flung away those little
childishnesses that formerly possessed me and by my father's
command took upon me the charge of his house and family, which I
so ordered by my excellent mother's example as found acceptance in
his sight."[131] At her mother's death Ann was "fifteen years and
three months" old, and the household she took charge of was one "of
plenty and hospitality," her father having a very great estate. In
1644 she married Sir Richard Fanshawe to whom she was passionately
devoted during the twenty-six troubled years of their life together.
She says: "Glory be to God, we never had but one mind throughout our
lives, our souls were wrapped up in each other, our aims and designs
one, and our resentments one. We so studied one the other that we
knew each other's mind by our looks; whatever was real happiness God
gave it me in him."[132]

[Illustration: LADY FANSHAWE

From an engraving in _Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe_, London, 1830]

When Lady Fanshawe wrote her _Memoirs_, her son Richard, her youngest
child, was about ten or twelve years old. Her purpose apparently
was to recount all the facts of the eventful family career. The
narrative, except for an occasional outburst, was uncolored by
emotion. One series of events recorded is the births and deaths of
children. In a period of twenty years Lady Fanshawe had fourteen
children and she records the deaths of nine of them. This would seem
to be suffering and sorrow enough for one life. But we get an added
conception of the family vicissitudes when we discover that no two
of the fourteen children were born in the same house, and no two
of the nine who died were buried in the same churchyard. Madrid,
Lisbon, Paris, Yorkshire, Kent, Hertfordshire, Oxford, were places
of sad memory to the bereaved mother. Yet, except in the cases of
"little Nan" and the first Richard, there is simply a recital of
facts and dates. Lady Fanshawe was but fifty-five when she died,
but she had gone through so much that a re-living of past emotions
as well as a recalling of facts would have made the writing of the
_Memoirs_ an impossibility. As a narrative of the externals of life
the story has singular interest. It abounds in striking contrasts.
Money stringency, mishaps by land and sea, sicknesses, imprisonments,
deaths, mingle strangely with official splendors, royal gifts, rich
furnishings, gorgeous apparel. It is personal in tone, with as little
historical detail as was consistent with carrying the narrative
forward. And for that reason it is of importance to-day as a closer
record of life than historians of the Civil War or of the reign of
Charles II are likely to give.


[Sidenote: Margaret Blagge, Mrs. Godolphin (1652-1678)]

The most interesting personality in this early group is the beautiful
Mrs.[133] Margaret Blagge. She is the supreme example of a developed
religious sense in the court of Charles II. She was not driven
to a life of devotion through a grief-enshrouded heart. Religion
was to her joy and ecstasy. John Evelyn recorded in his Diary a
determination to consecrate the worthy life of Margaret Blagge to
posterity, and when he died in 1706 he left a list of "things I
would write out fair and reform if I had leisure," among them being
the _Life of Mrs. Godolphin_. This manuscript was first published
in 1847. It records a life of singular charm and interest. Yet the
facts of Margaret Blagge's life are meager enough. She was born
in 1652; was early in France with the Countess of Guildford; when
scarcely twelve became maid of honor to the Duchess of York; and then
on the death of the Duchess in 1671 entered into the same service
with Queen Catherine; in 1674, after a nine-year courtship, married
Sidney Godolphin; and in 1678 died in child-birth. It is her inner
life that counts, and that life would have left small record had not
the beautiful young maid of honor chosen the wise and religious John
Evelyn as her friendly counselor in her difficult attempt to maintain
a life of purity and piety in the most dissolute court of Europe.
Evelyn recounts the success of her devout life in these words:
"Arethusa pass'd through all those turbulent waters without soe much
as the least staine or tincture in her Chrystall; with her Piety grew
up her Witt, which was soe sparkling, accompanyed with a Judgment
and Eloquence so exterordinary, a Beauty and Ayre soe charmeing and
lovely, in a word, an Address soe universally takeing, that, after
a few years, the Court never saw or had seen such a Constellation
of perfections amongst all their splendid Circles."[134] But though
she was regarded as "a little miracle" at court, her heart was never
there. To no young woman of the time were the pomp and glory of the
world more alluringly open, but she turned instinctively from all
such joys. She counted her beauty a snare and would never "trick and
dress herself vpp ... to be fine and ador'd." Lovers crowded about
her, but she avoided the vain converse of gallants. Evelyn records
her particular gift for mimicry, recitation, acting, but such talents
she held in abeyance. At sixteen she acted in a court play, probably
Dryden's _Indian Emperor_, with great success, but her growingly
devout spirit came to abhor such recreations, so that when she was
summoned by royal request to act in Crowne's _Calisto_, in 1674, even
though the play was to be given all by ladies, and those the most
illustrious in the land, it was a matter of almost tragic grief to
her that her duty forbade a refusal. "To be herselfe an Actoresse ...
cost her not only great reluctancy but many teares."[135] Though she
was decked with jewels worth £20,000, though she "trode the Stage
with a surprizeing and admirable Aire," and though the whole theater
was extolling her, she felt no transport, but, when an interval came,
"retired into a Corner, reading a book of devotion." Not even the
fact that she played the part of "Diana, the Goddess of Chastity,"
consoled her.

She had one real calling and that was to a religious life. As a
child of seven, in France with the Countess of Guildford, though
often "tempted by that By-Gott proselitesse to goe to Masse and be a
papist,"[136] she yet could maintain her own faith. Because of her
spiritual precocity she was "admitted to the holy Sacrament when she
was hardly Eleaven years of age." Though she disliked Catholicism,
she praised nunneries, and would have chosen a retired life of
devotion and good works, had not her love for Mr. Godolphin and the
urgent advice of Mr. Evelyn restrained her. Nearly all her writing
and reading were along religious lines. Mr. Evelyn says on this point:

  She has houres alsoe for reading historye and diversions of
  that nature; butt allwayes such as were choice, profitable and
  instructive, and she had devoured an incredible deale of that
  solid knowledge, and could accompt of it to admiration; soe as
  I have even beene astonished to find such an heape of excellent
  things and material observations collected and written with her
  owne hand, many of which (since her being with God) came to myne;
  for, besides a world of admirable prayers and pieces of flagrant
  devotion, meditations, and discourses on various subjects (which
  she compos'd), there was hardly a booke she read that she had not
  common placed, as it were, or taken some remarkable note of; add
  this to the Diary of her owne life, actions, resolutions, and
  other circumstances, of which I shall give some specimen. She had
  contracted the intire historye of the Scriptures, and the most
  illustrious examples, sentences, and precepts, digested under
  opposite and proper heads; and collected togeather the result of
  every Article of the Apostles' Creed, out of Bishop Pearson's
  excellent Treatise. I have allready spoken of her Sermon Notes:
  butt to give a just Account of her Letters, they are so many and
  in so excellent naturall and easy a style, that, as for their
  number, one would believe she did nothing else butt write, soe,
  for their weight and ingenuity, that she ought to doe nothing
  else; and soe easyly did her Invention flow, that I have seen her
  write a very long letter without once takeing off her pen (butt
  to dip it), and that with exterordinary Judgment.[137]

Her _Diary_ is a delightfully spontaneous document. Here is one
Resolution:

  June the 2d.

  I will nere play this halfe year butt att 3 penny omber, and then
  with one att halves. I will not I doe not vow, but I will not doe
  it;--what, loose mony att Cards, yet not give (to) the poore! 'T
  is robbing God, misspending tyme, and missimploying my Talent:
  three great Sinns. Three pounds would have kept three people from
  starveing a month: well, I will not play.[138]

Equally genuine and charming, but in more decorous and solemn
fashion, is the letter in which she consecrated John Evelyn
her friend. Indeed, the whole quaint and formal episode of the
establishment of this remarkable friendship, seems incredibly pure
and lovely when thought of as occurring in the court of which
Grammont's _Memoirs_ is a fair record. Evelyn wrote "a little
master-piece of biography," partly because of his intimate knowledge
of Mrs. Godolphin's spiritual experience and his personal affection
for her, but also, in part, because his imagination was inevitably
stimulated by the vision of a life so crystal clear in an environment
so murky.

The versatility and intellectual energy of the Duchess of Newcastle,
the quick wit and instinct for style in Dorothy Osborne's letters,
the grave and sincere religious feeling coupled with considerable
theological learning on the part of women in influential positions
like Margaret Blagge, Lady Pakington, and Lady Warwick, the vivid
social and political pictures in the biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson
and Lady Fanshawe, the gay playing with _belles lettres_ in Mary
North's little society, and especially the extraordinary vogue of
Mrs. Philips, are sufficient indications, as we look back over the
period, that a new spirit was awake. It reads now almost as if there
were a general and brilliant opening of literary pursuits to women.
But it is also significant to recall that Mrs. Philips and the
Duchess of Newcastle were the only two women whose ability or learned
tastes were known at the time beyond their own small private circle.
In reality the work was sporadic, secluded, uninfluential. And the
fame even of the Duchess of Newcastle and Mrs. Philips is hardly
established before 1660. It is with the Restoration that the more
varied and public activities begin.


2. THE CENTURY FOLLOWING THE RESTORATION

The period to be here presented in detail is the century following
the Restoration. During this period the work of women spreads out
in new directions. Not only is there a greater variety in the kinds
of writing, but other forms of self-expression are entered upon.
In this more complicated era the strictly chronological method
becomes confusing. It seems more desirable to take up the work under
different species, keeping to chronological development within each
species.

Two kinds of new work by women, acting and painting, demand brief
preliminary notice. Though possibly not within the category of
learned occupations they must yet be recognized as of great
importance in the new life opening before women.


ACTRESSES

Charles II had in France been familiar with the custom of having
women on the stage, and when he issued his two patents to Davenant
and Killigrew he inserted the famous clause, "We do permit and
give leave from this time to come that all women's parts be acted
by women." Mrs. Coleman had taken the part of Ianthe in Davenant's
_Siege of Rhodes_ in 1656, but this was not a regular play. It was
more of the nature of an opera or spectacle. The first woman to
act on the public stage in England was probably the actress who
played Desdemona, December 8, 1660. "J. Jordan" wrote a prologue to
introduce her as "the first woman that came to act on the stage," but
he did not give her name.[139]

The theatrical novelty initiated by this unknown actress was
far-reaching in its effects. Through the ensuing years a constantly
increasing number of women followed the lure of the stage. No
other opportunity open to the ambition of women met with so eager
a response, or could number so many aspirants, or could register
success so unqualified. Yet as we read of these early English
actresses we hardly think of acting as a profession or of them as
artists. They were in no sense students of the parts they played.
Beauty, youth, high spirits, a certain native endowment of wit or
boldness, ability to sing a song or dance a jig, seemed to meet all
the demands of audiences too much delighted with the mere fact of
seeing women on the stage to be over-critical of their technique
or interpretation. Moreover, the runs of plays were short, three
days being about the average, so there was hardly time to work up
finished productions. The stage tenure of most of the actresses was
also brief, hardly more than a prelude to the social and domestic
irregularities of their later lives. Cunningham names Mrs. Betterton
as the only actress of Charles II's day who was not mistress to some
man at court. "Frailties," as they were euphemistically called,
became so normally associated with actresses that Anne Bracegirdle
excited incredulous surprise by her reputed purity of life, and
she was presented by the noblemen of her day with a purse of eight
hundred guineas in recognition of her virtue.[140] The immorality of
these early actresses, girls of no rigorous professional training
and no professional standards, is quite intelligible. In appearing
before the public at all they broke so many conventions, defied the
feminine ideal so completely, that a few steps further in pursuit of
flattery and luxurious living hardly seemed to count. As actresses
they were at once under a moral stigma anyhow, so far as the soberer
part of the community was concerned, and they naturally followed the
path of least resistance and accepted the morality of the court of
the merry monarch, a court where virtue with her "lean and scare-crow
face" seldom intruded. The unfortunate outcome of the turpitude of
the Restoration actresses is that they built up in the public mind a
prejudice against actresses as a class, a prejudice which affected
later even such women as Mrs. Betterton, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs.
Cibber, or Mrs. Siddons. But it must not be forgotten that they
served the cause of women by opening the way to a new and important
profession, a profession in which women have no handicaps. The stage
has been represented by more women of genius, and has given to women
more unstinted recognition in fame and money, than have any of the
other forms of public activity into which women have so far been
admitted, except, possibly, in late years, administrative work in
social service.

It is unnecessary, in this study, to carry the account of the
actresses into further detail, or further down the century. The
history of the part women took on the seventeenth and eighteenth
century stage would make a volume of itself. And since it was many
years before acting was connected with any critical or intellectual
conception of the plays represented, it may suffice here to leave
this portion of the new work of women with the mere announcement of
its inception.


ARTISTS

To acting we may add another new realm, that of painting. The
earliest woman portrait-painter on record in England is Anne
Carlisle, who died about 1680. In 1658 Sir William Sanderson, in his
_Graphice_, commenting on the artists then in England, said, "And in
Oyl Colours we have a vertuous example in that worthy Artist, Mrs.
Carlisle." In the notes left by Vertue to Walpole was a statement
that he had seen in about 1730 the portrait Mrs. Carlisle had painted
of herself. Her chief work was in copying the paintings of Italian
masters, or, according to a fashion of the times, reproducing them in
miniature. It is said that Charles I admired her work so warmly that
he presented to her and Van Dyck ultramarine to the value of five
hundred pounds.[141]

Of more distinguished ability was Mary Beale (1637-1697),[142] who
is said to have studied either with Sir Peter Lely or Robert Walker.
At least she watched Lely paint and thereby gained some of his
technique. She worked in oils, water-colors, and crayons. Through
Sir Peter Lely she was given access to some of the best works of Van
Dyck and in copying these gained a training somewhat similar to that
given most artists by sojourns in Italy or Holland. There are in the
English National Portrait Gallery portraits by her of Charles II and
Abraham Cowley. At Knole is her portrait of John Milton; at Woburn
Abbey, one of the Duke of Monmouth; Archbishop Tillotson, Henry, Duke
of Norfolk, Dr. Sydenham, Dr. Croone, Bishop Wilkins, are among those
who sat to her. No other English portrait-painter of the period had
so distinguished a clientèle or is represented by so many canvases
in English galleries. Her success may be measured, in part, by her
financial returns. In a pocket-book kept by her husband in 1672 is
this entry: "Received this year, for pictures done by my dearest
heart, 202_l._ 5_s._" The receipts for 1674 were 216_l._ 5_s._; and
for 1677, 429_l._ She was still painting important portraits in
1691, for we find in the _Term Catalogue_ for Michaelmas of that
year the announcement of "The true Effigies of his Grace, John, Lord
Archbishop of Canterbury. Engraven by Rob. White on a large sheet of
Paper, from the Original lately painted by Mrs. Mary Beale."

According to the manuscript of Mr. Oldys, Mrs. Beale was also
celebrated for her poetry. He styles her, "that masculine poet, as
well as Painter, the incomparable Mrs. Beale." Dr. Woodford included
in his translations of the Psalms several versions by Mrs. Beale whom
he eulogizes as "an absolutely compleat Gentlewoman," and to whom he
wrote several poems under the name "Beliza."[143]

Anne Killigrew (1660-1685), a maid of honor to Mary of Modena, died
at twenty-five, but she had already attained considerable repute
as a portrait painter. There is a tradition that she studied with
Sir Peter Lely. If so she must have taken these lessons before she
was twenty, for Lely left England in 1680. Dryden says that her
portrait of James II expressed "not only his outward part, but
drew forth the very image of his heart," and that she was equally
successful in depicting the bright beauty and peerless majesty of
Mary of Modena. Her portrait of herself was engraved by Becket and
prefaces the volume of her poems issued the year after her death.
Other paintings were religious in subject, as in her portrayal of
incidents in the life of John the Baptist; or mythological, as in her
representation of Diana's nymphs. Of far more possible significance
is her landscape work. During 1660-1685 Robert Streater is the only
English landscape-painter of whom we have record. Charles II brought
over a number of Italian and Flemish artists who painted English
landscapes in the style of Ruysdael, Poussin, or Salvator Rosa, and
their work would be the pictures chiefly known at court. It is not
improbable that Miss Killigrew's landscapes were copies or imitations
of these foreign artists. Dryden says she painted ruins of Greece and
Rome, and forest glades in which were nymphs and shaggy satyrs. Such
pictures must have been copies. But Dryden also enumerates sylvan
scenes of herds and flocks; clear, shallow little brooks; deep rivers
reflecting as in a mirror the trees on their banks. Such pictures
are truly English in tone and whatever their intrinsic value such a
choice of subjects would put her with Robert Streater at the very
inception of English landscape art. And though the scanty records
concerning her painting do not substantiate Dryden's description
of her landscapes, it could hardly be supposed that he would have
been so explicit in a poem written for the family and immediately
after her death had there not been some pictures at least moderately
correspondent to his lines.[144]

Other seventeenth-century names of less importance show an aspiration
in art somewhat above that countenanced by the boarding-schools.
Mrs. Pepys and Miss Margaret Pen may serve to indicate the sort
of work being done in amateurish fashion in various homes. Both
ladies were "learning to limn" with one Mr. Browne. Pepys was
tremendously interested in his wife's progress. In the midst of
terrifying accounts of the plague and the fire there come in 1665
and 1666 frequent notes on her pictures. Once after a week's absence
on exhausting work he records, "To my wife, and having viewed her
last piece of drawing since I saw her which is seven or eight days,
which pleases me beyond anything in the world, to bed with great
content, but weary." The next day, on being importuned to buy her a
pearl necklace, he promises it, but only "if she pleases me in her
painting." On one occasion he called on Lady Pen and says of the
visit, "Talking with Mrs. Pegg Pen, and looking at her pictures,
and commended them; but, Lord! so far short of my wife's as no
comparison." A month later is the note, "I took my Lady Pen home,
and her daughter Pegg and, after dinner I made my wife show them
her pictures, which did mad Pegg Pen, who learnes of the same man."
In September, 1665, Pepys had just seen his wife's picture of our
Saviour and thought it so pretty that he boasted of it to Evelyn,
at which Evelyn paid him in kind by telling him that "the beautiful
Mrs. Middleton is rare (in painting) and his own wife do brave
things."[145]

[Illustration: MRS. ANNE KILLIGREW

From a painting by herself engraved by T. Chambars]

The Evelyn family seems to have been instinctively artistic. In
Mr. Thoresby's account of a visit to Evelyn, he said he was shown
"many drawings and paintings of his own and his lady's doing; one
especially of enamel was surprisingly fine, and this ingenious lady
told me how she wrought it." Both Mr. Evelyn and his son Draper were
proud of Mary's work in painting. Sixteen years after her death Mr.
Thoresby wrote: "He afterwards carried me in his coach to his son
Draper's at the Temple, and showed me many curious pieces of his
ingenious daughter's performances, both very small in miniature,
and as large as the life in oil colours, equal it is thought to the
greatest masters of the age. He gave me a specimen of some prospects
he took in Italy, and etched upon the copper by his own hand."

At the end of the century is Sarah Curtis (d. 1743) who was married
in 1701 to Bishop Hoadly. Before her marriage she had been a pupil
of Mary Beale, and she is now represented in the National Portrait
Gallery by three canvases, portraits of Burnet, Winston, and Hoadly.
Mrs. Rowe's paintings were likewise highly prized by discriminating
friends. Of greater interest is Mrs. Delany (1700-1788). She copied
at least seventy-two pictures by old masters and painted many
portraits. Her work is not represented in public galleries, but many
of her pictures are still preserved in private collections. Susan
Penelope Gibson was a successful miniature painter. Elizabeth Creed
was also an artist of at least local repute. She did sacred subjects
as altar-pieces for neighboring churches and she painted numerous
portraits. She also gave free lessons to the girls living near her.
Her daughter Elizabeth, who inherited her artistic tastes, is said to
have ornamented a hall in a Tudor mansion near Oundle.

Short and insignificant as this list appears, it yet assumes real
importance when we realize not only that these were the earliest
English women to enter this field, but that the list shows up
surprisingly well when compared with a similar list of the native
English painters among the men of the period. Charles I was a great
lover of art and he summoned many artists, some of the first rank, to
England, and he bought pictures with a far-sighted munificence, and
Charles II was ambitious of following along the same distinguished
path. But a list of the pictures painted in England before 1700 shows
hardly an English name. Hence the presence of any successful women
artists is doubly significant.

The amateurish quality of the painting may be in part explained by
the fact that in but one case, that of Mary Beale, was there any
impetus or training such as are necessarily associated with work
adopted as a profession. The painting was an accomplishment, a
pleasant occupation for leisure hours, a resource, rather than a life
purpose ardently pursued. The only external reward for the many hours
at the easel was the praise of a small circle of friends. The real
incentive was an inner demand for some form of self-expression, and
the mere number of pictures painted, quite apart from the question
of their excellence, is indicative of the eagerness with which women
welcomed any sort of opportunity for the free play of their own
individuality.


AUTHORS

It was not, however, acting or painting that occupied most of the
women whose natures craved something out of the ordinary routine.
Writing was a much more natural and feasible resource. Acting
implied a public, and even painting, especially portrait-painting,
was likely to be semi-public. But writing could be carried on in
retirement and the results submitted only to the partial criticism
of a home or social circle. It did not bring women before a carping
public or necessarily into competition with men, for even if plays
were produced and books published, the name of the writer could be
veiled, as it usually was, under a decent anonymity. Hence women who
respected the obvious conventions could yet indulge themselves in
authorship.


WRITERS ON PRACTICAL SUBJECTS

When women entered upon writing as a career, it might be thought that
they would at first take up subjects familiar to them, but such was
not the case. For instance, most of the books for children, before
the venture of the Newberys about the middle of the eighteenth
century, were by men.[146] It was James Janeway whose maxim, "A child
is never too little to go to Hell," resulted in works so popular as
_A Looking Glass for Children_ and _A Token for Children_ (1676);
John Bunyan's _A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rimes for
Children; being Divine Poems on the Creed, Commonwealth and Several
other Subjects_ (1690); Mr. Mason's _A Little Catechism with little
Verses and little sayings, for little children_ (1693). _The Divine
and Moral Songs for Children_, by Isaac Watts in 1720, carried on the
religious instruction. There were also various accounts of the "Life
and Saintly Death" of children of tender years, which were published
with the avowed purpose of influencing other children of like tender
years, but none of these are by women. The first women I have come
upon who wrote professedly for children are Sarah Fielding and Mrs.
Collyer in 1749.[147]

In a somewhat less degree the same condition exists in relation
to medicine, especially in the realms most definitely in the hands
of women. Mrs. Pilkington tells us that her father was the first
man midwife in England, but nearly all the books on midwifery were
written by men. Two women, however, appear in print, in a discussion
of their professional work. Mrs. Jane Sharp's book is entitled _The
Midwives' Book, or the whole Art of midwifery discovered, directing
Child-bearing Women how to behave themselves in their Conception,
Breeding, Bearing, and Nursing, of Children. In Six Books. By Mrs.
Jane Sharp, Practitioner in the Art of Midwifery above thirty
years_.[148]

Mrs. Elizabeth Cellier, a second writer on midwifery, is known
perhaps chiefly because she was supposed to have some connection
with the Meal Tub Plot. After her acquittal from treason charges she
wrote a pamphlet called _Malice Defeated_, in which she courageously
expressed her adherence to an unpopular cause in the words, "I do not
yet so much fear the smell of Newgate as to be frighted for telling
the truth; nor is death so great a terror to me, but that I am still
ready to seal the same with my blood."[149] She must have been a
woman of substance as well as courage, for she was fined a thousand
pounds because of certain passages in this pamphlet. She was also
condemned to stand in the pillory three times, a punishment which,
according to Lady Russell, she bore with intrepidity and nonchalance,
protecting her head from missiles by means of a battledore which she
held up with one hand, while with the other she gathered up and put
into her pocket all the stones that fell within her reach.

In her profession of midwifery Mrs. Cellier was of high repute, but
her interests were not circumscribed by her own practice. One of
her schemes was the establishment of a "Colledg of Midwives" where
the best possible training should be given. Though her pamphlet,
entitled _A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital and raising
a revenue of 5000 l or 6000 l a year by and for the Maintenance of a
Corporation of Skilful Midwives_, did not result in the establishment
of her proposed college, the idea and the formulation of the plan do
credit to her foresight and intelligence, and sound quite in line
with modern forms of woman's civic enterprise.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could show a long list
of interesting and elaborately worked-out books on housewifery in
general and cooking in particular, but it seldom happens that one
of these books is by a woman. It is, to be sure, not impossible
that more of the material was furnished by women than is apparent
on the surface. Very many of the books on housekeeping matters were
anonymous and were probably mere publishers' compilations from
unacknowledged sources, and in such cases the actual material may
have come from various housewives. But during the century I have
come upon but three women who published under their own names the
results of their experiences as cooks. The earliest of these was Mrs.
Hannah Woolley. She was born about 1623. Her mother and elder sisters
are said to have been "very well skilled in physick and chirurgery"
and they taught her in her youth. She was twice married, the first
time to a schoolmaster named Woolley, and then to a Mr. Francis
Challinor. She is known usually as Mrs. Woolley. One of her books,
_The Queen-like Closet, or A rich Cabinet stored with all manner of
rare Receipts for preserving, Candying, and Cookery. Very pleasant
and beneficial to all ingenuous persons of the Female Sex_, reached
its eleventh edition by 1696. Mrs. Woolley had been governess in two
noble families and had acquired definite ideas as to polite behavior.
This knowledge also she committed to the printed page. On manners,
but especially on household management, she wrote as an authority and
received due recognition.

Another book, by a woman whose initials I have not been able to
expand into a name, is the following: _The Cook's New Years Gift,
Cookery refined, or The Lady, Gentlewoman and Servant-maid's
Companion: containing the Art of dressing all sorts of Flesh, Fish,
and Fowl, various ways, after the newest Mode; with their proper
seasonings, sauces, Garnishes, serving up and carving, etc. By Mrs.
A. M. a long practiser of this curious Art._ (_Term Catalogues_,
Mich. 1697. Mich. 1700.)

The work of Mrs. Woolley in the seventeenth century found its most
worthy counterpart in the eighteenth century in Hannah Glasse's _The
Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, which far exceeds any Thing of
the kind ever yet Published.... By a Lady. London. Printed for the
Author; and sold at Mrs. Ashburn's, a China-Shop, the Corner of Fleet
Ditch, 1747._ The book was issued with about two hundred subscribers.
A fourth edition in octavo came out in 1751, a ninth edition in 1759,
and many later editions. In her Preface Mrs. Glasse said, "If I have
not wrote in the high polite Stile I hope I shall be forgiven, for
my Intention is to instruct the lower Sort, therefore treat them in
their own Way. For Example: when I bid them lard a Fowl, if I should
bid them lard with large Lardoons, they would not know what I want:
But when I say they must lard with small Pieces of Bacon, they know
what I mean." The new element in her book was this attempt to write
out receipts that were simple enough to come into general use.


WRITERS ON RELIGION AND THEOLOGY

The _Term Catalogues_ for 1670-1713 show how great was the
preponderance during those years of books on "Divinity." That women
should share in this prevailing interest is but natural, for religion
came within the accepted canon of the truly feminine. And there are
evidences of an even greater amount of devotional writing by women
than might be expected. The period 1650 to 1750, and especially the
first half of that period, could show a long list of women noted for
lives of piety and good works.[150] The loose living characteristic
of the court apparently had its reaction towards exceptional
spiritual rigor on the part of many ladies of rank. And of these
devout ladies no small number found in the composition of religious
verse or prose the intellectual and emotional outlet denied them in
other ways. Almost none of this writing was meant for a public. The
reams of meditations, prayers, and reflections left in manuscript
were merely a private resource, and often kept secret even from the
author's family. Such writings were in their nature fugitive, and it
would only now and then happen that some relative or friend would
collect and order the papers and see them through the press. We
accordingly get scattered hints through funeral sermons and casual
notices of an amount of devotional writing greatly in excess of that
published. But to tabulate even all the published material would be
wearisome and to no good end. A few illustrative examples showing the
chief characteristics may suffice.


[Sidenote: Lady Elizabeth Brooke (1601-1683)]

One of the best examples of the persistent and prodigious industry
shown by some of these ladies is the work of Lady Elizabeth Brooke.
She began at thirty to make notes on sermons, to copy extracts from
commentaries, and occasionally to write out some personal opinions,
and she kept at this sedative occupation till her death fifty-two
years later. It is painful to reflect on such a mass of undigested
material, but the significant fact remains that she preferred such
reading and writing to the ordinary interests of her sex. Some of her
"Observations and Rules for Practice" were published as an appendix
to the sermon preached at her funeral. Selections from her writings
were published as late as 1828 in _The Lady's Monitor_.


[Sidenote: Anne Murray, Lady Halkett (1622-1699)]

Anne Murray, Lady Halkett, was even more industrious. Her father,
who was tutor of Charles I and Provost of Eton, died when she was a
child, but her mother, who was governess to the Princess Elizabeth,
gave her "a complete education." Of her early life she says: "My
mother spared no expense in educating all her children in the most
suitable way to improve them ... and paid masters for teaching
my sister and mee to write, speak French, play on the lute and
virginalls, and dance, and kept a gentlewoman to teach us all kinds
of needlework, which shows I was not brought up in an idle life."
After several complicated and long drawn-out love affairs--fully
described in her _Autobiography_--Anne married Sir James Halkett
in 1656. As the years passed her interests finally centered on
two subjects, divinity and medicine. In "physick and surgery" she
gained great repute. She was consulted in difficult cases from the
remotest parts of the kingdom and her fame spread even to Holland.
It was quaintly said of her: "She was ever employed either in doing
or reaping good: in the summer season she vyed with the bee or ant,
in gathering herbs, flowers, worms, snails, etc., for the still or
limbeck, for the mortar or boyling pan, etc., and was ordinarily
then in a dress fitted for her still-house; making preparations of
extracted waters, spirits, ointments, conserves, salves, powders,
etc., which she ministered every Wednesday to a multitude of poor
infirm persons, besides what she dayly sent abroad to persons of all
ranks who consulted her in their maladies."[151] But it was religious
themes only that employed her pen. The catalogue of her writings
includes twenty-one volumes, or a total of about eight thousand pages
of manuscript, some in quarto, some in folio size, and all bound.
Some of these books were printed at Edinburgh in 1701. The title
of one book of three hundred and fifteen pages will indicate the
general character of her writing: _Select Meditations and Prayers
upon the First Week, with Observations on each Days Creation, and
Considerations on the Seven Capital Vices to be opposed, and their
opposite Virtues to be studied and practised_.

  _Vices to be subdued_                 _Virtues to be learned_
  _Pride_                 Sunday        _Humility_
  _Covetousness_          Monday        _Contentation_
  _Lust_                  Tuesday       _Chastity_
  _Envy_                  Wednesday     _Charity_
  _Gluttony_              Thursday      _Temperance_
  _Anger_                 Friday        _Patience_
  _Sloth_                 Saturday      _Diligence_

All but nine of these books were written during Lady Halkett's
twenty-eight years of widowhood when she had much leisure, but under
any circumstances the task was a great one, and becomes the more
amazing when we reflect upon it as really only a private recreation.
To write so much with no urgency of fame or money shows some very
strong inner demand for expression and a very facile pen.


[Sidenote: "Legacies"]

Another type of religious book goes back for its inspiration to
Elizabeth Jocelyn's famous _Legacie_. One of Lady Halkett's books
was _The Mother's Will to an Unborn Child_, written in 1656 before
the birth of her daughter Elizabeth. Books of advice from parents to
children to be read after the death of the parents were not uncommon.
Elizabeth Sadler (1623-1690), the wife of the Reverend Anthony
Walker, was an exceedingly devout woman whose literary instinct and
a prevision of death led her to write a large book in octavo for the
instruction of her two daughters. Two other books will sufficiently
illustrate the type: _The Experiences of God's gracious dealing with
Mrs. Elizabeth White, late wife of Mr. Tho. White of Caldecot in the
County of Bucks; as they were written under her own hand, and found
in her Closet after her decease: she dying in child-bed, December
5th, 1669_;[152] _The Legacie of a Dying Mother to her mourning
children; being the Experiences of Mistress Susanna Bell, who died
March 13, 1672. With an Epistle Dedicatory by Thomas Brookes,
Minister of the Gospel_.


[Sidenote: Rachel Wriothesley, Lady Russell (1636-1723)]

Lady Russell is an example of a woman who definitely set out to be
religious, and whose writings contain an analysis of her methods.
The circumstances of her life give everything pertaining to her a
particular interest. The execution of Lord Russell for treason in
1683 left her broken by the shock. She had, though without avail,
set in motion every possible agency to avert his fate, and she had
devoted herself absolutely to him till his tragic death. Then,
after a period of the deepest despondency, she entered again upon
the duties that lay before her. She conducted the education and
arranged the marriages of her three children. She showed herself an
excellent business woman in the management of her estate. And she
steadily interested herself in securing benefices and other offices
for persons of whom her husband would have approved. Her _Letters_
as published contain a few during the first years of her happy
married life; many written concerning the "judicial murder" of Lord
Russell; and very many concerning family affairs and the candidates
for whom she was seeking favor. As letters they are uninteresting.
The subject-matter is generally too local and temporary to hold the
attention of the modern reader, and the style is dry and hard. Even
the records of her bitter grief and of her struggle to attain a mood
of Christian resignation are less affecting than might be expected.
A kind of apathy seemed to settle down over her spirit. She was too
deeply hurt to find in words any balm for her sorrows. She answered
condolences when she must, but briefly, and with no lightening of the
gloom that encompassed her. Of all her letters the longest and most
valuable as a personal revelation is one written to her children July
21, 1691, "a day of sad remembrances," for it was the anniversary
of her husband's execution eight years before. In 1691, Rachel, the
oldest child, was twenty years old, and Wriothesley, the youngest,
was eleven. The five or six pages in which Lady Russell recounts,
probably especially for the benefit of Rachel, her method of personal
spiritual watch-care, has great value as a religious document,
for she was not alone in her way of seeking salvation, in her
heart-searchings, in her dependence on the external means of grace,
in her sedulous striving after perfection. It was the devout habit of
devout people of the time, but perhaps carried to a meticulous excess
by Lady Russell. She says that she was always provided with a little
piece of paper on which she wrote her faults and temptations as they
occurred during the day. At night a careful review of this record
contributed to a better watch and ward.

  And then [she continued], upon Friday morning when I have prayed
  my usual daily prayers (which have bin most constantly for
  many years those in taler's holy living) before I pray that of
  intercession pa: 35. I stop ... and look upon my dayly notes for
  that weeke, I recollect my fautes; consider what care I have
  taken to correct or forsake them--but alas when we do best we
  shall find enof to be humbled for--therefore I chuse some prayer
  of confesion most times that in taler's holy living page 302.
  When I have done it, I make my resolutions to do better for ye
  time to come, and especialy to watch myselfe where i ame most
  apt to fal, naming in what I ame so--then I pray some prayer
  for grace to keep these promises of better obedience--as in
  pa: 31--for grace to spend our time wel, on page 271, for the
  grace of faith, hope & charity. Then I pray the dayly prayer of
  intercession that I left of at in pa:35--after this I praise
  God ... for all the blessings vouchsafed to me both spiritual &
  temporal--as that I was born of Christian parents, not suffered
  to be strangled in the womb, that I was baptized, and sence,
  educated in Christian Religion. I blesse thee for al checks of
  Conscience I have had especially those I have profited by....
  And then I goe on, I bless thee for our creation, preservation
  &c.--close with ye lords prayer.

After this service she went over her faults of the week, making a
summary of them. A similar abridgment for the month was entered in
a book kept for that purpose, the incriminating little pieces of
paper were torn up, and a new record entered upon. She found that a
frequent re-reading of the book "saved much time in looking back"
and contributed to humility. Evidently Lady Russell was as orderly
in religion as she was in her business affairs. She finds her
definite tabulations "hugely more satisfying to her mind, than a more
carelesse loose way of living is, and no settled method." The letter
closes with the admonition, "Be devout & reguler in your dutys
to God--heaven wil be secure, and pleasures innocent."[153] Lady
Russell's letters reveal a devout, difficult, over-burdened life, so
much concerned with the means of grace as never to have any happy
consciousness of grace itself.


[Sidenote: Elizabeth Blake, Mrs. Burnet (1661-1712)]

Elizabeth Burnet (1661-1712), daughter of Sir Richard Blake, married
at seventeen into a Catholic family. Her husband, Robert Berkeley,
was a ward of Bishop Fell, through whom the marriage was brought
about. The firmness and tact necessary to maintain her own views as a
Protestant and hold her husband to that faith, and yet not antagonize
the family, could hardly be expected of so young a girl. But Bishop
Fell had judged her character well and she met all the demands of so
delicate a situation. She took advantage of many leisure hours in
the country to investigate fully the questions at issue between the
Catholics and the Protestants. She did not know the learned tongues,
but she studied the Scriptures, read commentaries, and conversed
with clergymen. When she became a widow in 1693, at thirty-two, she
employed her time in two characteristic ways. In the administration
of her husband's charitable schemes she found congenial activity.
And she gave way to her natural instinct for writing. In 1700 she
became the wife of Bishop Burnet. His approval of her literary work
and his request that it be published led to the production of her
_Method of Devotion_. It was so popular that she revised and enlarged
it and brought out a second edition. And it was republished in 1713
after her death. The book contained "Rules for holy and devout
Living," "Prayers on Several Occasions," "Advices and Devotions on
the Holy Sacrament." Mrs. Trotter said of her in 1701, "She has an
extraordinary clear and solid judgment, the truest goodness and
prudence, and the most charming affability in her behaviour; in
short, I have met with no such perfection in any of my sex."


[Sidenote: Elizabeth Bury (1644-1720)]

Elizabeth Bury was another young woman whose bright, acquisitive
mind resented conventional inactivity and put out tentacles in all
directions for knowledge. Philology, philosophy, history, heraldry,
geography, mathematics, were among her interests. She contended
that souls were of no sex and that women were often "disposed to
an accurate search into things curious and profitable, as well as
others." She studied anatomy and medicine until she had gained "a
surprizing knowledge of the human body, and of the _Materia Medica_,"
so that she could state the symptoms of the most difficult and
intricate cases in the physician's own terms. She learned French that
she might talk with French refugees to whom she was a benefactress.
Her correspondence and conversation were both highly prized. But all
these interests must be counted merely as diversions. "Her constant
favourite and darling study was divinity." The Bible, Mr. Henry's
_Annotations_, a few works on practical divinity, and a competent
number of Hebrew books made up her working library. Hebrew because of
its scriptural importance was the subject on which she concentrated
her attention and she was reputed to have a critical knowledge of
its idioms and peculiarities. It was said that she could even quote
the original in common conversation if the elucidation of some text
were in question. As the years passed, books and writing, "morning
hours with God," and many arduous charitable duties so fully occupied
her that she found mere social life an unrewarded tax. Of ordinary
conversation she said that though one might strike fire "it always
fell on wet tinder." The mass of manuscripts found after her death
reflected the variety of her interests, but the majority were on
topics such as _Meditations on the Divinity of the Holy Scriptures_,
_The unreasonableness of Fretting against God_, and similar subjects.
She kept also a voluminous _Diary_, an abridgment of which was
published by her husband in Bristol in 1721. Mr. Watts's _Elegy_
indicates something of the reverence with which Mrs. Bury was
regarded by her contemporaries; and a woman of her personal charm,
executive ability, alert responsiveness to the calls of charity,
along with her quick mind, and multifarious, if not always profound,
learning would take an even higher place in any organized community
to-day.


[Sidenote: Susanna Hopton (1627-1709)]

Women also entered the less feminine fields of controversy. Susanna
Hopton is an interesting example. In her youth she had become a
Catholic, but under the influence of her husband she entered upon a
thorough study of the points at issue between the Catholics and the
Protestants. Dr. Hickes says of her: "She made herself as perfect
in the controversie, as English writers could make her, who managed
the controversie on both sides. I have (says he) above twenty popish
authors, which she left me, and some of them with marginal notes in
her own hand. She was well versed in Bishop Moreton's, Archbishop
Laud's and Mr. Chillingworth's works, and Ranchin's _Review of
the Council of Trent_, etc."[154] As a result of this reading she
drew up a long and learned letter to Father Tuberville, showing
him why she had renounced the Church of Rome. This letter was
published by Dr. Hickes immediately after her death in his volume of
_Controversial Letters_ in 1710. Mr. William said that she was an
excellent casuist and divine, and could encounter and confute all
enemies of the church. "Her discourse and stile upon serious matters
was strong, eloquent and nervous; upon pleasant subjects, witty
and facetious: and when it required an edge was sharp as a razor."
_Daily Devotions_, _Meditations on the Six Days Of Creation_, and
_Meditations on the Life of Christ_ were her other works. As a wife,
a neighbor, and a friend she seems to have been in high esteem, but
her life had the church as its center.


[Sidenote: Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham (1658-1708)]

Damaris Cudworth and Mary Astell, two of the most gifted women of
the period, became involved in the theological discussion between
John Norris and John Locke. Miss Cudworth knew both disputants well.
As a young woman she had corresponded with Norris on the subject of
"Platonic Love," and in 1689 he had dedicated to her his _Reflections
upon the Conduct of Human Life, with reference to the study of
learning and knowledge_. But it was Locke who had a permanent
influence on her opinions. While she was still in Cambridge with her
father, Ralph Cudworth, Locke taught her divinity and philosophy.
After her marriage to Sir Francis Masham in 1685, Locke was a
frequent visitor at their home, and from 1691 till his death in 1704
he lived permanently with them. Her polemical articles were doubtless
written under his inspiration. In 1694 the correspondence between
Mary Astell and John Norris was published, under the title, _Letters
concerning the Love of God_. Two years later Lady Masham answered
their arguments in her _Discourse concerning the Love of God_,[155]
which was attributed to Locke and answered by Norris. In 1700 Lady
Masham published _Occasional Thoughts in reference to a virtuous
Christian Life_, which is her closing word in the controversy.

Damaris Cudworth was a woman of remarkable intellect. Her father
was delighted with the early manifestations of her power and he
took pride in securing for her the best possible education. The
curious epitaph on her tomb praises her learning, judgment, candor,
penetration, and love of truth, and credits her with being a devoted
and intelligent mother. It sums up her character in the statement,
that "to the Softness and Elegancy of her own Sex" she added "several
of the noblest Accomplishments and Qualities of the other," and that
"she possessed these advantages in a degree unusual to either." The
conventional eulogy on a tomb is always open to suspicion, but in
this case the vague generalities of the epitaph fall below the truth.
Locke, in a letter to Phillipp van Limborch, said of her: "The Lady
herself is so well versed in theological and philosophical studies
and of such an original mind that you will not find many men to whom
she is not superior in wealth of knowledge and ability to profit by
it. Her judgment is excellent, and I know few who can bring such
clearness of thought to bear upon the most abstruse subjects, or such
capacity for searching through and solving the difficulties. I do not
say of most women, but even of most learned men."[156]

Lady Masham was also recognized as one of the early champions for
woman's education, for when Mary Astell's _Serious Proposal_ appeared
anonymously in 1694 it was by some attributed to Lady Masham. She
took the subject up definitely in her _Occasional Thoughts_. After
commenting on the lack of knowledge of science, law, history,
politics, morals, and religion, of most English gentlemen, Lady
Masham continued:

  Thus wretchedly destitute of all that Knowledge which they ought
  to have, are, generally speaking, our English gentlemen, and
  being so, what wonder can it be, if they like not that women
  should have knowledge; for this is a quality that will give some
  sort of superiority even to those who care not to have it?... But
  such men as these would assuredly find their account much better
  therein, if tenderness of that prerogative would teach them a
  more legitimate way of maintaining it, than such a one as is a
  very great impediment or discouragement at the least, to others
  in the doing what God requires of them. For it is an undesirable
  truth that a lady who is able to give an account of her faith,
  and to defend her religion against the attacks of the cavilling
  wits of the age, or the abuses of the obtruders of vain opinions:
  that is capable of instructing her children in the reasonableness
  of the christian religion, and of laying in them the foundations
  of a solid virtue: that a lady, I say, no more knowing than this
  does demand, can hardly escape being called learned by the men
  of our days, and in consequence thereof, becoming a subject of
  ridicule to one part of them, and of aversion to the other; with
  but a few exceptions of some virtuous and rational persons. And
  is not the incurring of general dislike one of the strongest
  discouragements we can have to any thing?[157]


[Sidenote: Grace Norton, Lady Gethin (1676-1696)]

There was published soon after Lady Gethin's death, from loose papers
left by her, a work entitled _Reliquiæ Gethinianæ_. Congreve's poem,
entitled _Verses to the Memory of Lady Grace Gethin, occasioned by
reading her Book_, speaks in high praise of her. He says the book
shows all that study or time could teach.

      But to what height must his amazement rise,
      When, having read the work, he turns his eyes
      Again to view the foremost opening page,
      And there the beauty, sex, and tender age,
      Of her beholds, in whose pure mind arose
      Th' ethereal source, from whence the current flows.

Lady Gethin was counted a marvel of wisdom, but when we read her
_Apothegms_ and _Essays_ and _Witty Sayings_ we are more impressed by
her accurate memory of Bacon and other earlier essayists than by any
profound knowledge of life on her own part.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Eleanor James (fl. 1685-1715)]

Mrs. Eleanor James[158] was a writer on religious and political
topics. No complete list of her works has ever been compiled. She
gained publicity for her religious views by numerous single printed
sheets between 1685 and 1715. John Dunton described her husband as
being well known because he was an excellent printer, and "something
the better known for being the husband of that she-state-politician,
Mrs. Eleanor James." She is said to have constituted herself a sort
of "adviser to reigning sovereigns" from Charles II to George I, whom
she visited in turn for counsel and admonition. Her chief published
works are on religious controversy. Her _Vindication of the Church
of England_ (1687) created considerable antagonism. In answer to a
satirical _Address of thanks to Mrs. James on behalf of the Church
of England_ she wrote _Mrs. James's Defence_. A lady also appeared
in the lists against her in a book entitled _Elizabeth Rowe's Short
Answer to Eleanor James's Long Preamble or Vindication of the
new Test_. Mrs. James's _Apology_ (1694) and her _Reasons humbly
presented to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal_ (1715) complete the
list of her more important publications.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Newcome (fl. 1728)]

Mrs. Newcome's _Enquiry into the Evidences of the Christian Religion_
was published in 1728. Mr. Bowyer says that she was by every one
accounted a most excellent and worthy woman, and that her learning
was attested by more than one volume. Mr. Grey mentioned her in his
_Hudibras_ as "the very learned lady" who gave him the note about
Penguins in Book I. Nichols quotes a Mr. "T. F." who says that she
had great fame for learning, but adds cautiously: "All that I know
of that matter is, that as often as I have been in company with her,
and when things were thrown out designedly to tempt her to speak,
and discover herself, as the armour produced to Achilles, it never
took effect. So that I can not speak of her learning from my own
knowledge; but if she was not that, she was something better, a very
good woman."[159]


[Sidenote: Catherine Trotter, Mrs. Cockburn (1679-1749)]

The most distinguished woman in the field of polemics in the first
half of the eighteenth century was Catherine Trotter, better known as
Mrs. Cockburn. The contemporary recognition accorded Mrs. Cockburn
is to-day the most surprising fact about her. Her father was a
Scotchman, a commander in the royal navy, and highly thought of by
Charles II, but his death at sea in 1683, and many ensuing disastrous
business complications, left the family in serious financial
difficulties. Mrs. Trotter was, however, nearly related to the Duke
of Lauderdale and the Earl of Perth, a fact which secured her social
recognition no matter how narrow her circumstances. Catherine, her
youngest child, began writing poetry at a very early age. She also
early showed unusual mental alertness, for "she both learned to
write and made herself mistress of the _French_ language, by her own
application and diligence, without any instructor." In Latin and
Logic she had some guidance. Logic was so interesting to her that
while still young she drew up an abstract of its principles, for her
own use.

Catherine's first extant poem was a thanksgiving in heroic verse
for the recovery of Mr. Bevil Higgons from small-pox. She was then
fourteen, but the labored lines have a kind of heavy maturity
prophetic of her later verse. In her seventeenth year she entered
fully upon her literary career. For thirteen years she devoted
herself to study and writing, and if applause from high authorities
could justify her serious preoccupation with things of the mind, such
justification was hers in full measure. Before she was seventeen
her tragedy, _Agnes de Castro_, was acted at Drury Lane. It was by
the advice of the Earl of Dorset and Middlesex that she had allowed
"this little off-spring of her early muse"[160] to try its fortune in
the world, and such success as it had must be attributed largely to
the protection of influential patrons. But with or without patrons,
whatever Miss Trotter did was sure to win praise. When she wrote a
eulogistic poem to Congreve on his _Mourning Bride_, in 1697, he
expressed himself as heartily vexed that her lines came too late for
publication with his play, and said of her poetical commendation, "It
is the first thing, that ever happened to me, upon which I should
make it my choice to be vain."

In 1698 there appeared, at the new theater in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
Miss Trotter's second tragedy entitled _The Fatal Friendship_.
Mr. Betterton, Mr. Verbruggen, Mr. Thurmond, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs.
Bracegirdle, took the chief parts. The play ran several nights and
was seen occasionally on the stage until far down in the eighteenth
century. Its immediate success was great and the praise that poured
in upon the nineteen-year-old author must have been bewilderingly
sweet. Mr. Higgons evened up the score for the small-pox poem by some
verses which declared her direct descent from Sappho. Mr. Harman said
that she maintained the true empire of the stage along with Congreve,
Granville, and a few others "well read in honour's school." From "an
unknown hand" came a poem addressed to "my much esteemed Friend."
This author writes of his consuming anxiety at the beginning of the
play, and of the joy that gushed forth as he observed its success.
The impression from his poem is that he had known the play intimately
before its appearance. According to "the elegant pen of Mr. John
Hughes" Miss Trotter's "virgin voice offends no virgin ear," her
chaste thoughts and clean expressions set her nobly apart as a
reformer of the stage, and she is a successful champion of her sex,
since her genius has destroyed the "Salique law of wit" established
by men. So pleased was Mr. Farquhar with _The Fatal Friendship_
that he sent his first comedy _Love and a Bottle_, which had "been
scandalously aspersed for affronting the ladies," "to stand its
tryal before one of the fairest of the sex, and the best judge." And
he adds his thanks for the "favour and honour" she showed him by
appearing on his third night. He concludes his letter with a double
compliment: "But humbly to confess the greatest motive, my passions
were wrought so high by representation of _Fatal Friendship_, and
since raised so high by a sight of the beautiful author, that I
gladly catched this opportunity of owning myself your most faithful
and humble servant." Mrs. Manly also gave a generous tribute to her
young fellow-aspirant for stage honors:

      Orinda and the Fair Astrea gone
      Not one was found to fill the Vacant Throne;
      Aspiring Man had quite regain'd the Sway,
      Again had Taught us humbly to Obey;
      Till you (Nature's third start, in favour of our Kind)
      With stronger Arms, their Empire have disjoyn'd, etc.

          _Dela Manley_

After _The Fatal Friendship_ Miss Trotter's work for the stage need
not be particularly dwelt upon. She had a comedy brought out at Drury
Lane in 1701. A new tragedy in the same year at Drury Lane, and a
tragedy at the Haymarket in 1706, complete the list. Some occasional
poems appeared during this period. In 1700 she was one of the nine
ladies who wrote on the death of Dryden, under the title _The Nine
Muses; or Poems written by as many ladies on the death of the late
famous John Dryden, Esq._ In 1704 she entered the lists with Mr.
Addison and Mr. John Philips in celebrating the victory of Blenheim,
but she did not venture to publish her poem till the manuscript had
been submitted to the Duke of Marlborough. When the duke and the
duchess and the lord treasurer Godolphin declared themselves "greatly
pleased" she sent her lines to the press.

Besides her dramatic and poetical work Miss Trotter wrote in prose
on critical and theological subjects. An interesting disquisition on
"the poets of the last age" appeared in the dedication of her _The
Unhappy Penitent_ in 1701. Of Shakespeare, Dryden, Lee, and Otway she
speaks with independent judgment and considerable discrimination. But
none of the works so far listed are those on which her fame rested.
It was not in poetry, drama, or literary criticism that she found
satisfaction. Religion and philosophy were her true field. Locke's
_Essay concerning Human Understanding_ was published in 1690, and
among the antagonistic criticisms it called forth were three series
of _Remarks_ published anonymously in 1697 and 1699. Young as she was
Miss Trotter pursued the controversy with the keenest interest and in
1701 she drew up a _Defence of The Essay of Human Understanding_. Mr.
George Burnet of Kemney, then in Holland, and Mrs. Burnet, the wife
of Bishop Burnet, were entrusted with the secret of her _Defence_,
and both advised anonymous publication, agreeing with her that her
youth and sex would, if known, count against a work of that nature.
Her _Defence_ appeared in print in 1702. Mrs. Burnet on finding that
the Bishop, Mr. John Norris, and Mr. Locke himself, were highly
pleased with it, could keep the secret no longer.[161] Mr. Locke sent
Miss Trotter a present of books and a letter in which he expressed
his gratitude for "an opportunity to own you for my protectress,
which is the greatest honour my Essay could have procured me. Give
me leave therefore to assure you, that as the rest of the world take
notice of the strength and clearness of your reasoning, so I can not
but be extremely sensible, that it was employed in my behalf."[162]

A second pamphlet was entitled _A discourse concerning a guide in
Controversies_ and grew out of her own spiritual conflicts. Although
of a Protestant family she had become a Catholic early in life, but
had gradually found herself less and less in harmony with that church
till 1707 when, in this _Discourse_, she announced her return to the
Church of England.

The polemical years between 1701 and 1707 had been diversified by
several love affairs. Mr. George Burnet of Kemney, Mr. Fenn who was
an eloquent young clergyman,[163] Mr. Cockburn, "and some others,"
are indicated in her letters. Miss Trotter's letters to two of
these lovers, Mr. Fenn and Mr. Burnet, are nearly as polemical as
her _Defence_ and _Discourse_. She uses all her old Art of Logic
to reason her lovers into friends. She had, in fact, no particular
respect for the passion of love as a factor in human life. She
apologized for having given it so important a place in her plays,
for it was "not noble enough to fill a whole tragedy."[164] When
Mr. Burnet professed "the most passionate ardour of mind and soul"
for her,[165] she responded with a eulogy of "just and beneficent
friendship." "It is only that niggard passion, which is distinguish'd
by the name of love, that excludes all but one object from having a
part in it, and is not satisfied without monopolizing the affections
of the heart."[166] She offered Mr. Burnet "due gratitude" and she
surely owed him some return for the pains he took to spread the
fame of her works. He wrote so highly of her to the Princess Sophia
that the royal lady wrote in answer: "_Je suis charmée du portrait
avantageux, que vous me faites de la nouvelle Sappho Ecossoise, qui
semble meriter les eloges, que vous luy donnez_."[167]

Miss Trotter's letters to Mr. Cockburn, whom she married in 1708, are
also full of argument and business. If she had a deep affection for
him she certainly never allowed herself to speak out. She says that
their chief aim in marriage was to assist each other in performing
those duties that flow from the love of God.[168] Of the ensuing
twenty years she wrote in 1738 as follows: "Being married in 1708,
I bid adieu to the muses, and so wholly gave myself up to the cares
of a family, and the education of my children, that I scarce knew
there was any such thing as books, plays, or poems stirring in Great
Britain."[169] It was an attack on Mr. Locke that again drew her
into public controversy. Dr. Winch Holdsworth published in 1720 a
sermon on Mr. Locke's "false reasonings" against the resurrection
of the same body. The sermon came to her hands some years later
and she published in 1726-27 _A Letter to Dr. Holdsworth_. In 1727
he published _A Defence of the Doctrine of the Resurrection of the
same Body_. Her answer, _A Vindication of Mr. Locke's Christian
Principles_, remained in manuscript till the publication of her
works in 1751. She also wrote in 1739 _Remarks upon some Writers in
the Controversy concerning the Foundation of Moral Duty and Moral
Obligation_ which was published in 1743 in _The History of the
Works of the Learned_. In 1747 she entered upon a confutation of
Dr. Rutherforth's _Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue_.
Her _Remarks_ on this _Essay_ was published by Mr. Warburton with a
laudatory Preface in which he spoke of her "fine genius," "clearness
of expression, strength of reason, precision of logic, and attachment
to truth."

From 1731 to 1748 there is a series of letters between Mrs. Cockburn
and Anne Hepburn (afterwards Mrs. Arbuthnot), her niece. It is
almost entirely a literary and religious correspondence and shows
that Miss Hepburn's interests were on almost as high a plane as her
aunt's. A list of the books they exchanged and commented on would
include most of the important new works in England during the first
half of the century. The most interesting literary taste revealed is
Mrs. Cockburn's partiality for Pope. In 1738 she wrote him a long
letter in which she said, "Your _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, and
_Essay on Man_, gave me some idea of your morals. But when I read
your private letters, where, as you express it, you _throw yourself
out upon paper_, I thought I saw your heart open and undisguised. I
was charmed with the sincere, ingenuous, unsuspecting friend, the
unwilling enemy, the benevolent mind, extending to all parties, all
religions, all mankind; the filial piety, the tender concern for
a mother's approaching death, at an age, when most men would have
considered theirs only as a useless burden. In short, I saw so many
amiable qualities opening on every different occasion, that I began
as much to admire the valuable man as the great genius." She chides
him gently for thinking too lightly of his genius, for while he is
measuring syllables and coupling rhymes to such excellent moral
ends, she is ready to assure him of a final "_Well done, thou good
and faithful servant_." It is a pity this epistle was never sent. It
would doubtless have been almost as surprising to the wicked wasp
of Twickenham as to the crowd of enemies for whose benefit he was
preparing the _New Dunciad_.

Mr. Birch, who edited Mrs. Cockburn's _Works_ in 1751, said of her:

  Posterity at least will be solicitious to know, to whom they
  will owe the most demonstrative and perspicuous reasonings, upon
  subjects of eternal importance; and her own sex is entitled to
  the fullest information about one, who has done such honour to
  them, and raised our ideas of their intellectual power, by an
  example of the greatest extent of understanding and correctness
  of judgment. Antiquity, indeed, boasted of its _female
  philosophers_, whose merits have been drawn forth in an elaborate
  treatise of _Menage_. [_Historia Mulierum Philosophorum_, 8vo.
  Lyons, 1690.] But our own age and country may without injustice
  or vanity oppose to those illustrious ladies the defender of
  _Locke_ and _Clarke_; who, with a genius equal to the most
  eminent of them, had the superior advantage of cultivating it in
  the only effectual method of improvement, the study of a real
  philosophy, and a theology worthy human nature, and its all
  perfect author.

Mrs. Cockburn had a strong, clear, acute mind. The impression she
made on the best thinkers in her generation is due to this fact, and,
further, to the fact that she used her mentality on topics then
counted vital. She was didactic, she was morally irreproachable,
she was unassuming. That her editor's confident prediction of her
fame has been discredited by time, that she is in reality hardly
so much as a name to-day, is due partly to the oblivion that has
overtaken her subjects, but also, and even more justly, to the dead
level of her excellence. She has no wit, no fancy, no imagination,
no sprightliness of thought, no humor. Mary Astell and "Sophia" were
occasionally roused to picturesque indignation. But not so with Mrs.
Cockburn. She is as cold, as orderly, as unstimulating as a formula.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Margaret Fell (1614-1702)]

Among dissenters there is less literary record. We find more among
the Quakers than elsewhere, yet even there not so much as might be
expected from the fact of their recognition of the equality of the
sexes. It was stated in their creed: "As we dare not encourage any
ministry but that which we believe to spring from the influence
of the Holy Spirit, so neither dare we attempt to restrain this
ministry to persons of any condition in life, or to the male sex
alone; but as male and female are one in Christ, we hold it proper
that such of the female sex as we believe to be endued with a right
qualification for the ministry should exercise their gifts for the
general edification of the Church."[170] As a rule, however, the
Quaker women were too busy on their preaching tours to have much
time for authorship. Margaret Fell is their chief representative
writer.[171] Her activities began before the Restoration. As the
wife of Judge Fell of Swarthmore Hall she was of distinct social
importance, and she showed unusual ability in the conduct of the
household affairs incident on her husband's wealth and large landed
properties. She was always exceedingly devout and Swarthmore Hall
was traditionally recognized as the home of "lecturing ministers."
Among these itinerant speakers, in 1652, was George Fox. His brief
sojourn at Swarthmore was epoch-making, for when Judge Fell returned
from a distant visit he was met as he crossed Ulverston Sands by a
solemn conclave of gentlemen on horseback whose purpose it was to
announce that his wife and most of his household had become Quakers.
On investigation he became himself at least sufficiently sympathetic
with the new views not to interfere with his wife's convictions.
For half a century she was identified with Quaker interests. The
great dining-room at Swarthmore was for many years the regular
meeting-place of the Friends. In 1669, eleven years after the death
of Judge Fell, Margaret married George Fox, and till his death in
1691 she gave her time, her thought, her money, to a defense of
persecuted Quakers. Three of her daughters became preachers. She
traveled from jail to jail, from house to house, to comfort the
imprisoned and their families, and from meeting to meeting to preach
the word. As the "nursing mother" of the church she had an immense
correspondence. The petitions to the king and to powerful noblemen
were often composed and personally presented by her. The importance
attached to her advice and opinions is indicated by the hundreds of
letters still extant addressed to her by the preachers who gathered
about George Fox. During her most active years the practical conduct
of church affairs occupied her to the exclusion of other work. But
earlier, especially during 1665-1668, she made use of the enforced
leisure consequent on various imprisonments to write in defense of
Quaker principles. Of the ten tracts thus produced one of the most
interesting was on the vexed question of the right of women to preach
and was entitled _Women's Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of
by the Scriptures_.


[Sidenote: Anne Finch, Lady Conway (d. 1679)]

Another important lady who, after long study in other religions came
finally into the Quaker faith, was Anne Finch, a daughter of Sir
Henry Finch. In 1651 she married Lord Conway and was established
as mistress of Ragley Castle in Warwickshire. As a young woman she
had been attracted by the teachings of Henry More, the Cambridge
Platonist. After she became Lady Conway he spent much time at Ragley
where he wrote several of his books. During his various absences Mr.
More and Lady Conway corresponded regularly on theological subjects.
The questions in her letters sufficiently indicate the metaphysical
perplexities that absorbed her thoughts. She knew the learned tongues
and read eagerly the works of "Plato, Plotinus, Philo Judæus, and the
Kabbala Denudata." She was a theosophist and a mystic. The esoteric,
the mysterious, the miraculous, captured her imagination. "Under
her inspiration Ragley became the home of religious marvels." One
chapter of _John Inglesant_, the novel in which Mr. Shorthouse so
sympathetically described Little Gidding, is said to be based on
the life at Ragley. Lady Conway suffered from headaches so severe
and persistent as to defy the best skill of London and Paris. Under
the influence of Mr. More, who said there might be "a sanative and
healing contagion as well as a morbid and venemous," she summoned to
Ragley the famous Valentine Greatrakes, "the Stroker," but the magic
of his hands failed in her case. Her headaches made of her life one
long disease, but never conquered her intellectual eagerness and
hardly abated her learned pursuits.

When she finally joined the Quakers it was against the advice of
Mr. More, but she was one, he said, "who never submitted all her
judgment to any one." Her friendship with Robert Barclay and William
Penn followed her acceptance of the new doctrines. While Lady Conway
was undoubtedly one of the most distinguished converts to the Quaker
faith, her invalidism and then her death in 1679 interfered with any
such active service as that of Margaret Fell. The two women were,
moreover, temperamentally unlike. Margaret Fell, a descendant of
Anne Askew, had the blood of the martyrs in her veins. A "cause"
could capture her mind and heart. She was energetic, an organizer
and administrator. Lady Conway, on the other hand, beyond almost any
woman of her time, lived in things of the mind.

Of Lady Conway's numerous works only one has been printed. In 1690
there appeared at Amsterdam a collection of philosophical treatises
written in Latin. The first one of the series was a translation of
"a work by a certain English countess, learned beyond her sex."
Leibnitz, on the authority of Van Helmont, attributed this to Lady
Conway. This treatise was re-translated into English in 1692.[172]


[Sidenote: Jane Ward, Mrs. Lead (1623-1704)]

Mrs. Jane Lead[173] was a mystic and the founder of a sect. She
was the daughter of Schildknap Ward, of a good Norfolk family, and
it is said that there were no external influences to account for
her unusual experiences. As a child in the midst of the Christmas
gayeties at her father's house, she heard a miraculous voice that
summoned her to a religious life. She became a widow while still
young and thereafter followed without hindrance, in the completest
seclusion, in London, her recognized vocation. She studied mystical
works and had nightly prophetic visions which she recorded in her
spiritual diary. Between 1681 and 1702 she published fifteen volumes
and another one appeared immediately after her death. In 1693 Mr.
Francis Lee, a young Oxford man and a medical student at Leyden,
visited her, gave allegiance to her doctrines, and devoted himself to
her service. Mr. Lee and Mrs. Lead became the center of an important
theosophical organization called _The Philadelphian Society_, which
existed till 1702. Mrs. Lead died in 1704 "in the 81st year of
her age and the 65th of her vocation to the inward life." Mr. Lee
wrote to the Countess Kniphausen and others in France and Germany
a letter entitled _The Last Hours of Jane Lead by an Eye and Ear
Witness_. Five years before her death Mrs. Lead's spiritual diary was
published under the title, _A Fountain of Gardens, watered by the
Rivers of Divine pleasure, and springing up in all the variety of
spiritual plants, blown up by the pure Breath into Paradise. To which
is prefixed, A Poem, introductory to the Philadelphia Age, called
Solomon's Porch, or The Beautiful gate to Wisdom's Temple_.


[Sidenote: Susannah Annesley, Mrs. Wesley (1670-1742)]

One of the most notable women of the early eighteenth century was
Susannah Wesley, the mother of John and Charles Wesley. She came of a
fine old Nottinghamshire family, and her father, Dr. Annesley, a man
of power and influence, "the St. Paul of the Nonconformists," secured
for his children an education suitable to their birth. At twenty-one
Susannah, a beautiful and gifted young woman, married Samuel Wesley
and entered upon her career as wife of a rector of humble position
and small means.

It is said that large families either submerge the individual, or
result in characters of exceptionally fine discipline. From this test
Susannah emerged triumphant. She was the twenty-fifth child of her
father, and in the first twenty-one years of her married life she had
nineteen children. So, as child and parent, she was always in close
touch with many varied personalities, an experience the conditions of
which demanded both firmness and flexibility.

Her married life seemed made up of difficulties. Most of it was
passed in a remote rectory, at Epworth, in the Lincolnshire
fens, among the crudest and most boorish people.[174] Not even
the strictest economy could hold the outgo within the meager
limits of the rector's stipend. There were fevers, small-pox, and
other diseases to combat, and five of the children died young.
There were also disasters through fire and flood and through the
hostility of malicious parishioners, but Mrs. Wesley held herself
steadfast to her ideals. Her spirit was never daunted. In the most
unpromising environment, under the most adverse conditions, she
created a family life remarkable for its order, serenity, good
breeding, and aspiration. Even as a child the quality of her mind
and character had been apparent. It is reported that at thirteen,
having heard at home much discussion of the points at issue between
the Nonconformists and the Church of England, she had reviewed
the questions for herself and had decided in favor of the Church.
Throughout her married life she showed the same independence and
self-reliance. Mr. and Mrs. Wesley were always very happy together,
but she was in no sense the ideal submissive wife of the eighteenth
century. She wrote to her son John when he was in Oxford, "'T is
a misfortune almost peculiar to our family that your father and I
seldom think alike."[175] She considered King William a usurper and
consistently refused to say Amen to the rector's prayers for the new
monarch. Mr. Wesley celebrated the victory of Blenheim in a poem,
but Mrs. Wesley disapproved of the war and she wrote: "Since I am
not satisfied of the lawfulness of the war, I cannot beg a blessing
on our arms till I can have the opinion of one wiser and a more
competent judge than myself in this point; namely, whether a private
person that had no hand in the beginning of the war but did always
disapprove of it may, notwithstanding, implore God's blessing on it,
and pray for the good success of those arms which were taken up, I
think unlawfully." And she declined to join in the worship on the day
appointed for prayers for the success of English troops.[176]

Mrs. Wesley had a natural genius for teaching and she became the
school-mistress of her family. Her methods were uniform and rigorous.
At five each child was given in one day, during two sessions of three
hours each, such effective tutoring in the alphabet that by night he
knew it and could begin reading the Book of Genesis the next day.
The various studies counted necessary followed in due order. Each
child was kept closely to the task in hand and the progress made was
surprising. Mrs. Wesley said, "It is almost incredible what a child
may be taught in a quarter of a year by a vigorous application if it
have but tolerable capacity and good health." The virtues inculcated
were prompt obedience, quiet manners, correct speech, and courtesy.
The religious training of the children received especial emphasis.
Mrs. Wesley wrote out for them a clear series of explanatory comments
on the Catechism and the Creed, she trained them to take part in
family devotions, and once a week she met each child for an hour of
private religious conversation and instruction. So precious were
these hours to the children that when John was a Fellow in Oxford,
he wrote urging his mother to devote her thought and prayer to him
during the Thursday evening hour that had been his.

Mrs. Wesley's devout ministrations to her own family, during her
husband's absence, became known to some of the neighbors who
desired to join her circle. The numbers increased so rapidly that
on the first Sunday of February, 1712, more than two hundred were
present and many went away for want of room. The curate objected to
these meetings and Mr. Wesley wrote in deprecation of them. Mrs.
Wesley, too, was seriously in doubt whether one of her sex could
find Scripture authority for thus breaking the bread of life to the
people. But the manifest needs of the poor parishioners and their
eagerness for the gospel prevailed over all doubts and the meetings
continued.

The power of Mrs. Wesley in her own home and immediate neighborhood
was, through her son John, felt throughout England. Mr. Winchester
says truly:

  John Wesley was the son of his mother. From her he inherited his
  logical cast of mind, his executive capacity, his inflexibility
  of will, his union of independence of judgment with respect for
  authority, his deep religious temper. And all the characteristics
  were developed and fixed by his early training. His precision
  and order, his gift of organization and mastery of details, his
  notions of education, even some specific rules and customs of his
  religious societies, can be traced to his mother's discipline. It
  is often said that Methodism began in the University of Oxford:
  with more truth it might be said that it began in Susannah
  Wesley's nursery.[177]

The religious writers so far mentioned only partially represent the
great amount of similar literary activity. In many homes where rank
or wealth made social diversions an alluring possibility there was
carried on by wives and daughters not only a life of austere piety
and great practical benevolence, but a life also of intellectual
ambitions and instincts. The fact that many of the questions which
these ladies discussed are now dead issues cannot obscure the more
significant fact that on questions then counted vital they wrote
always with energy, often with logical acumen, and sometimes with
effectiveness. The home and social life that emerges from scattered
hints and records in these religious writings is as remote from
that portrayed in contemporary court memoirs or diaries as is the
general tone of _Paradise Lost_ or _Pilgrim's Progress_, and is worth
dwelling upon as illustrative of that body of almost unrecognized
solid morality that gave to Jeremy Collier a background of public
approval when he attacked the immorality of the stage, and through
the stage, the immorality of the stage-going people.


WRITERS ON PRACTICAL BENEFICENCE

The piety that finds genuine expression in the writings of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had almost as frequent
expression in the practical necessities of daily life. On the great
ladies of the land was laid the responsibility for the physical
well-being, the education, and the happiness of those beneath them in
birth and wealth. Responsibilities now provided for by multifarious
overworked organizations then devolved upon individuals. And many
women in the distribution of their money and leisure showed so much
insight and practical ability as to become ruling influences in
their communities. The fame of some of these women spread through
the nation. The combination which they showed of munificent giving,
on the one hand, and of rigid self-discipline, on the other, exalted
them almost into saints. The two ladies who most fully illustrate the
type are Mrs. Bovey and Lady Elizabeth Hastings. Their learning was
chiefly in the realm of theology.


[Sidenote: Catherine Riches, Mrs. Bovey (1670-1726)]

Mrs. Bovey,[178] the daughter of a London merchant, was a great
heiress and a great beauty and was consequently much sought after.
At fifteen she married William Bovey, Esq., Lord of the Manor of
Flaxley, Gloucestershire. After seven years of unhappiness she was
left a childless widow with a large fortune at her command. She
refused to marry again, but entered into a close friendship with Mrs.
Mary Pope. The two ladies lived together in retirement for thirty-two
years, making it the purpose of their lives to manage Mrs. Bovey's
fortune and estate and to dispose of most of the income in wisely
regulated charities. Mrs. Bovey was the subject of much praise from
all kinds of people. Mrs. Manley gives the following vivid picture of
her:

  She is one of those lofty, black and lasting beauties that strike
  with Reverence, and yet Delight; there is no Feature in her Face,
  nor any thing in her Person, her Air and Manner, that could be
  exchanged for any others, and she not prove a Loser: Then as to
  her Mind and Conduct, her Judgment, her Sense, her Stedfastness,
  her Reading, her Wit and Conversation, they are admirable; so
  much above what is most lovely in the sex, shut but your Eyes,
  (and allow for the Musick of her Voice) your Mind would be
  charmed, as thinking yourself conversing with the most knowing,
  most refined of ours; free from all Levity and Superficialness,
  her Sense is sold [solid?] and perspicuous. Lovely Porcia is so
  polite, so neat, so perfect an economist, that in taking in all
  the greater Beauties of Life, she does not disdain to stoop to
  the most inferiour; in short, she knows all that a Man can know,
  without despising what, as a woman, she should not be ignorant of.

In 1714 Steele dedicated the second volume of his _Ladies' Library_
to her. With his genius for giving delightful compliments, he says:
"Thus with the charms of your own sex, and knowledge not inferior to
the more learned of ours, a closet, a bower, or some scene of rural
nature, has constantly robbed the world of a ladies appearance, who
never was beheld but with gladness to her visitants, nor ever admired
but with pain to herself."

Dr. Hickes, in the Preface to his _Linguarum Septentrionalium
Thesaurus_ (1702), eulogized this _præstantissima & honestissima
matrona_ as the _Angliæ nostræ Hypatia Christiana_. She had received
no formal education, yet by frequent converse with some of the most
learned men of the day and by intense application to study she
gained a great share of knowledge. She was interested in educational
matters, and she gave with particular pleasure to organizations for
the training of poor children. At her death Mrs. Pope, her executor,
was instructed to pay large sums to such charitable schemes as
the gray-coat school, the blue-coat school, the charity school of
Christ's Church Parish in Southwark, and a college to be founded in
the Island of Bermuda.

Mrs. Bovey's attractive personality may be further emphasized by the
persistence of the rumor identifying her with "the perverse widow"
whose charms and whose coldness destroyed the peace of Sir Roger de
Coverley's heart. Her beauty, her wealth, her learning, her kindness
of heart, her general beneficence, and, finally, her inaccessibility,
made her admired, loved, and longed for, till she was idealized into
something quite above human nature's daily food.

Catherine Riches's father belonged to the wealthy merchant class
of London. It would be interesting if we could know the kind of
home life and training given to this young city heiress. Was it the
unhappy disciplinary years of her married life that turned her so
decisively from the pomps and pleasures apparently awaiting one so
young and beautiful and rich?


[Sidenote: Lady Elizabeth Hastings (1688-1739)]

Lady Elizabeth Hastings was the daughter of Theophilus, seventh
earl of Huntingdon, by his first wife, through whom, in 1704,
she came into a fortune and the possession of Ledstone Park, an
estate near Pontefract, Yorkshire. From twenty-two to her death at
fifty-seven Lady Elizabeth lived almost continuously at Ledstone. Of
these thirty-five years not a striking event is recorded. Her days
were "bound each to each by natural piety" and her tranquil life
developed along an uninterrupted course of charity and devotion.

To live in Yorkshire, in the eighteenth century, was to be buried.
Social and intellectual life were alike without sustenance. Yet
from this remote home Lady Elizabeth's fame traveled to London and
she became the subject of remarkable eulogies. Number 42 of _The
Tatler_, written possibly by Congreve, appeared in 1709 when the
"divine Aspasia" had been but five years at Ledstone. She must have
gone there with well-formed ideas of life, for with no vacillations,
no period of experimentation, she seems to have entered immediately
on that career of religious contemplation and good works which
had, in five years, given her the reputation of being a "female
philosopher" of the most exalted type. _The Tatler_ paper says that
she put into practice the schemes and plans the ancient sages had
thought beautiful but inimitable. Steele, in _The Tatler_, number 49,
gave perfect expression to the reverent admiration with which Lady
Elizabeth had come to be regarded:

  Aspasia must therefore be allowed to be the first of the
  beauteous Order of Love, whose unaffected freedom, and conscious
  innocence, give her the attendance of the graces in all her
  actions. The awful distance which we bear towards her in all our
  thoughts of her, are certain instances of her being the truest
  object of love of any of her sex. In this accomplished lady, love
  is the constant effect, because it is never the design. Yet,
  though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to
  behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; and to love
  her is a liberal education.

A somewhat closer view of the life of the Lady Elizabeth comes from
casual notes by Thoresby who, in his travels about the northern
counties between 1711 and 1724, frequently spent a few days at
Ledstone. From the unconnected details scattered through his letters
and diaries there emerges a fairly clear picture of a great house
exactly ordered on the basis of the religious life. Private prayers,
family devotions in which all the servants were included, at several
stated hours each day, preparation for church festivals, frequent
assemblages for the reading of sermons and holy books, refreshing
conferences on mooted points of doctrine, friendly communion on the
present and future joys of the Christian, filled the days to the
exclusion of worldly interests. No mother superior could have felt a
responsibility more definite or have exerted a power more minutely
organized for the promotion of the spiritual welfare of those under
her charge.

Lady Hastings was also engaged in schemes of wider application. She
became as noted for her benefactions as for the saintliness of her
recluse life. "Human learning as the handmaid of religion" was the
basis on which her gifts were made. She therefore became definitely
associated with the new schemes springing up in England for the
education of poor boys and girls. In one of Thoresby's visits they
walked across the fields to see the new school she was building and
endowing for the absolute maintenance and education of fourteen poor
girls. The _Victoria History of the County of Yorkshire_ records
"Lady Hastings's Schools" at Thorp Arch, Ledsham, Collingham, and
Wick. The formal deeds conveying these schools to trustees are
dated in 1738, probably because at that time she knew she could not
recover from the cancerous affection of which she died the following
year. But some of these schools had been established and supported
by her much earlier. The account given of the Ledsham school is
typical of the others: "These schools are part of the general charity
founded by Lady Elizabeth Hastings by deed 14 December, 1738. In
a charity school for boys 20 scholars were to be taught and one
youth between the ages of 17 and 23 as a charity school-master. The
girls' school was for 20 scholars, who were to be clothed partly out
of the proceeds of their spinning. The boys' school is now public
and elementary, while the girls' school gives a free education in
elementary subjects and household duties. The expenses of this
school amount to about £400 a year, and this is wholly derived from
the endowment." Lady Elizabeth also left a large bequest to Queen's
College, Oxford, for poor scholars from schools in Yorkshire,
Westmoreland, and Cumberland.[179] Berkeley's missionary project
found in her one of its most generous supporters, and her name headed
many a list of charities for educational and religious purposes.

So well known did she become that in 1735 a remarkable tribute to
her was planned and partly executed. An anonymous donor offered to
_The Gentleman's Magazine_ a series of prizes for the four best poems
entitled _The Christian Hero_. The chief prize was to be a "GOLD
MEDAL (_intrinsic value about Ten Pounds) which shall have the_ HEAD
_of the Rt. Hon. the Lady_ ELIZABETH HASTINGS _on one Side, and that
of James Oglethorpe Esq. on the other, with this Motto_, ENGLAND MAY
CHALLENGE THE WORLD, 1736."[180] This announcement was in December,
1735. In the January number for 1736 the editor expressed his great
concern at having given offense to a Lady, whose name even they did
not venture to mention again, by the publication of the proposed Gold
Medal prize without her consent.[181] In February the donor humbly
asked her Ladyship's pardon for the uneasiness he had so undesignedly
caused her, saying that he had not the honor to know her personally,
but had been animated solely by the feeling of respect and deference
due to the eminence of her character.[182]

When Lady Hastings died, in 1739, _The Gentleman's Magazine_
published a memorial notice said to be by Dr. Johnson. In heavy,
analytic fashion it sums up her reputation for sanctity and
benevolence, and closes with the statement that "scarce any age
has afforded a greater Blessing to many, or a brighter Pattern to
all."[183] The year after her death, Law, the noted author of _The
Serious Call_, cited Lady Hastings as a sufficient refutation of the
charge that saintliness was not a natural product of the English
Church. In 1741 Wilford's stately folio contained a laudatory account
of Lady Hastings, and in 1742 Mr. Barnard published _An Historical
Character, relating to the holy and exemplary Life of the Right
Honourable Lady Elizabeth Hastings. To which are added, 1. One of the
Codicils of her last Will, setting forth her Devise of Lands to the
Provost and Scholars of Queen's College in Oxford, for the interest
of 18 Northern Schools. 2. Some Observations therefrom. 3. A Schedule
of her other perpetual Charities, with the Principal Rules for their
Administration._

Few of the people who praised Lady Hastings knew her personally.
Even more strongly than in the case of Mrs. Bovey there seems to
have grown up in the public mind a kind of idealized picture of her.
She was a saint set apart from the world, not only by a voluntary
isolation, but by virtue of her beauty, beneficence, and nobility.
She was enshrined. The reverence, affection, and praise accorded her
have a definite note of Platonism. She becomes an embodiment of the
highest charm and excellence, and the actual "Lady Betty" seems lost
in the process.

What were the diversions at Ledstone? Lady Elizabeth's four younger
half-sisters, Anne, Frances, Catherine, and Margaret, usually lived
with her. After the death of Lady Elizabeth, Margaret, who had
become a convert to Methodism, married one of the leaders in that
new communion and it was through her influence that Selina, the
wife of Theophilus, the brother of these young ladies, was likewise
converted to Methodism. The five sisters were apparently a unit in
their predisposition to a religious life. But they were too young and
too free not to have had some other elements in their life. Had they
any such relief as the book-binding at Little Gidding? Our knowledge
of the life at Ledstone is tantalizingly incomplete because every
one who wrote about Lady Elizabeth took at once an exalted tone, and
generalized his picture into abstractions.


[Sidenote: Lady Huntingdon (1707-91)]

Closely connected with Lady Hastings and the life at Ledstone is
another leader in the religious world, the famous Lady Huntingdon,
the wife of Lady Hastings's brother Theophilus. Margaret Hastings had
accepted the doctrines of the Methodists and through her influence
Lady Huntingdon allied herself with the same obscure body. Lady
Huntingdon was from childhood introspective and religious. As the
daughter of Earl Ferrars and the wife of the Earl of Huntingdon, a
brilliant social career was almost inevitable. But in the midst of
the splendid scenes in which she took a vivacious and apparently
happy part she was spiritually aloof. She was always resisting the
encroachments of the world, and striving by self-denial, a rigid
course of devotional exercises, and systematic beneficences, to
secure inward peace. But she never came into a free and joyous
religious consciousness till she accepted the new doctrines taught
by the group of Oxford men known as Methodists.[184] In 1739 she
sent for John and Charles Wesley to visit her and she became a
fearless advocate of their views. After her husband's death in 1746
she devoted her time, her great wealth, and her influence to the
cause of Methodism. With several clergymen, her two daughters, her
sisters, Anne and Frances, and a few friends, she made a sort of
home missionary tour from Bath through Wales for the purpose of
studying the needs of the poor in the matter of religious education.
In 1748-49 she opened her fine mansion in Park Street, London, for
Methodist preaching services. The most distinguished men and women
of the time attended these services, but not always as reverent
listeners. The whole scheme was met with varying degrees of ridicule.
Coventry wrote a description of the meetings at Park Lane, it is
supposed, in his account of "Lady Harridan" and her assembly:

  It was a sisterhood of the godly, met together to bewail the
  vanities of human life, and congratulate one another on their
  breaking from the enchantments of a sinful world.

  The causes which had converted them to Methodism, were as various
  as the characters of the converts. Some, the ill success of their
  charms had driven to despair; others, a consciousness of too
  great success had touched with repentance.... But the greater
  part, like the noble president, were women fatigued and worn out
  in the vanities of life, the superannuated jades of pleasure,
  who, being grown sick of themselves, and weary of the world,
  were now fled to Methodism, as the newest sort of folly that had
  lately been invented.[185]

One particularly offensive element in Methodism to people who set
store by birth and breeding was its leveling effect. Social position
counted for little in the face of the all-important classification
into saints and sinners. The Duchess of Buckingham wrote in violent
protest: "The doctrines of these preachers are most repulsive, and
strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards their
superiors, in perpetually endeavoring to level all ranks and do away
with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you have a
heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl upon the earth.
This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that
your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at variance with
high rank and good breeding."[186]

The fruition of Lady Huntingdon's remarkable work belongs later in
the century, but its inception is between 1739 and 1760 and is of
great importance.


DRAMATIC WRITERS

In July, 1867, there was dispersed at Sotheby's rooms the library
of the Reverend A. J. Stainforth. "The collection was formed
entirely of works of British and American poetesses and female
dramatic writers. The books were arranged in over three thousand
lots, and the catalogue extends to 166 pages." That Mr. Stainforth
spared neither money nor diligence in securing the books for this
collection is evident from a single illustration, namely, his search
for so obscure a book as _Eliza's Babes_. "When Mr. Stainforth was
forming his collection of _Female Poets_ without regard to cost,
he failed to procure a copy of _Eliza's Babes_, although the hue
and cry was circulated far and near."[187] I have not had access to
this catalogue and I do not know how many items the "three thousand
lots" contain, nor how many individual names are catalogued. If the
arrangement is chronological it would doubtless serve to indicate the
very rapid spread of female authors after about 1750. Yet even the
century from 1650 to 1750 is not without its large contribution. In
the preceding sections of this study there has been some indication
of the mass of devotional and polemical writing by women. Among
poets, playwrights, essayists, novelists, and letter-writers we shall
find not only an even greater volume of production, but work of
higher intrinsic value.


[Sidenote: The Duchess of Newcastle (cir. 1625-1673)]

The Duchess of Newcastle wrote numerous plays. Twenty-one were
published in 1662, and in 1668 five more appeared. They are
described as hardly more than allegorical dialogues arranged in
successive scenes, but without plot, and showing no power of dramatic
portrayal. The Duchess herself is evidently the original of several
of the characters. In her plays as in her scientific studies the
particular boast of the Duchess is that whatever she writes is spun
out of her own fancy:

      But noble readers, do not think my plays
      Are such as have been writ in former days;
      As Johnson, Shakespear, Beaumont, Fletcher writ,
      Mine want their learning, reading, language, wit.
      The Latin phrases, I could never tell,
      But Johnson could, which made him write so well.
      Greek, Latin poets I could never read,
      Not their historians, but our English Speed:
      I could not steal their wit, nor plots out-take;
      All my plays plots, my own poor brain did make.
      From Plutarch's story, I ne'er took a plot,
      Nor from romances, nor from Don Quixote.[188]

It goes without saying that these plays were not suited for stage
presentation, and, in point of fact, very few of them were ever put
into rehearsal. One of the plays that did appear drew a great crowd,
but the motive was curiosity to see the Duchess rather than any
interest in the play. Pepys, who went to hear this play March 30,
1667, wrote concerning it, and its author:

  The whole story of this lady is a romance and all she does is
  romantic. Her footmen in velvet coats, and herself in antique
  dress, as they say; and was the other day at her own play, "The
  Humorous Lovers"; the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote,
  but she and her Lord mightily pleased with it: and she at the
  end, made her respects to the players, and did give them thanks.
  There is as much expectation of her coming to Court, that so
  people may come to see her, as if it were the Queen of Sheba.


[Sidenote: Aphra Amis, Mrs. Behn (1640-1689)]

The only important dramatic work by a woman during the second half
of the seventeenth century was by Mrs. Behn. She was born at Wye,
in Kent.[189] While she was still very young the Amis family went
to Surinam, West Indies, where Aphra's girlhood was spent. At about
twenty-three[190] she returned to England and soon thereafter married
Mr. Behn, a London merchant of Dutch parentage. At his death, before
1666, she was left nearly penniless. For a short time she was in
Holland as a secret political agent for the English court. But her
services received scant official recognition and the pay was so
meager and uncertain that she returned to England and began to look
about for other means of support. The new passion for the theater was
not yet exhausted and she turned instinctively to play-writing as
her most hopeful resource. During the years 1670-1689 her literary
output extended into many other fields and shows continuous work at
high pressure. Not only was she one of the chief assets of the Duke's
Theater as a playwright, but she also translated French verse and
prose; she wrote numerous occasional poems; she edited miscellanies;
and she wrote novels. Her comedies had a most flattering contemporary
vogue and some of them maintained their popularity well into the
next century. She satisfied the taste of the day for rapid, bustling
plots, with many and varied characters, and her intrigues were
cleverly manipulated, while she surpassed most of her contemporaries
in vivacious, easy, rapid dialogue. She is never dull or insipid. Her
plays show that she had a vigorous mind, an overflow of spirits, a
reckless mental energy. There is apparent a sense of power conscious
of itself and careless of precedents or restrictions. In defiance of
Ben Jonson, Dryden, and Shadwell she spoke contemptuously of "the
musty unities." The material for her plays she took wherever she
found it, from preceding plays, from romances, from real life, used
it, made it over, and often so improved it that she could justifiably
laugh at charges of plagiarism. One charge she could not evade
and that had to do with the immorality of her writings. Dryden,
Shadwell, Wycherley, and Etherege, and the audiences who applauded
their plays, seemed to find the _vis comica_ in an open indecency
of character, situation, and conversation that is to-day almost
unbelievable. And of Mrs. Behn it must be admitted that she vied with
the most corrupt. She said, in extenuation, as Dryden also said in
answer to Jeremy Collier's strictures, that she wrote to please. She
did not consider comedy "a reforming or converting agent," it was
meant to be "an entertainment." Her emphasis on the vicious elements
of the life about her was a clear case of supply and demand, but it
had an unhappy personal result. There early gathered about her name
a hostile tradition based on the fact that she was not only a woman
writer, but an eminently successful woman writer, and on the further
fact that, being a woman, she had not the modest reserve for which
the chaste Orinda was idolized, but presented debaucheries in the
bold and open manner characteristic of contemporary male playwrights.
This hostile tradition, crystallized by Pope in a witty couplet,[191]
became a commonplace of adverse criticism, and Astræa's undeniable
talents have sunk into oblivion. A general revival of Mrs. Behn's
comedies would be impossible, undesirable, but by the student of
social and political history in the Restoration period they cannot be
ignored.

[Illustration: MRS. APHRA BEHN

From a picture by Mary Beale in the collection of his Grace the Duke
of Buckingham. Drawn by T. Uwins. Engraved by J. Fittler, A.R.A. From
an engraving in _Effigies Poeticae_, London, 1824, Vol. II]

Mrs. Behn's novels are now as little known as her plays, but in her
own day were very popular. _Oroonoko_, the first and by far the
best, was based on her life in Surinam. At a time when French heroic
romances, with their high-flown adventures, unreal characters, and
stilted dialogue, were the only works of fiction, Mrs. Behn's short,
simple, vigorous, and affecting story of real life comes with a
startling sense of novelty.[192] The vivid portrayal of the cruelties
incident to the slave trade, though probably written without didactic
intent, gives the story a modern humanitarian note not unprophetic of
_Uncle Tom's Cabin_. And the description of the Indian Prince as
the ideal natural man, his innate virtues in their pristine purity
unvitiated by civilization, foreshadows the theories of Rousseau.
The descriptions of nature, however exaggerated, are vivid and
attractive, and show a delight in scenic detail not found again in
fiction before Mrs. Collyer in 1730. Thus in four ways, choice of
real life as a theme, interest in scenery, emphasis on the natural
man, and on humanitarianism, Mrs. Behn's little story links itself
with the novel of the future rather than with the romances of the
past. In the plays Mrs. Behn showed exceptional ability in a realm in
which women have seldom excelled. In her novels she marked out a path
where women have gained marked literary success.

In one other way she is an important, outstanding figure. She was
the first woman in England who made authorship a profession, the
first one who definitely set out to earn her living by her pen. It
is unfortunate that the first literary lady to achieve "economic
independence" should likewise be the first whose writings were
notably immoral. But it is a law of human nature that an unaccustomed
freedom seldom contents itself in its early exercise of power with
destroying merely the unjust bonds by which it has been confined.
Freedom is likely to begin by being license. And when Aphra Behn
so far defied convention as to compete with men as a playwright on
the public stage, when she openly criticized her contemporaries and
boasted that her comedies did not fall below most that she read, she
had so set herself apart in an unfeminine realm that prudishness and
decency fell together. Psychologically the actress and the writer of
comedies seem to have gone through similar experiences.


[Sidenote: Plays between 1696 and 1706]

Mrs. Behn had no feminine contemporary rivals, but later in the
century a number of women attempted to write for the stage. In
Genest's record for Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields seven plays
by six women are listed in 1696. In the ensuing ten years at least
eighteen more plays by women appeared. This exceptional activity
did not pass without satiric comment. In 1697 "W. M.'s" _Female
Wits_,[193] with its attack on Miss Trotter, Mrs. Manley, and
Mrs. Pix, was acted six times without intermission, a run showing
exceptional popularity. In 1702 the hostility of the wits towards
women playwrights was again voiced in Gildon's _The Two Stages_.[194]
Genest says that about this time "prejudice against females rose
so high that Mrs. Centlivre in _Stolen Heiress_ and Mrs. Pix in
_Conquest of Spain_ spoke of their plays as if by men."[195] The
authors of these twenty-five plays were Miss Trotter, Mrs. Pix, Mrs.
Manley, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Wiseman, "A Lady," "A Young Lady," "A
Lady of Quality," and "A Club of Ladies." Fourteen of the plays
were tragedies, the best one being, probably, Miss Trotter's _Fatal
Friendship_, almost the only one of the fourteen that survived on
the stage after its initial season. The writers of comedy were more
successful.

Few of these authors need particular notice. Miss Trotter's work
has already been discussed.[196] Mrs. Manley's three plays appeared
at ten-year intervals, 1696, 1706, 1717. They were unsuccessful on
the stage and they have no qualities that would claim the reader's
attention. It is in fiction, not in drama, that Mrs. Manley gained
her reputation.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Pix (1666-1720?)]

Mrs. Pix, daughter of the Reverend Roger Griffith, Vicar of
Nettlested in Oxfordshire, and wife of George Pix, a merchant tailor
of London, was thirty when she brought out her first play. During
the ensuing ten years she put on the stage five tragedies, one
comedy, and possibly other plays not under her name. Her tragedies,
though written in blank verse, yet belong to the heroic _genre_,
and their chief interest lies in the fact that they represent that
_genre_ in its dying throes. In Mrs. Pix's tragedies the heroic
play of Dryden's day could look upon its enfeebled and distorted
image. We have the war background, the remoteness of time and place,
the historical source with free alterations of persons and events,
that mark the heroic drama. The type characters are the same. The
heroine is unapproachable in beauty, unassailable in virtue. The
hero, godlike in personal prowess, the idol of the army, framed by
nature to be the darling joy of womankind, cares for glory only that
he may lay it at the feet of his beloved. Blest by her he will leave
unenvied monarchs to "fight for this Dunghil Earth." This noble pair,
joined by indissoluble vows or by a secret marriage, are subjected
by the plot to the machinations of the beautiful wicked woman in
whose heart has sprung into being a passion for the hero, and to the
arrogant demands of the tyrant who claims the heroine as his prey.
The result is disaster and the last act is a holocaust. Fights,
murders, and suicides carry off all the important _dramatis personæ_.
Disguises, mistaken identity, the ravings of sudden madness, ghosts,
and secret documents, determine the events of the play. Passion is
torn into exclamatory tatters from the first scene to the last. We
have rant and bluster and tortured similes, until taste, good sense,
and correct English suffer the same fate as the chief characters.
The description of Mrs. Pix as "a fat female author," appropriately
called "Mrs. Wellfed," would prepare us for something more placid
than the chaos into which she leads us.

The one possible explanation of Mrs. Pix's acceptance year after
year by the audiences of Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields is that
the business of her plays never lags. They are short, full of action
and surprising turns. An event is never delayed by a disquisition.
They also gave excellent opportunity for scenic effects of palaces,
prisons, and camps.


[Sidenote: Susanna Freeman, Mrs. Centlivre (1680?-1723)]

The only woman writer of plays of real importance in this period is
Susanna Centlivre.[197] She was the daughter of a Mr. Freeman of
Holbeach, Lincolnshire. He is said to have had a considerable estate
at the time of the Restoration, but being a zealous dissenter, he was
persecuted, his estates were confiscated, and he was obliged to seek
refuge in Ireland, where Susanna was born. Her early life is involved
in obscurity, but there cling to her name biographical details of
a picturesque and romantic sort, though of rather questionable
authenticity. Left an orphan at nine and subjected to the ill-usage
of a stepmother, the child, at twelve, finally escapes and makes her
way to London which she enters penniless, innocent, beautiful. She
is rescued by a Cambridge student, a Mr. Hammond, and disguised as
a boy she accompanies him to the University. Later she marries the
nephew of Stephen Fox, but is left a widow before she is sixteen. A
second marriage to a Mr. Carroll results in a second widowhood before
she is eighteen. At twenty her first tragedy is played at Drury Lane.
She appears soon after this as an actress in country theaters. Mrs.
Behn and Mrs. Haywood could ask no richer material for an adventure
novel. Then suddenly the scene changes. The buffeted Susanna marries
Mr. Centlivre, Queen Anne's chief pastry-cook, and settles down into
a comfortable, orderly, and apparently happy domestic life, of which,
however, we know in reality even less than of her early kaleidoscopic
career.[198] The events of her life are the presentation and
publication of her plays.

Before her marriage in 1706 she had begun the series of comedies of
which, between 1703 and 1722, she wrote seventeen. They were all
successful, and four of them, _The Gamester_ (1705), _The Busy Body_
(1709), _The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret_ (1714), and _A Bold
Stroke for a Wife_ (1718), held a fairly prominent place on the stage
through the century.

In 1761 there was published a fine edition of her works in three
volumes. There is a preliminary address "To the World" in which an
anonymous woman endeavors to do justice to "The Manes of the never
to be forgotten Mrs. Centlivre." She thus recounts the difficulties
Mrs. Centlivre encountered as a female author:

  She was even ashamed to proclaim her own great Genius, probably
  because the Custom of the Times discountenanced poetical
  Excellence in a Female. The Gentlemen of the Quill published it
  not, perhaps envying her superior Talents; and her Bookseller,
  complying with national Prejudices, put a fictitious Name to her
  Love's Contrivance, thro' Fear that the Work shou'd be condemned
  if known to be Feminine. With modest Diffidence she sent her
  Performances, like Orphans, into the World, without so much as a
  Nobleman to protect them; but they did not need to be supported
  by Interest, they were admired as soon as known, their real
  Standard, Merit, brought crowding Spectators to the playhouses,
  and the female Author, tho' unknown, heard Applauses, such as
  have since been heaped on that great Author and Actor _Colley
  Cibber_.

  Her play of the Busy Body, when known to be the Work of a Woman
  scarce defray'd the Expences of the First Night. The thin
  audience were pleased, and caused a full House the Second; the
  Third was crowded, and so on to the Thirteenth, when it was
  stopt, on account of the advanced Season; but the following
  Winter it appear'd again with Applause, and for Six Nights
  successively, was acted by rival Players, both at _Drury
  Lane_ and at the _Hay-Market_ Houses. See here the Effects of
  Prejudice, a Woman who did Honour to the Nation, suffer'd because
  she was a Woman. Are these things fit and becoming a free-born
  People, who call themselves polite and civilized! Hold! let my
  Pen stop, and not reproach the present Age for the Sins of their
  Fathers....

  A Poet is born so, not made by Rules; and is there not an equal
  Chance that the Poetical Birth should be female as well as
  male?... I could wish that some young Ladies of my Acquaintance,
  now in Boarding Schools, had classical Education, which would
  improve their Minds, furnish them with a more general Knowledge,
  and of course better fit them for Conversation, and the
  Management of Business.

The author of "To the World" finds great satisfaction in the union
of Mrs. Lennox with "Lord Corke and Mr. Samuel Johnson" in the
translation of _Brumoy's Greek Theatre_.

  This convinces me [she says] that not only that barbarous Custom
  of denying Women to have Souls, begins to be rejected as foolish
  and absurd, but also that foolish Assertion, that Female Minds
  are not capable of producing literary Works, equal even to those
  of _Pope_, now loses Ground, and probably the next Age may be
  taught by our pens that our Geniuses have been hitherto cramped
  and smothered, but not extinguished, and that the Sovereignty
  which the male Part of the Creation have, until now usurped over
  us, is unreasonably arbitrary: And, further, that our natural
  Abilities entitle us to a larger Share, not only in Literary
  Decisions, but that, with the present Directors, we are equally
  entitled to Power both in Church and State....

In 1764 Baker, in _Biographia Dramatica_, gave an account of Mrs.
Centlivre's work, and most eighteenth-century dramatic collections
included plays by her. In 1776 _The New English Theatre_, which
professed to assemble "the most Valuable Plays which have been Acted
on the London Stage," published _The Busy Body_, _A Bold Stroke for
a Wife_, and _The Wonder_. Her plays were included by John Bell
in various collections from 1776 to 1792. Mrs. Inchbald, in her
_British Theatre_ (1808), and Oxberry, in _The New English Drama_,
1818-1824, carried the publication of her plays into the nineteenth
century. Such brief notices as occur are highly laudatory. Mr. Baker
says: "In a word we cannot help giving it as our opinion, that if
we do not allow her to be the very first of our female writers for
the stage, she has but one above her, and may justly be placed next
to her predecessor in dramatic glory, the great Mrs. Behn." Nearly
half a century later Mrs. Inchbald gave even stronger praise when
she said that Mrs. Centlivre "ranks in the first class of our comic
dramatists." Of the _Busy Body_ Mrs. Inchbald said: "This comedy is
by far her best work. In excellence of fable, strength of character,
and intricacy of occurrences, it forms one of the most entertaining
exhibitions the theatre can boast." Of _The Wonder_ she wrote:
"Garrick thought Don Felix worthy his most powerful exertions, in
describing the passion of jealousy; and his character was upon the
lists with the favorite parts he performed.... Mrs. Centlivre has
somewhere said 'the Muses, like most females, are least liberal
to their own sex.' She was ungrateful if she did not acknowledge
her obligation to them in the composition of this work; for they
presided with no niggardly influence over the whole production."

Modern study of Mrs. Centlivre's work has taken a surprising turn. It
has to do entirely with _Quellen_ and _Verhältnisse_. In 1900-1905
there were seven German dissertations dealing with the sources of her
plays.[199]

The impulse to play-writing seems to have expended itself with Mrs.
Centlivre. Hannah Cowley's popular _Belle's Stratagem_ (1782) is
the only other play of even moderate importance through the rest of
the century. The situation with regard to play-writing is rather
curious. Virtuous ladies were at liberty to write tragedies because
tragedies were supposed to be moral and elevating. But unfortunately
none of these ladies succeeded in tragedy. On the other hand, ladies
who were not virtuous wrote comedies and were eminently successful.
The realm between tragedy and comedy, the sentimental comedy, in its
combination of didacticism and morality with social studies from
middle-class life and the opportunity for rapid intrigue, might have
seemed the very medium in which women could most advantageously work.
But the successful sentimental comedies from _The Conscious Lovers_
to _False Delicacy_ were written by men playwrights.


GENERAL LEARNING AND LITERARY WORK

Besides the women whose work was sufficiently specialized to be
grouped under particular subjects or species there were many women
to whom learning was itself an avocation with no thought of any
literary outcome, and there were many more whose interests were in
the general field of _belles-lettres_ and who wrote either in verse
or in prose, and on such varied themes as the occasion might suggest.
Since no effective principle of classification suggests itself in
connection with these writers, it will probably be in the interests
of clearness to discuss them in an order as nearly chronological as
may be.


[Sidenote: Joan Philips (fl. 1679)]

An early, almost unknown, little volume of poems, published in 1679
under the title, _Female Poems on Several Occasions. Written by
Ephelia_, is the work of Joan Philips whose portrait accompanies the
poems. Such of Miss Philips's poems as can be dated belong but a year
or two before the publication of the book. She apparently had some
rather close connection with court circles. Her little volume is
dedicated to the "Most Excellent Princess Mary, Dutchess of Richmond
and Lennox"; she sends a congratulatory poem to Charles II on the
discovery of the Popish Plot; and she writes an elegy on Archbishop
Sheldon.

Her poems are not, however, usually concerned with court and state.
The "Several Occasions" calling forth her verse are chiefly amatory
or friendly. Her love-poems are highly personal. From poem to poem
the lady pursues the uneven and finally disastrous course of her love
for "Strephon," sometimes less poetically addressed as "F. G." From
"Love's First Approach" to Strephon's final decisive nuptials with
a wealthier Fair One the hopes and despairs of Ephelia are spread
before us. She can find no surcease from sorrow. Books fail her as
a resource, and her pen proves as recalcitrant as that of the White
King in Looking Glass Land.

      Sometimes with Books I would divert my mind,
      But nothing there but F's and G's I find.
      Sometimes to ease my Grief, my Pen I take
      But it no letters but F. G. will make.

Miss Philips's friendship poems, in their addresses to "the honoured
Eugenia," "the beauteous Marinda," to "Damon," and to "Phylocles
inviting him to friendship" show how definitely Ephelia formed
herself on the model of the great Orinda whom she praises as having
reached the summit of excellence.

Miss Philips also wrote in awe-struck admiration of "Madam _Behn_"
whose "strenuous polite lines" seemed to her a union of "Strong and
Sweet" such as might be envied by the wittiest men. And she followed
in the footsteps of Mrs. Behn to the extent of writing one comedy,
_The Pair-Royal of Coxcombs_ which had the humble success of being
acted at a dancing-school. The deprecatory Prologue and Epilogue were
included in her poems together with some of the love-songs in the
play.

Ephelia seems to spread her life before us, but as a personage in
the real world she escapes us. She and Strephon have faded into
obscurity. She is contemporary in comedy with Mrs. Behn. Had they
some literary comradeship? But twelve years separate the published
work of Joan Philips from that of Mrs. Katherine Philips. Were
the two poetesses perhaps related? Lady Winchilsea was eighteen
when the volume by Ephelia appeared. About fifteen years later we
find Lady Winchilsea as "Ardealia" writing on Friendship to one
"Ephelia." Could it possibly be this Ephelia? Did Ephelia publish
the poems herself with her own portrait as frontispiece? If so she
was strangely lacking in the reserve characteristic of Orinda and
Ardelia. But even with no biographical data whereby to substantiate
or correct the poems, the thin little volume holds its place of
interest because of its early date and because of the literary
ambitions it indicates.


[Sidenote: Anne Killigrew (1660-1685)]

Anne Killigrew came of a family prominent in the court of Charles
II. Her uncle Thomas, the "court wit," was given a patent for the
Theater Royal; her uncle Henry was admiral under James, Duke of York;
her father was chaplain to James and Master of the Savoy; and Anne
was maid of honor to Mary of Modena. She was born in St. Martin's
Lane and died at her father's lodgings within the Cloisters of
Westminster. London and the court were her habitat. Ballard says she
had "a polite education," but no details are given. She apparently
was taught the accomplishments counted necessary for a girl in her
social position. That she went beyond mediocrity in painting we
have already seen.[200] In poetry, also, according to Dryden, she
excelled. The thin volume of her published verse (1686) scarcely
justifies his eulogy, but Wood, in _Athenæ Oxoniensis_, says that
Dryden in no way exceeds the truth. Her poems sent anonymously from
hand to hand received high praise and were even at first attributed
to the best poets of the age. They gradually came to be known as
hers, but she gives no evidence of having suffered any contumely
as a poetess. She has nowhere any complaint of undue or irritating
feminine limitations. She is pessimistic, scornful, rather hard and
drastic, in her judgments, but it is greed for gold, ambition for
place or power, unbridled love, atheism, war, that are the subjects
of her invective. There is not a light or playful, or even a happy,
touch in her poems. They have a crude virility, what Dryden calls a
"noble vigour," and a contemptuous outlook on "the truly wretched
Human Race."

Personally Miss Killigrew must have been attractive. Her epitaph
eulogizes her as a daughter and a sister:

      In a numerous race
      And vertuous, the highest place
      None envy'd her: sisters, brothers,
      Her admirers were and lovers:
      She was to all s' obliging sweet,
      All in one love to her did meet.

And she was an acknowledged favorite at court, especially with her
royal master and mistress. Dryden emphasizes her beauty and charm.
The portrait she painted of herself shows her in no sense averse to
pomps and vanities of attire.[201] In actual life she must have moved
along in fairly smooth accord with the life about her, but there
could have been few ladies within the circle of the court more alien
to it in spirit than Anne Killigrew. It is difficult to place her
mentally amid the gayeties of London life. She presents an anomaly.
To be young, beautiful, gifted, high in social opportunities,
praised and loved, and yet to look out upon life with bitterness
and distaste, to be conscious at twenty-five that all this world
has to offer will turn to dust and ashes in the mouth--such is the
curious combination we find in her. While the few accessible details
concerning her indicate a considerable degree of lovableness, her
poems are those of an implacable moral censor.

Anne Killigrew was but four when Mrs. Philips died, but the spell of
the "Matchless Orinda" descended early upon her, and she gives one of
the earliest of the many eulogies written by women concerning their
distinguished ancestor among British Muses.

      Orinda (Albion, and her sex's grace)
      Ow'd not her glory to a beauteous face:
      It was her radiant soul that shone within,
      Which struck a lustre thro' her outward skin;
      That did her lips and cheeks with roses dye,
      Advanc'd her height, and sparkled in her eye.
      Nor did her sex at all obstruct her fame.
      But high'r 'mongst the stars it fixt her name;
      What she did write, not only all allow'd,
      But ev'ry laurel, to her laurel bow'd!


[Sidenote: Mrs. Evelyn (1635-1709) and Mary Evelyn (1665-85)]

John Evelyn's flattering letter to the Duchess of Newcastle,
already quoted, with its list of learned women, his suggestion to
Lord Cornbury that he add two ladies to his gallery of notables,
the trouble he took to conduct a party of ladies to see the girls'
"colleges" at Hackney, and various references in _Numismata_ (1697)
indicate a genuine interest in the intellectual achievements of
women. Mrs. Evelyn seems at first to have been of a different temper.
She wrote as follows to her son's tutor, Mr. Bohun, in 1672:

  Women were not borne to reade authors, and censure the learned,
  to compare lives and judge of virtues, to give rules of morality,
  and sacrifice to the Muses. We are willing to acknowledge all
  time borrowed from family duties misspent; the care of children's
  education, observing a husband's commands, assisting the sick,
  relieving the poore, and being serviceable to our friends, are of
  sufficient weight to employ the most improved capacities amongst
  us. If sometimes it happens by accident that one of a thousand
  aspires a little higher, her fate commonly exposes her to wonder,
  but adds little to esteeme. The distaffe will defend our quarrels
  as well as the sword, and the needle is as instructive as the
  penne. A heroine is a kind of prodigy: the influence of a blazing
  starre is not more dangerous, or more avoyded. Though I have
  lived under the roofe of the learned, and in the neighborhood of
  science, it has had no other effect on a temper like mine, but
  that of admiration.

But these very letters, in which Mrs. Evelyn disclaims learning,
would be a capital point in refutation of Macaulay's charge of
general feminine illiteracy. In subject-matter, in style, and in the
mechanics of writing they show a development not unworthy of that
"roofe of the learned" under which she dwelt. At the time Mrs. Evelyn
wrote the letter just quoted her daughter Mary was but six years old,
but her literary and artistic tastes must have soon become manifest,
for when she died of small-pox at nineteen she was an accomplished
young woman, on the road, apparently, to be the dangerous "blazing
starre" her mother decried, and her training must have been going on
for ten or twelve years in the home with the active connivance of her
parents. Her father was exceedingly proud, not only of her excellence
in dancing and music, but especially, it would seem, of her passion
for books. She had, he said, "read abundance of history, and all
the best poets, even Terence, Plautus, Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid;
all the best romances and modern poems." After her death they found
among her papers a commonplace book in which she had entered "an
incredible number of selections from historians, poets, travellers."
Her piety and her impulse towards expression were both shown in the
many "resolutions, contemplations, prayers and devotions" she left
in written form. Of the extent to which both Mrs. Evelyn and her
daughter carried their work in painting and enamel I have already
spoken.[202]

The Evelyn household may stand doubtless as one of many where,
without any tinge of pedantry or any especial outward manifestations
of learning, there was yet a natural interest in arts and letters, an
interest shared, in quite a simple, normal way by all the members of
the family.


[Sidenote: The Honorable Miss Dudleya North (1675-1712)]

The Honorable Miss Dudleya North was a niece of the Honorable Roger
North, and it is through the memorable _Lives of the Norths_ that
we come upon an account of her life. Dudleya and her two younger
brothers were brought up together. She learned the same lessons and
read the same books as her brothers, and joined in their amusements.
When they went to the University, she carried on her studies at
home and she became one of the most highly cultured and learned
women of her time. After she had conquered Greek and Latin she
advanced to Hebrew, and finally, "by a long and severe course of
study," she gained "a competent knowledge in the whole circle of
Oriental learning." Her uncle Roger laconically described her life as
follows: "The eldest sister, Catharine, died ... and the youngest,
named Dudleya, having emaciated herself with study whereby she had
made familiar to her, not only Greek and Latin, but the Oriental
languages, under the infliction of a sedentery distemper, died also."

The fine collection of Oriental books left by Miss North was given
by her brother, Lord North and Grey, to the parochial library at
Rougham in Norfolk. Her uncle wrote: "I have had a design to build a
parochial library at Rougham, and now shall finish it this summer,
and placing my niece's books there, entitle the Catalogue _Ex dono_,
etc., _e libris eruditissimæ virginis_, etc., which will be a
monument more lasting than marble."[203]


[Sidenote: Anne Lee, Lady Wharton (1632?-1685)]

Anne Lee, the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Henry Lee, married in
1673 Thomas Wharton, whose chief interest in her was based on the
large dowry she brought him. The unhappiness of her married life
received some alleviation from the wise and steadfast friendship of
Dr. Gilbert Burnet. In 1680-81, she was in France for her health
and during this time she corresponded regularly with Dr. Burnet.
He addressed to her various poems with titles such as _The Secrets
of Friendship_, _Friendship's Mysteries_, _Pure Love_, and _Love's
Magnetism_. She wrote a tragedy in blank verse on the love of Ovid
for Julia, a number of Scripture paraphrases, and some occasional
poems.[204] Some of these poems drew approving verses from Dryden in
his _Eleonora_, a panegyrical poem on the death of Mrs. Wharton's
elder sister, Lady Abingdon, in 1691, and from Waller, who, in his
old age, was still equal to flattering a new "Chloris," under which
name he celebrated her learning and her poetry.


[Sidenote: Ann Baynard (1672-1697)]

Ann Baynard had a natural propensity to learning and her father Dr.
Edward Baynard, Fellow of the College of Physicians, London, gave her
a very liberal education. Dr. Prude[205] says of her:

  As for learning, whether it be to know and understand natural
  causes and events, to know the courses of the sun, moon, and
  stars; the qualities of herbs and plants; to be acquainted with
  the demonstrable verities of the mathematicks; the study of
  philosophy; the writings of the antients; and that in their own
  proper language, without the help of an interpreter: These and
  the like are the most noble accomplishments of the human mind,
  and accordingly do bring great delight and satisfaction along
  with them, these things she was not only conversant in, but
  mistress of, and that to such a degree, that very few of her sex
  did ever arrive at. She had from her infancy been trained up in
  the knowledge of these things, and had made a great progress
  therein; and even in her green years, at the age of 23, was
  arrived to the knowledge of a bearded philosopher.[206]

She was a "nervous and subtle disputant" in the "hard and knotty
arguments of metaphysical learning." She was always coveting more
knowledge, saying that it was a sin to be contented with but a
little. She was exceedingly religious and learning was to her but a
handmaid of piety. Her last words were a recommendation to women to
study philosophy and the great book of nature which would give them
a sound basis for wisdom in practical life. Women, she said, are
capable of such study, and could accomplish much if they would "spend
of that time in study and thinking, which they do in visits, vanity
and folly." Mr. Collier, in the _Great Historical Dictionary_, says
of her that it is doubtful whether the first Ralph Baynard, who for
his conduct at the battle of Hastings was rewarded with eighty-five
lordships, did more honor to the name of Baynard or the last Anne.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Alicia D'Anvers (fl. 1691)]

_Academia: or the Humours of the University of Oxford in burlesque
verse_ is a thin quarto by Mrs. Alicia D'Anvers. It was printed in
May, 1691, and again with a fuller descriptive title in June of the
same year. The poem is an account given to his fellow-servants by
John who has recently visited Oxford. Mrs. D'Anvers puts herself
in John's place. She uses his crude and even rough language, she
gives his point of view, and relishes the misconceptions due to
his ignorance. Heavy and clumsy as the poem is there is something
refreshing and original in its tone. As an attempted realistic
portrayal of a servant's experiences it stands quite by itself,
except in comedies, in the decades before the novel widened human
interests. Mrs. D'Anvers is neither patronizing nor didactic.
She simply finds genuine humor and entertainment in the comic
juxtaposition of John's mind and the ancient customs and glories of
Oxford.


[Sidenote: Lady Chudleigh (1656-1710)]

Lady Chudleigh[207] was a lady of much repute in the eighteenth
century for her writings in both prose and verse. Her _Poems_ were
published in 1703 and her _Essays_ in 1710, but her chief literary
activities belong in the late seventeenth century. Her _Essays_ are
disquisitions on Pride, Humility, Self-love, Friendship, Death,
Anger, Avarice, Solitude, and kindred themes. Mr. Ballard says of
them: "They appear to be, not the excursions of a lively imagination
... so much as the deliberate results of a long exercise in the
world, improv'd with reading, regulated with judgment; softened by
good breeding, and heightened with sprightly thoughts and elevated
piety." Her prose style is fluent, energetic, and, for the most part,
correct. In her Preface to her _Song of Three Children Paraphrased_
she makes several points that indicate mental independence. In the
height of the dominance of the heroic couplet she chooses Pindaric
verse because she does not wish to be tied up to the rules of the
couplet, and because she desires to give her fancy greater scope.
She begs pardon for introducing into her poem ideas "not generally
received," such as Dr. Burnet's conception of the "Ante-diluvian
Earth as Smooth, regular, and uniform; without Mountains or Hills."
Concerning her poetic use of the doctrine of preëxistence she says,
"To me 't is indifferent which is true, as long as I know I am by
the Laws of Poetry allow'd the Liberty of chusing that which will
sound most gracefully in Verse." In regard to the stars she adopts
"the Cartesian Hypothesis" because it makes the universe "appear
infinitely larger, fuller, more magnificent." Her imagination is
as genuinely excited as was Tennyson's by her conception of the
"boundless Spaces" of the heavens and the splendor of the "huge
Globes which roll over our Heads." She believes also in a millennial
existence on "a new habitable earth." The poem itself is an unbroken
ecstasy ninety long stanzas in duration, and becomes undeniably
wearisome. But the woman who could spend months in a lonely country
place absorbed in such religious and scientific reflections, who
could maintain for so long a time so rapt and energetic a mental
attitude towards abstract subjects, was far enough removed from the
traditional _hausfrau_.

Though Lady Chudleigh rejoices in these learned topics she modestly
disclaims any accurate knowledge. "But 't is not reasonable to
expect that a Woman should be nicely skill'd in Physics: We are kept
Strangers to all ingenious and useful Studies, and can have but a
slight and superficial Knowledge of things." Two poems, _Resolution_
and _To Mr. Dryden on his excellent Translation of Virgil_, give
evidence of Lady Chudleigh's wide reading in poetry, history, drama,
and divinity. Her literary dicta are of little value, for they do
hardly more than echo the judgments of the day. According to her it
was the poet Waller who, coming after the "transient Glimm'rings of
Chaucer" and the "Lunar Beams of Spenser," announced the dawn of
a new Morn, and with Dryden came "The Triumphs of refulgent Day."
Taken as a whole the poems bitterly inveigh against life with its
blighting sorrows, its fleeting, unreal joys, its injustice, its
black despairs. The only break in the gloom comes in short periods of
absorption in books, or in occasional religious ecstasies.

The first poem by which Lady Chudleigh became known is _The
Ladies' Defence_: a sudden, angry outburst caused by a sermon on
_Conjugal Duty_ by a Mr. Sprint, a nonconformist in Sherbourn,
Dorsetshire.[208] The personal animus in a little poem _To the
Ladies_ warning them against marriage, apparently grew out of her own
matrimonial infelicities. And _The Ladies' Defence_ has the same ring
of indignant sincerity. The poem is in the form of a conversation
between the parson who preached the sermon; Sir William Loveall, who,
out of the ignorance of his unmarried state, endeavors to reconcile
the warring parties; Marissa, Lady Chudleigh herself; and Sir John
Brute, who thanks the parson for preaching against "those Terrors of
our Lives, those worst of Plagues, those Furies call'd our Wives."
The parson replies:

      Not led by Passion, but by Zeal inspir'd,
      I've told the Women what's of them requir'd:
      Taught them their Husbands to Obey and Please,
      And to their Humours sacrifice their Ease:
      Give up their Reason, and their Wills resign,
      And ev'ry look, and ev'ry thought confine.
      Sure, this Detraction you can't justly call?
      'T is kindly meant, and 't is address'd to All.

             *       *       *       *       *

      If you wou'd live as it becomes a Wife,
      And raise the Honour of a marry'd Life,
      You must the useful Art of wheedling try,
      And with his various Humours still comply;

             *       *       *       *       *

      Whate'er he is, you still must think him best,
      And boast to all that you are truly blest;

             *       *       *       *       *

      Also, to him you inward Reverence owe;
      If he's a Fool, you must not think him so;
      Nor yet indulge one mean contemptuous Thought,
      Or fancy he can e'er commit a Fault.
      Nor must your Deference be alone confin'd
      Unto the hid Recesses of your Mind,
      But must in all your Actions be display'd,
      And visible to each Spectator made.[209]

After this sarcastic summary of Mr. Sprint's irritating sermon Lady
Chudleigh in the person of Marissa, depicts the general condition of
women and her own loftier ambitions:

      'T is hard we should be by the Men despis'd
      Yet kept from knowing what would make us priz'd.
      Debarr'd from Knowledge, banish'd from the Schools,
      And with the utmost Industry bred Fools.
      Laugh'd out of Reason, jested out of Sense,
      And nothing left but Native Innocence:

             *       *       *       *       *

      Or that my Sex would all such Toys despise;
      And only study to be Good, and Wise:

             *       *       *       *       *

      Instead of Novels, Histories peruse,
      And for their Guides the wise Ancients chuse,
      Thro' all the Labyrinths of Learning go,
      And grow more humble as they more do know.

             *       *       *       *       *

      Beauty's a Trifle merits not my Care.
      I'd rather Æsop's ugly Visage wear,
      Joyn'd with his Mind, than be a Fool, and Fair.

             *       *       *       *       *

      But spite of you, we'll to ourselves be kind:
      Your censures slight, your little Tricks despise,
      And make it our whole business to be wise.
      The mean low trivial Cares of Life disdain,
      And read and Think, and Think and read again,
      And on our Minds bestow the utmost Pain.


[Sidenote: Anne Kingsmill, Lady Winchilsea (1661-1720)]

One of the important women of letters in the late seventeenth century
was Anne Kingsmill.[210] Of her early life we have no definite
details. That it was a gay and happy life may be inferred from one
of her retrospective poems in which she says that in her youth
"Pleasure's tempting Air" blew soft about her, and that she dedicated
her "Prime" to "vain Amusements." Later she coveted a place at court
which to her ambitious eye seemed "Paradice below." At what time this
desire was realized we have no record, but in 1683 we find her listed
as one of the maids of honor to Mary of Modena. Miss Strickland says
that Anne Killigrew and Anne Kingsmill were "ladies of irreproachable
virtue, members of the Church of England, and alike distinguished
for moral worth and literary achievements," and she adds that Anne
Kingsmill was "well-known as the beautiful and witty maid of honour."
In 1684 Anne married Mr. Finch, gentleman of the bedchamber to
the Duke of York. At the coming of William and Mary, Mr. and Mrs.
Finch went to the family place at Eastwell Park where they spent
the rest of their uneventful lives in a retirement, embittered at
first, doubtless, by their grief over Stuart disasters, but, as
the years passed, rendered more and more delightful by the joys of
country life, of books, and of friends. Mrs. Finch's best poems are
those inspired by Eastwell and its associations. The Elizabethan
house at Eastwell was set in a park of old yew trees and majestic
beeches, forming "the very ideal of an ancestral park of the ancient
noblesse," and it was by the extraordinary dignity and beauty of this
park that Mrs. Finch's most imaginative work was inspired. Within
doors the gathering of antiquities, the illuminating of books,
the formation of a great library, and free literary productivity
were the family interests. There were also many and close ties of
friendship founded on natural causes of union such as loyalty to the
Stuarts, devotion to the Church of England, high and even austere
ideals of life. And family ties and ties of friendship received
ardent acknowledgment. No woman of this period was more happily
circumstanced in her home for the unhampered pursuit of literary
tastes than was Lady Winchilsea. She began to write when she was a
maid of honor, but it was with a nervous sense of the ridicule that
would probably follow any disclosure of that fact. But at Eastwell
the case was different. There are charming pictures of evening
sessions when the authoress presented her work to an enthusiastic
circle. A scribe entered her writings in a fair and clerkly hand in a
majestic folio. With such encouragement the lady kept sedulously and
joyfully to her task. And when her husband's accession to the title
gave her a new position of dignity and authority she even ventured,
in 1713,[211] to publish a selection from her verse, first under the
pseudonym "Ardelia," and then, in a later impression, with her full
name and title.

Lady Winchilsea's poems were composed between 1683 and 1720, and
during this period she tried nearly all poetic forms. Songs, satires,
fables, tragedies, translations, are fully represented. She was
the most voluminous of the minor poets of her time, and in vigor
and scope she outranks most of them. But her literary importance
to-day rests not so much on the amount or variety of her work, as
on the fact that in an age of didacticism and satire she delicately
foreshadowed tastes that ruled in the romanticism of a century
later. It was her _Nocturnal Reverie_, with its minute accuracy of
observation, its sense of the mystery of nature and of the mystic
union between man and nature, that secured Wordsworth's praise,
gave her an honorable place in Ward's _English Poets_, and finally
established her in the heaven of literary fame as, in Mr. Gosse's
phrase, "a minor excelsitude."

In the present study quite other points are to be made concerning
Lady Winchilsea. She is particularly interesting when considered as
a heretic against certain prevailing social and educational ideals.
In the gay dissipations of court life under Charles II she maintained
a conception of life serious and even austere. In close association
with Mary of Modena and James II she yet maintained her devotion
to the Church of England. With the world of fashion flocking to
the comedies of the Restoration dramatists she yet condemned the
immoralities of the stage with the bitterness of a Jeremy Collier.
There was, then, in Lady Winchilsea an independence of judgment, a
stoutness of fiber in forming and defending her own views, which
would lead one to expect some trenchant remarks on the contemporary
attitude towards women. It is much to be regretted that the letters
of Lady Winchilsea, if any are extant, have never been published. Her
interests were so varied, her friendships so ardent, her hours of
country leisure so numerous, her pen so facile, that she must have
found, in what Anne Seward called "epistolary solicitudes," one
of the most convenient outlets for a spirit often kicking against
the pricks of social conventions, and her keenness of insight,
her caustic phrasing, would make her letters worth many pages of
pindarics. But in default of such letters we turn to the one prose
essay and to the poems. From scattered passages we can build up the
elements of her heresies. Though she loved her home and was the most
devoted of wives, she utterly rejected the _hausfrau_ theory of life.
She declared that she, at least, was never meant for "the dull manage
of a servile house." She asked little of her table except that it
should be "set without her care." Rich food and elaborate service
could be dispensed with, but leisure and a free mind she must have.
The frivolous occupations of the town lady, the endless discussions
of laces and brocades, the rivalries as to dishes and screens from
China, the gossip and ill-natured jests at fashionable tea-tables,
she found unendurable. Feminine accomplishments, such as embroidery,
amateurish drawing and painting, awakened her active hostility.

This definite rejection of all that ordinarily filled the feminine
mind, and a rejection, moreover, in the interests of books and
writing, of course made Ardelia the unhappy victim of many a sneer.
The attack on her by Pope and Gay, in _Three Hours after Marriage_,
in 1717, may be taken as an extreme example of the indignities to
which "a petticoat author" might be subjected, but there must have
been many lesser evidences of social disapproval or the irritating
theme would not so often recur in her poems. In "The Introduction"
she says:

      Alas! a woman that attempts the pen,
      Such an intruder on the rights of men,
      Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem'd,
      The fault, can by no vertue be redeem'd.
      They tell us, we mistake our sex and way;
      Good breeding, fassion, dancing, dressing, play
      Are the accomplishments we should desire;
      To write, or read, or think, or to enquire
      Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time,
      And interrupt the Conquests of our prime.

She congratulates herself that she had at least had the good sense
to keep her rhymes a secret while at court, where a "Versifying
Maid of Honour" would have been looked upon "with prejudice, if not
with contempt." During a visit to London she heard the young gossip
Almeria describe a certain lady as "A Poetess! a woman who writes!
A common jest!" Conscious of her growing folio at Eastwell, Ardelia
resented the implied censure. What law, she asks, forbids women
to think? Women, she protests, are "Education's and not Nature's
fools." Ardelia had high praise from noted contemporaries and cordial
appreciation at home. But these did not avail to conquer her morbid
sensitiveness to criticism. She seemed to embody in herself two
warring tendencies, a demand for complete intellectual freedom and
the author's inevitable desire to spread his wares abroad, with the
shrinking modesty of the lady to whom any sort of publicity was
hateful.

The "Matchless Orinda," Lady Winchilsea tells us, was the model on
whom, from her early girlhood she formed herself. The first verses
she wrote were in honor of Orinda. By Orinda's example she justified
the efforts and aims of her own muse, but she is in no sense a
copyist. It was Orinda's fame as a noted and virtuous woman poet
that inspired her rather than any close study of Orinda's work. Lady
Winchilsea, in that small portion of her work on which her fame
rests, is very delicately and truly original. Her spirit reacted
against court life as definitely as did Anne Killigrew's, but she
found no satisfaction in satiric comment. She shrank from any sort of
contest. She argued and protested only when pushed to the wall. She
was shy and easily intimidated, and her best work does not come from
the heat of conflict or from bitterness of spirit. She is essentially
contemplative. The poems on which her fame rests blossomed out
quietly, exquisitely, under the gentle stimulus of a happy home life
in the midst of lovely natural surroundings. She is typically a
lady of letters because, without the spur of necessity, urged on by
no popular applause, she yet, for more than thirty years, made the
reading of books and the writing of books the central occupation of
her life.


[Sidenote: The Honorable Mrs. Monck (d. 1715)]

The honorable Mrs. Monck[212] was the daughter of Lord Molesworth, a
nobleman of Ireland. Mr. Ballard says of her learning: "She, purely
by force of her own natural genius, acquired a perfect knowledge of
the Latin, Italian and Spanish tongues: and by a constant reading of
the finest authors in those languages, became so great a mistress of
the art of poetry, that she wrote many poems for her own diversion."
In 1716, after her death, Lord Molesworth published her poems under
the title _Marinda. Poems and Translations on Several Occasions._ In
his dedication to Caroline, the Princess of Wales, he says that the
book represents the works of the leisure hours of a young gentlewoman
in a remote country solitude, with no assistance but that of a good
library, and with the daily care of a large family on her hands. In
commending her character he says, "I loved her more _because she
deserved it, than because she was mine_." Various slight poems show
Marinda's knowledge of Italian and Spanish. Better than all these
are two cleverly turned epigrams on "a lady of pleasure," and some
affecting farewell lines written in her last sickness to her husband.
Mrs. Monck's repute for learning comes largely by hearsay, her
printed memorials are slight and unimportant, but she nevertheless
gives an impression, elusive but real, of a most interesting
personality.


[Sidenote: Martha, Lady Giffard (1639-1722)]

Lady Giffard was Sir William Temple's sister. She was twelve years
younger than Dorothy. After her marriage and almost immediate
widowhood, in 1661, she made her home with the Temples. Her _Life
and Correspondence_ has been published by Mrs. Longe as a sequel to
the _Letters of Dorothy Osborne_. The volume contains letters from
Lady Chesterfield, from Lady Sunderland ("Saccharissa"), and others,
to Lady Giffard. The letters by Lady Giffard are few in number and
are all written to her niece Lady Berkeley, later Lady Portland, and
belong in the years 1697-1722. These letters have none of the sparkle
and humor and literary charm of Dorothy's. But we get indications
that Lady Giffard was a woman of intellectual interests. We find
her reading Turkish history daytimes with recourse to Virgil, "as
less exacting," for evenings. She knew Spanish and French, and one
of the specific items in her will is a bequest of the books she had
collected in these two languages.


[Sidenote: Sarah Byng, Mrs. Osborne (1693-1775)]

A third series of letters, published under the title _Political
and Social Letters of a Lady of the Eighteenth Century_, though
belonging later in the century, may be brought in here because they
carry on the series of Osborne letters. Sarah Byng, the daughter of
Admiral Byng, Viscount Torrington, married, in 1710, John Osborne
of Chicksands Priory, the old home of Dorothy and the place from
which she wrote most of her letters. Mr. John Osborne was Dorothy's
grand-nephew. He died in 1719 and his father in 1720, leaving to
Sarah Osborne an infant son, Danvers, the heir to the title and a
heavily burdened estate. Her letters fall in several series, the
first set from 1721 to 1739 being to her brother George on business
matters concerning the property. Most interesting are the letters
to Danvers from 1733 to 1751. When he came of age in 1736 she was
able to turn over to him an unincumbered estate, and on his marriage
in 1740 she superintended the establishment of the new household at
Chicksands. A third set of letters has to do with the sentence and
execution of her brother Admiral Byng, in 1757. Through the death of
the wife of Danvers in 1743 and the death of Danvers in 1750 Mrs.
Osborne was left with two grandsons to bring up, and her last letters
are to John, one of these grandsons, who was traveling in Holland.

Through two generations Mrs. Osborne bore heavy administrative and
financial burdens. She was both father and mother to her son, and
then to her grandsons. And she was left single-handed to conduct
the defense of her brother Admiral Byng. It is not strange that
the letters are frequently hurried and harassed in tone. She is
constantly vexed and baffled because, as a woman, she cannot conduct
affairs directly. Some man must be her intermediary. She lays plans,
foresees difficulties, writes explicit directions, and then she must
urge and cajole her representative to due interest and prompt action.
The especial interest in her letters is their abundant and exact
account of social life and especially of domestic economy. Energetic,
courageous, resourceful, keenly observant, and with a clear head for
business, Mrs. Osborne shows herself to be. Perhaps if we had her
letters before the burdens of life fell so heavily upon her we might
find some hint of the charm in Dorothy's letters, for even Dorothy's
letters after marriage became "tame and flat to what was before."
As it is, Mrs. Osborne's letters are valuable for scattered social
detail, not for any permanent charm of expression.


[Sidenote: Elizabeth Singer, Mrs. Rowe (1674-1737)]

Mr. Walter Singer, a dissenting minister of Frome, was early left a
widower with three daughters. Two of these daughters showed while
still young exceptionally good minds and a natural interest in
study. One daughter, who died at nineteen, was devoted to medicine
and collected books on that subject. Elizabeth preferred drawing and
poetry. She began drawing when her fingers could hardly hold the
pencil, and she squeezed out the juices of plants to make colors. Her
father furnished her an excellent master, and she attained sufficient
skill so that throughout her life her work was highly prized by
her friends. She also loved music "to excess." But poetry was her
chief delight. She began writing at twelve, and by the time she
was twenty-two she had on hand a store of verse so pleasing to her
friends that they insisted on its publication, and there accordingly
appeared a thin little volume in 1696 under the title _Poems on
Several Occasions. Written by Philomela._ The "Preface to the
Reader," by one Elizabeth Johnson, is another of many contemporary
indications of feminine irritation at the limitations imposed
upon them. Miss Johnson allows "Mankind the _Brutal Advantages of
Strength_," but when they "wou'd Monopolize _Sence_ too, when neither
that, nor Learning, nor so much as _Wit_" is granted the women, they
are forced to protest against such "_notorious_ Violations on the
_Liberties of Free-born English Women_." "This makes the _Meekest
Worm_ amongst us all, ready to turn agen when we are thus _trampled_
on; But alas! What can we do to _Right_ our selves? _stingless_ and
_harmless_ as we are, we can only _Kiss_ the _Foot_ that _hurts_
us." But it sometimes pleases Heaven to succor a distressed people
by sending them some bright genius, "an Epaminondas, a Timoleon,
a Nassaw." "Nor is our _Defenceless Sex_ forgotten--we have not
only _Banduca's_ and _Zenobia's_, but _Sappho's_, and _Behn's_, and
_Schurman's_, and _Orinda's_, who have _humbled_ the most haughty
of our Antagonists, and made 'em do Homage to our _Wit_, as well
as our _Beauty_." Miss Singer's consent to the publication of this
volume was gained only by a promise of strict anonymity, and the
"Philomela," then chosen as a pen-name through a naïve adaptation of
"Singer," became her permanent appellation.

One interesting fact with regard to these early poems is the
indication we have of a kind of poetical commerce maintained among
the members of a group of persons similarly inclined to verse.
Philomela writes a _Pindarick Poem on Habbakuk_ which she sends to
"The Athenians" and they respond with a poem beginning,

      We yield! we yield! the Palm, bright Maid! be thine!

She sends a _Poetical Question_ to the Athenians and gets a long
answer. _The Vanity of the World_ and _The Wish_ are likewise
addressed to the Athenians and have similar responses. In a
_Pindarick to the Athenian Society_ she brings as "_Zealous
Tribute_," "The early products of a Female muse," praising especially
their piety and heroic sentiments and the courage with which they
have lashed the darling vices of the times.

      A friendship so exalted and immense,
      A _female breast_ did ne'er before commence.

A little poem in humorous vein, _To one that persuades me to leave
the Muses_, gives some account of her school-days. "I fairly bid
the Boarding Schools farewell," "Old Governess farewell with all my
heart," are lines indicative of her attitude.

      Spite of her heart, _Old Puss_ shall damn no more
      Great _Sedley's_ Plays, and never look 'em o're;
      Affront my _Novels_, no, nor in a Rage,
      Force _Dryden's_ lofty Products from the Stage,
      Whilst all the rest of the _melodious crew_,
      With the _whole_ System of _Athenians_ too,
      For Study's sake out of the Window flew.
      But I, to Church, shall fill her Train no more,
      And walk as if I sojurn'd by the hour.

In like vein she bids adieu to "dancing days," singing lessons,
Japan work, and even her "esteemed Pencil," and vows to give herself
to poetry. And true it is that the rest of her life is mainly of
literary and pious significance. When young her beauty and charm had
resulted in "a train of lovers," but no one of them, not even Mr.
Prior, the poet, could lure her from her serene solitude--possibly
because she was "destined by heaven for the possession of another
gentleman." At any rate, she went smoothly on with her chosen
literary life till she was thirty-six, when she married Mr. Thomas
Rowe, thirteen years younger than herself, but of like tastes and
himself an author. Their extraordinarily happy life together was
brought to a close by his death in 1715, and, after this five years
of happiness, she spent the twenty-seven years of her widowhood
in a stricter solitude, a more absorbed religious communion, a
completer devotion to literary pursuits, than before her marriage.
Her essays, her poems, her letters, were the events of her life. She
had early come to know the family of Lord Weymouth at Longleate.
Mr. Thynne had taught her French and Italian; various members of
the family and various family events were celebrated in her verse.
She was on most intimate terms with the Countess of Hertford and
corresponded with her for many years. Over a hundred of her letters
to the Countess were published in _The Works of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe
and Mr. Thomas Rowe_, and though they make dull and monotonous
reading now were highly esteemed at the time. In fact, the modest and
anonymous Philomela had great eighteenth-century vogue. She had the
friendship of many in the great world, she was abundantly praised
by poets and divines, and her works went through numerous editions.
Her husband said that she combined the fire and passion of Aphra
Behn with the chaste purity of Mrs. Katherine Philips. But Astræa's
passion underwent some strange alchemy when it was transmuted into
Philomela's religious ecstasy. Orinda's purity was fatal to the
combination. Yet Mrs. Rowe's "divine transports" have--Mr. Watts
admits it--sometimes a soft and passionate sound, even an amorous
note, capable of misinterpretation, but evidently reminiscent of
the _Songs of Solomon_, beloved of her youth. It was not an age for
enthusiasms and ecstasies. That her "flights" were so popular may
possibly be explained by the fact that through them all she was
curiously prosaic and intellectually commonplace.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Bland (1660?-1765?)]

Mr. Ballard speaks of "Mrs. Bland,[213] a Yorkshire gentlewoman so
well skilled in Hebrew that she taught it to her son and daughter."
Mrs. Bland was born about 1660 and married Mr. Nathaniel Bland in
1681. Her instructor in Hebrew was Lord Van Helmont from whom she
learned to write the language with great exactness. At the request
of Mr. Thoresby she wrote a Phylactery in Hebrew and presented it to
the Royal Society, where it was preserved among their curiosities.
Mr. Bland became Lord of the Manor at Beeston and Mr. Thoresby
visited him there. To the astonishment of the guest Martha Bland, the
young daughter of the house, was translating Hebrew into English,
having been taught by "that ingenious gentlewoman," her mother. Four
years later Mr. Thoresby took his son Ralph to see "Mrs. Bland,
the Hebrician." She had also studied Anglo-Saxon, for she borrowed
Elizabeth Elstob's book from Mr. Thoresby and kept it long enough to
copy out the grammar part.


[Sidenote: Miss Jane Barker (fl. 1688-1723)]

Miss Jane Barker is a literary lady whose productions belong in
two epochs. Her collected poems appeared in 1688 under the title
_Poetical Recreations: Consisting of Original Poems, Songs,
Odes, etc. With Several New Translations. In Two Parts, Part I.
Occasionally Written by Mrs. Jane Barker. Part II. By Several
Gentlemen of the Universities, and Others._ Twenty-seven years after
the publication of this verse Miss Barker again came before the
public, this time as a writer of romances which proved very popular.
They were collected under the title _The Entertaining Novels of Mrs.
Jane Barker_, and a second edition had appeared by 1719. In 1723 she
brought out _A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies; or Love and Virtue
Recommended: In a Collection of Instructive Novels. Related after a
Manner intirely New, and interspersed with Rural Poems, describing
the Innocence of a Country Life. By Mrs. Jane Barker, of Wilsthorp,
near Stamford, in Lincolnshire._[214]

The long silence between the verse of 1688 and the romances of
1715-26 is unbroken by any explanatory hint or reference. Yet Miss
Barker had but one story to tell and that was told in her youth. In
her novels she uses the characters, events, and emotions recorded in
her early verse. Under the form of a sustained narration, with the
addition of much in the way of romantic adventure, they make more
entertaining reading, but offer no essentially new elements. The
fifth novel, _Clodius and Scipiana_, is perhaps but an enlargement
of a romance entitled _Scipina_, which had been published and
concerning which she had received several congratulatory poems,
before 1688.[215]

One persistent element in Miss Barker's verse and prose is
autobiographic reference. Especially is this true of the poems,
_The Amours of Bosvil and Galesia_ and _A Patch-Work Screen_. From
these sources various facts emerge concerning Miss Barker's life and
personality.

She says that she was sent at first to the "Putney School," but
that she was taken home at about ten by her mother who had come to
consider such schools as "Academies of Vanity and Expense, no Way
instructive in the Rudiments of a Country Gentlewoman's Life." At
fifteen she was sent to London under the care of an aunt to learn
"Town Politeness."[216] Her father lived near Cambridge,[217] and
through her brother, a Cambridge man, she was well known in the
younger literary set at the University. The praise accorded her
verse was excessive. "Philaster" of St. John's hails her as the true
heiress of the great Orinda. To "C. G." she is the Elijah for whose
mantle meaner poets wait. "Exilius," also of St. John's, celebrates
the miracles of her Almighty Pen. "S. C." wonders to see men "tug at
Classic Oars" and "sweat over Horace" when along comes a lady who
without effort utters "well-shapt Fancy and true Digested Thought."
"Fidelius" rejoices to see "Physick and Anatomie done into purest
Verse." And "J. N.," Fellow of St. John's, praises her Scipina as
writ in lines,

      More than Astrea's soft, more than Orinda's Chaste.

Another gentleman from St. John's said that she surpassed "the
Scaroons and Scudderies of France" and showed that England could
originate as well as translate.[218] Miss Barker was evidently in the
stimulating and unusual position of being the temporary literary idol
of an academic coterie.

There was a false lover in Miss Barker's early life who, as
"Strephon" in verse[219] and as "Bosvil" in prose,[220] is copiously
written up along with her own emotional experiences as "Galesia."
The most interesting portion of the affair has to do with Galesia's
original ways of reëstablishing her happiness. She found comfort in
contemplating the wonderful works of Creation.[221] She wandered
along shady paths, by little streams, and through the meadows. She
loved the early morning, the evening dews, the starry night sky.
There is no felicitous phrasing in the references to nature, but
the fact remains that Galesia found in nature a satisfaction and
sometimes an exaltation quite foreign to the heroines of her time.

Galesia's second resource is study. She says of this new occupation:

  Finding myself abandon'd by _Bosvil_ and thinking it impossible
  ever to love any Mortal more, resolv'd to espouse a Book, and
  spend my Days in Study ... I imagin'd my self the _Orinda_ or
  _Sapho_ of my Time. In order to this, I got my brother, who
  was not yet return'd to Oxford,[222] to set me in the way to
  learn my Grammar, which he really did, thinking it ... a Freak
  without Foundation to be overthrown by the first Difficulty I
  shou'd meet with in the Syntax, knowing it to be less easy to
  make Substantive and Adjective agree, than to place a Patch or
  Curl.[223]

Her indulgent brother, when he came back from his studies abroad,
also taught her medicine. With him she went on long "simpling"
excursions to gather flowers for the "large natural Herbal" they were
making. With him she read "Bartholine, Walæus, Harvey, his Circulatio
Sanguinis, and Lower's Motion of the Heart."[224] She learned to
write prescriptions, or "bills" as she called them, in Latin, with
the same "Cyphers and Directions as Doctors do," so that even the
apothecaries were misled and filled her "bills" with those of the
regular physicians.[225] She also ventured on something in the way
of practice and gained some repute for curing cases of gout given up
by the doctors.[226] She began to abandon the Muses for Paracelsus.
Or if she wrote poems the processes of digestion and the circulation
of the blood were her themes.[227] If the shackles of rhyme hindered
scientific accuracy of statement, she squared herself with facts by
abundant footnotes in which the proper Latin terminology was given
full scope. Her interest in medicine was a vital one. She even thanks
Strephon, through whose falsity she had been driven to study, and had
so gained a joy beyond "the sottish ease" that waits on love. In her
new love of learning she even took a vow of virginity:

      In this happy life let me remain,
      Fearless of twenty-five and all its train
      Of slights or scorns, or being call'd Old Maid,
      Those Goblings which so many have betray'd.[228]

Somewhat later Galesia gained a complete victory over her lovelorn
self by a most original and sensible method. She took entire charge
of her father's farm. She planned the work, hired the laborers,
superintended in person the occupations of each day, paid the wages,
and kept the accounts. The wholesome interests of each day and
equally wholesome fatigue at night left no intervals in which to
regret her lost lover.[229]

Galesia's recourse to hard study and responsible farm management
as a cure for a wounded heart sets her as a heroine in a class by
herself. She is so sensible and reasonable as to seem out of place
in a romance. It is therefore something of a surprise to find her
out-distancing the most sentimental in sighs and sobs and tears. Her
utterance in recounting the baseness of Bosvil, "It is fitting that I
should weep on all occasions," might serve as her permanent order of
business. "My sighs alternately blew up my Tears and my Tears allay'd
my Sighs" till "fresh Reflections rais'd new Gusts of Sorrow,"
describes her stormy woes. Sometimes she is able to restrain "the
briny Ebullition," but usually "a new Flux of Tears" breaks down all
barriers.

With the death of her brother the joy of Galesia's life went out.
Books and medicine lost their charm. Without his inspiring presence
all her occupations became insipid. Her view of learned women also
changed. She says a learned woman is as ridiculous as a spinning
Hercules; that books are as unfit for women as paint, washes, and
patches are for a man; that a studious woman and an effeminate man
may be classed together as out of their sphere. A learned woman is
"like a Forc'd Plant that never has its due or proper Relish but
is wither'd by the first Blast," or "like the Toad in the Fable,
that affected to swell itself as big as the Ox," and burst in the
enterprise.[230] This bitter view of learning comes only in the
novels, and probably indicates some unhappy experiences on Miss
Barker's part since the days when her muse was honored by the
University wits.


[Sidenote: Celia Fiennes (fl. 1691-1703)]

Celia Fiennes was the daughter of Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes and the
sister of the third Viscount Saye and Sele. The one book by which she
is known is _Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William
and Mary, Being the Diary of Celia Fiennes_, first published in 1888
by the Honorable Mrs. Griffith, to whom the original manuscript
was given by her father, the thirteenth Baron Saye and Sele. In
her interesting "To the Reader" Miss Fiennes explains that these
journeys were undertaken that she might regain her health by "variety
and change of aire and exercise"; that she picked up such information
as came in her way because her mind could not remain totally
unoccupied; and that she wrote down her observations merely for the
pleasure of her near relations, the manuscript not being designed for
more public use. She then proceeds to justify her travels:

  Now thus much without vanity may be asserted of the subject,
  that if all persons, both Ladies, much more Gentlemen, would
  spend some of their tyme in Journeys to visit their native
  Land, and be curious to Inform themselves and make observations
  of the pleasant prospects, good buildings, different produces
  and manufactures of each place, with the variety of sports and
  recreations they are adapt to, would be a souveraign remedy to
  cure or preserve ffrom these Epidemick diseases of vapours,
  should I add Laziness?--it would also fform such an Idea of
  England, add much to its Glory and Esteem in our minds and
  cure the evil Itch of over-valueing fforeign parts; at least
  ffurnish them with an Equivalent to entertain strangers when
  amongst us, Or jnform them when abroad of their native Country,
  which has been often a Reproach to the English, ignorance and
  being strangers to themselves. Nay the Ladies might have matter
  not unworthy their observation, soe subject for conversation,
  within their own compass in each country to which they relate,
  and thence studdy now to be serviceable to their neighbours
  especially the poor among whome they dwell, which would spare
  them the uneasye thoughts how to pass away tedious dayes, and
  tyme would not be a burden when not at a card or dice table,
  and the ffashions and manners of fforeign parts less minded
  and desired.... But now I may be justly blamed to pretend to
  give acc: of our Constitution, Customs, Laws, Lect, matters
  farre above my Reach or capacity, but herein I have described
  what have come within my knowledge either by view and reading,
  or relation from others which according to my conception have
  faithfully Rehearsed, but where I have mistaken in any form
  or subject matter I easily submitt to a correction and will
  enter such Erratas in a supplement annext to y^e Book of some
  particulars since remark'd; and shall conclude with a hearty wish
  and recommendation to all, but Especially my own Sex, the studdy
  of those things which tends to Improve the mind and makes our
  Lives pleasant and comfortable as well as proffitable in all the
  Stages and Stations of our Lives, and render suffering and age
  supportable and Death less fformidable and a future State more
  happy.[231]

Miss Fiennes's separate journeys are not dated, but we know that
they began before 1691 because the earlier trips from her home at
Newtontony in Wiltshire to Bath, to Oxfordshire, to "Salsebury,"
were taken with her mother, and her mother died in 1691. The
description of the coronation of Queen Anne would indicate that the
travels extended beyond 1703. "My Northern Journey in May 1697"
was one of the most important of her travels. She thus records its
close: "Thence to Highgate 6 miles, thence to London 4 miles where
I returned and all our Company Blessed be God very well w^{th}out
any disaster or trouble in 7 weeks tyme about 635 miles that we went
together."[232] Cambridge, Ely, Peterborough, Nottingham, Lincoln,
Hull, and Scarborough, indicate their general route north. Encouraged
by the success of this difficult trip, Miss Fiennes determined upon a
still more hazardous enterprise. "My great Journey to Newcastle and
to Cornwall"[233] records a remarkable achievement. She went north to
Peterborough; then west to Chester; then north by way of Liverpool,
Preston, Lancaster, Kendall, Lake Windermere, Ambleside, Ulswater,
Penrith, Carlisle, and so over into the edge of Scotland; then east
to Newcastle; then southwest by Durham, Manchester, Worcester,
Exeter, Plymouth, Land's End; and finally home to Newtontony.

Arthur Young is famous for his English tours, but his travels
are nearly three quarters of a century later than those of Miss
Fiennes.[234] Gray's notable visit to the Lakes was in 1769. In
1756-1766 Amory, in his _Life of John Buncle_, described the Lake
Region, and as early as 1760 Dr. Brown wrote a letter praising the
Lakes. But Celia Fiennes's visit and description belong at the very
beginning of the century and confer upon her the honors belonging to
the pioneer. Her book has also a distinctive interest of its own.
I cannot forbear to quote her account of her journey through the
Westmoreland Hills:

  Thence I Rode almost all the waye in sight of this great water
  [Windermere], some tymes I lost it by reason of y^e great hills
  interposeing and so a Continu'd up hill and down hill and that
  pretty steep, even when I was in that they Called bottoms w^{ch}
  are very rich good ground, and so I gained by degrees from Lower
  to higher hills w^{ch} I alwayes went up and down before I came
  to another hill. At last I attained to the side of one of these
  hills or ffells of Rocks, w^{ch} I passed on the side much about
  the Middle, for Looking down to the bottom it was at Least a Mile
  all full of those Lesser hills and jnclosures, so Looking upward
  I was as farre from the Top which was all Rocks, and something
  more barren tho there was some trees and wood growing in y^e
  Rocks and hanging over all down y^e Brow of some of the hills.
  From these great ffells there are severall springs out of y^e
  Rock that trickle down their sides, and as they meete with stones
  and Rocks in the way, when something obstructs their passage and
  so they Come with more violence, that gives a pleaseing sound
  and murmuring noise.... As I walked down at this place I was
  walled on both sides by those inaccessible high rocky barren
  hills w^{ch} hangs over ones head in some places and appears very
  terrible, and from them springs many Little Currents of water
  from the sides and Clefts, w^{ch} trickle down to some Lower part
  where it runs swiftly over the stones and shelves in the way,
  w^{ch} makes a pleasant Rush and murmuring noise.[235]

Wordsworth's "And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of
waters," has here an interesting early statement. Of Ulswater, she
says:

  I rode the whole Length of this water by its side, sometyme a
  Little higher upon the side of the hill and sometyme just by the
  shore.... I observed the boundaries of all these great waters
  (which are a sort of deep Lakes or kind of standing waters) are
  these sort of Barren Rocky hill w^{ch} are so vastly high. I Call
  this a standing water because its not like other great Rivers as
  y^e Trent, Severne, Hull or Thames, etc. to appear to Run w^{th}
  a streame or Current but only as it Rowles from side to side Like
  waves as the wind moves it.[236]

As a rule scenery is but slightly touched upon. Miss Fiennes's
interest was in roads, bridges, markets, dwellings and grounds,
churches; in the quality and price of food, in dress, in pictures and
furniture, in manners and customs; in pageantry, processions, and
ceremonials. Her description of the customs at Bath, of the funeral
of Queen Mary, of the Lord Mayor's Day in London, may be taken as
illustrative of her method of writing. Her manuscript was printed
_verbatim_, and that was, indeed, the only course to pursue. Any
attempt to correct or methodize, or modernize it, would result almost
in rewriting it. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a generation later, was
a keen observer of affairs in Turkey, but Miss Fiennes surpasses her
in fullness of detail. Nothing escapes her quick, accurate eye, her
sharply retentive memory, and her unwearied pen. The facts crowd
in upon each other with breathless haste. There is no such thing
as grace or melody or beauty of style. There is hardly anything
so tranquilizing as order and clearness. There is no time for any
personal reactions on the things seen. There is only here and there a
reflection, there are only the scantiest notes on people. But there
is an astounding assemblage of external facts, undiscriminating,
uninterpreted, unenlivened by a spark of emotion or imagination,
but, in their total effect, genuinely impressive. What energy, what
courage, what endurance, it required for a woman to make these
unusual and very difficult journeys! And yet at first reading the
dry, rapid, confused narrative is as uninspiring as a guidebook. It
is only gradually that we become conscious of the burning enthusiasm
that kept Miss Fiennes at her self-imposed task. She had the zeal
of a devotee with the intellectual method of a chronicler or maker
of inventories. But whatever may be the counts against her style,
there can be no deductions from the high estimate of her book as a
contribution to social history. And still more must it stand to her
credit that not only no other woman, but no man of her day knew so
much about England as did this earliest of the women travelers.


[Sidenote: Elizabeth Elstob (1683-1756)]

A lady who can in the strictest interpretation of the word be called
learned is Elizabeth Elstob. For this reason and because she is very
little known, I shall give as full an account as I have been able
to obtain. In Ballard's _Collection of Original Letters_, in the
Bodleian Library are several to him from Miss Elstob, and among them
is the following brief memoir of her life, in her own handwriting,
enclosed in a letter dated November 23, 1738:

  Elizabeth Elstob, Daughter of Ralph and Jane Elstob,[237] was
  born in the Parish of St. Nicholas, in New Castle upon Tyne,
  September the twenty ninth, sixteen hundred and eighty-three.
  From her childhood she was a great lover of books, which
  being observed by her mother, who was also a great admirer of
  learning, especially in her own sex, there was nothing wanting
  for her improvement, so long as her mother lived. But being
  so unfortunate as to lose her when she was about eight years
  old, and when she had but just gone thro' her accidence and
  grammar, there was a stop put to her progress in learning for
  some years. For her brother being under age when her mother
  died, she was under the guardianship of a relation, who was no
  friend to women's learning, so that she was not suffered to
  proceed, notwithstanding her repeated requests that she might,
  being always put off with that common and vulgar saying that one
  tongue is enough for a woman. However, this discouragement did
  not prevent her earnest endeavours to improve her mind, in the
  best manner she was able, not only because she had a natural
  inclination to books herself, but in obedience to her excellent
  mother's desire. She therefore employed most of her time in
  reading such English and French books (which last language she
  with much difficulty obtained leave to learn) as she could meet
  with till she went to live with her brother, who very joyfully
  and readily assisted and encouraged her, in her studies,
  with whom she laboured very hard as long as she lived. In that
  time she translated and published an Essay on Glory, written in
  French by the celebrated Mademoiselle de Scudery, and published
  an English-Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory, with an
  English translation and Notes, etc. Also the Rudiments of Grammar
  for the English-Saxon Tongue. She designed, if ill fortune had
  not prevented her, to have published all Ælfrick's Homilies, of
  which she made an entire transcript, with the various readings
  from other manuscripts, and had translated several of them into
  English. She likewise took an exact copy of the Textus Roffensis
  upon vellum, now in the library of that great and generous
  encourager of learning, the Right Honourable the Earl of Oxford.
  And transcribed all the Hymns, from an ancient Manuscript
  belonging to the Church of Sarum. She had several other designs,
  but was unhappily hindered, by a necessity of getting her bread,
  which with much difficulty, labour, and ill health, she has
  endeavoured to do for many years, with very indifferent success.
  If it had not been that Almighty God was graciously pleased to
  raise her up lately some generous and good friends, she could not
  have subsisted, to whom she always was, and will, by the grace of
  God, be most faithful.[238]

[Illustration: ELIZABETH ELSTOB

From a drawing by herself engraved in an initial for her translation
of _The Pastoral of St. Gregory_, 1709, and used also in her
_Grammar_ in 1713]

The brother of whom Miss Elstob speaks was William Elstob, who was
ten years older than she. At eleven he was sent to Eton. At sixteen
he went to Cambridge, and later to Oxford, where he was finally, in
1696, elected fellow of University College. In 1702 he became rector
of the united parishes of St. Swithin and St. Mary Bothaw, in London,
where he died in 1715 at the age of forty-two. He was a highly
trained linguist, a great lover of antiquities, and one of the most
promising Anglo-Saxon scholars of his time. He apparently had liberal
sentiments concerning the education of women, so that as soon as his
sister came under his care all her desires for study were gratified.
Just when she went to Oxford is not certain, but it was probably
about the time he took his fellowship, when she was thirteen. She
gives the date of her entrance upon her Anglo-Saxon studies as 1698,
when she was fifteen. In that year her brother had made a transcript
of King Alfred's version of the Latin historian Orosius which he
designed to publish. She wished to understand it and says, "Having
gained the Alphabet, I found it so easy, and in it so much the
grounds of our present Language, and of a more particular Agreement
with some Words which I had heard when very young in the _North_, as
drew me to be more inquisitive after Books written in that Language."
Her brother was well pleased and recommended the _Saxon Heptatuch_.
From this she went on to other treatises, and finally began to
divert herself with taking transcripts of such ancient manuscripts
as she could find.[239] She proved to be particularly facile with
her pen. The copies she made of the old manuscripts were said to be
marvels in the way of beauty and accuracy of lettering. Her copy of
the _Textus Roffensis_ is described by Nichols as "one of the most
lovely specimens of modern Saxon writing that can be imagined." She
was well received in the University, for Mr. Rowe Mores speaks of
her as "the _indefessa comes_ of her brother's studies, a female
student in the University and a favourite of Dr. Hudson and the
Oxonians."[240] In 1702 she went with her brother to London and they
kept on in their work together with great eagerness and satisfaction.
There gradually grew up in Miss Elstob's mind a desire to translate
and publish some Anglo-Saxon manuscript. She was encouraged in this
not only by her brother, but by Dr. Hickes, "the great patron of
the Septentrional Studies," who said that by publishing somewhat in
Saxon she might invite "the ladies to be acquainted with the Language
of their Predecessors, and the Original of their Mother Tongue."
The text finally determined upon was the _Homily on the Birthday of
St. Gregory_. Dr. Hudson, "a man of so generous a mind as not to
discourage learning, even in the female sex," gave her access to the
ancient parchment Book of Homilies in the Bodleian. The book on St.
Gregory appeared in 1709 under the title, _An English-Saxon Homily on
the Birth-Day of St. Gregory: Anciently used in the English-Saxon
Church. Giving an Account of the Conversion of the English from
Paganism to Christianity. Translated into Modern English, with
Notes._ It was a stately and dignified volume with a full-page
engraving by Gribelin, and many engraved letters and head and tail
pieces. In the capital "G" of Gregory was a portrait of Miss Elstob
done by herself.[241] The Dedication to Queen Anne apologizes for
using a language so "out-dated and antiquated," a language which "few
Men and none of the other Sex have ventured to converse with" since
the time when it was the current speech. But she adroitly pays the
necessary compliment and at the same time recommends her theme, by
pointing out that Anglo-Saxon was the language in which the Pious
Progenitors of Queen Anne had received the Orthodox Faith of which
the Queen was the undoubted Defender. The Preface, sixty pages
long, is a learned account of the introduction of Christianity into
England. In the text the Saxon and English are in parallel columns,
and there is a brave apparatus of notes and comments. Following the
English-Saxon Homily is a Latin version by William Elstob which he
presents to his sister with the following Latin letter:

      _Gulielmus Elistobius
      ELIZABETHÆ
      Sorori suæ carissimæ
      S. D._

  _Dum tu, soror mea dilectissima, Homiliæ Saxonicæ, de gentis nostræ
  Conversione paras versionem Anglicam fæminis liberalibus: nonnulli
  forte ex amicis nostris, tum Academicis tum aliis, Latinam postulant
  hominibus eruditis. Id te velle accomodare venis ad me dicens, bene
  autem posse negâsti. Verecundius sane id quam verius. Sed favendum
  omnino verecundiæ, præsertim muliebri: maximè autem tuæ, cum in te
  virtus illa sit notissima. Quare, quod poscis, dulcis & indefessa
  studiorum meorum comes, do tibi Latinè. Non Ciceronianè, ut tu velis,
  id est ornatè, at non ineptè tamen: iisdem ferè verbis repositis
  quæ in Saxonica olim tansfusa, vel ex Turonensi Gregorio, vel tuo,
  vel ex Beda nostrate, vel utroque Diacono, & Johanne & Paulo. Eadem
  plane ratione, qua jam pridem Orosium à nobis elucubratum scis, & qua
  Gregorii tui Curam Pastoralem, Deo favente, & adjutrice te, Eruditis
  perlibenter darem. Vale._

      _Kal. Jun._ MDCCIX.

The book was published by subscription and the list of subscribers
is an interesting one. We, of course, find the Anglo-Saxon scholars,
such as Mr. Thwaites[242] and Dr. Hickes, various Oxonians, the
Elstobs of Canterbury and Durham, and others who were in the same
religious or learned circles. Various letters to Ralph Thoresby[243]
show his interest. In March, 1708-09, she sent him the frontispiece
to the _Homily_ saying there would be other ornaments in the way of
borders and letters "which will make the book somewhat dear, but I
would willingly have it as beautiful as possible." In May, 1709,
she thanks him for procuring "so noble a number of encouragers"
to her work. Nearly half of the two hundred and sixty subscribers
are women. Lady Elizabeth Hastings and Lady Catharine Jones, Mary
Astell's friends, are there; and Lady Winchilsea's friends, the
Thynnes, the Worseleys, and the Thanets, but not Mary Astell or Lady
Winchilsea. The literary set--Pope, Swift, Gay, Addison, Steele--is
not represented. Women of title, clergymen, and scholars make up the
list.[244]

The Preface is of personal as well as learned interest. Miss Elstob
did not enter upon the career of authorship without an uneasy
recognition of the opprobrium she might bring upon herself by
aspirations so unfeminine. She was, in her own mind, fortified by
the elegant Latin treatise in which "Mrs. Anna Maria à Schurman,
that Glory of her Sex," had answered, with due scholastic form and
dignity, the usual objections made by Gentlemen to Women's Learning,
but in deference to the readers of her _Homily_ she felt the
necessity of a few words of self justification:

  For first, I know it will be said, What has a Woman to do with
  Learning? This I have known urged by some Men, with an Envy
  unbecoming that greatness of Soul, which is said to dignify their
  Sex.... Where is the Fault in Womens seeking after Learning? why
  are they not to be valu'd for acquiring to themselves the noblest
  Ornaments? what hurt can this be to themselves? what Disadvantage
  to others? But there are two things usually opposed against
  Womens Learning. That it makes them impertinent, and neglect
  their household Affairs. Where this happens it is a Fault. But
  it is not the Fault of Learning, which rather polishes and
  refines our Nature, and teaches us that Method and Regularity,
  which disposes us to greater Readiness and Dexterity in all
  kinds of Business. I do not observe it so frequently objected
  against Womens Diversions, that They take them off from Household
  Affairs. Why therefore should those few among us, who are Lovers
  of Learning, altho' no better account cou'd be given of it than
  its being a Diversion, be deny'd the Benefit and Pleasure of it,
  which is both so innocent and improving.... I shall not enter
  into any more of the Reasons why some Gentlemen are so eager to
  deny us this privilege: I am more surprised, and even ashamed, to
  find any of the Ladies were more violent than they, in carrying
  on the same charge. Who despairing to arrive at any eminent or
  laudable degree of knowledge, seem totally to abandon themselves
  to Ignorance, contenting themselves to sit down in Darkness, as
  if they either had not Reason, or it were not capable by being
  rightly cultivated, of bringing them into the Light.... Admit
  a Woman may have Learning, is there no other kind of Learning
  to employ her time? What is this Saxon? What has she to do with
  this barbarous antiquated Stuff? so useless, so altogether
  out of the way?... I fear, if things were rightly consider'd,
  that the charge of Barbarity would rather fall upon those who,
  while they fancy themselves adorn'd with the Embellishments
  of foreign Learning, are ignorant, even to barbarity, of the
  Faith, Religion, the Laws and Customs, and Language of their
  Ancestors.[245]

It was inevitable that the learning in Miss Elstob's work should
be thought of by many as in reality the work of her brother. On
this point, towards the close of the Preface, she comments rather
ambiguously as follows:

  I have been askt the Question, more than once, whether this
  Performance was all my own? How properly such a Question may be
  ask'd by those who know with whom I live, I shall not dispute:
  But since some there are who may have a Curiosity to know the
  same thing, who yet suspect the Decency of such a Question: that
  they may be under no Uneasiness on this account, they may be
  pleas'd to understand that I have a kind Brother, who is always
  ready to assist and encourage me in my Studies. I might say much
  of my Obligations on this account: wou'd he permit me to express
  my self at large on that Subject. But as I think it no shame to
  me to take any Advice where it may be so easily obtain'd: so I
  should think it unpardonable to be guilty of such a Silence, as
  might make me seem averse to all Acknowledgement.

After the publication of the _Homily on the Birthday of St.
Gregory_ Miss Elstob made a visit to Canterbury where her uncle
was prebendary. The number of Canterbury names in her list of
subscribers shows that her fame for learning had preceded her. She
was very favorably received, especially by some ladies of rank,
one of whom expressed a desire to study Anglo-Saxon under her
direction. In pursuance of this project Miss Elstob began at once
on the preparation of an _Anglo-Saxon Grammar_.[246] In 1715, when
the _Grammar_ finally appeared, Miss Elstob wrote thus in a Preface
addressed to Dr. Hickes:

  I was more particularly gratified with the new Friendship and
  Conversation, of a young Lady, whose Ingenuity and Love of
  Learning is well known and esteem'd, not only in that Place,
  but by yourself: and which so far indear'd itself to me, by her
  promise that she wou'd learn the _Saxon Tongue_, and do me the
  Honour to be my _Scholar_, as to make me think of composing an
  _English Grammar_ of that Language for her use. That Ladies
  Fortune hath so disposed of her since that time, and hath placed
  her at so great distance, as that we have had no Opportunity,
  of treating farther on this Matter, either by Discourse or
  Correspondence. However, though a Work of a larger Extent, and
  which hath amply experienced your Encouragement, did for some
  time make me lay aside this Design, yet I did not wholly reject
  it.... But considering the Pleasure I my self had reaped from
  the Knowledge I have gained from this Original of our Mother
  Tongue, and that others of my own Sex might be capable of the
  same Satisfaction: I resolv'd to give them the Rudiments of that
  Language in an English Dress.

The long Preface to the _Grammar_ is chiefly taken up with an
attack on John Brightland, author of the _Whole System of English
Education_, and other wise grammarians who had spoken lightly of
Anglo-Saxon and especially of the _Thesaurus_ of Dr. Hickes. One of
the aspersions cast by the gentlemen on their mother tongue was that
the Northern Languages "consist of nothing but _Monosyllables_,"
and Miss Elstob plunges into a lengthy defense of monosyllables
with so many quotations from English verse as to show that being
"mistress of eight foreign languages" did not prevent her from being
exceedingly well read in the poetical literature of her own tongue.
This portion of the Preface is followed by a diatribe against those
who consider the study of antiquities and of the Saxon tongue as
belonging to a lower order of mind, and not contributing to a "just
stile" as do the classics.[247] This topic, also, is illustrated by
literary characterizations so numerous and apt as to show wide and
discriminating reading in English prose.[248]

Miss Elstob was a redoubtable champion in the cause of Anglo-Saxon
learning. At the beginning of her career, in 1709, just as her
_Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory_ was coming from the press,
Swift had spoken of her as one of the Professors in the College of
Madonella, ascribing to her the publication of "two of the choicest
Saxon novels, which are said to have been in as much repute at Queen
Emma's Court, as the 'Memoires from the New Atalantis' are with those
of ours."[249] This disparaging allusion may have predisposed Miss
Elstob to answer Swift with exceptional energy when he ranged himself
with the scorners of Anglo-Saxon learning. In 1737 Mr. Ballard, in
expressing surprise at the appearance of some new opponent of Saxon,
wrote: "Indeed I thought that the bad success Dean Swift had met
with in this affair from the incomparably learned and ingenious Mrs.
Elstob, would have deterred all others from once opening their mouths
on this head."[250]

The _Homily_ and the _Grammar_ gave Miss Elstob, at thirty-two,
a distinguished place in the world of scholarship. She had also
shown unusual skill with her pencil. Not only were her transcripts
of manuscripts noted for their beauty, but she also drew admirable
portraits. In 1737 Mr. Ballard wrote Mr. Joseph Ames:

  I design, if possible, to make a tour to London this Winter, just
  to peep upon a few choice friends, and will bring Miss Elstob's
  Life of her Brother along with me, to pleasure you with. But you
  must be silent in the affair, for some particular reasons not
  proper here to be mentioned. Besides the above mentioned _Life_,
  I have a dozen pieces of this fine accomplished gentlewoman's
  drawings, amongst which are pictures of herself, Dr. Hickes, Mr.
  Dryden, and Johannes Ogilvius, etc. very masterly done, and, as I
  am told, very extraordinary true likenesses.[251]

We get no further completed work from Miss Elstob after the _Grammar_
of 1715, but the six years between the _Homily_ and the _Grammar_
were rich in study and plans. In February, 1708-09, Mr. Thoresby
wrote to Dr. Richardson:

  Amongst the Authors, I might have mentioned some of the female
  sex; as the Bishop of Sarum's lady, and Miss Elstob; the former
  has writ a Method of Devotion, the latter translated a piece of
  Mons. Scudery from the French, and added some of her own: and is
  for giving us a more correct Edition of Sir John Spelman's Saxon
  Psalms, in which tongue she is a great proficient, and has writ
  that in my Album, etc.[252]

The "work of larger extent" for which Miss Elstob temporarily
set aside her _Grammar_ was the proposed publication of a Saxon
Homilarium with English translations and notes. That this Homilarium,
which was to have been her great work, was well under way by 1712 is
indicated by the following letter, December 23, 1712, from Dr. Hickes
to Dr. Charlett:

  I suppose you may have seen Miss Elstob, sister to Mr. Elstob,
  formerly fellow of your Coll. and the MSS. she hath brought
  to be printed at your press. The University hath acquired
  much reputation and honour at home and abroad, by the Saxon
  books printed there, as well as by those printed in Latin and
  Greek, and the publication of the MSS. she hath brought (the
  most correct I ever saw or read) will be of great advantage to
  the Church of England against the Papists; for the honour of
  our Predecessors the English Saxon Clergy, especially of the
  Episcopal Order, and the credit of our country to which Miss
  Elstob will be counted abroad as great an ornament in her way,
  as Madam Dacier is to France. I do not desire you to give her
  all encouragement, because I believe you will do it of your own
  accord from your natural temper to promote good and great works.
  But I desire you to recommend her, and her great undertaking to
  others, for she and it are both very worthy to be encouraged, and
  were I at Oxford, I should be a great solicitor for her. And had
  I acquaintance enough with Mr. Vice-Chancellor I had troubled him
  with a letter in her behalf. I will add no more but to tell you
  that the news of Miss Elstob's encouragement at the University
  will be very acceptable to me, because it will give her work
  credit here, where it shall be promoted to the utmost power
  by your Philo-Sax. and Philo-Goth. and most faithful, humble
  Servt.[253]

In February, 1713, Bedford wrote to Mr. Hearne: "I am to desire y^o
from him to give all y^e assistance & encouragement y^o can to Mrs.
Elstob's work, who is now going down to y^e University again ab^t
it."[254] Mr. Hearne responded in March: "I wish Mrs. Elstob good
success. Tho' if she meet with no better Encouragement here than I
have done as yet 't will not be great."[255]

In the same year Mr. Bowyer printed "Some Testimonies of Learned Men
in favour of the intended edition of the _Saxon_ Homilies, concerning
the learning of the author of those Homilies, and the advantages to
be hoped from an edition of them."[256] And three letters from Miss
Elstob to the Lord Treasurer show that he solicited and obtained the
Queen's Bounty towards printing the _Homilies_.[257]

In spite of all this encouragement the publication of the
_Homilies_ hung fire for many months. It is possible that the
death of Mr. Elstob and of Dr. Hickes in 1715 delayed matters by
depriving Miss Elstob of able advocates and counselors. In July,
1716, Sir P. Sydenham indicates his concern that the book had not
yet appeared.[258] In November of that year Mr. T. Baker writes
apologetically to Mr. Hearne that he is "deep in M^{rs}. Elstob and
Mr. Strype," and that the work does not admit of haste.[259] Later in
the same month Mr. Hearne gives the cheering news that "Mrs. Elstob's
book is going on at last."[260] But only five of the _Homilies_ were
actually printed off at Oxford.[261] The great scheme failed for want
of money. Miss Elstob's own fortune was apparently involved, for in
1718 Mr. T. Baker wrote to Hearne that Miss Elstob was "lately gone
off for debt."[262]

Except these few facts concerning the _Homilies_ very few details are
known concerning Miss Elstob's life after 1715. Bishop Smalridge[263]
aided her for a time, but she could not endure the thought of
being a burden on her friends, and she finally went to Evesham,
Worcestershire, where she started a little school. Mr. Tindale,
in his _History of Evesham_, says that he was credibly informed
that her weekly stipend in this school was at first but a groat a
week. She was in this very contracted and difficult way of life for
nearly twenty years. When relief came it was as the result of the
efforts of an obscure young Anglo-Saxon scholar, Mr. George Ballard,
a lady's-stay-maker, who became acquainted with Miss Elstob and
described her situation so effectively to one of his customers, a
Mrs. Chapone, that this lady wrote a circular letter representing
Miss Elstob's extensive learning, her service to literature, her
multiplied distresses, her meekness and patience, and sent it to
the neighboring gentry. An annuity of twenty guineas was raised,
and Miss Elstob was enabled to keep an assistant so that she could
again "taste of that food of the mind from which she had been so long
oblig'd to fast."

Another result of Mrs. Chapone's letter was a possible appointment
for Miss Elstob as mistress of a charity school kept up by Lady
Elizabeth Hastings. With regard to this plan Miss Elstob wrote the
following very interesting letter to Mr. George Ballard:

  Since you desire to know if I have accepted Mrs. Capon's
  proposal, I do, though I am very sensible it is not commendable
  to expose a private correspondence, venture to communicate to
  so good a friend, a copy of the worthy gentleman's letter, sent
  her in answer to her vastly kind recommendation of me, and the
  charming letter she sent to me. In answer to hers, after I had
  received your answer, I assured her of my readiness to serve that
  excellent lady, as far as lyes in my power. But there are some
  things to be taught in such a school, which I cannot pretend to:
  I mean, the two accomplishments of a good housewife, spinning
  and knitting. Not that I would be thought to be above doing any
  commendable work proper for my sex; for I have continually in my
  thoughts the glorious character of a virtuous woman, Proverbs
  XXXI, 13; "She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with
  her hands." And as an instance of the truth of this, the gown
  I had on when you gave me the favour of a visit was part of it
  my own spinning, and I wear no other stockings but what I knit
  myself: yet I do not think myself proficient enough in these arts
  to become a teacher of them. As to your objection on the meanness
  of the scholars, I assure you, Sir, I should think it as glorious
  an employment to instruct those poor children, as to teach the
  children of the greatest. But I must tell you that mine may be
  termed a life of disappointments from my cradle till now, nor
  do I expect any other while I live. This, and hearing no more
  of that affair, makes me think her ladyship is provided with a
  mistress before now, there being many more deserving than myself,
  that are in want of such an employment. Nor do I repine; for I am
  so inured to disappointments, that I expect nothing else, and I
  receive them with as much easiness as others do their greatest
  prosperity.... I often compare myself to poor John Tucker, whose
  Life I read when a girl in Winstanley's Lives of the Poets, which
  affected me so much that I cannot forget it yet. He is there
  described to have been an honest, industrious, poor man, but,
  notwithstanding his indefatigable industry, as the author writes,
  "no butter would stick on his bread."[264]

The Mrs. Chapone who wrote the circular letter concerning Miss Elstob
was Sarah Kirkham, an intimate girlhood friend of Mary Granville,
afterward Mrs. Pendarves, but better known as Mrs. Delany. Sally
Kirkham is described by Mrs. Delany as a girl of "extraordinary
understanding, lively imagination, and humane disposition," of
"uncommon genius and intrepid spirit." In 1725, at the age of
twenty-four she married the Reverend John Chapone, and they went to
live in Stanton, Gloucestershire, and little more is heard of her
until the writing of this letter before 1734. Mrs. Chapone meant the
letter for the neighboring gentry, but it finally reached a more
distinguished audience. Mrs. Pendarves writes:

  I told you in my last I had left Sally's letter with Mrs. Pointz.
  She gave it to her husband, who desired the Duke to read it to
  the Queen. The Queen was so touched with the letter that she
  immediately sent for Mrs. Pointz, to inquire into some more
  particulars about the person mentioned in it, _and the person
  who wrote it_. Mrs. Pointz said she knew no more than what the
  letter told, but that Mrs. Chapone was a friend of ours. The
  Queen said she never in her life read a better letter, that it
  had touched her heart, and ordered immediately an hundred pounds
  for Mrs. Elstob, and said she "need never fear a necessitous
  old age whilst she lived, and that when she wanted more to ask
  for it, and she should have it." I think this was acting like a
  queen, and ought to be known.... I hope this may be the means of
  serving our friend Sally, the letter was the whole discourse of
  the drawing-room. The Queen asked the Duke "When he should be
  able to write such a letter." He answered, honestly, "Never."
  Mrs. Pointz has asked many particulars about Mr. Chapone, and I
  did him justice.[265]

Queen Caroline's interest was so genuinely aroused that she not only
ordered the £100 to be at once sent to Miss Elstob, but promised to
repeat the same every five years. This was evidently with the idea
that she should be taken from the little school at Evesham and put
into her proper station as "mistress of a boarding-school for young
ladies of a higher rank." Such might have been the outcome had not
the money lapsed with the death of the Queen in 1737.

All plans for Miss Elstob seemed to end in failure till "Sally's
historical epistle," as Mrs. Pendarves called it, was sent to the
Duchess of Portland at Bulstrode.[266] The result in this case was
of permanent value, for Miss Elstob was invited by the Duchess to
make her home at Bulstrode as instructor of the children. Of this
appointment Mrs. Pendarves wrote, December 12, 1738, to her mother:

  The Duchess has now a thousand fears, lest my Lord and Lady
  Oxford should have any objections against taking her, but I
  hope they will all prove false.... Mrs. Elstob seems, out of
  modesty and diffidence of herself, to decline coming, but it
  would be most imprudent of her to decline such an offer, when no
  fatigue will be imposed upon her, but all imaginable care will
  be taken of her. I own I long to have _you see her_, that I may
  really know what sort of woman she is. My Lord Oxford objects
  to her not speaking French, but the Duchess answers she shall
  have a master for that, or a maid to talk, and all she requires
  and hopes of Mrs. Elstob is to instruct her children in the
  principles of religion and virtue, to teach them to speak, read,
  and understand English well, to cultivate their minds as far as
  their capacity will allow, and to keep them company in the house
  and when her health and strength will permit to take the air with
  them. All this she is surely well qualified to do, and it would
  be a sincere joy to me to have our worthy Duchess possest of so
  valuable a person.[267]

Ten days later Mrs. Pendarves wrote again from Bulstrode:

  The Elstobian matter is _quite fixed_, and she expressed the
  utmost satisfaction at having secured such a worthy woman to
  educate her children; I wrote last post to Mrs. Elstob to tell
  her that the Duchess looked on her as engaged to her, and that
  her salary should begin on Xmas Day next, though she could not
  conveniently take her into her family till Midsummer. I hope
  she will write to the Duchess, and suppose she will of course;
  I gave her a little hint but would not have it mentioned that
  I did.... I think your advice to Mrs. Elstob quite right about
  _paying debts_; a person of such principles as hers cannot enjoy
  any advantages without doing that justice when it is in her power
  to do it.[268]

In August, 1739, Miss Elstob was in Evesham and several times met her
benefactor, Mrs. Chapone, of whom she gives a lively picture showing
that letter-writing was not Mrs. Chapone's only title to fame. Miss
Elstob writes:

  The last time she was here, I had an exceeding pleasure,
  though not without some concern, at hearing a long and _warm_
  dispute between that charming woman, and Mr. Ben Seward, on
  some methodistical notions, in which it was by better judges
  than myself agreed that the _female_ antagonist had _much the
  advantage over him_.[269]

Miss Elstob spent the remaining seventeen years of her life with
the Duchess of Portland. They were comfortable, leisurely, studious
years, a delightful haven after her twenty years of hardship, penury,
and intellectual starvation. But she was fifty-six when she went to
Bulstrode, and the ease and security of her life there came too late
to rouse into life the mental activity so long dormant. Miss Elstob's
real life was the twenty years with her brother, years of plain
living and high aspirations while they worked together in the realms
of pure scholarship. It would be difficult to find a more satisfying
example of literary comradeship than that offered by the learned
young curate and the learned young sister, the "_dulcis & indefessa
comes_" of his studies.[270]


[Sidenote: Elizabeth Blackwell (fl. 1739)]

In 1739 Mrs. Elizabeth Blackwell published in two folio volumes _A
Curious Herbal, containing Five Hundred Cuts, of the most useful
Plants, which are now used in the Practice of Physick, engraved
on folio Copper Plates, after Drawings taken from the Life, by
Elizabeth Blackwell. To which is added, a short Description of the
Plants and their common Uses in Physick. Printed for John Nourse at
the Lamb without Temple Bar._ The first of these magnificent volumes
is dedicated to the famous Dr. Richard Mead, "Physician to Kings," as
the one who first advised the publication of the work. The dedication
of the second volume is to Isaac Rand, an apothecary and Fellow of
the Royal Society, and Curator of the Botanical Garden at Chelsea, as
the one to whom she went for assistance in all difficult botanical
questions. The short descriptions of the plants were taken mainly
from Mr. Joseph Miller's _Botanicum Officinale_ with his consent. She
lived near the Botanical Garden and made all her drawings from life.
She also etched them on copper, and colored them herself. The book
received high recognition. Much of the work must have been done by
1735, for on October 1 of that year the following testimonial, now
one of the title-pages, was written:

  We whose names are underwritten, having seen a considerable
  Number of the Drawings from which the Plates are to be engraved,
  and likewise some of the Coloured Plants, think it a Justice done
  the Publick to declare our Satisfaction with them, and our good
  Opinion of the Capacity of the Undertaker.

  R. Mead, M.D.
  G. L. Tessier, M.D.
  Alexander Stuart, M.D.
  Ia. Douglas, M.D.
  James Sherard, M.D.
  W. Cheseldon
  Joseph Miller
  Isaac Rand
  Rob. Nicholls

This statement was repeated in French and the names again signed.

A further endorsement on the completion of the book was dated July 1,
1737. It is as follows:

  _Imagines hasce Plantarum Officinalium per Dominam Elizabetham
  Blackwell delineatas ceri incisas & depictas, iis qui Medicinæ
  Operam dant, perutiles fore judicamus._

  Thomas Pellet, Præs.

  Henricus Plumptre }
  Richardus Tyson   } _Censores_.
  Peircuis Dod      }
  Gulienius Wasey   }

In 1757-73 there was a fine republication of the work in Nuremberg
with an addition of a hundred plants, and a highly laudatory Preface.
The work was recognized at once as of great practical value because
of the accuracy of the drawings and the large number of plants
represented. The charm of the plates is beyond question so far as
delicacy of outline and beauty of coloring are concerned. They are
superior to the plates in Darwin's _Botanic Garden_, nearly half a
century later. The Blackwellia race of plants was named after Mrs.
Blackwell in recognition of her admirable work.[271]

Mrs. Blackwell is herself an enigma. She emerges into public
notice for three years, but her life before and after sinks into
obscurity. She was said to be "a virtuous gentlewoman, daughter of
a worthy merchant," who gave her a handsome portion. Her husband
was Alexander Blackwell, a printer. He was a well-educated and able
man, but generally counted an adventurer. He at one time entered
upon a project of conducting a printing establishment of his own.
His failure in this landed him in a debtor's prison where he was
confined several years. Mrs. Blackwell's _Herbal_ was made by her for
the purpose of securing his release. He is said to have aided her in
the foreign terminology and in the abridgments from Miller. When he
was free her object was accomplished and we hear of no further work.
It would be interesting to know how she came to have so much skill.
It would be more interesting to know the psychology of her prompt
abandonment of work by which she won both fame and money, and in
which she took such evident delight.[272]


[Sidenote: Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper (fl. 1735-40)]

It is to be regretted that so few facts are accessible concerning
Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper. Her works seem to offer interesting points
of departure for investigation into her life and education, but
we know little about her except that her literary ventures belong
between 1735 and 1740. She was the wife of Thomas Cooper,[273] who
was either an auctioneer or a book-seller, or possibly both, and she
was married before 1735. Beyond these meager facts our knowledge of
her must be gleaned from her books. Apparently her first literary
venture was a comedy. It was entitled _The Rival Widows; or, the Fair
Libertine_, and was brought out at the Covent Garden Theater in 1735.
It had a successful run of nine nights. Baker says that "allowing for
the too common freedom of female dramatists, this is far from a bad
comedy."[274] Genest, after briefly outlining the play and commenting
on various passages that seem to him borrowed from preceding
dramatists, says: "It is on the whole a tolerable play, but it wants
incident sadly." But he does not agree with Baker as to the moral
tone of the play, for he says of Lady Bellair, the heroine, "Lady
Bellair is gay and extravagant, but of good principles at bottom ...
it is with much impropriety that she is called a Fair Libertine--she
is only above vulgar prejudices."[275] In her preface to the play
Mrs. Cooper says that it was designed "an Offering to the Sex" in
that the chief character is a woman "capable of thinking for herself,
and acting on the principles of Nature and Truth." Some indications
of the characteristics of Lady Bellair may be found in the fact that
Mrs. Horton was chosen to create the part. Millamant in Congreve's
_Way of the World_, Lady Dainty in Burnaby's _The Reform'd Wife_,
Lady Betty Modish in Cibber's _Careless Husband_, and Lady Townly in
his _Provoked Husband_, were the parts in which Mrs. Horton's beauty
and her elegance of dress and manner found their fitting opportunity.
Lady Bellair belongs evidently to this class of fine lady coquettes,
and a further point of interest concerning Mrs. Cooper is that on her
benefit night she herself played the part of Lady Bellair. Either
Mrs. Cooper had already shown enough ability as an amateur actress to
warrant her appearance on the stage of one of the leading theaters,
or she was well enough known as a writer or as a personality to make
her presence in the cast a drawing card. That she could venture
on the inevitable comparison with Mrs. Horton may indicate some
possibilities in the way of her own attractive qualities. And it is
to be further noted that she "unexpectedly and surprizingly" eclipsed
Mrs. Horton. The _Prompter_ endeavors to explain Mrs. Cooper's
success by saying that she "looked" the character and represented
with great "naturalnes," the somewhat bold and libertine heroine.[276]

Mrs. Cooper's second dramatic attempt was a tragedy which was not
successful. It was acted but one night and was never printed.

This theatrical work was, however, only on the fringe of Mrs.
Cooper's real interest. In 1737 she published a book entitled _The
Muses Library; Or, a Series of English Poetry, from the Saxons, to
the Reign of King Charles II containing, The Lives and Characters of
all the known Writers in that Interval, the names of their Patrons;
Complete Episodes, by way of Specimen of the larger Pieces, very
near the intire works of some, and large Quotations from others.
Being a General Collection of almost all the old valuable Poetry
extant, now so industriously enquir'd after, tho' rarely to be found,
but in the Studies of the Curious, and affording Entertainment
on all Subjects, Philosophical, Historical, Moral, Satyrical,
Allegorical, Critical, Heroick, Pastoral, Gallant, Amorous, Courtly
and Sublime._ But one volume of this projected work was published.
The early Georgian public was not trained to an interest in the
past. Mrs. Cooper suffered the not infrequent fate of pioneers.
There was even difficulty in working off one edition of the first
volume, as is evident from its appearance in 1738 and 1741 with
changed title-pages.[277] That Mrs. Cooper expected to publish the
second volume, including the poets from Samuel Daniel to the time of
Charles II, is shown not only by the statement in her Preface, but
by interesting notes in the _Diary of William Oldys_ (1696-1761),
the famous antiquary. In 1736 he was in London employed in seeing
through the press a new edition of Raleigh's _History of the World_.
His Chambers were in Gray's Inn and he was frequently consulted
there "on obscure and obsolete writers by eminent men of letters."
Two of the people in whom he was particularly interested were Thomas
Hayward, who was compiling his _British Muse_, and Mrs. Cooper. In
his _Diary_ are the following records:

  1737, June 22. Mrs. Cooper came to my chambers: said she would
  return Puttenham's _Art of Poesy_, Browne's _Pastorals_, and Sir
  Henry Wotton, when she had finished her extracts for the second
  volume of her _Muses' Library_ to be published by Christmas.

  July 4, Monday. Returned Sir T. More's works: some of his English
  poetry therein might be for Mrs. Cooper's work, or Mr. Haywards,
  on Fortune, etc.

  Aug. 13. Rec'd letter from Mrs. Cooper to borrow old Marlowe's
  poem of _Hero and Leander_ for the continuation of her _Muses'
  Library_; sent by the servant a very scarce collection of old
  poetry, called _The Paradise of Dainty Devices_, in which are
  several pieces by the old Lord Vaux in King Henry the Eighth's
  time, the Earl of Oxford, Sir W. Raleigh, Mr. Edwards, Jasper
  Haywood, Hunis, Churchyard, Kinwelmarsh, Lloyd, Whetstone, etc.,
  printed 4^o. 1578. To borrow one of Caxton's books of Sir Hans
  Sloane and remember to apply the story of Absyrtus in the preface
  for Mr. Hayward's Collection of select thoughts from our old
  poets.[278]

Mrs. Cooper frequently comments on the difficulty and expense of
gathering material for her enterprise and gratefully acknowledges
"the generous Assistance of the Candid Mr. Oldys." Biographical data
were also obtained only through most patient effort. The only _Lives
of the Poets_ to which she could have access were Wood's _Athenæ
Oxoniensis_ and the works of Phillips, Winstanley, and Jacob. Edward
Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_ appeared in 1675. Its first volume
gave brief biographical and critical notes on sixty-four authors from
Robert of Gloucester to George Chapman, thus covering about the same
ground as Mrs. Cooper's first volume which closes with Samuel Daniel.
William Winstanley's _Lives of the English Poets_ was published
in 1687. It includes notes on poets from William the Conqueror to
James II with occasional brief illustrative extracts. _The Poetical
Register_ of Giles Jacob (1724) is, in the first volume, confined to
dramatists and is based on Langbain. The second volume, _The Lives
and Characters of the English Poets_, extends about a century and a
quarter later than Mrs. Cooper's volume. In the period before 1600
about half the names in her volume are included and briefly commented
on. Jacob also gives an occasional extract.

Mrs. Cooper was not, then, without predecessors in her undertaking.
The novelty in her book was her assumption that people would not
only like to know about the old poets, but that there would be
many lovers of literature who would rejoice in reading the old
poems, and very nearly in their original antiquated form. She gives
ten pages from Langland, eleven from Barclay, twenty-eight from
Sackville, twenty-four from Churchyard, thirty-five from Fulke
Greville, thirty-one from Fairfax, and so on. Chaucer, Spenser, and
Shakespeare are less fully represented, as being already well known.
The selections are the result of wide reading and are made because
they pleased Mrs. Cooper's own taste. "What has given me Pleasure in
my Closet," she says, "I have undertaken to recommend to the Publick;
not presuming to inform the Judgment, but only awaken the Attention."
That she failed to "awaken Attention" was the fault of the age. Her
selections were representative and interesting.

Mrs. Cooper's book shows not only wide research and a full knowledge
of extant criticism, but it also manifests a personal zest in reading
and an unusual independence of literary judgment. This independence
is shown in her choice of authors. Phillips, Winstanley, and Jacob
had omitted Langland, but she says, "In my Judgment, no Writer,
except _Chaucer_, and _Spenser_, for many Ages, had more of real
Inspiration." Or take the case of Lydgate. Phillips mentions him, but
not, apparently, from any personal knowledge of his work. Winstanley
and Jacob praise him highly. Mrs. Cooper says of him: "Many Authors
are so profuse in his Praise as to rank him very little below his
Master, and, often, quote them together; which rais'd my Curiosity so
high, that I gave a considerable Price for his Works, and waded thro'
a large Folio, hoping still to have my Expectation gratified....
But I must, either confess my own want of Penetration, or beg leave
to dissent from his Admirers." She gives a long quotation from
Lord Brook's _A Treatise of Humane Learning_, because his name has
"never yet received the Honours it deserved." She is indignant at
the general indifference to the work and fame of Edward Fairfax and
writes a eulogy of several pages. Her comments on Chaucer, Spenser,
and Shakespeare are brief, since all agree on their preëminence.
Mr. Lounsbury, after noting one or two errors in the book, says of
it: "I know of no similar work produced at that period in which the
knowledge displayed is so accurate and comprehensive, or the critical
estimates so uniformly good and just. There was exhibited in it
not merely freshness of judgment but the independence that springs
from the study of writers at first hand."[279] Mrs. Cooper had in
her the making of a scholar. She allowed herself no generalities.
Whatever she said was based on a thorough study of the material under
discussion. Furthermore, she acquainted herself with all extant
critical opinion without thereby losing the power to form an opinion
of her own.

Mrs. Cooper's Preface is an excellent, even an eloquent, piece
of writing, in justification of poets as a nation's glory. She
recognizes that "Merit is not its own Preservative" and wishes in
her book to set up if possible "a Bulwark which shall preserve Merit
from the attacks of Time." She considers her "SERIES OF POETRY (which
has never been aim'd at anywhere else) ... one of the most valuable
collections that ever was made publick." She has no apologies to
make. In introducing to the moderns this august company of ancient
poets she is saved from any possible self-consciousness by the
dignity of her enterprise. The same tone pervades her Dedication. No
single name is glorious enough to appear at the head of her list.
She chooses rather a dedication to "the truly Honourable Society for
the Encouragement of Learning."[280] That Society was then in the
hey-day of its brief glory. Mrs. Cooper had, apparently, no thought
of personally benefiting by her Dedications. On the contrary she
counted this an opportunity to express what all authors and lovers
of literature must feel towards a design "so great, seasonable, and
humane" as that of this new organization, a design applauded by "all
who have Generosity, Benevolence or Politeness."

As dramatist and actress Mrs. Cooper would deserve at least passing
mention, but as a scholar, as an ardent advocate of early English
poetry, she must take high rank, not only among the learned women,
but also among the learned men of her day.


[Sidenote: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762)]

No woman of the first half of the eighteenth century had a more
active mind or facile pen than Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Although
almost none of her work appeared in print in her lifetime, her
personality made its own way, and she was early recognized as of note
for genius and learned acquirements. It is, therefore, of especial
interest to inquire into the particulars of her education, and to
find out her status as a woman of letters.

The materials for such an inquiry are fairly abundant, and are
mainly: her miscellaneous letters, first published in 1803; a
fragmentary autobiographical romance, of which she says "not a
sillable" except the names is feigned; and the _Introductory
Anecdotes_ by her granddaughter, Lady Louisa Stuart,[281] included
in Lady Mary's _Letters and Works_ brought out by Lord Wharncliffe,
her great-grandson, in 1887. The important groups of letters
containing personal details are those written to Mr. Montagu from
about 1709 till their marriage in 1712, and the very large group to
her family and friends, chiefly to Lady Bute, her daughter, during
Lady Mary's stay in Italy from 1739 to 1761.

Lady Mary's mother died when she was eight, and her father, too much
a man of pleasure to trouble himself with the education of girls,
gave his three young daughters into the care of "an old governess,
who, though perfectly good and pious, wanted a capacity for so great
a trust."[282] In commenting on the evil effects of an ignorant
education, Lady Mary said: "My own was the worst in the world, being
exactly the same as Clarissa Harlowe's; her pious Mrs. Norton so
perfectly resembling my governess, who had been nurse to my mother.
I could almost fancy the author was acquainted with her. She took so
much pains from my infancy, to fill my head with superstitious tales
and false notions, it was none of her fault I am not at this day
afraid of witches and hobgoblins, or turned methodist."[283] But at
least there were no hindering home influences, and Lady Mary had what
Charles Lamb would call the luck to be "tumbled early into a closet
of good old English books." Forsaking the dolls of her sisters she
took refuge in her father's fine library and there she read with the
absorption of a youthful Coleridge. She "got by heart all the poetry
that came in her way," and she "read every romance as yet invented."
Lady Louisa says she "possessed and left after her, the whole library
of Mrs. Lenox's Female Quixote--Cleopatra, Cassandra, Clelia, Cyrus,
Pharamond, Ibrahim, etc., etc.--all, like the lady Arabella's
collection, '_Englished_,' mostly, '_by persons of honour_.' The
chief favourite appeared to have been a translation of Monsieur
Honoré d'Urfé's Astrea, once the delight of Henri Quatre and his
court, and still admired and quoted by the _savans_ who flourished
under Louis XIV. In a blank page of this massive volume (which might
have counterbalanced a pig of lead of the same size) Lady Mary had
written in her fairest youthful hand the names and characteristic
qualities of the chief personages thus:--the beautiful Diana, the
volatile Climene, the melancholy Doris, Celedon the faithful, Adamas
the wise, and so on; forming two long columns."[284] Among Lady
Mary's earliest attempts at authorship were romantic stories in
imitation of these her favorite authors.

But along with her romances, and soon superseding them, were sterner
studies. She early began to teach herself Latin. In her account of
herself under the name Lætitia, she said:

  Her appetite for knowledge increasing with her years, without
  considering the toilsome task she undertook, she began to learn
  herself the Latin grammar, and with the help of an uncommon
  memory and indefatigable labour, made herself so far mistress
  of that language as to be able to understand almost any author.
  This extraordinary attachment to study became the theme of public
  discourse. Her Father, though no scholar himself, was flattered
  with a pleasure in the progress she made, and this reputation
  which she did not seek (having no end in view but her own
  amusement) gave her enviers and consequently enemies among the
  girls of her own age.

Lady Mary was but fourteen when her "just and knowing" criticism of
a play, her knowledge of Latin, and her relish for the classics,
excited the wonder and admiration of Mr. Wortley Montagu. He was as
amazed "as if he had heard a piece of wax work talk."[285] But the
envy of her girl companions and the liberal praise of Mr. Wortley
are not the only proofs that Lady Mary's shining talents and learned
tastes met early recognition. Her uncle, Mr. William Fielding,
"perceived her capacity, corresponded with her, and encouraged her
pursuit of information." Bishop Burnet showed himself most friendly,
and condescended to direct her studies. Mr. Wortley also kept up a
kind of scholarly guidance. Lady Mary said to Spence in Rome in 1741:
"When I was young I was a great admirer of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and
that was one of the chief reasons that set me upon the thoughts of
stealing the Latin language. Mr. Wortley was the only person to whom
I communicated my design, and he encouraged me in it. I used to study
five or six hours a day for two years in my father's library; and
so got that language, whilst everybody else thought I was reading
nothing but novels and romances."[286] By the time she was twenty
Italian had been added to her accomplishments. In an early undated
letter to Mrs. Hewet she wrote: "I have begun to learn Italian, and
am much mortified I cannot do it of a signor of Monsieur Resingade's
recommendation; but 'tis always the fate of women to obey, and my
papa has promised me to a Mr. Cassotti. I am afraid I shall never
understand it as well as you do." By 1710 she was quoting Italian
verse, and in the following year she corresponded with Mr. Resingade
in Italian. That she was still working under Mr. Cassotti in 1712
is apparent from her request that Mr. Wortley should send one of
his letters to her under the care of Mr. Cassotti, her "Italian
master." At this period, or a little later, she also learned French,
so that she wrote letters and essays in that language. Her continued
devotion to study is shown by a letter from Thoresby to Anne Wortley
in 1709: "I am now so much alone, I have leisure to pass whole days
in reading.... My study is nothing but dictionaries and grammars. I
am trying whether it be possible to learn without a master; I am not
certain (and dare hardly hope) I shall make any great progress; but I
find the study so diverting. I am not only easy, but pleased with the
solitude that indulges it."[287]

Lady Mary's diligence resulted in 1710 in a translation of the Latin
version of the _Enchiridion_ of Epictetus which she sent to Bishop
Burnet with a notable letter. Of the translation she says: "Here is
the work of one week of my solitude--by the many faults in it your
lordship will easily believe I spent no more time upon it; it was
hardly finished when I was obliged to begin my journey, and I had
not leisure to write it over again. You have it here without any
corrections with all its blots and errors." Bishop Burnet returned
the document with emendations which in the present printed form are
given in italics.[288] In spite of the numerous changes suggested
as closer to the original, the translation remains as a remarkable
production for a self-educated girl of twenty. Even more remarkable
as evidencing maturity of thought and command of an admirable
English style is the letter, which is of particular significance in
connection with the contemporary attitude towards the learned woman:

  My sex is usually forbid studies of this nature, and folly
  reckoned so much our proper sphere, we are sooner pardoned any
  excesses of that, than the least pretensions to reading or
  good sense. We are permitted no books but such as tend to the
  weakening and effeminating of the mind. Our natural defects are
  every way indulged, and it is looked upon as in a degree criminal
  to improve our reason, or fancy we have any. We are taught to
  place all our art in adorning our outward forms, and permitted,
  without reproach, to carry that custom even to extravagancy,
  while our minds are entirely neglected, and, by disuse of
  reflections, filled with nothing but the trifling objects our
  eyes are daily entertained with. This custom, so long established
  and industriously upheld, makes it even ridiculous to go out
  of the common road, and forces one to find as many excuses as
  if it was a thing altogether criminal not to play the fool in
  concert with other women of quality, whose birth and leisure only
  serve to render them the most useless and most worthless part
  of the creation. There is hardly a character in the world more
  despicable, or more liable to universal ridicule, than that of
  a learned woman: those words imply, according to the received
  sense, a tattling, impertinent, vain, and conceited creature. I
  believe nobody will deny that learning may have this effect, but
  it must be a very superficial degree of it. Erasmus was certainly
  a man of great learning and good sense, and he seems to have my
  opinion of it when he says, _Fæmina qui_ (sic) _vere sapit, non
  videtur sibi sapere; contra, quæ cum nihil sapiat sibi videtur
  sapere ea demum bis stulta est._ The Abbé Bellegarde gives a
  right reason for women's talking overmuch: they know nothing, and
  every outward object strikes their imagination, and produces a
  multitude of thoughts, which, if they knew more, they would know
  not worth their thinking of. I am not now arguing for an equality
  of the two sexes. I do not doubt God and nature have thrown us
  into an inferior rank; we are a lower part of the creation, we
  owe obedience and submission to the superior sex, and any woman
  who suffers her vanity and folly to deny this, rebels against
  the law of the Creator, and indisputable order of nature: but
  there is a worse effect than this, which follows the careless
  education given to women of quality, its being so easy for any
  man of sense, that finds it either his interest or his pleasure,
  to corrupt them.[289]

In 1712 Lady Mary married Mr. Wortley Montagu, in 1713 her son was
born, and in 1715 she started with her husband on their journey
to Turkey. The six years between the _Enchiridion_ and the Embassy
present Lady Mary to us in an enviable position. The reputation
of her youth was augmented. "The wittiest as well as one of the
most beautiful women of her day, she numbered among her admirers
the most powerful of the statesmen, and the most brilliant of the
_littérateurs_; while, for a time at least she was a favourite at
the rival Courts of the King and the Prince of Wales."[290] The
only literary output of this period is a long, rather stilted and
perfunctory criticism of Addison's _Cato_ which she undertook at her
husband's request,[291] and some _Court Poems_ which she wrote with
great zest, in conjunction with Pope and Gay, in pursuance of Gay's
plan to ridicule the pastoral by keeping the form, but making it the
vehicle of corrupt court and town life. Of the seven poems so written
four were by Lady Mary. In them we come for the first time on her
power of combining picturesque detail and caustic comment. Not Gay
himself was richer in local color; and Pope and Swift were almost
equaled in contemptuous social portraiture.

During the six years before the Embassy Lady Mary's activities
were essentially those of a social leader and the mistress of a
household. But all her interests were focused to one point when she
found that she could go to Turkey with Mr. Montagu. Travel "is the
thing on earth I most wish," she had written in 1710, and now that
her husband was sent as Ambassador to the Porte, her dreams could be
realized. She must have been a perfect traveling companion. She had
great courage, great endurance; no hardships or dangers daunted her.
During the fifteen months of their absence she had her three-year-old
son to care for, and her daughter was born while they were in
Constantinople, but nothing interfered with her zest for experiences.
Each day was a new adventure. Each day her insatiable desire to learn
and to know some new thing received some new satisfaction. During
the journey she kept a full diary which, though not published till
after her death, became known in manuscript soon after her return.
Certainly by 1725 she had prepared a copy with an eye to publication.
To this manuscript Mary Astell wrote a Preface, signed "M. A.," and
dated 1725. Mary Astell was twenty-two years older than Lady Mary for
whom she had a strong personal affection, as well as a very sincere
pride in her reputation as a learned woman. The Preface would seem to
indicate that Lady Mary's "enviers" and "enemies" had not decreased
since her girlhood days:

  In short [says Mary Astell] let her own sex, at least, do her
  justice; lay aside diabolical Envy, and its brother Malice, with
  all their accursed company, sly whispering, cruel backbiting,
  spiteful detraction, and the rest of that hideous crew, which,
  I hope, are very falsely said to attend the _Tea-Table_, being
  more apt to think they attend those public places where virtuous
  women never come. Let the men malign one another, if they think
  fit, and strive to pull down merit, when they cannot equal it.
  Let us be better-natured, than to give way to any unkind or
  disrespectful thought of so bright an ornament of our sex merely
  because she has better sense; for I doubt not but our hearts
  will tell us, that this is the real and unpardonable offense,
  whatever may be pretended. Let us be better Christians, than to
  look upon her with an evil eye, only because the Giver of all
  good gifts has entrusted and adorned her with the most excellent
  talents. Rather let us freely own the superiority of this sublime
  genius, as I do in the sincerity of my soul, pleased that a woman
  triumphs, and proud to follow in her train. Let us offer her
  the palm which is so justly her due; and if we pretend to any
  laurels, lay them willingly at her feet.

After Lady Mary's return to England in 1718 we come upon a long
period of quiescence. Domestic affairs, events of social and
political life, her friendships and hatreds, her economies and stock
speculations, completely occupied her. During the first part of this
period she was extravagantly praised. Steele said of her in his essay
on Inoculation:

  This ornament of her Sex and Country, who ennobles her own
  Nobility by her Learning, Wit and Virtues, accompanying her
  consort into Turkey, observed the Benefit of this Practice, with
  its frequency, even among these obstinate Predestinarians, and
  brought it over for the service and safety of her native England,
  where she consecrated its first effects on the persons of her own
  fine children.

In 1720 Pope wrote

          In beauty and wit
          No Mortal as yet
      To question your empire has dared:
        But men of discerning
        Have thought that in learning
      To yield to a lady was hard.

          Impertinent schools,
          With musty dull rules,
      Have reading to females denied;
        So Papists refuse
        The Bible to use,
      Lest flocks should be wise as their guide.

             *       *       *       *       *

          But if the first Eve
          Hard doom did receive
      When only one apple had she,
        What a punishment new
        Shall be found out for you,
      Who, tasting, have robbed the whole tree.

And in 1727 he wrote in _Sandys' Ghost_:

      Ye ladies, too, draw forth your pen,
        I pray where can the hurt lie?
      Since you have brains as well as men,
        As witness Lady Wortley.

Before 1724 Dr. Young had sent her his tragedy _The Brothers_,
requesting her criticism. In 1725 Richard Savage dedicated his
_Miscellanies_ to her as one through whose elevated and immortal wit
England had been honored, and who had firmly established the fact
that women have "strength of mind in proportion to their sweetness."
And Henry Fielding, her second cousin, sent her his comedies,
"exceedingly anxious" for her opinion of them.

But after 1724 or 1725 the years seem to slip on in an aimless
fashion, the only breaks in the monotony coming from the
intermittently virulent quarrels with Pope, the religious and medical
animosities roused by the inoculation process, family sorrows and
family discords, with no literary output to mark any personal
achievements. From thirty to fifty should have been harvest years
after so brilliant a beginning. But the early promise faded into a
middle age disillusioned, unambitious, and rather commonplace. The
only writing of any importance was in the correspondence kept up in a
desultory fashion with various friends. Such of the letters of this
period as have been preserved are so vivid and picturesque, so witty,
and so pleasantly caustic in their comment, that we can only regret
their small number. Take for instance the following description of a
feminine riot in the House of Commons:

  At the last warm debate in the House of Lords, it was unanimously
  resolved there should be no crowd of unnecessary auditors;
  consequently the fair sex were excluded, and the gallery destined
  to the sole use of the House of Commons. Notwithstanding which
  determination, a tribe of dames resolved to show on this occasion
  that neither men nor laws could resist them. These heroines were
  Lady Huntington, the Duchess of Queensberry, the Duchess of
  Ancaster, Lady Westmoreland, Lady Cobham, Lady Charlotte Edwin,
  Lady Archibald Hamilton, and her daughter, Mrs. Scott, and Mrs.
  Pendarves, and Lady Frances Saunderson. I am thus particular
  in their names, since I look upon them to be the boldest
  asserters, and most resigned sufferers for liberty, I ever read
  of. They presented themselves at the door at nine o'clock in
  the morning, where Sir William Saunderson respectfully informed
  them the Chancellor had made an order against their admittance.
  The Duchess of Queensberry, as head of the squadron, pished at
  the ill-breeding of a mere lawyer, and desired him to let them
  upstairs privately. After some modest refusals, he swore by
  G---- he would not let them in. Her grace, with a noble warmth,
  answered, by G---- they would come in in spite of the Chancellor
  and the whole House. This being reported, the Peers resolved to
  starve them out; an order was made that the doors should not be
  opened till they had raised their siege. These Amazons now showed
  themselves qualified for the duty even of foot soldiers; they
  stood there till five in the afternoon, without either sustenance
  or evacuation, every now and then playing volleys of thumps,
  kicks, and raps against the door, with so much violence that the
  speakers in the House were scarce heard. When the Lords were not
  to be conquered by this, the two duchesses (very well apprised of
  the use of stratagems in war) commanded a dead silence of half
  an hour; and the Chancellor, who thought this a certain proof of
  their absence (the Commons also being very impatient to enter),
  gave order for the opening of the door; upon which they all
  rushed in, pushed aside their competitors, and placed themselves
  in the front rows of the gallery. They stayed there till after
  eleven, when the House rose; and during the debate gave applause
  and showed marks of dislike, not only by smiles and winks (which
  have always been allowed in these cases), but by noisy laughs and
  apparent contempts; which is supposed the true reason why poor
  Lord Hervey spoke miserably.[292]

In 1739 Lady Mary drifted, without settled plan, to Italy, and there
her self-elected exile lengthened itself insensibly into a habit of
absence, so that she did not return to England till 1761, the year
before her death. During this period she kept a full journal, and
projected other work, but brought nothing to fruition.[293] Her chief
occupation was reading. Her voracious appetite for fiction passed
over from her girlhood absorption in French romances to the novels
crowding the presses of the mid-eighteenth century. The events of her
placid life were boxes of books from England, and the novels she read
would make an adequate list even for Polly Honeycomb. Lady Orford
said she wondered how any one could find pleasure in the books Lady
Mary chose. But Lady Mary confessed herself "a rake in reading," and
said, in 1750: "I thank God my taste still continues for the gay
part of reading. Wiser people may think it trifling but it serves to
sweeten life to me."[294] In 1752 her daughter sent her _Peregrine
Pickle_ (1751), Lady Vane's _Memoirs_ (1750), _The Fortunate Parish
Girl_ (1750), _Pompey the Little_ (1751), _Eleanora's Adventures_
(1751) and the _Life of Mrs. Constantia Philips_, as among the
interesting new books. In a letter to Lady Bute Lady Mary wrote:

  I see in the newspapers the names of the following books:
  Fortunate Mistress, Accomplished Rake, Mrs. Charke's Memoirs,
  Modern Lovers, History of Two Orphans, Memoirs of David Ranger,
  Miss [Mos]tyn, Dick Hazard, History of a Lady Platonist, Sophia
  Shakespear, Jasper Banks, Frank Hammond, Sir Andrew Thompson,
  Van a Clergyman's Son, Cleanthes and Celimena. I do not doubt
  at least the greatest part of these are trash, lumber, etc.;
  however, they will serve to pass away the idle time, if you will
  be so kind to send them to your most affectionate mother.[295]

And she read English drama from _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ to Lillo's
_George Barnwell_, her prime favorite.[296]

During the twenty-two years in Italy Lady Mary was practically alone,
but she says time never hung heavy on her hands. She wrote letters
constantly, and her interest never flagged in the affairs of England
in general and of Lady Bute's family in particular. As the daughters
grew up, Lady Mary wrote often about their education, and we see that
the ideas of the letter to Bishop Burnet persist. In 1753 she wrote
concerning Lady Mary, the eldest granddaughter, who had shown herself
excellent in arithmetic:

  Learning, if she has a real taste for it, will not only make
  her contented, but happy in it. No entertainment is so cheap
  as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new
  fashions, nor regret the loss of expensive diversions, or variety
  of company, if she can be amused with an author in her closet.
  To render this amusement extensive, she should be permitted to
  learn the languages. I have heard it lamented that boys lose so
  many years in mere learning of words: this is no objection to a
  girl, whose time is not so precious: she cannot advance herself
  in any profession, and has therefore more hours to spare; and as
  you say her memory is good, she will be very agreeably employed
  in this way. There are two cautions to be given on this subject:
  first, not to think herself learned when she can read Latin, or
  even Greek. Languages are more properly to be called vehicles
  of learning than learning itself, as may be observed in many
  schoolmasters, who, though perhaps critics in grammar, are the
  most ignorant fellows on earth. True knowledge consists in
  knowing things, not words. I would wish her no further a linguist
  than to enable her to read books in their originals, that are
  often corrupted, and always injured by translations. Two hours
  application every morning will bring this about much sooner than
  you can imagine, and she will have leisure enough besides to run
  over the English poetry, which is a more important part of a
  woman's education than it is generally supposed.... If she has
  the same inclination (I should say passion) for learning that I
  was born with, history, geography, and philosophy will furnish
  her with materials to pass away cheerfully a longer life than is
  allotted to mortals. I believe there are few heads capable of
  making Sir I. Newton's calculations, but the result of them is
  not difficult to be understood by a moderate capacity. Do not
  fear this should make her affect the character of Lady ----,
  of Lady ----, or Mrs. ----: These women are ridiculous, not
  because they have learning, but because they have it not. One
  thinks herself a complete historian, after reading Echard's Roman
  History; another a profound philosopher, having got by heart some
  of Pope's unintelligible essays; and a third an able divine, on
  the strength of Whitfield's sermons: thus you hear them screaming
  politics and controversy.[297]

In the next letter Lady Mary shows some doubt as to the wisdom of
giving advice so outspoken on the subject of learning. She says:

  I cannot help writing a sort of apology for my last letter,
  foreseeing that you will think it wrong, or at least Lord Bute
  will be extremely shocked at the proposal of a learned education
  for daughters, which the generality of men believe as great a
  profanation as the clergy would do if the laity should presume to
  exercise the functions of the priesthood. I desire you would take
  notice, I would not have learning enjoined them as a task, but
  permitted as a pleasure, if their genius leads them naturally to
  it.[298]

Later in the same letter she says:

  There is nothing so like the education of a woman of quality as
  that of a prince: they are taught to dance, and the exterior
  part of what is called good breeding, which, if they attain,
  they are extraordinary creatures in their kind, and have all the
  accomplishments required by their directors. The same characters
  are formed by the same lessons, which inclines me to think (if I
  dare say it) that nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to
  men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no
  distinction of capacity; though, I am persuaded, if there was a
  commonwealth of rational horses (as Doctor Swift has supposed),
  it would be an established maxim among them, that a mare could
  not be taught to pace.

In October of the same year she wrote further on the subject of the
learned woman:

  I confess I have often been complimented, since I have been in
  Italy, on the books I have given the public. I used at first
  to deny it with some warmth; but, finding I persuaded nobody,
  I have of late contented myself with laughing whenever I heard
  it mentioned, knowing the character of a learned woman is far
  from being ridiculous in this country, the greatest families
  being proud of having produced female writers; and a Milanese
  lady being now professor of mathematics in the University of
  Bologna, invited thither by a most obliging letter, wrote by the
  present Pope, who desired her to accept of the chair, not as a
  recompense for her merit, but to do honor to a town which is
  under his protection. To say truth, there is no part of the world
  where our sex is treated with so much contempt as in England.
  I do not complain of men for having engrossed the government:
  in excluding us from all degrees of power, they preserve us
  from many fatigues, many dangers, and perhaps many crimes. The
  small proportion of authority that has fallen to my share (only
  over a few children and servants) always has been a burden and
  never a pleasure, and I believe every one finds it so who acts
  from a maxim (I think an indispensable duty), that whoever is
  under my power is under my protection. Those who find a joy in
  inflicting hardships and seeing objects of misery, may have
  other sensations; but I have always thought corrections, even
  when necessary, as painful to the giver as to the sufferer, and
  am therefore very well satisfied with the state of subjection
  we are placed in: but I think it the highest injustice to be
  debarred the entertainment of my closet, and that the same
  studies which raise the character of a man should hurt that of
  a woman. We are educated in the grossest ignorance, and no art
  omitted to stifle our natural reason; if some few get above their
  nurse's instructions, our knowledge must rest concealed, and be
  as useless to the world as gold in a mine. I am speaking now
  according to our English notions, which may wear out, some ages
  hence, along with others equally absurd.[299]

Lady Montagu died in London in 1762. Her _Turkish Letters_ were
published the next year. Her miscellaneous correspondence came
out in 1807. Nor was her real significance apparent until both
publications were accessible. It was then at once recognized that
no English letter-writer had surpassed Lady Mary in brilliancy and
wit. Her eye was so quick and accurate that no interesting details
of dress or manner escaped her. As a chronicler and critic of social
faults and foibles she was cool, keen, merciless. She was graphic in
phrase, homely and direct in figures of speech, racy and idiomatic.
The whole tone of her writing was free, lively, energetic, and she
could make any topic entertaining. As a person there seems to be
ground for two opposite opinions concerning Lady Mary. People admired
her and praised her, or they hated her and told scandalous stories
about her. But as a writer there could be but one opinion. She was
not the first woman of letters to be eulogized, but she was the first
woman, not in fiction or drama, whose writings every one wished to
read.


[Sidenote: Mrs. De la Rivière Manley (1672-1724)]

Mrs. Manley,[300] a gentlewoman of good family, the daughter
of Sir Roger Manley, was left an orphan while still young. Her
guardian, a cousin twenty years older than herself, tricked her
into a false marriage, and then, on the birth of a child, announced
the cheat and disappeared. Most of the fortune left by her father
had also vanished. The details of her life after this until she
began her career of authorship are but vaguely known. In 1696 she
made a threefold appeal to the public in _Letters written by Mrs.
Manley_;[301] _The Lost Lover_, a comedy written in seven days,
produced at Drury Lane, and not successful; and _The Royal Mischief_,
successfully brought out at Lincoln's Inn Fields. In the Preface
to her _Letters_ (1696) Mrs. Manley spoke of the eager contention
between the theaters as to which should bring her on the stage, but
drama was not her natural medium. When, after a silence of nine
years, she again appeared as an author, it was with _The Secret
History of Queen Zarah_ (1705), a precursor of the scandalous
personal and political memories for which she became known. In
1709 she published _Secret Memoirs and Manners of several Persons
of Quality of Both Sexes. From the New Atalantis, an Island in the
Mediterranean._ The popularity of this book brought a second volume
the same year. In 1710 appeared _Memoirs of Europe towards the Close
of the Eighth Century_. This and a second volume were afterwards
reprinted as the third and fourth volumes of _The New Atalantis_. The
sixth edition of _The New Atalantis_ had a _Key_ at the end of the
fourth volume.

This book purported to be by an Italian and put into English by an
anonymous translator. The plan of the romance is that of a journey
where Astræa (Mrs. Behn revisiting the earth), Fame, and Virtue are
conducted invisibly about while their guide, "Intelligence," tells
them the secret histories of the persons they meet. Under this thin
disguise the statesmen, wits, and beauties of the reign of William
and Mary and Queen Anne were at once recognized. Mrs. Manley, the
publisher, and the printer, were arrested. On her own testimony,
however, the blame was counted hers and she was examined before the
court, but after about three months she was discharged. And the later
volumes followed with no public expression of disapproval.

In 1711 Mrs. Manley succeeded Swift as editor of _The Examiner_. In
1714 appeared _The Adventures of Rivella, or, the History of the
Author of Atalantis, by Sir Charles Lovemore_. In 1724 Curll brought
this out as _Mrs. Manley's History of Her own Life and Times_, and
it was probably written by her. In 1720 _The Power of Love in Seven
Volumes, and Verses_, in Anthony Hammond's _New Miscellany_, close
her contributions to literature. She died at the house of Alderman
Barker whose mistress she had been for several years.

A fact of central interest about Mrs. Manley's personal and literary
career is her quarrel with Steele which kept up with long lulls and
acrimonious crises from before 1709 to 1717. In the first volume
of _The New Atalantis_[302] she gave an account of Steele as
"Monsieur le Ingrate," narrating in detail her aid in rescuing him
from the impostors who were leading him into ruinous expenses in
search of the philosopher's stone, and bitterly assailing him for
his later ingratitude in the time of her own distresses. In the same
year _The Tatler_, No. 35, possibly referred to Mrs. Manley under
the description of the snuff-eating lady. Certainly in September
Swift represented her, under the name of "Epicene," as one of the
professors in Madonella's college. Mrs. Manley, assuming that the
paper was by Steele, wrote a denunciatory letter, which he answered
in mild fashion, owning his former indebtedness to her and explaining
his inability to aid her when she appealed to him. In the third and
fourth volumes of _The New Atalantis_ (1710) were further attacks
on Steele.[303] This third volume was dedicated to him as "Isaac
Bickerstaffe." She quoted his letter, but omitted some of the
mitigating sentences. Of the "mighty Tatlers" leveled at her she
says: "A weak, unlearn'd Woman's Writings, to employ so great a Pen!
Heavens? how valuable am I? How fond of that _Immortality_, even of
_Infamy_, that you have promised! I am ravished at the Thoughts of
_living a Thousand Years hence_ in your indelible lines, tho' to
_give Offence_.... I shall be proud of furnishing Matter towards your
inexhaustible _Tatler_, and of being a perpetual Monument of Mr.
Bickerstaffe's Gallantry and Morality."

In August, 1713, (_The Guardian_, No. 128), Steele entered the
controversy concerning the demolition of Dunkirk. Mrs. Manley
answered with a pamphlet in which the "honour and Prerogative of the
Queen's Majesty" were defended "against the unexampled Insolence of
the Author of the Guardian." This closed the open hostilities, and
by 1717 there were handsome apologies and frank admissions of error
on both sides, and the reconciliation seems to have been complete.
The chief interest we find in Mrs. Manley's play is the fact that
Steele wrote the Prologue and that the play was dedicated to him. In
this Dedication she said, "I have not known a greater mortification
than when I have reflected upon the severities which have flowed
from a pen which is now, you see, disposed to celebrate and commend
you."[304]


[Sidenote: Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas (1677-1731)]

Dryden conferred upon Mrs. Thomas the title of "Corinna" and says, "I
would have called you Sapho, but that I hear you are handsomer." The
young poetess had received no regular education, but she improved her
mind by reading the politest authors, and finally, at twenty-two, she
ventured forth as a poet herself. She sent two poems to Mr. Dryden
asking his critical judgment of them. He responded with the following
letter:

  _Fair Corinna_,

  I have sent your two poems back again, after having kept them so
  long from you: They were I thought too good to be a woman's; some
  of my friends to whom I read them, were of the same opinion. It
  is not very gallant I must confess to say this of the fair sex;
  but, most certain it is, they generally write with more softness
  than strength. On the contrary, you want neither vigour in your
  thoughts, nor force in your expression, nor harmony in your
  numbers; and methinks, I find much of Orinda in your manner, (to
  whom I had the honour to be related, and also to be known) but I
  am so taken up with my own studies, that I have not leisure to
  descend to particulars, being in the meantime, the fair Corinna's

  Most humble, and
  Most faithful servant
  JOHN DRYDEN.

  Nov. 12, 1699.

The poetical career thus auspiciously begun with the praise of
the great poet ended in disaster. After the death of Mr. Gwinnet,
who had courted her for sixteen years, in 1717, and of her mother
in 1719, she was always in financial straits and used almost any
means to avoid her creditors. During the time when she was living
under the protection of Mr. Henry Cromwell, she gained possession
of twenty-five letters written to him by Mr. Pope. These she sold
to Curll, who published them in 1726, and she thus gained a
disgraceful place in _The Dunciad_. Her _Poems_ were published in
1722, 1726, 1727, but she does not seem to have been rewarded with
either fame or money. Besides other unimportant literary work she
wrote an autobiography entitled _Pylades and Corinna; or, Memoirs
of the Lives, Amours, and Writings of Richard Gwinnet, Esquire, and
Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, junior.... To which is prefixed the Life of
Corinna, written by herself._ This was published in 1731 in two
volumes. The autobiography in an abridged form appears in Cibber's
_Lives of the Poets_.[305]


[Sidenote: Mrs. Eliza Haywood (1693-1756)]

Miss Eliza Fowler, the daughter of a small shopkeeper in London, was
married before she was twenty to the Reverend Valentine Haywood.[306]
In 1721 she left her husband[307] and thereafter she had her own
way to make. A few unimportant attempts as an actress[308] and some
occasional unsuccessful attempts as a playwright may be set aside
as not belonging to her real career. It was as a writer of romantic
tales and novels that she achieved success. This vein once tapped,
the ore, such as it was, seemed inexhaustible. From 1719 to 1756 Mrs.
Haywood published about seventy single works, nearly all of them
"fictitious tales."[309] If we should count various editions, the
numbers of times she was privileged to see some work by her issue
from the press during her thirty-seven years of authorship would
exceed one hundred and fifty. Her most prolific years were 1724 to
1728, thirty-three new books appearing during this short time.

This crowding of book after book through the press, the numerous
editions of the more popular novels, and the fact that four
"Collections" of her works had appeared by 1729, sufficiently attest
her extraordinary contemporary popularity. Mrs. Haywood's fecundity
is not a matter for great surprise. It is easy to understand that
if she could write one novel like _Love in Excess_, she could write
half a hundred more without seriously taxing her creative spirit. But
to the present-day reader her popularity seems incredible. Of what
sort was the reading public that stimulated her and her publishers to
such activity? According to Mr. Gosse's conjecture in "What Ann Lang
Read," "Eliza was read by servants in the kitchen, by seamstresses,
by basket-women, by prentices of all sorts, male and female, but
chiefly the latter."[310] But Mr. Whicher points out that Mrs.
Haywood's novels were never issued in cheap form, and that one to
three shillings for a slender octavo would put the books beyond the
purses of the servant class.[311] In all probability Ann Lang, the
milliner's apprentice, is less truly representative of Mrs. Haywood's
readers than is Polly in Colman's _Polly Honeycomb_ (1760). Polly did
not begin her career as a novel-reader till more than a decade after
the appearance of _Pamela_, so that a fairly wide range of fiction
was open to her, and Mrs. Haywood could be but one element of her
possible literary joys. But we know that _The History of Miss Betsy
Thoughtless_ was one of her favorites, and the extracts she gives
from Mrs. Haywood's previous novels and the names she cherishes,
read like satires on that lady's heroics. If Polly may be counted as
typical of Mrs. Haywood's public, we have readers distinctly above
the servant class. Mr. Honeycomb was a well-to-do tradesman with
clerks in the office and a fairly elaborate domestic establishment.
Polly may even have been to a finishing school. There are also
indications of a class of readers higher still. The ladies of fashion
who so attentively pursued Mrs. Manley's _New Atalantis_ could hardly
be supposed indifferent to the social scandal in Mrs. Haywood's
_Memoirs of a Certain Island_ and _The Court of Carimania_. In
Leonora's library there was a _Book of Novels_ which would doubtless
appeal to the same taste as Mrs. Haywood's tales. Furthermore, the
impassioned protests against novel-reading in all didactic addresses
to young ladies would indicate a widespread devotion to fiction in
the higher social ranks.

Mrs. Haywood's popularity was certainly contributed to by a lack
of important competitors. Before the advent of _Pamela_ the young
girl eager for stories must read French romances, Defoe's novels,
or Mrs. Haywood's novels. Defoe was not particularly attractive to
the Pollys of the age, and the taste for the many-volumed romances,
beloved of ladies from Dorothy Osborne and Mrs. Pepys to Biddy Tipkin
and Arabella,[312] was gradually dying out. So Mrs. Haywood had her
chance. Her "little Performances," as she called them, offered in
brief compass the love and adventure of the long romance without its
tax on the reader's patience.

Mrs. Haywood's short romances have but one theme. "Eliza writes, but
Love alone inspires," is a correct analysis by one of her admirers.
She is the self-appointed chronicler of Love and all its attendant
passions. She sets herself to trace "The Wild Career of untamed Love
in the proud Heart of Arbitrary Man"; to note the thrilling ardors,
the languishments, the ecstasies and violent agitations on the part
of the adored one; to depict with extravagant emphasis the jealousy,
rage, despair, of disappointed affections. These experiences of the
heart take place in the midst of adventures of the most melodramatic
sort. Flights over land and sea are complicated by storms and
shipwreck, by bandits and pirates. The heroic play itself is less
prolific in elopements, seductions, duels, murders, and suicides.
The sword, the dagger, and the poison cup play an active part in
cutting Gordian knots too intricately tied. There is small effort to
make the story probable. The whole effort is to make it exciting.
The reader is plunged from adventure to adventure with no breathing
place in which to be critical, and it is by this headlong speed that
the attention is held. But after reading several of the tales it
becomes apparent that to know one is to know all. The passions, the
situations, the obstacles, the dénouements recur. Nor are the people
differentiated. The ardent lovers, their yielding or temporarily
obdurate fair ones, the jealous lovers and mistresses, hard-hearted
fathers, faithless friends, and mercenary confidants, make up the
personnel of each story. Among the hundreds of characters there is
not one that remains in the memory as a real person. They are but
puppets through whose convulsive starts and unnatural tones Mrs.
Haywood vainly endeavors to make genuine passion speak.

Nor have these novels any additional points of interest such as might
come from witty dialogue, pungent comment, or beautiful description.
Mrs. Haywood's English is fluent, intelligible, and fairly correct,
but it never attains distinction. The total effect of these tales
of passion is one of almost stupefying dullness and monotony. It is
painful to reflect on the blunted moral, emotional, and æsthetic
sensibilities of a generation of readers who found their solace in
_The Excess of Love_ and its congeners.

Mrs. Haywood's activities suffered something of a check after 1729,
possibly owing to the savage attacks on her by Pope in _The Dunciad_
(1728).[313] At any rate, for some reason or combination of reasons,
no new original works of any importance by her appeared between
1729 and 1751. Among various expedients to earn a livelihood during
this period the most notable is her attempt to establish herself
as a publisher in 1742, but since only two books are recorded
as published by her she probably quickly found herself without
the business training for such an enterprise.[314] A more notable
undertaking is _The Female Spectator_ edited and at least partly
written by Mrs. Haywood in April, 1744--May, 1746.

She entered again the field of authorship with her best novels, _The
History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless_, in four volumes (1751), and _The
History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy_, three volumes (1752), which have
the merit of faintly foreshadowing the domestic novel of a later
day.[315]

The paper is professedly modeled on the work of Addison and Steele.
The writing purports to be by an editorial group of four ladies with
Mrs. Haywood as editor-in-chief. A vivacious widow in whom lovers
confide; Euphrosine, so called because of her brightness and charm;
and Mira, a lady of hereditary wit, complete the quadrumvirate. Their
avowed purpose is to give entertaining items of news, discuss dress,
decorum, and social foibles in friendly admonition, and analyze the
human heart. But there is no real emphasis except on the last of
these topics. The Tenderillas, Claribellas, Elismondas, Dorindas, and
the rest, pursue their amorous way from volume to volume, unconscious
that the world holds any interest but love, that "noblest, softest,
and the best" of all the passions.

[Illustration: THE SUPPOSED EDITORS OF _THE FEMALE SPECTATOR_ BY MRS.
ELIZA HAYWOOD

From Vol. I of the seventh edition, 1771

Mrs. Haywood is the scribe; the lady in black is the vivacious widow
of quality; the lady standing is "Euphrosine"; the other lady is
"Mira"]

But now and then the editors or some contributor break out of
the charmed circle, and we get a glimpse of women who, along with
their overworked hearts, have at least rudimentary minds. A certain
"Cleora" urges that women's best qualities are often stifled by a
wrong education, and that "the world would infallibly be happier
than it is if women were more knowing than they generally are." The
studies suggested are history, geography, some of the more agreeable
parts of mathematics, and "Enchanting Philosophy, its path strewd
with Roses." Music, poetry, dancing, and novels are suggested by
way of relaxation. For solid reading the recommendation includes
translations of Latin historians and French books of travel, and
closes with _Bailey's Dictionary_, "a library of itself since there
was never person, place or action of any note, from the creation
down to the time of its being published, but what it gives a general
account of." In another essay "Philo-Naturæ" spends impassioned
pages urging ladies to study natural history, but nullifies her
eloquence by the narrow limit she assigns to their work. "It is easy
to see, that it is not my ambition to render my sex what is called
deeply-learned." Women need only "a kind of general understanding"
of science, such as will enable them to take an agreeable part
in conversation. They are not called to abstruse and difficult
researches, but merely to those light and charming observations that
catch the watchful eye on little excursions such as ladies make in
fields, meadows, and gardens.

In _The Wife_ (1755) Mrs. Haywood is less liberal than in _The
Spectator_. The married lady is particularly warned against the
dangers of an active mind or speculative disposition. She may be so
misguided as to "attempt to investigate those things that Heaven has
hidden from human understanding," in which case her brain will be
distracted by books of controversy. Or she may strangely busy her
mind about the planets, wondering whether those vast and luminous
orbs are habitable, and if so, whether possessed by men or angels
or the ghosts of the departed. A lady so fantastically engaged is
likely to waste her time over such books as Fontanelle's _Plurality
of Worlds_.

  A woman who once gets either of these fancies into her head,
  is lost to everything besides; her husband, children, family,
  friends, acquaintances, with all the necessary avocations and
  duties of her station, seem altogether unworthy her regard; she
  lives in the clouds, and it is with difficulty she is dragg'd
  down to the performance of anything requir'd of her below.

  Methinks it is down-right madness to waste any part of time in
  seeking after things impossible to be attain'd; or if attain'd
  could be of no real service:--a married woman, above all others,
  should avoid this error:--it best becomes her to center her whole
  studies within the compass of her own walls,--to enquire no
  farther than into the humours and inclinations of her husband and
  children, to the end she may know how to oblige those she finds
  in him, and rectify whatever is amiss in them, and not attempt to
  extend her speculations beyond her family, and those things which
  are entrusted to her management.

Mrs. Haywood's programme reads like a combination from Molière's
Chrysal and Mrs. Barbauld.


In 1729 Swift wrote from Dublin to Pope:

[Sidenote: Mrs. Mary Barber (1690?-1757])

  There are three citizens' wives in this town; one of them whose
  name is Grierson, a Scotch book-seller's wife. She is a very good
  Latin and Greek scholar, and has lately published a fine edition
  of Tacitus, with a Latin dedication to the Lord Lieutenant; and
  she writes _Carmina Anglicana non Contemnenda_. The second is one
  Mrs. Barber, wife to a woolen draper, who is our chief poetess,
  and, upon the whole, has no ill genius. I fancy I have mentioned
  her to you formerly. The last is the bearer hereof, and the
  wife of a surly rich husband, who checks her vein; whereas Mrs.
  Grierson is only well to pass, and Mrs. Barber, as it becomes the
  chief poetess, is but poor. The bearer's name is Sykins. She has
  a very good taste of poetry, has read much, and, as I hear, has
  writ one or two things with applause, which I never saw, except
  about six lines she sent me unknown, with a piece of sturgeon,
  some years ago, on my birthday. Can you show such a triumfeminate
  in London?[316]

Soon after Swift added Mrs. Pilkington to his list of Dublin writers,
but it still remains a triumfeminate, because we hear no more of Mrs.
Sykins, the surly rich husband having apparently been successful in
checking her vein. Her proposed visit to Pope was also a failure.
She went to Twickenham and delivered Swift's letter, but, for some
unknown reason, returned to London two hours before the time Pope
had appointed to receive her. His irritation found expression in the
reference to "an Irish poetess" as among his troublesome visitors in
one version of _The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_.[317]

Mrs. Mary Barber would hardly be so much as a name to-day were it not
for Swift. He first met her in about the year 1729, and from that
time to 1736 letters to and from him have much to say concerning
her career. She was then nearly forty, most of her poems existed
in manuscript, she was already something of a celebrity in Dublin,
and her one desire was a subscription publication of her work. In
pursuance of this wish she went to London late in 1730 and Swift
sent kindly letters in her behalf to several of his London friends.
In the summer of 1731 a mysterious letter to the Queen, purporting
to be from Swift, contained this passage: "Mrs. Barber, the best
female poet of this or perhaps any age, is now in your majesty's
capital; known to Lady Hertford, Lady Torrington, Lady Walpole,
etc.; a woman whose genius is honoured by every man of genius in
this kingdom, and either honoured or envied by every man of genius
in England."[318] Pope sent a copy of this letter to Swift, who
immediately and indignantly, in letters to Pope and the Countess of
Suffolk, disavowed it. Such a letter, he said, would be "a folly so
transcendent, that no man could be guilty of, who was not fit for
Bedlam." In his letter to Pope Swift said of Mrs. Barber:

  Dr. Delany has been long her protector; and he, being many years
  my acquaintance, desired my good office for her, and brought her
  several times to the deanery. I knew she was poetically given,
  and, for a woman, had a sort of genius that way. She appeared
  very modest and pious, and I believe was sincere; and wholy
  turned to poetry. I did conceive her journey to England was on
  the score of her trade, being a woollen-draper, until Dr. Delany
  said, she had a design of printing her poems by subscription,
  and desired I would befriend her: which I did, chiefly by your
  means, the doctor still urging me on: upon whose request I writ
  to her two or three times, because she thought my countenancing
  her might be of use. Lord Carteret very much befriended her, and
  she seems to have made her way not ill.[319]

The perpetrator of the forged letter and the purpose in sending it
to the Queen have never been discovered, but the irritation arising
from it might well have destroyed Swift's interest in Mrs. Barber's
subscription list. He apparently recognized, however, that she was
innocent of offense and continued his efforts in her behalf. Dr.
Arbuthnot writes that he has shown "as much civility as he could" to
Mrs. Barber.[320] Gay has "made a visit to Mrs. Barber."[321] Lady
Betty Germain says Mrs. Barber "goes on in her subscription very
well."[322] But the list was incomplete by the summer of 1732 and
dragged slowly on till 1734 in spite of the aid of Mr. Barber, Lord
Mayor of London, Mrs. Worsley, Mrs. Cæsar, Mrs. Conduitt, Miss Kelly,
Lord Carteret, Lord Orrery, and the Duchess of Queensberry, all of
whom in response to applications from Swift wrote to him concerning
the progress of Mrs. Barber's affairs. In 1733 Mrs. Conduitt wrote
that "the town had already been so long invited into the subscription
that most people had already refused or accepted."[323] It was
not till 1734 that the list was considered long enough to make
publication safe.

Swift crowned his service by writing a dedicatory letter to Lord
Orrery. In this letter he spoke of Mrs. Barber as follows:

  She desireth your protection on account of her wit and good
  sense, as well as of her humility, her gratitude, and many
  other virtues. I have read most of her poems; and believe your
  Lordship will observe, that they generally contain something
  new and useful, tending to the reproof of some vice or folly,
  or recommending some virtue. She never writes on a subject with
  general unconnected topics, but always with a scheme and method
  driving to some particular end: wherein many writers in verse,
  and of some distinction, are so often known to fail. In short,
  she seemeth to have a true poetical genius, better cultivated
  than could be expected, either from her sex, or the scene she
  hath acted in, as the wife of a citizen. Yet I am assured, that
  no woman was ever more useful to her husband in the way of his
  business. Poetry hath only been her favorite amusement; for which
  she hath one qualification that I wish all good poets possess'd a
  share of; I mean, that she is ready to take advice, and submit to
  have her verse corrected, by those who are generally allow'd to
  be the best judges.[324]

But for the persistent efforts of Swift the subscription would never
have been completed. Yet Mrs. Barber had gained incidentally such
a retinue of supporting friends that her poems were republished in
1735 and 1736. There was apparently a touch of personal venom in the
passage where Mrs. Pilkington chronicles the generous aid given Mrs.
Barber and emphasizes the final small success of the poems:

  Mrs. Barber ... was at this time writing a volume of Poems,
  some of which I fancy might, at this Day, be seen in the
  Cheesemungers, Chandlers, Pastry-cooks, and Second-hand
  Book-sellers' Shops: However, dull as they were, they certainly
  would have been much worse, but that Dr. Delany frequently held
  what he called a _Senatus Consultum_, to correct these undigested
  materials; at which were present sometimes the Dean, (in the
  Chair) but always Mrs. Grierson, Mr. Pilkington, the Doctor, and
  myself.[325]

A poem in which they were summoned to one of these meetings began:

      Mighty _Thomas_ a solemn _Senatus_ I call,
      To consult for _Saphira_, so come one and all.

In 1736 Mrs. Barber was again in financial straits. A scheme for
letting lodgings, and another scheme for selling Irish linens at
Bath having proved impracticable, she made a final appeal to Swift.
Dr. King of Oxford and Mrs. Cleland had spoken so warmly of Swift's
_Treatise on Polite Conversation_ that many people wished to see it,
and Lady Worsley with many other of Mrs. Barber's patronesses urged
her to ask Swift to let her publish it for her own benefit. After
apologies for asking such a favor she says:

  I humbly beseech you, sir, if you do not think it proper not to
  be offended with me for asking it; for it was others, that out of
  kindness to me, put me upon it. They said you made no advantage
  for yourself, by your writings; and that, since you honoured me
  with your protection, I had all the reason in the world to think
  it would be a pleasure to you, to see me in easy circumstances;
  that everybody would gladly subscribe for anything Dr. Swift
  wrote; and indeed, I believe in my conscience, it would be the
  making of me.[326]

Dean Swift presented her with the copy and the sale proved
advantageous.

The career of a mediocre writer like Mrs. Barber would hardly justify
chronicling were it not for the interesting exemplification it
offers of the system of patronage. Swift and his influential friends
manifest no particular interest in Mrs. Barber's "moral and not
inelegant verse," but responsibility for her welfare seems to have
been accepted by them without demur, nor does she seem to have felt
any hesitancy about accepting any aid that might be forthcoming.


The most vivid introduction to Mrs. Grierson comes from the pen of
her early friend Mrs. Pilkington:

[Sidenote: Mrs. Constantia Grierson (1706?-33)]

  About two years before this a young Woman of about eighteen
  years of age, was brought to my Father, by a Stationer to be by
  him instructed in Midwifery.[327] She was Mistress of _Hebrew_,
  _Greek_, _Latin_, and _French_, understood the _mathematicks_,
  as well as most men. And what made these extraordinary Talents
  yet more surprizing was, that her Parents were poor illiterate
  Country People; so that her learning appeared like the Gift
  poured out on the Apostles, of speaking all languages, without
  the Pains of Study; or, like the intuitive Knowledge of Angels:
  Yet in as much as the Power of Miracles is ceased; we must allow
  she used human Means for such great and excellent Acquirements:
  And yet in a long Friendship and Familiarity with her, I could
  never obtain a satisfactory Account from her on this Head;
  only she said, "she had received some little Instruction from
  the Minister of the Parish, when she could spare time from her
  Needlework, to which she was closely kept by her Mother." She
  wrote elegantly both in Verse and Prose; and some of the most
  delightful Hours I ever past, were in the Conversation of this
  female Philosopher.

  My Father readily consented to accept her as a Pupil; and gave
  her a general Invitation to his Table, so that she and I were
  seldom asunder. My Parents were well pleased with our Intimacy,
  as her Piety was not inferior to her Learning. Whether it was
  owing to her own Desire, or the Envy of those who survived her,
  I know not; but of her various and beautiful Writings except
  one Poem of her's in Mrs. Barber's Works, I have never seen any
  published; 't is true, as her turn was chiefly to philosophical
  or divine Subjects, they might not be agreeable to the present
  Taste.[328]

A eulogy of Mrs. Grierson was written by Henry Brooke (1703?-1783)
the author of a tragedy, _Gustavus Vasa_, and various popular novels,
in a poem on "The Art of Printing," and an account of her, derived
from his notes, was published in _Brookiana_ in 1804.

  Mr. Brooke has celebrated the learning, piety, and virtue, of
  Mrs. Grierson, in a poem which he wrote on the Art of Printing.
  This lady was born in the city of Kilkenny. Such is the vanity
  of man, that he thinks he pays a sufficient compliment to woman,
  when he says, she has a masculine mind, when, in truth, it is
  known that there are many females on record, who have rivalled
  the lords of the creation in every branch of science, and
  department of learning. In this constellation the name of Mrs.
  Grierson will shine with increasing luster. Her father observed,
  that his daughter, while yet a child, was very fond of books, and
  not-withstanding his circumstances were narrow, he was determined
  to furnish her with all those that he thought were suited to her
  years; but he soon found, to his great joy, that her capacity was
  not to be measured by her years, it flew before them; and that
  her genius and inclination would triumph over every difficulty,
  even without the aid of a master. In a time that is almost too
  short to be mentioned, she was allowed by competent judges, to
  be a perfect mistress of the Greek and Roman tongues; and whilst
  other young women were proud of carrying the keys of closets,
  etc., she carried the keys of science, which she unlocked and
  surveyed, not with a transient eye, but with the warmth and
  constancy of one that fell in love with their beauties, and could
  duly appreciate their charms, so that all her attainments may be
  said to have been dictated by nature, aided by laudable curiosity
  and industry. She was early married to George Grierson, Esq., the
  king's printer. As he had a good library, she had an opportunity
  of indulging her literary pursuits.[329]

After her marriage Mrs. Grierson carried on her studies with such
ardor that at twenty-one she brought out an edition of Terence and at
twenty-three an edition of Tacitus. When she died at twenty-seven,
she left a partially completed edition of Sallust. Mrs. Barber
says that she also wrote an unpublished _Abridgment of the History
of England_. Her Tacitus has received high praise. Dr. Harwood, a
learned bibliographer, commented on it in the following terms:

  This is one of the best edited books ever delivered to the world.
  _Mrs. Grierson_ was a lady possessed of singular erudition, and
  had an elegance of taste and solidity of judgment, which justly
  rendered her one of the most wonderful as well as amiable of her
  sex. Prefixed to this edition of Tacitus, is a dedication to
  _Lord Carteret_, in most elegant Latinity.[330]

Mrs. Grierson also wrote occasional verse a few specimens of which
appear in Mrs. Pilkington's _Memoirs_, in _Poems by Eminent Ladies_,
and in Mrs. Barber's edition of her own poems. Mrs. Barber in her
Preface praised Mrs. Grierson and gave many of the facts used by
later writers. Mr. Ballard was anxious to give a full account of
Mrs. Grierson, and he wrote in 1747 to Mrs. Barber for further
information. "I likewise," says Mr. Ballard, "got the same friend to
apply to a learned and eminent dignitary in the church in Ireland;
one who is thoroughly acquainted with all the various circumstances
of her life and is every way qualified for the performance." The
eminent churchman promised an account of her life, but it never came
to hand, so Mr. Ballard was obliged to content himself with a general
eulogy. He says, "If Heaven had spared her life, and blessed her with
health, which she wanted for some years before her death, there is
good reason to think she would have made as great a figure in the
learned world, as any of her sex are recorded to have done." Mrs.
Grierson, "the learned Nymph Whom Curiosity engaged every Person to
see,"[331] was on intimate terms with Swift, Thomas Sheridan, and
Dr. Delany, and it is singular that a more exact account of her life
should not have been preserved.


[Sidenote: Lætitia van Lewen Pilkington (1712-50)]

Lætitia Pilkington, the daughter of Dr. Van Lewen, a physician of
Dublin, was about twenty-two years younger than Mrs. Barber, but
Mrs. Barber's work came so late in her life and Mrs. Pilkington was
so precocious that they were in effect poetical contemporaries.
Lætitia's love for literature and her lively mind were in evidence
before she was five. She thus describes the beginning of her
education:

  My mother strictly followed _Solomon's_ Advice, in never sparing
  the Rod; insomuch that I have frequently been whipt for looking
  blue of a frosty Morning; and whether I deserved it or not, I was
  sure of Correction every Day of my life.

  From my earliest Infancy I had a Disposition to Letters; but my
  Eyes being weak after the Small-pox, I was not permitted to look
  at a Book; my Mother regarding more the Beauty of my Face, than
  the Improvement of my Mind; neither was I allowed to learn to
  read: This Restraint, as it generally happens, made me but more
  earnest in the Pursuit of what I imagined must be so delightful.
  Twenty times a Day have I been corrected, for asking what such
  and such Letters spelt; my Mother used to tell me the Word,
  accompanying it with a good Box on the Ear, which, I suppose,
  imprinted it on my Mind.... I do assure you, it had this Effect
  on me, that I never forgot what was once told me; and quickly
  arrived at my desired Happiness, being able to read before she
  thought I knew all my Letters; but this Pleasure I was obliged to
  enjoy by Stealth with Fear and Trembling.

  I was at this Time about five Years of Age; and my Mother being
  one Day abroad, I had happily laid hold on _Alexander's Feast_
  and found something in it so charming, that I read it aloud; but
  how like a condemned Criminal did I look, when my Father, softly
  opening his Study-door, took me in the very Fact; I dropt my Book
  and burst into Tears, begging Pardon and promising never to do
  so again: But my Sorrow was soon dispelled, when he bade me not
  to be frightened, but read to him, which to his great Surprize,
  I did very distinctly, and without hurting the Beauty of the
  Numbers. Instead of the whipping, of which I stood in dread,
  he took me up in his Arms, and kissed me, giving me a whole
  Shilling, as a Reward, and told me, "He would give me another as
  soon as I got a Poem by Heart," which he put into my Hand, and
  proved to be Mr. Pope's sacred Eclogue; which Task I performed
  before my Mother returned Home. They were both astonished at my
  Memory, and from that Day forward, I was permitted to read as
  much as I pleased; only my Father took care to furnish me with
  the best, and politest Authors; and took Delight in explaining to
  me, whatever, by Reason of my tender Years, was above my Capacity
  of Understanding.

  But chiefly was I charmed and ravished with the Sweets of Poetry;
  all my Hours were dedicated to the Muses; and, from a Reader, I
  quickly became a Writer; I may truly say with Mr. _Pope_,

      _I lisp'd in Numbers, for the Numbers came._

  My Performances had the good Fortune to be looked on as
  extraordinary for my Years; and the greatest and wisest Men in
  the Kingdom did not disdain to hear the Prattle of the little
  Muse, as they called me, even in my Childish Days. But as I
  approached towards Womanhood a new Scene opened to me; and by the
  Time I had looked on thirteen Years, I had almost as many Lovers.

At seventeen Lætitia married a penniless Irish parson, Mr. Matthew
Pilkington. Soon after their marriage they became well known in
the Dublin literary set. Constantia Grierson who was the first to
congratulate Lætitia on her marriage, and who witnessed the cruel
treatment the couple received from Mrs. Van Lewen, introduced them
to Dr. Delany who befriended them. Through Dr. Delany they met
Swift, who was much taken by the "little poetical parson and his
littler poetical wife." He called them "The Mighty Thomas Thumb
and her Serene Highness of Lilliput,"[332] and for a short time
they were evidently much at the deanery. The most famous portions
of her _Memoirs_ have to do with Swift. His early biographers were
apparently unwilling to own how much of their vivid, picturesque
material came from a source so little esteemed, but Mr. Craik credits
Mrs. Pilkington with "a picture of the Dean which is probably more
true to the life than many that are more pretentious."[333] The young
lady's wit, vivacity, courage, and independent mind brought a new
and piquant element into Swift's life. He scolded her till she fled
in tears, but at his imperious summons she always came back in new,
adoring subjection. On one occasion, after an exceptionally severe
castigation, he wrote sharply but with an underlying compliment: "You
must shake off the Leavings of your Sex. If you cannot keep a Secret,
and take a Chiding, you will quickly be out of my Sphere. Corrigible
People are to be chid; those who are otherwise, may be very safe
from any Lectures of mine: I should rather choose to indulge them in
their Follies, than attempt to set them right."[334] Usually her wit
could turn an impending quarrel into some sort of gay banter. On one
occasion Swift began to reprimand her for having copied out one of
his manuscript poems. But she interrupted, saying she did not copy
it, but knew it by heart from one reading. Whereupon there ensued a
memory contest. The test given her was from Shakespeare, all of whose
works she said she could repeat. "The Line he first gave me, he had
purposely picked out for its Singular Oddness: _But_ [sic] _rancours
in the Vessel of my Peace_. Macbeth. I readily went on with the whole
Speech, and did so several times, that he tried me with the different
Plays. The Dean then took down _Hudibras_, and ordered me to examine
him in it, as he had done me in _Shakespeare_; and, to my great
surprize, I found he remembered every Line from Beginning to End of
it."[335]

When Swift first saw little Mrs. Pilkington as a bride he exclaimed,
"What, this poor little Child married! God help her, she is early in
Trouble."[336] The words were prophetic, for the troubles began very
soon. They were engendered by literary jealousy, for Mr. Pilkington
was a poet on his own account. Compliments to the wife became as
wormwood to the husband, especially when such compliments were
accompanied by frank depreciation of his own talents. Swift once put
a question to Mrs. Pilkington and received her answer. Mr. Pilkington
then entered the room and was asked the same question and gave an
unsatisfactory answer. "P-x on you for a Dunce," said the Dean. "Were
your Wife and you to sit for a Fellowship, I would give her one,
sooner than admit you a Sizar." From that time on Mr. Pilkington
viewed his wife "with scornful yet with jealous eyes."[337]

On another occasion the two wrote odes in imitation of Horace.
Angered at her success Mr. Pilkington told her that a Needle was more
becoming to a Woman's Hand than a Pen, and was placated only when the
lady consigned her own ode to the flames and highly praised his. Her
comment is: "And here let me seriously advise every Lady, who has
the Misfortune to be poetically turned, never to marry a Poet.... If
a Man cannot bear his Friend should write, much less can he endure
it in his Wife; it seems to set them too much on a Level with their
Lords and Masters; and this I take to be the true Reason why even
Men of Sense discountenance Learning in Women, and commonly choose
for Mates the most illiterate and stupid of the Sex; and bless their
Stars their Wife is not a Wit."[338] Jealousy was, however, the least
of Mr. Pilkington's faults. He soon proved himself "the arrantest
rogue in England." The action he brought against his wife for divorce
was not sustained by the courts, but the outcome of it was that he
abandoned her and her two children, and she was left penniless. She
went to London where she lived a life compounded of misfortunes and
misdemeanors.

In the _Memoirs_ she gives _in extenso_ the various expedients
whereby she tried to get a living. One of the most successful was as
a public letter-writer for which she issued the following card:

  _Letters written here on any Subject, except on the Law, Price
  Twelvepence; Petitions also Drawn at the same Rate. Mem. Ready
  Money, no Trust._[339]

Under cover of getting subscriptions for the _Memoirs_, she really
lived on the charities of the charitable and what she euphemistically
termed "contributions from the great." Colley Cibber[340] especially
befriended her and urged her to push forward the _Memoirs_. But
spite of all aid her course was downward. At one time she was even
imprisoned for debt.[341] On her release she tried to keep a print
and pamphlet shop,[342] but failed. And finally she wandered back to
Dublin where she died at thirty-eight.

The one book by which Mrs. Pilkington is known is her _Memoirs_, the
three volumes of which appeared in 1748. In 1754 a third edition
appeared with an additional volume by her son. Shortly after her
death there appeared a compilation entitled _The Celebrated Mrs.
Pilkington's Jests; or, The Cabinet of Wit and Humour_. In the
_Memoirs_ the early happy life in Dublin and the later tricks
and shifts and intrigues of the London life are described with
equal frankness. The result was a tarnished fame as a woman, but
an undisputed reputation as a clever writer. When the Earl of
Chesterfield wondered that she could write English so well, she sent
word to his lordship that Dr. Swift had been her tutor.

As a literary critic Mrs. Pilkington is especially severe on the
immorality of some contemporary women writers. Speaking of a lady who
had refused to subscribe to her book she said:

  She would have purchased my Book sooner than the Bible, to
  indulge her private Meditations, Especially if I had the wicked
  Art of painting up Vice in attractive Colours, as too many of
  our Female Writers have done, to the Destruction of Thousands,
  amongst whom Mrs. Manly and Mrs. Haywood deserve the foremost
  Rank.

  But what extraordinary Passions these Ladies may have
  experienced, I know not; far be such Knowledge from a Modest
  Woman: Indeed Mrs. _Haywood_ seems to have dropped her former
  luscious Stile, and, for Variety presents us with the insipid:
  Her _Female Spectators_ are a Collection of trite Stories,
  delivered to us in stale and worn-out Phrases: Bless'd Revolution!

      _Yet of the two, less dang'rous is th' Offence_
      _To tire the Patience, than mislead the Sense._

  And here give me leave to observe, that amongst the Ladies that
  have taken up the Pen, I never met with but two who deserved the
  Name of a _Writer_; the first is Madam _Dacier_, whose Learning
  Mr. Pope, while he is indebted to her for all the notes on
  _Homer_, endeavoured to depreciate; the second is Mrs. Catherine
  Philips, the matchless _Orinda_, celebrated by Mr. _Cowley_, Lord
  _Orrery_, and all the Men of Genius who lived in her Time.

  I think this incomparable Lady was one of the first Refiners of
  the _English_ Numbers. I cannot, except my own Country-woman
  _Mrs. Grierson_, find out another female Writer, whose Works are
  worth reading; she indeed had a happy and well-improved Genius!

The last glimpse we have of Mrs. Pilkington is most effective in the
dramatic contrast it presents. On Thursday, April 12, 1750, John
Wesley wrote in his Dublin Diary: "I breakfasted with one of the
Society, and found she had a lodger I little thought of. It was the
famous Mrs. Pilkington, who soon made an excuse for following me up
stairs. I talked with her seriously about an hour: we then sung,
'Happy Magdalene.' She appeared to be exceedingly struck: how long
the impression may last, God knows."[343]


[Sidenote: Mrs. Mary Davys (fl. 1725)]

Mrs. Mary Davys wrote a comedy produced at Lincoln's Inn Fields in
1716, and a didactic novel, _The Reform'd Coquet_, which appeared
in 1724. Her _Works_, in two volumes, appeared in 1725. Miss Morgan
says that the young lord who is the hero of _The Reform'd Coquet_,
is one of the earliest examples in fiction of "the perfect prig of
which Sir Charles Grandison is the consummate example."[344] She was
the wife of the Reverend Peter Davys, master of the free school of
St. Patrick's, Dublin, so she came into the circle of Swift. Dr. Ewen
of Cambridge formerly had thirty-six letters from Swift to Mr. and
Mrs. Davys. Mr. Davys died in 1698 and Mrs. Davys was "left to her
own endeavours." In 1713 she wrote to Swift complaining that he had
not written to her for four years. "I have honestly told her," he
said, "it was my way never to write to those whom I am never likely
to see, unless I can serve them, which I cannot her, etc. Davis the
schoolmaster's widow."[345] She was not so fortunate as Mrs. Grierson
and Mrs. Pilkington.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Mary Mitchell Collyer (1716?-1762?)]

Mrs. Collyer's publications were anonymous and she has been hardly
more than a name in literary history. Recent investigations have,
however, shown her to be of genuine importance, not merely as a
writer of considerable ability, but especially as an author in whom
romantic tendencies found early and well-defined statement.[346]
Mrs. Collyer was the wife of Joseph Collyer, a compiler, translator,
and publisher to whom her books have sometimes been attributed. Her
son was Joseph Collyer, an engraver of merit. Mr. Collyer's income
was apparently small, for Mrs. Collyer wrote for the support of her
family. In the Dedication to her _Death of Abel_ she said: "Placed
by the hand of Providence at an humble distance from the Great, my
cares and pleasures are concentrated within the narrow limits of my
little family, and it is in order to contribute to the support and
education of my children, I have taken up my pen."

The seven works attributed to Mrs. Collyer fall between 1743 and
1763. It is unnecessary to consider these works here in detail except
so far as may serve to indicate their historical significance.
For this purpose we may take up first the last of her books, the
translations from the German, for it is on these that her modicum
of fame has rested. When Mrs. Collyer translated Gesner's _Der Tod
Abels_ in 1761 and began Klopstock's _Messiah_ the year after, she
was a pioneer in a new kind of learning. The professed linguists
seldom included German in their list, and German literature was
practically unknown.[347] Mr. Haney, in his study of "German
Literature in England before 1790," gives William Taylor of Norwich
as "the first literary critic to attempt a systematic introduction of
German literature into England," and Mr. Taylor's period of literary
activity did not begin until 1790. Of the sporadic translations
before that period, aside from scientific and theological works and a
few hymns, Mr. Haney cites but two anterior to Mrs. Collyer's _Death
of Abel_. There were few more popular works in the eighteenth century
than this translation. There were eighteen editions in twenty-one
years, and many later editions. It satisfied alike the pious reader
and the lover of fiction. _The Quarterly Review_ for 1814[348] says:
"No book of foreign growth has ever become so popular in England as
the Death of Abel. Those publishers whose market lies among that
portion of the people who are below what is called the public, but
form a far more numerous class, include it regularly among their
'sacred classics': it has been repeatedly printed at country presses
with worn types and on coarse paper; and it is found at country
fairs, and in the little shops of remote towns almost as certainly
as the Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe." Miss Hughes quotes
numerous other testimonies to the same effect.

This remarkable popularity was due, of course, to the original author
rather than to the translator. Mrs. Collyer's version received high
contemporary praise, but according to modern ideas it would be
counted loose and inaccurate. Miss Reed characterizes the style as
unnatural and affected, and she thinks that while the translation
made Gesner widely known, it in reality injured his fame. But the
excellence of the work, or its defects, are not so significant in a
study of Mrs. Collyer as are the facts that she was sufficiently well
trained in German to give even a fairly adequate version, and that
she should be the first to present a German poet of the new school to
an English public.

Mrs. Collyer died before completing her translation of Klopstock and
her husband carried it to a conclusion. He said in his Preface that
his wife's fatal illness was brought on by her agitation of mind in
connection with her work on the _Death of Abel_.

Mrs. Collyer's _Christmas Box_ is another instance of pioneer work.
Its full descriptive title is _A Christmas Box, Consisting of Moral
Stories, adapted to the Capacities of Little Children and calculated
to give them early impressions of Piety and Virtue. Two volumes.
Adorned with cuts._ The _Christmas Box_ and Miss Fielding's _Little
Female Academy_ appeared in 1749, five years after Newbery's first
child's book, _The Little Pretty Pocket Book_, of 1744. In 1745
he brought out three volumes of _The Circles of the Sciences_,
and in 1751-52 _The Lilliputian Magazine_. Thus a new class of
literature was definitely started, with Mrs. Collyer and Miss
Fielding as important contributors to the spread of the idea at its
inception.[349]

Two of Mrs. Collyer's novels are translations from the French, and
are of slight importance in comparison with her one original novel
the full title of which is _Felicia to Charlotte: Being Letters
from a Young Lady in the Country, to her Friend in Town. Containing
A Series of the most interesting Events, interspersed with Moral
Reflections; chiefly tending to prove that the Seeds of Virtue are
implanted in the Mind of Every Reasonable Being._ Volume one appeared
in 1744 and a second volume in 1749. Miss Hughes in her analysis of
this novel[350] points out various elements that forecast ideas not
dominant till some decades later. It was a novel of purpose, written
for ethical and religious ends, and as such antedates _John Buncle_
by twelve years. It is also a novel of feeling. Its hero, Lucius,
must wait for Sterne before he can find his true kin. The courtship
of Lucius is punctuated with sighs and tears, with the overwrought
emotions of a sensitive heart. Steele's _Conscious Lovers_ offers an
early sentimental parallel, but the type was not fully developed till
in the seventies. The first volume ends with the marriage of Felicia
and Lucius. In the second volume the happy pair, now quite sane and
sensible, are able to discuss with fluency and precision their ideas
on the nurture and education of children. This volume was thus a
pedagogic romance of the sort that became popular after Rousseau.

The most interesting of all the new ideas brought forward by Felicia
and Lucius is their love of nature and of country life. They choose
the country as a place of residence and justify their choice on
rational grounds. And Mrs. Collyer has a surprising fullness and
ardor of description, and a sincere joy in nature not equaled
in fiction before _John Buncle_ (1756-66), and she is a decade
earlier.[351] It was only in poetry or in philosophical theory that
Mrs. Collyer could have found sources for her literary use of
nature. Spenser, Milton, and Thomson were well known to her and they
doubtless influenced her.

Connected with this love of nature are Mrs. Collyer's ideas on
gardening. When she and Lucius bought their estate it was in the
formal style, but they at once changed it to make it appear as much
like nature as possible. In this Mrs. Collyer was not entirely
original, for the _Spectator_ and the _Guardian_, Pope, Switzer, and
Batty Langley had decried the stiff regularity of the formal garden,
and Kent's great gardens came between 1730 and 1748. But Mrs. Collyer
promptly took up the new ideas and she ranks among their early
defenders.

Mrs. Collyer is very interesting because she showed herself in these
various ways so sensitive to new ideas. She seemed to know what was
in the air even before it had had any but the most casual expression.
She sat down very modestly and with much trepidation to write
anonymous translations and novels for the support of her family, but
she was, quite unconsciously it may be, treading the path of the
pioneer.


[Sidenote: Sarah Fielding (1710-1768)]

Sarah Fielding's first and most important novel, _The Adventures
of David Simple in search of a Faithful Friend_ (1744), received
extraordinary commendation from the two contemporary authors whose
judgments might be counted authoritative, Henry Fielding and Samuel
Richardson. Fielding's satiric picture of Mrs. Western in _Tom Jones_
is more than offset by his utterances in connection with his sister
Sarah's books. When _David Simple_ appeared, _Joseph Andrews_ had
been two years before the public, and it was natural that her popular
little book should be attributed to Fielding. But when the second
edition came out (also 1744) he took occasion to disavow his supposed
authorship, and likewise to commend the book.

  A third, and indeed the strongest, reason which hath drawn me
  into print, is to do justice to the real and sole author of this
  little book; who, notwithstanding the many excellent observations
  dispersed through it, and the deep knowledge of human nature it
  discovers, is a young woman; one so nearly and dearly allied
  to me, in the highest friendship as well as relation, that if
  she had wanted any assistance of mine I would have been as ready
  to have given it to her as I would have been just to my word in
  owning it; but, in reality, two or three hints which arose on the
  reading it, and some little direction as to the conduct of the
  second volume, much the greater part of which I never saw till in
  print, were all the aid she received from me. Indeed, I believe
  there are few books in the world so absolutely the author's own
  as this....

  And as the faults of this work want very little excuse, so its
  beauties want as little recommendation; though I will not say
  but they may sometimes stand in need of being pointed out to the
  generality of readers. For as the merit of this work consists
  in a vast penetration into human nature, a deep and profound
  discernment of all the mazes, windings, and labyrinths, which
  perplex the heart of man to such a degree that he is himself
  often incapable of seeing through them; and as this is the
  greatest, noblest, and rarest of all the talents which constitute
  a genius; so a much larger share of this talent is necessary even
  to recognize these discoveries when they are laid before us than
  fall to the share of a common reader....

  As to the characters here described, I shall repeat the saying
  of one of the greatest men in this age,--"That they were as
  wonderfully drawn by the writer as they were by Nature herself."
  There are many strokes in Orguiel, Spatter, Varnish, Levif, the
  Balancer, and some others which would have shined in the pages of
  Theophrastus, Horace, or La Bruyère. Nay, there are some touches
  which I will venture to say might have done honour to the pencil
  of the immortal Shakespeare himself.[352]

For a continuation of _David Simple_ in 1747,[353] Fielding wrote a
dedication and five letters. In this Preface he gave his opinion on
learning for women:

  The objection to the sex of the author hardly requires an answer;
  it will be chiefly advanced by those who derive their opinion of
  women, very unfairly, from the fine ladies of the age; whereas,
  if the behavior of their counterparts, the beaux, was to denote
  the understanding of men, I apprehend the conclusion would be in
  favour of the women, without making a compliment to that sex.
  I can, of my own knowledge and from my own acquaintance, bear
  testimony to the possibility of those examples which history
  gives of women eminent for the highest endowments and faculties
  of mind. I shall only add an answer to the same objection,
  relating to David Simple, given by a lady of very high rank,
  whose quality, is however, less an honour to her than her
  understanding. "So far," said she, "from doubting David Simple to
  be the performance of a woman, I am well convinced it could not
  have been written by a man."[354]

Miss Fielding's own views on the woman question are slightly
indicated in this story. In the course of his peregrinations David
Simple meets the charming Miss Cynthia, who tells him the story of
her life and leads him to reflect upon the irritation and unhappiness
which result from the undue restrictions imposed upon women. Miss
Cynthia had always been subject to repression. Whenever she asked
questions she was told, such things were not proper for girls of her
age to know. She was not allowed to read, for Miss Cynthia must not
inquire too far into things lest it should turn her brain. She was to
mind her needlework and such things as are useful to women. Reading
and poring over books would never get her a husband. Cynthia's
restlessness doubtless well represents the state of mind of many a
contemporary girl eager for learning, but not able to escape from the
feminine conventions.

In 1749 Miss Fielding published a work quite new in form and
intention. It was entitled _The Governess; Or, The Little Female
Academy. Calculated for the Entertainment and Instruction of Young
Ladies in their Education._ It was so popular that a seventh edition
appeared in 1760. This little book represents the happenings of nine
days in the school of Mrs. Teachum, a gentlewoman who taught young
ladies "in Reading, Writing, Working, and in all proper Forms of
Behavior." The oldest of her nine young ladies was fourteen, the
youngest was six, and the others between six and twelve. The book
was professedly written, not for the Mrs. Teachums of the age, but
for little girls under twelve. And the instruction embodied was
thrown into story form to make it more acceptable to young readers.
I know of no earlier similar attempt. Such books as had been
written for children were serious and religious in tone. But Miss
Fielding's book was lively and entertaining. Each little girl told
the history of her life and analyzed her adventures and emotions,
particularly her faults and their outcome, in true romance style.
But all is kept pretty near to a child's understanding. And there
are some occurrences--as a fracas in which the genteel young ladies
"fought and scratched and tore like young cats," for the possession
of an apple redder and bigger than its companions in the basket, a
collation at a dairy farm, sewing-parties in an arbor with Miss Jenny
Peace, the fourteen-year old girl, as story-teller and as umpire in
all disputes, that must have had extraordinary charm for young misses
who had never before seen even a semblance of their own lives in
print.

Miss Fielding's other works are of less significance except for her
translation of _Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates; with the Defence of
Socrates before his Judges_ (1762), which indicates a knowledge of
Greek more exact than was common in her day.

The most interesting fact in Miss Fielding's life is her close
friendship with Richardson. She was one of the most ardent admirers
of his work. She says of Clarissa: "When I read of her I am all
sensation; my heart glows; I am overwhelmed; my only vent is
tears.... Often have I reflected on my own vanity in daring but to
touch the hem of her garment." In 1756 Richardson wrote to her:

  Why did you not tell Lady Bradshaigh ... that you were my
  much-esteemed Sally Fielding, the author of David Simple? She
  knows my opinion of you, and of your writing powers.... I have
  just gone through your two vols. of Letters. Have re-perused them
  with great pleasure, and found many new beauties in them. What
  a knowledge of the human heart! Well might a critical judge of
  writing say, as he did to me, that your late brother's knowledge
  of it was not (fine writer as he was) comparable to yours. His
  was but as the knowledge of the outside of a clock-work machine,
  while your's was that of all the finer springs and movements of
  the inside.[355]

The most popular work by Miss Fielding was _The Little Female
Academy_. _David Simple_, to be sure, went through two editions in
1744. But the indications of contemporary recognition are not at all
commensurate with the praise from her brother and Richardson and
other high authorities. Of foreign appreciation of her work there
are more proofs. _David Simple_ was translated into German[356] in
1746 and into French in 1755,[357] and _The Countess of Gräfin_ was
translated into German in 1761.[358] The French translator of _David
Simple_ commented on the _approbation générale_ which this romance
had found.[359]


[Sidenote: Charlotte Lennox (1720-1804)]

Charlotte Rumsey was the daughter of Colonel James Rumsey,
Lieutenant-Governor of New York. At fifteen she was sent to England
as the protégé and probable heiress of an aunt. But the aunt became
insane, and the girl was left penniless. The only facts that emerge
concerning the difficult years before her marriage to Mr. Lennox in
about 1748 have to do with her very mediocre career as an actress.

Except for a volume of poems in 1747, it was not till after her
marriage that Mrs. Lennox came forward prominently as an author. Her
two-volume novel, _The Life of Harriet Stuart, Written by Herself_,
appeared in 1751. But in literary circles she was evidently well
known before this, for Johnson was her especial friend. When her
manuscript was ready for publication, he arranged a celebration at
his Club. The festivities were to last all night. Mrs. Lennox was
ceremoniously crowned with laurel, and there was a magnificent hot
apple-pie stuck with bay leaves.[360] This first novel is probably
in part autobiographical inasmuch as the heroine, Harriet Stuart,
is the daughter of a man of high official rank in America, and goes
to England at fifteen to live with an aunt who becomes insane and
leaves her penniless. But this is merely a slight framework for
a series of love adventures. Miss Stuart's wit and beauty gather
about her lovers of all varieties, army officers, sea-captains,
pirates, merchants; and the alarming crises of her fate put her
into close competition with Clarissa Harlowe herself. America,
France, and England are the far-separated scenes of Miss Stuart's
trials and victories, the emphasis being on her life in America.
There would be a chance for some interesting local color in this
representation of mid-eighteenth-century life in New York if the
young lady could have spared a moment from her adventures to observe
her surroundings. An Indian encampment, a visit to a fort, an
escapade to a "farm," a midnight row on the Hudson, are mentioned,
but with no comment. Towns and houses, roads, rivers, and seas, are
but localities for love scenes, means of transit from one episode
to another. The story is told with a deft manipulation of details
and an easy fluency that would seem to indicate something of a
previous literary apprenticeship. At any rate, in this novel she had
found her medium, and she was soon ready with a tale that gave her
genuine distinction. _The Female Quixote_ appeared in 1752 with a
Dedication written by Johnson, and it was reviewed by him in _The
Gentleman's Magazine_ for March. He said of it: "Mr. Fielding,
however emulous of Cervantes, and jealous of a rival, acknowledges
in his paper of the 24th, that in many instances, this copy excels
the original, and though he has no connection with the author, he
concludes his encomium on the work, by earnestly recommending it as
a most extraordinary, and most excellent performance. 'It is,' says
he, 'a work of true humour, and cannot fail of giving a rational, as
well as a very pleasing amusement, to a sensible reader, who will
at once be instructed, and highly diverted.'"[361] Johnson's name
is still more intimately connected with the book, for he wrote the
chapter which has the heading, "Being in the author's opinion, the
best chapter in this history."[362] _Harriet Stuart_ reads like an
echo of Richardson, but in _The Female Quixote_ Mrs. Lennox strikes
an original note. Comedy had already, a generation earlier, in Biddy
Tipkin, made sport of the romance-reading girls of the day. But the
satire was new in fiction. And it was carried out with a fullness
and accuracy of details possible only to one who had herself been a
traveler in enchanted realms. Mrs. Lennox must at some time have been
as devoted to French fiction as even Dorothy Osborne and Mrs. Pepys
in the preceding century. Her story is long-drawn-out and improbable,
but the cleverness with which Arabella and Lucy parody Don Quixote
and Sancho Panza gives the book a notable place among the English
followers of Cervantes. _The Spiritual Quixote_ (1773), a satire on
the Methodists, and _The Benevolent Quixote_ (1791), a satire on
mawkish ideas of charity, are inferior in vivacity and interest to
Mrs. Lennox's work.

In 1753-54 Mrs. Lennox brought out _Shakespeare Illustrated; or,
Novels and Histories on which the Plays are ... founded, collected
and translated_, an uncritical piece of work according to present
standards, but historically significant as one of the earliest
attempts to present Shakespeare's sources.[363] A two-volume novel,
_Henrietta_, in 1758, was dramatized as a didactic comedy under
the title _The Sister_,[364] and brought out at Covent Garden in
1769. Though Miss Mattocks played the chief part, and the Prologue
and Epilogue were respectively by Colman and Goldsmith, the play
met with but moderate success. In 1760-61 Mrs. Lennox edited _The
Ladies Museum_, in which were illustrated articles on natural
history written especially for ladies, philosophical discussions
simplified for ladies, and continued stories of the love-adventure
type evidently calculated for the same tastes. The most interesting
character drawing is that of an incipient Mrs. Malaprop in the person
of a Mrs. Gibbons.

If any annals were extant of Mrs. Lennox's life we should doubtless
find records of continuous study. At least we constantly get new
proofs of her learning. _The Memoirs of M. de Bethune, Duke of
Sully_, in three volumes in 1756,[365] _The Memoirs of the Countess
Berci_, in two volumes in the same year, and _Memoirs for the History
of Madame de Maintenon_, in 1757, show not only her mastery of
French, but very steady application to intellectual tasks. In 1759
she had what might be considered her crowning honor as a learned
lady. She was chosen to edit a translation of Brumoy's _Greek
Theatre_. In collaboration with her were Dr. Johnson, Dr. Gregory
Sharpe, Dr. Grainger, and John Bourrya, men of recognized standing as
scholars.[366]

Mrs. Lennox lived forty-four years after the close of the period
under discussion. But she belongs properly in the first half of
the century because all her important work comes between 1750 and
1760. After a decade of exceptional literary activity she sinks
into obscurity. In 1775 Dr. Johnson assisted in preparing proposals
for the publication of her collected works, in three quarto
volumes, by subscription. Had this plan been carried out there
would doubtless have been preserved much interesting information
concerning the social and literary life of an eminently successful
mid-eighteenth-century _bas bleu_. From the facts at hand it is easy
to see that she was countenanced by some of the best minds of her
time. Her portrait was painted by Reynolds and engraved by Bartolozzi.


[Sidenote: Miss Catharine Talbot (1721-1770)]

In 1770 Miss Elizabeth Carter gathered together and published
the _Works_ of her friend Miss Catharine Talbot. There had been
considerable urgency on the part of Miss Talbot's friends to secure
such a publication during her lifetime, but she was too timid, and,
though _The Green Book_ in which she kept sketches and fragments,
and "the considering drawer," constantly received accessions, her
modest opinion of her own worth and an exaggerated dread of general
criticism held her back from the ordeal of the printed page. But when
the _Works_ finally appeared they achieved immediate popularity.
The _Reflections on the Seven Days of the Week_ went through three
editions the first year and there was a tenth edition in 1784. Of
the _Works_ the eighth edition appeared within forty years. The
extravagant contemporary estimate of Miss Talbot as a moral and
religious writer, as a supporter of Christian ethics, can awake only
surprise in the modern reader. Even a reader whose mind has been
subdued to second-class eighteenth-century didacticism finds Miss
Talbot's moralizings pale and anæmic. But when we read her letters
we come upon a much more attractive and vital personality. A letter
descriptive of Mr. Browne Willis and his four daughters shows a gay
spirit and a talent for minute observation and social satire of the
Jane Austen type.[367]

From the age of five Miss Talbot lived in the family of Mr.
Seeker, Bishop of Oxford and later Archbishop of Canterbury. Her
spiritual and mental training were constantly under the supervision
of the Archbishop, who loved her devotedly. And her education is
particularly interesting as an illustration of the desultory and
fragmentary character of the intellectual discipline provided for a
girl of active mind, even in one of the best families. One advantage
was hers from early life, and that was her association with the
learned guests at the deanery where there was always an atmosphere
of scholarly and serious discussion. And her position as a member
of the Archbishop's family not only gave her entrance into the best
social circles, but made it incumbent on her, as hostess or guest, to
cultivate the amenities of life. But she did comparatively little in
the way of exact studies. She was proficient in French and Italian,
but she knew no Hebrew or Greek and but little Latin. She had tutors
in geography and astronomy and found satisfaction in the conceptions
opened up to her by these subjects. Of her drawing and painting for
which she had considerable repute she wrote in 1745:

  I learn of a good master but am much too impatient and too
  volatile to give half the time and application that are necessary
  to make anything tolerable, yet I undertake large pictures, like
  an inconsiderate goose as I am, and then have the mortification
  to leave them unfinished. This is actually the case with a fine
  holy family of Carlo Maratti's, which I began last winter (and
  two or three other pictures at the same time) in crayons, and
  which must now want the perfecting touches till February or
  March. At the same time I had undertaken to learn perspective of
  Mr. Wright. I hope from all these things I shall in time learn
  discretion at least, and not to be thus perpetually aiming _de
  prendre la lune avec les dents_.[368]

This letter was written when she was twenty-five. A _Dialogue_
written at eighteen gives an earlier glimpse of her chaotic student
life. This _Dialogue_ is entitled "Enquiry how far Practice has kept
pace with Intention."

  What have you done, this Summer?

  Rode, and laughed, and fretted.

  What did you intend to do?

  To learn geography, mathematics; decimal fractions and good
  humour: to work a screen, draw copies of two or three fine
  prints, and read abundance of history: to improve my memory and
  restrain my fancy: to lay out my time to the best advantage: to
  be happy myself, and make everybody else so. To read Voltaire's
  Newton, Whiston's Euclid, and Tillotson's Sermons.

  Have you read nothing?

  Yes: some of the Sermons; Mrs. Rowe's Works; The Tale of a Tub; a
  book of Dr. Watt's; L'Histoire du Ciel; Milton, and abundance of
  plays and idle books.

Archbishop Secker's household presents an agreeable picture of
lettered leisure. During the evenings there are long sessions known
as "the family readings." In 1751 they are reading Pope's _Works_,
evidently in the recent nine-volume edition by Warburton. They are
filled with mingled pride and shame as they reflect on his genius and
his failings. They have read Mrs. Cockburn's defense of him and they
love her for her zealous championship. But Pope is not their idol.
All their hero worship, at least all of Miss Talbot's hero worship,
goes to Richardson. She cannot subscribe to any criticism of him. In
a discussion of one of his essays in _The Rambler_, Miss Carter's
strictures bring a spirited protest from Miss Talbot:

  He does not pretend to give a scheme (not an entire scheme)
  of female education, only to say how when well educated they
  should behave, in opposition to the racketing life of the
  Ranelagh-education misses of these our days. Do read it over
  again a little candidly. How can you ever imagine that the author
  of Clarissa has not an idea of what women may be, and ought to be.

Richardson and Miss Talbot were personal friends and he thought
so highly of her judgment that when he contemplated creating the
character of a perfect gentleman as the hero of _Sir Charles
Grandison_, he consulted her concerning the traits of this superman.
She in turn consulted Miss Carter, and when the book appeared she
wrote to Miss Carter in great glee:

  Oh! Miss Carter, did you ever call Pigmalion a fool, for making
  an image and falling in love with it ... and do you know that
  you and I are two Pigmalionesses? Did not Mr. Richardson ask us
  for some traits of his good man's character? And did we not give
  him some? And has not he gone and put these and his own charming
  ideas into a book and formed a Sir Charles Grandison?

Beside the evening readings there were leisurely literary picnics,
where by some riverside they drank tea and read Madame de Sévigné's
_Letters_ and Miss Fielding. They read Mrs. Cockburn and Mrs. Jones,
and Mrs. Lennox, even the _Memoirs_ of Mrs. Constantia Phillips, and
the early verse of Miss Mulso. There is time for slow and meditative
reading, and for interested comment and question, back and forth, by
letter. It was a normal, unpretentious, and stimulating way to gain
an acquaintance with contemporary literature. And the great classics
were read, in translations, in the same manner. To read with a
learned man like Archbishop Secker was in itself an education.

It is thus that Miss Talbot had all the environment of education
with none of its disciplinary work. By twenty she was known as "the
celebrated Miss Talbot" without any basis of actual achievement. She
seems to have embodied an eighteenth-century ideal. Her religious
beliefs were beyond cavil, her conduct irreproachable. She had an
alert mind, wide interests, and considerable information on varied
topics. She had a high social rank, and she recognized social
obligations. She was affable, approachable, attentive. She had enough
learning to give her distinction, but not enough even to threaten
pedantry. And she exerted all her talents in home and church circles.
She was not a Lætitia Pilkington writing scandal for daily bread,
nor a Mary Astell protesting against the tyranny of man, nor an
Elizabeth Elstob delving in unfashionable research. She awakened no
antagonisms. She had the success and happiness that come from being
entirely in accord with one's environment.[369]


[Sidenote: Mary Leapor (1722-1746)]

A few mediocre poetesses at the end of the period may be cursorily
noticed because in their own day they attracted some attention. In
_Poems by Eminent Ladies_ Mary Leapor (1722-1746)[370] is given more
space than any other author. And in these decorous pages she stands
out as a distinct individuality. She is the daughter of a gardener,
but no such elegant creature as Tennyson's Rose. She has work to do
indoors and out, and her life is eminently prosaic. She has a plain
face, an awkward figure, and non-descript clothes. But she has no
quarrel with fate or her mirror. She seems to have been a shrewd,
sensible young woman, vivacious, quick-witted, with no illusions, no
sentimentality, no dreams. In her minor fashion she was a satirist of
the Pope school. Of the seventeen books in the little library she had
painfully gathered, the ones she valued most were by Pope and Dryden.
She manages the heroic couplet with considerable correctness and ease
and she follows Pope's method of illustrating a topic with verse
portraits. Her closely studied country scenes suggest that Gay's
_Shepherd's Week_ must have been among her books. Considering her
youth and contracted way of life, she had a remarkable insight into
social foibles, but she had none of Swift's scorn of the human race
nor of Pope's personal virulence. Her outlook on life was detached,
tolerant, and amused.


[Sidenote: Miss Mary Jones (fl. 1755)]

In 1755, when Miss Mary Jones was included in _Eminent Ladies_, she
was still living, and therefore the date of her birth was not given.
But the editorial comment says that Oxford was her home, and "hence
deservedly called the Seat of the Muses." Miss Jones corresponded
with a maid of honor, had many intimacies among the nobility, and
rejoiced in the friendship of Her Royal Highness, the Princess
of Orange. Her poems had, therefore, especial opportunities to
make their way. But the modest author long resisted the suggested
publication of her works. She felt that these "accidental ramblings
of her thoughts into rhyme" were of too slight value to be preserved
in print. But she finally, in 1752, came forward with a volume
which was greeted with high praise. _The Monthly Review_ for 1752
began an Appreciation of her in the following flattering fashion:
"To the applauded names of the ingenious _Molly Leapor_, and the
truly admirable Mrs. _Cockburn_ (see Review, _the preceding volumes_)
we have now the pleasure to add that of Mrs. Jones; whose name
will not be less an honour to her country, and to the republic of
letters, than her amiable life and manner are to her own sex: to
that sex whose natural charms alone are found sufficient to attract
our tenderest regards; but which, when joined to those uncommon
accomplishments and virtues this lady is mistress of, so justly
command our highest admiration, and most ardent esteem." _The
Review_ considers her compositions in verse as "superior to those
of any other of our female writers since _Catherine Phillips_"
and her prose as "superior to any pieces of the kind that our own
country has produced, from the pen of a woman." She was of a gay
and vivacious temperament, and social by nature. Her interest in
her friends' affairs brought forth many occasional poems. A spider
frightens Charlot, Mrs. East's canary bird dies, a hare is sent
to Mrs. Clayton, Lady Beauclerk desires an elegy in memory of her
husband,--each incident receives poetical commemoration. Epistles on
_Patience_, _Desire_, and _Hope_ are addressed to her friends among
the nobility.

Like Miss Leapor she is a satellite of Pope. She has studied him to
such effect that phrases and whole lines from his poems occur in
her verse, and to the best of her ability she copies his style. Her
_Epistle to Lady Bowyer_ is throughout curiously reminiscent of his
_Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_. Her verse essays are loosely constructed
amplifications of Pope's aphorism which she transforms into "Whatever
is, is Best."


[Sidenote: Mrs. Madan (fl. 1755)]

Mrs. Madan ("formerly Miss Cowper") was living in 1755. She was
reputed to have fine talents for poetry, an "extraordinary genius,"
in fact, but she could never be brought to publish any of her poems.
She is therefore known now only by her translation of Abelard's
Letter to Eloisa, a kind of companion piece to Pope's _Eloisa to
Abelard_. It is smooth, well-expressed, and shows some sympathetic
understanding of Abelard's emotions.


[Sidenote: Miss Mary Masters (fl. 1755)]

Miss Mary Masters, a native of Ottley near Leeds in Yorkshire,
had an early taste for poetry, but she was "always brow-beat and
discountenanced by her parents."[371] The chief poems by her in
_Eminent Ladies_ are trite paraphrases of the Psalms and need not
detain us.

In 1755 she brought out by subscription _Familiar Letters and Poems
on Several Occasions_. The letters between her as Maria and various
friends in 1755 are of considerable interest. The young ladies
discuss, in the main, questions of love and marriage, but some
letters at the end of the book concern themselves with the relative
powers of men and women. "Miss ----" sustains the conventional view
that they differ fundamentally, men having more strength of judgment,
and women quicker apprehension. She says that no woman has been great
as an orator, that the best women poets are inferior to Milton, and
that men have always managed the government. Maria maintains that the
difference is not in the faculties themselves, but in the training of
the faculties and in opportunities for their use. She cites a young
lady of twenty-two in France who had been admitted to the Academy
of Science. And one entire letter is a eulogy of Italian learned
ladies. She gives the name of Clelia Borromeo of Milan, counted by
the Italians "the greatest mathematician their country has produced,
except Galileo and Manfredi"; Gabriella Agnesi, also of Milan,
skilled in algebraic computations; Countess Tullia Francesca Bizetti
Imbonati, a "Lyrick Poetess," another Milanese lady; Laura Catterina
Bassi, Professor of Experimental Philosophy in the University of
Bologna, and many others. Maria is the earliest apologist for the
advancement of women to make such definite and intelligent use of
the learned Italian ladies as corroborative illustrations.[372]


[Sidenote: Miss Mary Chandler (1687-1745)]

Miss Mary Chandler (1687-1745), the daughter of a minister, was a
popular poetess of Bath, where she had at eighteen set up a little
shop. She was literary in her tastes and in spite of constant
ill-health and the hard work entailed by her shop she found time for
wide reading in poetry. She also wrote rhyming riddles and poems to
her friends. She became a favorite among the gentry and the literary
ladies in and about Bath, Lady Russell, the Duchess of Somerset, Mrs.
Barber, and Elizabeth Rowe being among her friends. She often visited
at great houses and her poems were handed about with much praise. She
was finally advised to make a collection of these occasional verses
and publish them. They appeared under the title _A Description of
Bath_, and the book was so favorably received that it went through
six editions by 1744, and a seventh and an eighth edition in 1755
and 1767. Our knowledge of Miss Chandler comes mainly from Cibber's
_Lives of the Poets_. The account published by Cibber was written by
Miss Chandler's brother Samuel.[373]


[Sidenote: Mary Granville (Mrs. Delany) (1700-1788)]

Mary Granville was sent at six to the private school of Mdlle.
Puelle. From eight to seventeen she was educated at home according to
the established programme for girls destined for marriage and social
position. "Music, reading, writing, French, work, and whist" are the
occupations she enumerates. At seventeen she was married to Alexander
Pendarves, a match counted advantageous though the bridegroom was
sixty and detested by the bride. After the wedding--"conducted with
much pomp and misery"--there came seven years on an isolated estate
where all the skill and patience of the young wife were called into
action by the jealous fancies and the hypochondriac whims of her
invalid husband. At twenty-four, a beautiful widow, she entered upon
a gay period of London life. Socially a success she had many offers
of marriage, but her affections were entirely centered upon Lord
Baltimore. His impassioned love was not, however, equal to the strain
put upon it by her small dowry, and he suddenly married a rich wife.
After the long illness that followed this destruction of her hopes
Mrs. Pendarves went to Ireland to recuperate. There she met Patrick
Delany whom, years later, when she was forty-three, she married.
The most satisfying years of her life came after this marriage. Dr.
Delany belonged to the best literary set of Dublin, and he was in
full accord with his wife's literary and artistic interests. For
a quarter of a century her life was one of leisure, stimulating
companionship, much reading and discussion, much social variety, and
long hours of entertaining hand-work. After Dr. Delany's death in
1768 Mrs. Delany lived in an honored, dignified, but not inactive
retirement. She was loved and visited by the King and Queen and by
many devoted friends. There had gathered about her name a tradition
of love and admiration. A sketch of her entitled "Maria," by Dr.
Delany, does not exceed the general impression we get of her charm.
He wrote:

  Maria was early initiated into every art, with elegance and
  condition, that could form her into a fine lady, a good woman,
  and a good Christian. She read and wrote two languages correctly
  and judiciously. She soon became a mistress of her pen in every
  art to which a pen could be applied. She wrote a fine hand in the
  most masterly manner, she drew, and she designed with amazing
  correctness and skill....

  With a person finely proportioned, she had a lovely face of great
  sweetness set off with a head of fair hair, shining and naturally
  curled, with a complexion which nothing could equal, in which the
  lilies and the roses contended for the mastery. Her eyes were
  bright ... indeed, I could never tell the colour they were of,
  but to the best of my belief they were what Solomon calls "Dove's
  eyes," and she is almost the only woman I ever saw whose lips
  were scarlet and her bloom beyond comparison.

Mr. Ballard dedicated the second part of the _Memoirs of Learned
Ladies_ to her as "the truest judge, and the brightest pattern of
all the accomplishments which adorn her sex." Burke called her "the
highest bred woman of the world and the woman of fashion of all ages."

These citations but faintly indicate the impression made by Mrs.
Delany on her contemporaries. It is not, however, an impression
sustained by any existing work of hers. The seventy-two pictures
she painted were copies of old masters with occasional portraits
of relatives and friends, and they were highly prized at the time,
but no one of them was of sufficient excellence to secure permanent
recognition. Her wide and diversified reading is evidenced by her
letters which are full of references to the histories, novels, plays,
criticism, and devotional works occupying her eager attention. She
carried books on every journey. She read or was read to every spare
moment. But none of this miscellaneous devotion to books resulted in
anything like learning or even in a critically discriminating taste.

Her two real achievements were letter-writing and hand-work. Over
a thousand of her letters have been published. They are lively and
entertaining and are valuable for the study of mid-eighteenth-century
social life. Especially vivid are her accounts of festivities. The
rooms and their furnishings, the gowns and jewels of the ladies,
the refreshments served, the guests and their idiosyncrasies, are
effectively sketched in. There is humorous appreciation, but no touch
of malice, and almost no gossip. The refinement and sweetness of
tone in the letters never becomes vapid or mawkish. There is always
a counter-balancing gayety and buoyancy of mood. Mrs. Delany must
have made letter-writing nearly as much a matter of business as did
Miss Seward, but the heavy "epistolary solicitudes" of the Swan of
Lichfield are at the other end of the scale from Mrs. Delany's bright
naturalness. Mrs. Delany's letters are but a clear medium revealing
"the fine lady, the good woman, and the good Christian" of Dr.
Delany's picture of "Maria."

The most surprising element of Mrs. Delany's life is her hand-work.
In October, 1750, she wrote: "I am going to make a very comfortable
closet, to have a dresser, and all manner of working tools, to keep
all my stores for painting, carving, and gilding, etc., for my own
room is now so clean and pretty that I cannot suffer it to be strewed
with litter, only books and work, and the closet belonging to it to
be given up to prints, drawings, and my collections of fossils and
minerals."

With almost any tool she had instinctive dexterity, and she had taste
and originality. She apparently enjoyed every kind of hand-work that
came to her notice. She never wasted a minute. The knotting-shuttle
and the embroidery needle were constant attendants on her tea-table
hours, and she accomplished almost unbelievable amounts in
designing and working fancy gowns, coverings for chairs and sofas,
bed-curtains, etc. She made a carpet and other elaborate pieces in
double cross-stitch; she did "shell lustres" and chenille work; she
designed and executed a chapel ceiling in cards and shells. Most
remarkable of all is her herbal begun when she was seventy-two and
completed when she was eighty-five. The flowers were made of colored
papers and were so accurate as hardly to be distinguished from
the flowers themselves. This paper mosaic was left to the Duchess
of Portland with a selection of twenty of the flowers to Queen
Charlotte. The herbal is now in the British Museum.

A review of the achievements of Mrs. Delany--her painting, her
hand-work, her letter-writing, her multifarious reading--shows that
these are but incidental to her personal charm. Her beauty, and the
loveliness of her nature, made a fine commendatory background for
whatever she did. A friend's portrait, a design for a gown, a bit
of turning in ivory, a letter--every trifle gained in value when
illumined by the "dove's eyes" of so high-bred and elegant a lady.
Her character was marked by uprightness, dignity, and good judgment.
She was delicate in her feelings, gentle, courteous, and most
sincerely kind. All of her qualities made her a desirable member of
any family or social group. It is as a fine lady of the best type
that she is remembered, not as a learned woman.


[Sidenote: Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806)]

Elizabeth Carter lived nearly half a century after the close of
the period now under consideration, and her fame as a learned lady
belongs chiefly in the second half of the century, but the work on
which that fame was based belongs before 1760. Our knowledge of
her life comes mainly from two sources, her _Memoirs_ published in
1807 by her nephew and executor, Montagu Pennington, and a series
of letters between Miss Carter and Miss Talbot written in the years
1741-1770 and published in 1809. There are also many allusions to
Miss Carter in contemporary writings.[374]

Miss Carter's linguistic tastes were early in evidence, but she
was discouragingly slow and dull in mastering language details. It
was by sheer force of industry that she developed her remarkable
aptitude for foreign tongues. Latin, Greek, and Hebrew she learned
from her father. Italian, Spanish, and German she taught herself.
French she had learned as a child from a Huguenot refugee minister
in Canterbury. She also gained some knowledge of Portuguese, and
she finally studied Arabic. She began her career as an author at
seventeen with verses signed "Eliza" in _The Gentleman's Magazine_.
At twenty-one her slender little volume of poems appeared. It is all
occasional verse and nowhere rises to any particular excellence.
But its moralizing and reflective tone proved acceptable to many
readers and there were new editions in 1762, 1766, 1776, 1777, with a
translation into French in 1706.

In 1739 Miss Carter's knowledge of French and Italian, her wide
reading, and her interest in philosophical questions were shown by
her translation from the French of an attack on Pope's _Essay on
Man_, by M. Crousaz,[375] and a translation from the Italian of
Algarotti's _Newtonianismo per le dame_.[376] At thirty-two she began
her translation of _Epictetus_ at the request of Miss Talbot and
Archbishop Secker. She kept rather fitfully at this task for three
years, from time to time forwarding completed sheets to the deanery.
She had not made the translation with any thought of publication and
it was with much difficulty that she could be brought to consider the
thought of presenting her work to a general public. But consensus of
authoritative opinion as to the ethical value of the original and
the excellence of the translation led her finally to consent to a
subscription publication at a guinea a volume in 1758. The success
was unprecedented. Her share of the profits was one thousand guineas
and her fame was established beyond cavil.

After _Epictetus_ we hear of no more work by Miss Carter. Her
intellectual life was not, however, at a standstill. She kept up her
languages by daily assigned readings, she read much in ancient and
modern history, she shows thorough familiarity with new books of
science, poetry, and letters. She practiced on the spinet and German
flute. She was an admirable housekeeper, being in especial repute for
puddings, cakes, and pastries. All odd minutes were given to work
with the needle and the shuttle. And she was guide and teacher to her
young half-brothers and sisters. But we get no more poems, no more
learned translations.

Her growing reputation as the most distinguished _bas bleu_ in
England, her social success during London winters, the awe with
which her country neighbors regarded her as "the greatest schollard
in the world," her travels in England and on the Continent, her
literary and artistic friendships--all these given in vivid detail in
her letters--belong in the picture of the brilliant life after the
mid-century mark.

[Illustration: MISS ELIZABETH CARTER

From an engraving in _The Works of Elizabeth Carter_, 1806]

But in whatever period, from whatever point of view, Miss Carter
presents us with a career almost unexampled in the annals
of learned ladies. She chose learning young and pursued it
undeviatingly, with no hesitancies and no retrospective regrets.
There were no disapproving friends or relatives to interpose
obstacles in her path. Few girls, even to-day, could have greater
freedom in the determination of their own hours, occupations, and
pleasures. Her father, though disheartened by her slow progress,
was her faithful teacher. Even her stepmother aided and abetted
her extravagant devotion to study. She was allowed to determine
the momentous question of marriage entirely according to her own
inclinations. Her published work met with immediate praise. She was
but twenty-two when Johnson published epigrams in Greek and Latin in
her honor, and said she should be praised in as many languages as
Lewis the Grand. And by middle life she had achieved independence,
money, and fame.

Nor was her career merely an external success brilliantly masking
unsatisfied inner desires. On the contrary, to the end her
eighty-nine years seemed rich and gracious to her. She did not covet
other women's lovers or husbands or children or homes. She set
possible honors lightly aside. When her friends were urging upon her
a place at court, she dreamed that she had cut off her head for the
greater convenience of curling her hair, and she declared this dream
symbolic of the fatal cost at which honors were often bought. Her
joys were of an unambitious, quiet, perennial sort. She loved nature
in all its moods of storm and shine. Her genius for friendship nearly
equaled the "Matchless Orinda's." She loved reading and had many
books. She enjoyed reflection and had many hours of happy solitude.
She was domestic in her tastes and found herself loved and needed in
her father's home. She had a sound, sweet, sensible, modest nature
that not only disarmed criticism, but preserved her from any undue or
arrogant emphasis on her position as the most distinguished literary
woman of her time. And she had an unfailing sense of humor that sent
an undercurrent of enjoyment through even the prosaic and dreary
parts of life.




CHAPTER III

EDUCATION


1. BOARDING-SCHOOLS FOR GIRLS

Of schools for girls in the period from 1650 to 1750 we can get only
the most scattered bits of information. It is apparent that there
were boarding-schools for girls from five to sixteen, and that these
schools rapidly increased in number, but of the scope and nature of
the instruction we have only the most general ideas. In 1677 there
appeared the following advertisement:

  In Oxford there is set up a boarding-school for young gentlewomen
  (by John Waver, Master in the art of dancing) where they may be
  educated and instructed in the art of dancing, singing, music,
  writing, and all manner of works.

A more famous school was at Chelsea in Gorges House. Our first
knowledge of this boarding-school comes from a play given by the
pupils. It was dated 1676 and was entitled "_Beauty's Triumph_,
a masque presented by the scholars of Mr. Jeffrey Banister and
Mr. James Hart at their new Boarding-School for young Ladies and
Gentlewomen kept in that house which was formerly Sir Arthur Gorges
at Chelsey."[377] The "Epilogue--Spoken by a young lady" recounts
"the serious things" done in the school, embroidery and modeling in
wax being the chief items.

      One in rich works with lively colours tells
      Lucretia's rape or mourning Philomel's;
      Each chaste beholder sighs and drops a tear.

             *       *       *       *       *

      Another's different mind more pleasure takes
      In various forms to mould the painted wax;
      Such shape, such beauty in each piece is shown,
      Nature sits pale, or blushing on her own,
      To see her pride by curious art out-done.

Between 1680 and 1690 Purcell's _Dido and Æneas_ was given at this
school. D'Urfey's _Love for Money; or, the Boarding School_ (1691)
has its scene "Chelsey by the River" and is supposed to refer to this
school. It was here that Molly Verney learned to japan. The school
maintained its repute under Mr. Portman, and later under Josias
Priests.

In 1680 the school was advertised:

  Josias Priests, dancing master, that kept a boarding school
  for gentlewomen in Leicester Field is removed to the great
  school-house in Chelsea, which was Mr. Portman's, where he did
  teach, and will continue the said master and others to the
  improvement of the said school.

Gorges House was demolished in 1726.

Two other notices belong in the reign of Queen Anne. The first one
shows the continued popularity of the Hackney schools:

  Whereas it is reported that Mrs. Overing who keeps a Boarding
  School at Bethnal Green near Hackney, is leaving off; this is to
  give Notice that the said Report is false, if not Malicious. And
  that she continues to take sober young Gentlewomen to board and
  teach whatever is necessary to the Accomplishment of that sex.

The second one reads,

  Mrs. Elizabeth Tutchin continues to keep her school at Highgate,
  notwithstanding Reports to the contrary. Where young Gentlewomen
  may be soberly Educated, and taught all sorts of Learning fit for
  young Gentlewomen.[378]

In _The Levellers_ a dialogue between two young ladies, we have an
account of the education given at most of these schools. One of the
young ladies says:

  You know my father was a tradesman, and lived very well by his
  traffick; and I, being beautiful, he thought nature had already
  given me part of my portion, and therefore he would add a liberal
  education, that I might be a complete gentlewoman; away he sent
  me to the boarding school; there I learned to dance and sing; to
  play on the bass viol, virginals, spinet, and guitar. I learned
  to make wax work, japan, paint upon glass, to raise paste,
  make sweetmeats, sauces, and everything that was genteel and
  fashionable.[379]

One element here indicated seems to have held a fairly permanent
place, and that is some trifling form of hand-work. A book published
in 1671 gives a hint as to the nature of this work. It is entitled
_Four hundred new sorts of Birds, Beasts, Flowers, Fruits, Fish,
Flyes, Worms, Landskips, Ovals, and Histories, etc. Lively coloured
for all sorts of Gentlewomen and School-Mistresses Works._ Many
of the kinds of work with which women attempted to get rid of
their leisure were apparently taught in the schools. All sorts of
needlework seem to have been included in the necessary subjects.
The interest in samplers is shown by a reference in _The Tatler_,
April 19, 1709, to an "excellent discourse" by "Mrs. Arabella Manly,
School-Mistress at Hackney," entitled _An Essay on the Invention of
Samplers, communicated by Mrs. Judith Bagford with an account of her
Collections for the same_.[380]

In 1714 a "Venerable Correspondent" wrote to _The Spectator_ that in
her day young women "Worked Beds, Chairs, and Hangings," and urged
_The Spectator_ to recommend a renewal of these activities. The
humorous response is hardly an exaggerated statement of the great
pieces of work undertaken by the women of the seventeenth century:

  What a delightful Entertainment must it be to the Fair Sex, whom
  their native Modesty, and the Tenderness of Men towards them,
  exempts from Publick Business, to pass their hours in imitating
  Fruits and Flowers, and transplanting all the Beauties of Nature
  into their own Dress, or raising a new Creation in their Closets
  and Apartments. How pleasing is the Amusement of walking among
  the Shades and Groves planted by themselves, in surveying Heroes
  slain by their Needle, or little Cupids which they have brought
  into the World without Pain.

  This is, methinks, the most proper way wherein a Lady can shew a
  fine Genius, and I cannot forbear wishing, that several Writers
  of that Sex had chosen to apply themselves rather to Tapestry
  than Rhime. Your Pastoral Poetesses may vent their Fancy in Rural
  Landskips, and place despairing Shepherds under silken Willows,
  or drown them in a Stream of Mohair.... How memorable would that
  Matron be, who should have it Inscribed upon her Monument, "That
  she wrought out the whole Bible in Tapestry, and died in a good
  old Age, after having covered three hundred Yards of Wall in the
  Mansion-House."[381]

In the eighteenth century embroidery and tapestry are still an
occupation, but other and less tedious works partially supplant them.
Pope's Grotto was not an isolated curiosity. _The Spectator_ suggests
the part women were taking in the manufacture of grottoes:

  There is a very particular kind of Work, which of late several
  Ladies here in our Kingdom seem very fond of, which seems very
  well adapted to a Poetical Genius: It is the making of Grottos.
  I know a Lady who has a very Beautiful one, composed by herself,
  nor is there one Shell in it not stuck up by her own Hands.[382]

Pope wrote an inscription for a "Grotto of Shells at Crux Easton, the
Work of Nine young Ladies." These young ladies were sisters and their
grotto was also celebrated by "N. H."[383] In 1735 "S. J." wrote
a poem to a Lady to accompany a present of shells and stones for
her grotto.[384] In 1746 Mr. Graves congratulated Lady Fane on her
"grotto divine" where "miracles are wrought by shells."[385]

Paper-cutting also remained something of an art. Waller had praised
a lady who skillfully cut a tree in paper.[386] Cutting silhouettes
was one of the diversions of the circle of Dr. Swift, Dr. Delany,
and Mr. Sheridan. There is a series of poems, concerning "Dan
Jackson's Picture Cut in Silk and Paper," by Lady Betty.[387] The
most important cut-paper work on record is Mrs. Delany's herbarium
or paper mosaics, but this did not come till the last quarter of the
century.[388]

Mrs. Barber's _Patch-Work Screen_ gets its name from another sort of
device. Screens were adorned by pasting odds and ends of pictures all
over them. Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe wrote to the Duchess of Somerset in
1734: "The screen your Ladyship sent me is a Rareeshew for all the
women and children about town who have anything of a nice and elegant
taste." The Duchess was at this time doing tent-stitch concerning
which Mrs. Rowe wrote:

  I am delighted with all your entertainments, except the
  _Tent-stitch_; and that I own, I admire, but then 't is as some
  people admire virtue, only in speculation. It seems to me an
  ante-diluvian invention, a task for those long-breath'd people,
  who spent a sort of eternity on earth, compar'd to the short
  duration of a modern period. However, I am in no pain for your
  Ladyship: whether your attempt is a chair or a stool, I suppose
  it will be an hereditary occupation; if you finish the branch of
  a tree, and Lady ----, a shepherd's crook, the service of your
  generation is done, and you may contentedly leave the rest to be
  finished by your children's children.

In 1758 Lady Bute had just completed a carpet concerning which she
wrote to her mother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Lady Mary answered:

  You need not excuse to me taking notice of your carpet. I think
  you have great reason to value your-self on the performance, but
  will have better than I have had if you can persuade anybody
  else to do so. I could never get people to believe that I set a
  stitch, when I worked six hours in a day.

Perhaps the most popular of all the arts was japanning. Molly (b.
1675), the daughter of Edmund Verney, was sent at eight to Mrs.
Priest's school at Great Chelsey. Her father wrote to her:

  I find you have a desire to learn to Jappan, as you call it,
  and I approve of it; and so I shall of anything that is Good &
  Virtuous, therefore learn in God's name all Good Things, & I
  will willingly be at the Charge so farr as I am able--tho' they
  come from Japan or from never so farr & Looke of an Indian Hue
  & Odour, for I admire all accomplishments that will render you
  considerable, and Lovely in the sight of God and man.[389]

The continued favor accorded japanning is shown by a letter from Mrs.
Rowe to the Duchess of Somerset in 1734:

  My great attainment at present is colouring prints: If Lady ----
  wants any birds for her new _Japan_, I have some at her service.
  Mrs. ---- is so inchanted with this new japanning, that she has
  abandon'd Mr. _Baxter_, and the _Greek_ Fathers, and employes her
  time in sticking bears and monkies on all the wooden furniture
  she can find about the house.

Japanning was taught in most of the schools.

Mrs. Montagu, Queen of the Blue-Stockings, was indefatigable in her
devotion to hand-work. Not only was she familiar with every kind of
needlework, but she turned in wood and ivory, made shell grottoes,
and designed shell frames, and she planned and executed feather
hangings for a room. Mrs. Delany is the only lady whose recorded work
exceeds that of Mrs. Montagu in amount and variety.

Domestic science was faintly foreshadowed in what were known as
"Pastry Schools." The following illustrates the type:

  To all young ladies at Edw. Kidder's Pastry School in little
  Lincoln's Inn Fields are taught all sorts of Pastry and Cookery,
  Dutch hollow works, and Butter works, on Thursdays, Fridays,
  and Saturday, in the afternoon, and on the same days in the
  Morning, at his school in Norris Street in St. James's Market,
  and at his School in St. Martin's Le Grand, on Monday, Tuesday,
  and Wednesday in the Afternoons. And at his School at St. Mary
  Overies Dock, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday Mornings from 9 to
  12.[390]

An entertaining passage in Shadwell's _The Scowrers_ (1690) indicates
something of the character of a girl's education in the country:

  _Priscilla._ Did she not bestow good breeding upon you there?

  _Eugenia._ Breeding! what, to learn to feed Ducklings, and cram
  Chickens?

  _Clara._ To see cows milk'd, learn to Churn, and make cheese?

  _Eugen._ To make Clouted cream, and whipt sillabubs?

  _Clara._ To make a Caraway Cake, and raise Py Crust?

  _Eugen._ And to learn the top of your skill in Syrrup, Sweetmeat,
  _Aqua Mirabilis_, and Snayl water.

  _Clara._ Or your great Cunning in Cheese cake, several Creams and
  Almond butter.

  _Prisc._ Ay, ay, and 't were better for all the Gentlemen in
  England that Wives had no other breeding, but you had Musick and
  Dancing.

  _Eugen._ Yes, an ignorant, illiterate, hopping Puppy, that rides
  his Dancing Circuit thirty Miles about, lights off his tyred
  steed, draws his Kit at a poor Country creature, and gives her a
  Hich in her Pace, that she shall never recover.

  _Clara._ And for Musick an old hoarse singing man riding ten
  miles from his Cathedral to Quaver out the Glories of our Birth
  and State, or it may be a Scotch Song more hideous and barbarous
  than an Irish Cronan.

  _Eugen._ And another Musick Master from the next town to Teach
  one to twinkle out _Lilly burlero_ upon an old pair of Virginals,
  that sound worse than a Tinker's Kettle that cries for his work
  on.

We happen to have somewhat more definite knowledge of one early
eighteenth-century school for girls. Mrs. Hannah Wood, the "Mistress
of a College-Boarding School" in Bury, in 1723, was the sister of Mr.
D. Bellamy who wrote "Dramatic Entertainments" for the "Annual Public
Exercises of the School." These "Entertainments" were published with
a dedication to Mrs. Wood, "A Prefatory Essay," and some "Familiar
Letters." Mr. Bellamy considers it the particular province of Mrs.
Wood "to polish Nature," since she has "a perfect Idea of every
Female Accomplishment" and if her young ladies can be "One Virtue the
better" through his labors it is ample reward.

Mr. Bellamy's plays were rather elaborately staged. There were
"pastoral figure dances" and considerable singing. One character
enters "drest like a Gentleman." There is a machine for the descent
of Apollo. The dramas performed are carefully adapted to young
ladies, "the porcelaine-clay of humankind." Mr. Bellamy examines
every word and weighs each thought to see that "The sence is Chast
and inoffensive to nicest tast." The first of the plays given is
_Vanquish'd Love: or, The Jealous Queen_, an adaptation of the
_Rosamund_ of Addison. The emphasis on warm passions, amorous
prayers, guilty fires, rage, jealousy, vengeance, and death, would
but doubtfully contribute to the delicate innocence of the young
ladies. All is, however, made right by the abrupt and unnatural
repentance of King Henry, and his eulogy of the sweets of "Virtuous
Love." The second play, _Innocence Betray'd; or, The Royal Imposter_,
was taken from Cowley's _Love's Riddle_. In the Epilogue a young lady
says the auditors may

      Wish we had Rehears'd our Spelling Books:
      And think our Time had been much better spent
      In Cross-Stitch, Irish-Stitch, or at the Tent.

And Mr. Bellamy is quite conscious that some indulgent and timorous
parents may censure his designs of teaching young ladies to speak
before an audience:

  There are too many, I know, are of Opinion, that the _Art of
  Pronunciation_ is no Female Accomplishment; that the Ladies were
  design'd by Nature for the Objects of Sight only; and that to
  encourage them in Dramatic Representations, is to offer Violence
  to their native Modesty....

  'T was an Observation of One of the most learned Prelates of his
  Age, the late Archbishop of Cambray, That the general Mistake of
  Parents in the Education of their Daughters, was this: "That they
  were too solicitous about the Ornament of their Person, and too
  remiss, if not entirely regardless, of the Endowments of their
  Mind."

  'T is pity methinks that the favourite Works of Nature should be
  nothing but moving Pictures, and, like Sir _Godfrey Kneller's_
  Canvas, as Mr. Dryden expresses it, only _Look a Voice_; that the
  Study of the Toilet should be recommended to them, as their most
  material Accomplishment, whilst the Improvement of their Judgment
  is neglected as a Trifle, and the early Exercise of their
  Rational Faculties esteem'd, if not a Crime, an Act of Imprudence
  and ill Conduct.

In the presentation of the play the young ladies are urged to enter
into the characters they have taken, and to remember the reverence
and respect they owe their auditors. Under more specific directions
Mr. Bellamy says:

  In the first place, Ladies, carefully avoid all unnatural
  Distortions both of your Limbs and Features. Wry mouths,
  contracted Brows, shrug'd up shoulders, and the like are Farce
  and Buffoonry, very disagreeable and very ungenteel: Nay,
  Coughing and Spitting, unless very accidental, are vicious
  Habits, and ought betimes to be corrected.

Among "Useful Observations" is the following on modulation of the
voice:

  All Persons Names, viz., I, Thou, He, She, We, Ye, and They, etc.
  and their following States, Me, Thee, Him, Her, Us, You, and
  Them, etc. and their Possessives, My, Thy, Our, Yours, Theirs,
  Mine, Thine, etc. and all Epithets, Adjectives, or Qualities,
  by which Substantives, Beings, or Things are explain'd and
  distinguish'd as, Black, White, Good, Bad, Round, Square, and the
  like, should always be read or spoken with a clear, open, and
  distinct Voice, as they are for the most part very emphatical,
  and the Beauty of Expression depends much upon them.

In a letter on "Female Accomplishments" the Virtuous and Fair Antiope
in the twenty-second book of Fénelon's _Telemachus_ is set forth as
an example of a lady of the first quality. Her silence, modesty,
reservedness, gentleness, her assiduous industry in spinning and
embroidering, her regularity and order and poise, make her a treasure
worthy to be sought in far regions. In the letter on "Innocent
Recreations" reading is particularly commended. The "chaste and very
useful" collection of books suggested is based on the Postscript to
Dr. Hickes's _Instructions for the Education of a Daughter_, and is
as follows:

  The whole Duty of Man, The Lady's Calling, The Government of the
  Tongue, Mr. Nelson's Companion for the Feast and Fasts of the
  Church of England, Meditations and Soliloquies of St. Augustine,
  Comber and Bennet on the Liturgy, Mr. Boyle on the Style of the
  Scriptures. Tillotson's Sermons, Paradise Lost with Addison's
  judicious and entertaining Remarks, Blackmore's Paraphrase on
  Job, Cowley's Davideis.

For the gayer part of poetry,

  Mr. Waller, Mr. Cowley's _Mistress_, some pieces of Mr. Prior,
  particularly his _Henry_ and _Emma_. Mr. Norris's _Miscellany_,
  and Mr. Watts's _Horæ Lyricæ_. For precepts of Morality I would
  lay before her Sir Roger L'Estrange's _Seneca_ and his _Fables_;
  Mr. Collier's _Essays_ and his _Antoninus_ and some select pieces
  of the Letters and Spectators.

For history, Lord Clarendon on the _Rebellion_ and Dr. Welwood's
_Memoirs_ are suggested.

  For novels, the _Adventures of Telemachus_, translated by Mr.
  Ozell; and _Don Quixot_ by Mr. Motteux, Mr. Congreve, and others,
  are the only Pieces that I would offer to her. For Plays, tho'
  there are too many unfit for a young Lady's Perusal: yet such as
  _Cato_, _Love and Empire_, _Tamerlane_, the _Mourning Bride_, the
  _Distress'd Mother_, _Phædra and Hippolitus_, and the _Conscious
  Lovers_, with many more, can never be read without Pleasure and
  Improvement.

Schools for young ladies increased in number during the eighteenth
century, especially near London. Malcolm, in 1808, said that even so
early as 1759

  two or three houses might be seen in almost every village, with
  the inscription, "Young Ladies boarded and educated," where every
  description of tradesmen sent their children to be instructed,
  not in the useful attainments necessary for humble life, but
  the arts of coquetry and self-consequence--in short, those of
  a _young lady_. The person who received the children had then
  the sounding title of Governess: and French and Dancing-masters
  prepared the girl for the hour when contempt for her parents'
  deficiencies was to be substituted for affection and respect.
  Instead of reading their native language with propriety and just
  emphasis, it was totally neglected, and in place of nervous
  sentences and flowing periods, the vulgarisms of low life were
  continued; while the lady repeated familiar words of the French
  language with a sound peculiar to Boarding-schools, and quite
  unintelligible to a native of France: the pleasing labours of the
  needle were thrown aside, and the young lady soon became an adept
  in imitating laces and spoiling the beauty of coloured silks.[391]

The _Idler_ in 1750 comments on female education as spoiling girls
for service:

  Scarcely a wench was to be got for all work, since education had
  made such numbers of fine ladies that nobody would now accept a
  lower title than that of waiting-maid, or something that might
  qualify her to wear laced shoes and long ruffles and to sit at
  work in the parlor window.


2. CHARITY SCHOOLS

In 1698 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge started a
movement for the establishment of charity schools. An organized
propaganda for getting subscriptions was undertaken by the bishops
and was so successful that between 1698 and 1715 more than one
hundred of these schools were established in London and Westminster.
In this scheme poor girls were considered as well as poor boys.
They were, of course, in separate schools.[392] Each school had
a prescribed uniform and the pupils marching in a body made a
picturesque addition to many a civic festival. In 1714 Thoresby went
to hear "the Bishop of London preach the charity sermon before an
almost innumerable company of poor children, decently clad in various
colours, which are Christianly educated and cared for in the several
wards of the city, both for soul and body."[393] In 1723 he again
records seeing the Lord Mayor in all his pomp going to St. Bride's
Church with a great train of charity children, all decently habited,
some with blue coats with yellow vests, others brown, most with
blue caps, but some with white hats and mathematical instruments in
their hands.[394] By 1753 the number of charity children that went
to Christ Church to hear the Anniversary Sermon was five thousand.
William Blake, in _Songs of Innocence_ (1789) and in _Songs of
Experience_ (1799), gives the impression of great numbers. In the
first of these commemorations Blake voices what was the general
attitude, and that is a eulogy of London's magnificent generosity.
The second one represents a much more modern tone, that of question
as to a city's social and civic standards where the supply of
helpless orphans was so large and so constant.

The word education is too pretentious for most of these schools.
The purpose in the main was to train boys and girls for service. In
the pictures drawn by Hogarth in 1741 in honor of Captain Coram's
noble charity, _The Foundling Hospital_, the three little girls in
the foreground are holding a spinning-wheel, a sampler, and a broom,
indicating branches of industry to which they were destined.

There were also many privately endowed schools in various parts of
England. In 1726 William Law, the author of _The Serious Call_,
brought out a treatise on _Christian Perfection_. It is said that an
anonymous stranger presented him with £1000 on reading it. The next
year Law founded a school for fourteen girls at King's Cliffe, and
the money is supposed to have come from this gift. When Archibald
Hutcheson died in 1740 he expressed a wish that his widow should lead
a retired and religious life under Law's guidance. Miss Hester Gibbon
joined Mrs. Hutcheson. Their joint income was £2600 a year, most of
which they planned to spend in charity. In 1744 they settled down in
King's Cliffe in Law's house, formerly a royal manor house and known
as "King John's Palace," where they continued the girls' school,
and added to it a school for eighteen boys. The important schools
in Yorkshire founded by Lady Elizabeth Hastings have already been
mentioned.

Other more private and personal and less permanent educational
ventures are occasionally recorded. A religious family school
something after the fashion of Little Gidding was now and then
attempted. One "religious retirement" is mentioned by Bishop Ken. Two
dear friends whom he frequently visited were Mary and Anne Kemys of
Cefn Mably, Glamorganshire. After the death of their mother in 1683
they went to reside at Naish Court, about a mile from Porteshead.
There they established a kind of Anglican sisterhood where they
lived a devout life and did charitable works. Bishop Ken was their
spiritual adviser, and since he had known Nicholas Ferrar well, it
is not unlikely that the ideals at Naish Court were somewhat like
those at Little Gidding.[395] In 1698 Sir George Wheler brought out a
tractate entitled _A Protestant Monastery, or Christian Œconomics_,
containing _Directions for the Religious Conduct of a Family_. He
founded and endowed a school for girls at Houghton-le-Springs,
Durham, when he was rector there. Sir George Wheler was an intimate
friend and a disciple of Dr. Hickes with whom he went abroad. It
was evidently through the influence of Dr. Hickes that he became an
advocate of higher education for women.

About the middle of the century Mrs. Montagu went to Bath-Easton to
visit her sister, Mrs. Scott, and Lady Bab Montagu, who had chosen a
life of retirement and good works. On her return to Sandleford, Mrs.
Montagu wrote as follows to Mr. Gilbert West:

  My sister rises early, and as soon as she has read prayers to
  their small family, she sits down to cut out and prepare work
  for 12 poor girls, whose schooling they pay for; to those whom
  she finds more than ordinarily capable, she teaches writing and
  arithmetic herself. The work these children are usually employed
  in is making child-bed linen and clothes for poor people in the
  neighborhood, which Lady Bab Montagu and she bestow as they see
  occasion. Very early on Sunday morning these girls, with 12
  little boys whom they also send to school, come to my sisters and
  repeat their catechism, read some chapters, have the principal
  articles of their religion explained to them, and then are sent
  to the parish church. These good works are often performed by the
  Methodist ladies in the best of enthusiasm, but thank God, my
  sister's is a calm and rational piety. Her conversation is lively
  and easy, and she enters into all the reasonable pleasures of
  Society; goes frequently to the plays, and sometimes to balls,
  etc. They have a very pretty house at Bath for the winter, and
  one at Bath Easton for the summer; their houses are adorned
  by the ingenuity of the owners, but as their income is small,
  they deny themselves unnecessary expences. My sister seems very
  happy; it has pleased God to lead her to truth, by the road of
  affliction; but what draws the sting of death and triumphs over
  the grave, cannot fail to heal the wounds of disappointment. Lady
  Bab Montagu concurs with her in all these things, and their
  convent, for by its regularity it resembles one, is really a
  cheerful place.[396]


3. HIGHER EDUCATION

The lesser boarding-schools and the charity schools give no
intimation of anything even approximating the higher education of
women. But that topic was not neglected. And it is of interest to
take up in chronological sequence the various expressions of opinion
as to the kind of education women should have.


[Sidenote: Anna van Schurman (1607-1678)]

The first influential writer advocating a large and liberal
curriculum for women was a foreigner,[397] the famous Anna van
Schurman of Utrecht. She was, indeed, the most famous learned woman
of the seventeenth century, not only in Holland, but in the entire
world of letters. As a child she gave such indication of unusual
power that her father's interest and ambition were aroused, and
he gave her perfect freedom and sympathetic coöperation in the
development of her tastes. There was no regular plan or discipline in
her education. She merely followed out, in art, in handicrafts, in
letters, every new interest of her singularly alert and responsive
mind. Till she was twenty-eight, art in some form was her chief
occupation. She carved portraits in boxwood, modeled them in wax,
etched them on glass or copper, and cut medallions in ivory. She
did fine needlework and intricate embroidery, and worked tapestry.
Specimens of her scissors-work are still preserved in the Schurman
museum at Franeker and show a dexterity that must have been
remarkable even in that day of exquisite cut-paper.[398] And she
excelled in the fashionable accomplishment of writing in foreign
alphabets. She sang delightfully, and played on the cymbal, the
lute, and the violin. Her interest in the technical side of music
is evidenced by her correspondence with noted musicians such as
Huyghens, Hooft, and Bannius.

But gradually during the amateurish delights of these occupations
and through the frivolities of a gay life there had been growing
in Anna's mind a desire for serious work. And from twenty-eight to
forty-eight she gave herself to the learned pursuits on which her
contemporary renown was based. She became known throughout Europe
and the most extravagant recognition was accorded her. As the finest
Latinist in Utrecht she was chosen to write the ode on the founding
of the University in that city. She was named the "Star of Utrecht."
Gisbert Voët, the Rector of the University, taught her Hebrew,
Syriac, and Chaldee, and influenced her to devote years to a textual
study of the Bible. Beverwyck, who through admiration for her had
become a convinced feminist, dedicated his treatise _De Excellentia
Fæmini Sexus_ to her as "the most wonderful woman of her day." Cats
wrote poems to her as the _Wonderstuk_ of the age. Her _Ethiopian
Grammar_ was greeted as a marvel by the scholars of the Dutch
universities. Jean Louis Balzac congratulated himself on coming to
know "_cette merveilleuse fille_." Descartes was one of her close
friends. She corresponded on terms of equality with theologians like
Jacob Lydius and Fredereck Spanheim and M. de Saumaise of Leyden
University. Caspar van Baerle eulogized her as "a second Sempronia,
a better Sappho, a new Pallas." She became almost an object of
pilgrimage, royal personages being among those attracted by her great
fame. The Queen of Poland, the Duchesse de Longueville, and Christina
of Sweden with an escort of Jesuit priests were among those who made
visits of state to "the incomparable Virgin."

The last twenty years of Anna van Schurman's life were given
entirely to mystical religion under the guidance of Jean de Labadie
of whose community she became the most influential member. But in
the preceding period many topics of contemporary interest held her
attention. Chief among these was the right of women to free mental
development. Dr. Rivet, Professor of Theology at Leyden, and her
intimate friend, once wrote to her that ordinary women were debarred
from equality with men by "the sacred laws of Nature." Anna responded
in lively protest and said that he based his arguments on custom
and not on reason. In time she wrote a book embodying her own views
on the subject. It was published by Elzevir at Leyden in 1641 under
the title _De ingenii muliebris ad doctrinam et meliores litteras
aptitudine_. In 1659 the book was translated into rather stiff and
cumbersome English, by "C. B.," doubtless Clement Barksdale, an
Oxford man, a prolific translator from the Latin and much interested
in education. He was master of a free school at Hereford, and later
had a successful private school at Hawling in Cotswolds. He must
have had especial interest in the education of women, for in 1675 he
wrote a _Letter touching a College of Maids or a Virgin Society_. Mr.
Barksdale's translation appeared under the title, _The Learned Maid_;
or, _Whether a Maid may be a Scholar. Logick Exercise Written in
Latine by that incomparable Virgin Anna Maria à Schurman of Utrecht.
With some Epistles to the famous Gassendus and others._ The book
opens with a quotation from Fr. Spanhemius in which he eulogizes
Anna van Schurman as "the utmost Essay of Nature in this Sex." The
translation is dedicated to the "Lady A. H.," probably the Lady Anne
Hudson to whom Gerbier dedicated his _Elogium Heroinum_. There had
evidently been an earlier translation than Barksdale's, for he says,
"This _strange maid_, being now the second time drest up in her
_English Habit_, cometh to kiss your hand." Two translations into
English within eighteen years indicate a considerable interest in
the arguments advanced. Yet the form of the book was difficult and
unattractive as is indicated by the phrase "Logick Exercise." Every
argument is thrown into stiff syllogistic form. The portion of the
book entitled "A Refutation to the Adversaries" is somewhat more
natural and lively. Stripped of their pedantry the arguments against
the education of women and the answers to these arguments are as
follows:

  Objection: The wits of women are too weak for the study of
  letters.

  Answer: Not all men have "heroical wits" yet they are not
  excluded from studies. No claim is made that all women should
  study, but only those of "at least indifferent good wits."
  Weakness of wit may be aided by study.

  Objection: Women have no opportunity to prosecute studies, no
  academies or schools being open to them.

  Answer: There are parents and tutors.

  Objection: Knowledge is a useless acquirement since women are
  shut out from "Politicall, Eclesiasticall, or Academicall"
  offices.

  Answer: Though they gain not the Primary end of public usefulness
  they yet gain an important secondary personal end.

  Objection: Since a little knowledge will suffice for a woman in
  her vocation an "Encyclopædy" of knowledge is superfluous.

  Answer: There is ambiguity in the word "vocation." Does it mean
  that woman belongs to private as against public life? Then many
  gentlemen in private life should be shut out from studies. Does
  it mean woman's special calling to Family Life? But all human
  beings have a right to a personal development, a "Universal
  Calling" separate from and above their special vocation.

  Objection: Women do not care for studies, and nothing should "be
  done _invitâ Minervâ_, as we say, Against the Hair."

  Answer: The assumption that women do not care to apply themselves
  to studies becomes logically important only when it is proved
  of women after excitation and opportunity in studies. "No man
  can rightly judge of our Inclination to studies, before he hath
  encouraged us by the best reasons and means to set upon them:
  and withall hath given us some _taste_ of their sweetness."

The arguments given and the objections answered lead to the statement:

  Wherefore our _Thesis_ stands firm: _A Christian Maid_, or _Woman
  may conveniently give herself to Learning_: Whence we draw this
  Consectary, that Maids may and ought to be excited and encouraged
  by the best and strongest _Reasons_, by the _Testimonies_ of wise
  men: and lastly by the _examples of illustrious Women_, to the
  embracing of this kind of life, especially _those_ who are above
  others provided of _leisure_, and other _means_ and _aides_ for
  their _studies_. And, because it is best, that the mind being
  seasoned with _Learning_ from the very Infancy: therefore the
  _Parents_ themselves are chiefly to be stirred up, as we suppose,
  and to be admonished of their duty.

In a presentation of the appropriate range of the studies of women
Anna includes the entire circle of Liberal Arts and Sciences as
convenient for the Head of a Christian Maid.

  But specially let regard be had unto those Arts which have
  neerest alliance to _Theology_ and the _Moral Virtues_, and
  are Principally subservient to them. In which number we
  reckon _Grammar_, _Logick_, _Rhetoric_: especially _Logick_,
  fitly called _The Key of all Sciences_: and then, _Physicks_,
  _Metaphysicks_, _History_, etc. and also the knowledge of
  Languages, chiefly of the _Hebrew_ and _Greek_. All which may
  advance to the more facile and full understanding of _Holy
  Scriptures_: to say nothing now of other Books. The rest, i.e.
  _Mathematicks_, (to which is also referred _Musick_) _Poesie_,
  _Picture_, and the like, not illiberal Arts, may obtain the
  place of pretty Ornaments and ingenious Recreations. Lastly,
  those studies which pertain to the practice of the Law, Military
  Discipline, Oratory in the Church, Court, University, as less
  proper and less necessary, we do not very much urge. And yet we
  in no wise yield that our _Maid_ should be excluded from the
  Scholastick Knowledge or Theory of those; especially not from
  understanding the most noble Doctrine of the _Politicks_ or Civil
  Government.

The whole book is a eulogy of learning as a specific for all the
ills of mind or heart. Anna quotes from the great Erasmus to the
effect that "nothing takes so full possession of the fair Temple of
a Virgin's breast, as learning and study, whither, on all occasions
she may fly for refuge," and hence nothing can so effectually
oppose vanity and light-mindedness. Studies will make a woman
sufficient unto herself in leisure hours. Studies perfect and adorn
the intellect; they conduce to reverence for the most beautiful, the
most excellent, and so to love of God; they fortify the mind against
heresies, they teach prudence, they destroy fear, they put courage
into the heart; they give a delight that is like "Divine gladness";
and they mollify and sweeten manners. In fine, the liberal pursuit
of learning brings the whole nature into conformity with "the Rule
of right reason." Who, then, would shut women out from delights so
laudable, virtues so desirable?

The whole book gives such an impression of high-minded earnestness,
it is so strenuous and sincere, affirmative arguments are so
elaborately established, and adversaries are so elaborately crushed,
that it becomes a distinct anti-climax to realize what, after all,
was the extent of her demand. She virtually asks nothing more than
that rich girls of good minds shall be allowed and even encouraged to
study at home under tutors, with the proviso that they make no public
use of their learning, that they remember St. Paul's injunction to
women "to be οἰκουργός, keepers at home," and that they make learning
the handmaid of piety. Anna van Schurman was asking for what she
herself had had. And her conception seems somewhat less modest when
we realize that no scholastic dignities, no authorship, no public
offices, could put a woman of to-day so distinctly in the lime-light
of royal and learned favor as was this retiring Anna in her quiet
little home at Utrecht.


[Sidenote: Bathsua Pell, Mrs. Makin (fl. 1641-1673)]

The immediate follower of Anna van Schurman was Bathsua Pell,
better known as Mrs. Makin.[399] She is one of the most
significant personages connected with the education of girls in
the mid-seventeenth century. Her father was a rector in Southwick,
Sussex. He died in 1616 and his wife in 1617, leaving three
children. Thomas became gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles I,
but went to America in 1635. The younger brother, John (1611-1685),
was early noted as a student. At thirteen he entered Trinity at
Cambridge, being even then "as good a scholar as some masters of
arts." At twenty he was reported to know Hebrew, Greek, Latin,
Arabic, Italian, French, High and Low Dutch. By the time he was
twenty-three he had specialized in mathematics. He held important
mathematical posts under Cromwell; and, later, under Charles II, he
was given a valuable living. Bathsua Pell had her brother's talent
for languages, and like him had an early repute for learning. About
1641, when she was perhaps about thirty, she was appointed tutoress
to Princess Elizabeth, the six-year-old daughter of Charles I. The
learned tutoress was apparently at liberty to follow her own ideas
of education, and for several years she led the sad little Princess
into such delights as might be found in the languages and theology.
She boasted of her pupil's proficiency, saying that at nine she
could "write, read, and in some measure understand, Latin, Greek,
Hebrew, French and Italian."[400] Mrs. Makin had other distinguished
pupils. Among them was Lucy Davies, daughter to Sir John Davies,
Attorney-General for Ireland, and better known as author of _Nosce
Teipsum_, and Eleanor Truchett, fluent author of half-mad books of
prophecy.[401] Lucy married the sixth Earl of Huntington. After his
death in 1655, when their son was but six years old, as Countess
Dowager of Huntington, she evidently gave her time and interest in
her retirement to the studies begun under Mrs. Makin (possibly in the
Putney Schools before 1649), who says of her in 1673: "I am forbidden
to mention the Countess _Dowager of Huntington_ (instructed
sometimes by Mrs. Makin) howe well she understands _Latin_, _Greek_,
_Hebrew_, _French_ and _Spanish_; or what a proficient she is in
Arts, subservient to Divinity, in which (if I durst I would tell you)
she excells."

[Illustration: MRS. BATHSUA MAKIN

"Facsimile copy from an almost unique print by Marshall." From an
engraving in Woodburn's _Gallery of Rare Portraits_, 1816, Vol. II,
page 39.]

Mrs. Makin makes enthusiastic mention of other learned ladies, but
does not make it clear whether they had been under her instruction.
Lady Mildmay could not, she says, be justly omitted. Then there
was Mrs. Thorold, daughter of Lady Carr in Lincolnshire, who was
"excellent in Philosophy, and all sorts of Learning." She cites also
"Dr. Love's daughters,"[402] as "still fresh in the memory of men"
for their "Worth and Excellency in Learning."

In April, 1649, John Evelyn and a party of ladies visited "the
schools or colleges for gentlewomen" at Putney. In all probability
Mrs. Makin had charge of this institution. Certainly no other known
Englishwoman would have been so competent, or would have had such
prestige as a school-mistress, and her _Essay_ of 1673 shows that
she remained in the educational field. Accompanying the _Essay_ is a
_Prospectus_ for a school she had recently opened. "If any enquire
where this education may be performed, such may be informed that a
school is lately erected for Gentlewomen, at Tottenham High Cross,
within four miles of London, on the road to Ware, where Mrs. Makin
is governess who was formerly tutoress to the Princess Elizabeth,
daughter to King Charles the First. Where, by the blessing of God,
Gentlewomen may be instructed in the _Principles_ of _religion_, and
in all manner of sober and virtuous Education: more particularly
in all things ordinarily taught in other schools." These things
"ordinarily taught in other schools" are listed as "Dancing, Musick,
Singing, Writing, Keeping accompts." Half the time in Mrs. Makin's
school was to be spent on this portion of the curriculum. The
other half was to be "employed in gaining the _Latin_ and _French_
tongues." Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish were optional subjects,
but were offered by the Governess who had a "competent knowledge"
of all of them. The language requirements could not have been
extensive since "Gentlewomen of eight or nine years old, that can
read well, may be instructed in a year or two (according to their
parts) in the _Latin_ and _French_ tongues." Something in the way of
natural history was attempted. Mrs. Makin announces, "_Repositories_
also for Visibles shall be prepared; by which, from beholding the
things, Gentlewomen may learn the Names, Natures, Values, and Use
of _Herbs_, _Shrubs_, _Trees_, _Mineral-pieces_, _Metals_, and
_Stones_," a sort of laboratory course in botany and mineralogy.
Astronomy, geography, and especially arithmetic and history were
also offered in a "general" way. Domestic science was not omitted,
though oddly bound up with a course in art: "Those that please may
learn Limning, Preserving, Pastry, and Cookery." The principle of
electives was in full force. "Those that think one language enough
for a Woman, may forbear the Languages, and learn only Experimental
Philosophy." In fact, students were allowed to take "more or fewer"
of the courses offered as they might incline. The regular rate was
twenty pounds per annum, but a "competent improvement in the Tongues,
and the other things aforementioned" was to command an additional
fee. Very astutely Mrs. Makin constituted the parents the judge as
to the excellency of their children's attainments. The notice closes
with this fair offer: "Those that think these Things Improbable,
or Impracticable may have further account every _Tuesday_, at Mr.
Mason's Coffee-house, in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange; and
_Thursdays_, at the 'Bolt and Tun,' in Fleet Street, between the
hours of three and six in the afternoon, by some person whom Mrs.
Makin shall appoint."[403]

This course of study, desultory, inchoate, fragmentary, as it is,
is nevertheless of great historic interest. It is the first known
attempt to organize a scheme of definite and solid study for girls.
However superficial the work, it was based on a novel and important
conception of the value of genuine knowledge in languages and science
for girls as well as for boys. It must have been as doubtful and
epoch-making an event in a community to have its girls sent to
Tottenham High Cross, as for the earliest students to go to Vassar.
Unfortunately the inception of this school is all we know about it.
A knowledge of its actual work, its success, a list of its students,
would serve as an illuminating commentary on the general attitude
towards learning for girls in the last quarter of the seventeenth
century.

That Mrs. Makin expected opposition is shown by the remarkable
_Essay_ that was issued with her _Prospectus_. The full title
of the _Essay_ is, _An Essay to Revive the Antient Education of
Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts, & Tongues, with an Answer
to the Objections against this Way of Education. London, Printed by
J. D. to be sold by Tho. Parkhurst, at the Bible and Crown, at the
lower end of Cheapside._ 1673. In her opening paragraphs Mrs. Makin
recognizes that an age in which "Learning and Virtue are counted
Pedantick Things, fit only for the Vulgar" is not a propitious time
to undertake an advanced scheme for the education of girls. She
trenchantly summarizes the prevalent attitude towards learned women;
and then bravely sets forth her own creed. She also emphasizes the
modesty of her demands:

  Custom, when it is inveterate, hath a mighty influence: it hath
  the force of Nature itself. The Barbarous custom to breed Women
  low, is grown general amongst us, and hath prevailed so far, that
  it is verily believed (especially amongst a cort of debauched
  Sots) that Women are not endued with such reason, as Men; nor
  capable of improvement by Education, as they are. It is lookt
  upon as a monstrous thing, to pretend the contrary. A Learned
  Woman is thought to be a Comet, that bodes Mischief, when ever
  it appears. To offer to the World the liberal Education of Women
  is to deface the Image of God in Man, it will make Women so
  high, and men so low, like Fire in the House-tops it will set
  the whole world in a Flame. These things and worse than these,
  are commonly talked of, and verily believed by many, who think
  themselves wise Men: to contradict these is a bold attempt;
  where the Attempter must expect to meet with much opposition....
  I verily think, Women were formerly Educated in the knowledge
  of Arts and Tongues, and by their Education, many did rise to
  a great height in Learning. Were Women thus educated now, I am
  confident the advantage would be very great: the Women would have
  Honour and Pleasure, their Relations Profit, and the whole Nation
  Advantage.... Were a competent number of Schools erected to
  Educate Ladyes ingenuously, methinks I see how ashamed Men would
  be of their Ignorance, and how industrious the next Generation
  would be to wipe off their Reproach. I expect to meet with many
  Scoffes and Taunts from inconsiderate and illiterate Men, that
  prize their own Lusts and Pleasure more than your Profit and
  Content. I shall be the less concern'd at these, so long as I am
  in your favour; and this discourse may be a Weapon in your hands
  to defend yourselves, whilst you endeavour to polish your Souls,
  that you may glorify God, and answer the end of your Creation,
  to be meet helps to your Husbands. Let not your Ladiships be
  offended, that I do not (as some have wittily done) plead for
  Female Preëminence. To ask too much is the way to be denied all.
  God hath made Man the Head, if you be educated and instructed, as
  I propose, I am sure you will acknowledge it, and be satisfied
  that you are helps, that your Husbands do consult and advise with
  you (which if you be wise they will be glad of) and that your
  Husbands have the casting-Voice, in whose determinations you will
  acquiesce.

The main portion of the _Essay_ is addressed to a "much-honoured and
worthy friend" who has expressed considerable doubt as to the wisdom
of her educational projects. The tone of his letter is indicated by
the following summary:

  Your great question is, Whether to breed up Women in Arts and
  Tongues, is not a mere new Device, never before practised in the
  World. This you doubt the more: Because Women are of low Parts,
  and not capable of Improvement by this Education. If they could
  be improved you doubt, whether it would benefit them? If it
  would benefit them, you enquire where such Education may be had?
  or, whether they must go to School with Boys? to be made twice
  more impudent than learned. At last you muster up a Legion of
  Objections.

These doubts and objections are then discussed _seriatim_. To
establish her contention that women have been educated in arts and
sciences in the past she gives an unchronological, uncritical list of
women who attained distinction in Greece and Rome and in Bible times.
Miriam, "a great poet and philosopher," the women who danced before
David (singing songs "compos'd it's like by themselves"), Huldah the
Prophetess, "who dwelt (we may suppose) in a college where women were
bred up in good literature"; Anna and Phebe; Triphena, Triphosa, and
Persis; Priscilla who instructed Apollos; Timothy's mother Eunice and
grandmother Lois; and Philip's four daughters, make up from Sacred
Writ a list intended to allay the anxieties of a devout churchman
as to the effect of learning on female piety. Mrs. Makin was really
forced to get as many Biblical recruits as possible, since her
opponents regularly massed their forces in the Garden of Eden with
the Sin of Eve as their impregnable fort.

To the lay mind examples from classic lands might prove
authoritative, hence there follows a list of Greek and Roman ladies
of learning. If the heroes of ancient story are but idealized
representations of actual men, why, reasons Mrs. Makin, may we not
suppose some actual wise women as the begetters of the legends
of Minerva, the Muses, and the Sibyls? From history she cites
"Sempronia, Cornelia, Lelia, Mutia, Cleobulina, Cassandra, Terentia,
Hortensia, Sulpitia, Portia, Helvitia, Enonia, Paula, Albina, Pella,
Jenobia, Voleria, Proba, Eudocia, Claudia," and many others; a list
too undiscriminating to be convincing, but certainly creditable to
Mrs. Makin's industrious learning. After this wide preliminary sweep,
Mrs. Makin takes up different realms of attainment. "Women have
been good Linguists"; "Women have been good Oratours"; "Women have
understood Logic"; "Women have been profound Philosophers"; "Some
Women have understood the Mathematics"; "Women have been good Poets";
"Women have been good Divines"--such are the theses she is prepared
to defend. The mathematics are most thinly provided with examples,
Hypatia of Alexandria and "A Lady of late, her name I have forgot,"
who printed divers tables, being the only instances she can summon.
The richest assemblage of names comes under the linguists and the
poets. The purpose of this ardent and prolonged search of times past
and present is to show that women are not by act of creation always
of "low parts"; that some, indeed, have approached the standards
set by men. This being the case, women should have full educational
opportunities. Mrs. Makin is careful, however, to hedge in even
this proposition with qualifications. Education belongs only to
the Christian maid, to the maid of excellent mind, to the maid of
wealth and leisure. A woman's education is for her own development
and pleasure and for the service of her family. Any social, public,
utilitarian use of it is not for a moment contemplated. A further
qualification is that education is not absolutely essential:

  I do not mean that it is necessary to the _esse_, to the
  _subsistence_, or to the salvation of women, to be thus educated.
  Those that are mean in the world have not the opportunity
  for this education. Those that are of low parts, though they
  have opportunity, cannot reach this. _Ex quovis ligno not fit
  Minerva._ My meaning is, persons that God hath blessed with the
  things of this world, that have competent natural parts, ought to
  be educated in knowledge. That is, it is much better they should
  spend the time of their youth to be competently instructed in
  those things usually taught to gentlewomen at schools, and the
  over-plus of their time to be spent in gaining arts and tongues
  and useful knowledge, rather than to trifle away so many precious
  minutes, merely to polish their hands and feet, to curl their
  locks, to dress and trim their bodies.

With these limitations the proposition may be allowed to stand that
the virtuous, talented woman of leisure should be granted educational
advantages. But there are objections still to be met. The more
important of these may be summarized with Mrs. Makin's answers:

  1. "If we bring up our Daughters to Learning no Persons will
  adventure to Marry them."

  Answer: Learned men would surely choose learned wives, and it
  will be long before there are learned women enough to overstock
  the market.

  2. "When Solomon praised the good housewife no mention was made
  of her learning."

  Answer: The daily tasks of Solomon's housewife required
  considerable knowledge. "To buy wool and flax, to dye scarlet
  and purple, requires skill in Natural Philosophy. To consider a
  field, the quantity and quality, requires knowledge in Geometry.
  To plant a vineyard, requires understanding in Husbandry. She
  could not merchandise without Arithmetic. She could not govern so
  great a family well without knowledge in Politics and Economics.
  She could not look well to the ways of her household, except
  she understood Physic and Chirurgery. She could not open her
  mouth with wisdom and have in her tongue the law of kindness
  without Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic." But at the best, Solomon's
  good housewife seems to Mrs. Makin hardly more than "an honest,
  well-bred, ingenious, industrious Dutchwoman," not at all the
  sort of talented gentlewoman of the leisure classes for whom the
  new liberal education is to be provided.

  3. "Women are of ill Natures, and will abuse their Education."

  Answer: Men also abuse their Education.

  4. "They will be proud and not obey their Husbands; they will be
  pragmatick and boast of their Parts and Improvements."

  Answer: "To this I Answer; What is said of Philosophy, is true
  of Knowledge; a little Philosophy carries a man from God, but a
  great deal brings him back again; a little knowledge, like windy
  Bladders, puffs up, but a good measure of true knowledge, like
  Ballast in a Ship, settles down, and makes a person more even
  in his station; 't is not knowing too much, but too little that
  causes the irregularity."

  5. "The end of Learning is Publick Business" in which women have
  no concern.

  Answer: The private ends of learning are as important as the
  public ends. Moreover, this objection would apply to all men in
  private life.

  6. "Women do not desire Learning."

  Answer: "Neither do many Boys."

  7. "Women are of Low Parts."

  Answer: "So are many Men."

  8. Women are soft, tender, delicate, weak.

  Answer: Then strengthen them by Education.

  9. A learned gentlewoman is ridiculous because contrary to custom.

  Answer: This custom has a bad ground. Men wish women to be fools,
  that they may remain slaves. A bad custom should be broken that
  good customs may prevail.

  10. The final and crucial objection is elaborately stated:
  "How shall time be found to teach children these things here
  proposed? Boys go to school ordinarily from seven till sixteen or
  seventeen, and not above one in four attain so much knowledge in
  the Tongues as to be admitted into the University, where no great
  accuracy is required, and they learn nothing else usually besides
  a little History. Gentlewomen will not ordinarily be sent out so
  soon, nor is it convenient they should continue so long. Further,
  half their time, it is supposed, must be spent in learning those
  things that concern them as Women. Twice as many things are
  proposed to be taught Girls in half the time, as Boyes do learn,
  which is impossible."

The rest of the article is taken up with an analysis of Lilly's
_Grammar_, to show how slow and burdensome and distasteful are its
methods, and to an analysis of the short cuts to knowledge devised
by Mrs. Makin and Mr. Lewis. For instance, Lilly's long rule for
substantives is simplified into, "Any word with _a_, _an_, or _the_
in front of it is a substantive." If you wish to distinguish between
a noun and an adjective you have but to note that nouns change
when you make a plural, adjectives do not. And so on with many
shrewd little tricks of learning whereby the parts of speech may
be known at a glance, the nature of said parts of speech not being
in question. The whole of Mrs. Makin's scope and plan of education
seems superficial and uncoördinated until seen in the light of the
contemporary training of boys as she describes it. Then her system
seems alive and energetic in its effort to slough off non-essentials.

In passing, Mrs. Makin frequently utters wise and far-seeing opinions
concerning the education of girls.

  If any desire to know what they should be instructed in? I
  answer: I cannot tell where to begin to admit Women, nor from
  what part of Learning to exclude them, in regard of their
  Capacities. The whole _Encyclopoedia_ of Learning may be useful
  some way or other to them. "Grammar, Rhetorick, Logick, Physick,
  the Tongues, Mathematics, Geography, History, Musick, Painting,
  Poetry"--all of these should be open to women, and all could be
  advantageously used by them.

With regard to the pleasures of the student she says, "Delight and
Pleasure are the attendants on Learning."

  There is no pleasure greater than what is founded in Knowledge;
  it is the First Fruits of Heaven, and a glimpse of that Glory we
  afterwards expect. There is in all an innate desire of knowing,
  and the satisfying this is the greatest pleasure. Men are very
  cruel, that give them leave to look at a distance, only to know
  they do not know; to make any thus to tantalize is a great
  torment.

She is especially scornful of the vain and frivolous women of that
frivolous age, those women whose time is spent in "making Points for
Bravery, in dressing and trimming themselves like Bartholomew-Babies,
in Painting and Dancing, in making Flowers of Coloured Straw, and
building Houses of stained Paper, and such like vanities."


[Sidenote: Poulain de la Barre]

A book nearly contemporaneous with Mrs. Makin's _Prospectus_ is
entitled _The Woman as Good as the Man, or the Equality of Both
Sexes. Written originally in French and translated into English by
A. L._ The French original was by Poulain de la Barre whose _De
l'Egalité des deux Sexes_ was published in 1673. The translation by
A. L. came out in 1677. The Preface by the author and that by the
translator show that they enter upon their work with considerable
trepidation, knowing that they write against the general view. The
probable opponents are classified as "all the Ignorant and most
of the Learned," but the author proceeds valiantly on his mission
of enlightenment. "Men," he says, "have always kept women in
subjection," moved thereto by a "secret Instinct," as if they had for
their own dominance "Letters-Patent from the Author of Nature." Women
have likewise accepted the doctrine of their own inferiority so that
dependence and subjection have come to seem their normal condition.
M. de la Barre states the prevalent idea and his own radical
departure from it in the following passage:

  Let every Man (in particular) be asked his Thoughts of Women
  (in general) and that he would surely confess his Mind; he will
  tell you without doubt, That they were not made but for Man;
  That they are fit for nothing, but to Nurse and Breed little
  Children in their Low Ages; and to mind the House. It may be the
  more Ingenious will add, That there are many Women that have
  indeed Parts, and Conduct; but that even they who seem to have
  most, when they are nearly examined, discover still some-what
  that speaks their Sex: That they have neither Solidity, nor
  Constancy; nor that depth of Judgment which they think to find in
  themselves: And that it hath been an effect of Divine Providence,
  and Wisdom of Men, to have barred them from Sciences, Government,
  and Offices: That it would be a pleasant thing indeed, to
  see a Lady in the Chair (in quality of a Professor) teaching
  _Rhetorick_, or _Medicine_; marching along the Streets, followed
  by Officers, and Sergeants; putting in Execution Laws: Playing
  the part of a Counsellour; pleading before Judges: Seated on a
  Bench, to Administer Justice in Supream Courts: Leading of an
  Army; giving Battel; and Speaking before States, and Princes, as
  the Head of an Embassy.

  I do confess, such Practices would surprize us; but for no other
  reason, but that of Novelty. For, if in modelling of states and
  establishing the different Offices that compose them, Women had
  been likewise called to Functions; we should have been as much
  accustomed to have seen them in Dignity, as they are to see us.
  And should have found it no more strange to have seen a Lady on a
  Throne, than a Woman in a Shop.[404]

M. de la Barre admits that many women may properly be accused of
"Idleness, Softness, and Ignorance," but gives the astonishingly
modern explanation that no fair estimate of the ability of women
can be made until they have been trained by right education and
stimulated by public responsibility and opportunity. He believes that
if women "made it their business to study Law, they would succeed in
it (at least) as well as we." "Women seem born to practise Physick."
They would excel as "Pastour or Minister in the Church ... and
there can be nothing else but custome shewn, which remove _Women_
therefrom.... And if men were accustomed to see _Women_ in a Pulpit,
they would be no more startled thereat, than the _Women_ are at the
sight of men." Women if rightly educated would show peculiar aptitude
for teaching.

  If _Women_ had studyed in the Universities with men, or in
  others appointed for them in particular, they might have entered
  into Degrees, and taken the title of Master of Arts, Doctor of
  Divinity, Medicine, Civil, and Cannon Law: And their genius so
  advantageously fitting them to learn, would dispose them to teach
  with success. They would find methods, and insinuating biasses,
  to instil their Doctrine; they would discover the strength and
  weakness of their Schollars, to proportion themseves to their
  reach, and the facility which they have to express themselves;
  and, [this] which is one of the most excellent talents of a good
  Master, would compleat and render them admirable Mistresses.[405]

There is no reason "why a _Woman_ of sound Judgment and
Understanding, might not take the chaire in a court of Justice, and
preside in all other companies." There are no positions of public
authority from the throne to the humblest office of state that should
not be open to women. Even "the military Art hath nothing beyond
others, whereof _Women_ are not capable."

That women may become learned is beyond dispute, and they are the
more to be praised because of the difficulties they have overcome:

  How many Ladies have there been, and how many are there still,
  who ought to be placed amongst the number of the Learned, if we
  assigne them not a Higher Sphear? The Age wherein we live hath
  produced more of these, than all the past. And as they have in
  all things run parallel with _Men_, upon some Particular Reasons,
  they ought more to be esteemed than they: For, it behoved them
  to surmount the Softness wherein their Sex is bred, renounce
  the Pleasures and Idleness, to which Custom had condemned them,
  overcome certain public Impediments that removed them from
  Study, and to get above those disadvantagious Notions, which the
  Vulgar conceive of the Learned, besides, those of their own Sex
  in general: All this they have performed. And whether it be,
  that these Difficulties have rendered their Wit more quick and
  penetrating, or that these Qualities are the peculiar of their
  Nature, they have [proportionably] made Progress and Advancements
  beyond _Men_.[406]

These may be regarded as exceptional women, but "there are infinite
numbers of _Women_, which could have done no less, had their
Advantages been Equal." But the training given to girls make them
believe that beauty and fine clothes should be their only interests.
Their education seldom goes beyond writing and reading, and their
library consists of a few little books of devotion.

  In all that which is taught to _Women_, do we see anything that
  tends to solid instruction? It seems, on the contrary, that men
  have agreed on this sort of education, of purpose to abase their
  courage, darken their mind, and to fill it only with vanity, and
  fopperies.

It may be said that "Learning would render _Women_ more Wicked and
Proud." But only false knowledge can produce so bad an effect. True
knowledge makes a woman humble and virtuous. It actually "choaks"
some men to find women eager after knowledge. These men have "forged
to themselves that Women ought not to Study," and they "stand upon
their Points, when Women demand to be informed of that which is
Learned by Books." But since "Ignorance is the most irksome Slavery,"
and knowing the truth is a way out of it, all women who seek that way
should be praised, not blamed.

"We may [then] with Assurance, exhort Ladies to apply themselves
to Study; without having Respect to the little Reasons of those
who would undertake to divert them there-from. Since they have a
Mind (as well as We) capable of knowing of Truth ... they ought to
put themselves in condition of avoyding the Reproach, of having
stifled a Talent, which they might put to use." Learning cannot
be counted useless to women even if they do not publicly use it.
It is a personal right and necessity like "Felicity and Vertue."
"The Spring of reason is not limited; it hath in all men an equal
Jurisdiction.... Truth and Knowledge are goods that admit of no
prescription." And, finally, the economy of the world demands that
one half its mentality should not be debarred from the search after
Truth.

The sincerity of M. Poulain de la Barre might be put in question
by the fact that he wrote in 1675 a book entitled _De l'Excellence
des Hommes contre l'Egalité des Sexes_, but the earlier treatise
maintained its popularity, for it was republished in 1676, 1690,
1692. Of the English translation but one edition appeared, nor does
it seem to have been well known in the seventeenth century. Mary
Astell makes no use of it, perhaps because it was too radical and
uncompromising in its demand. Certainly no other defense of feminism
even approached the work of M. de la Barre in the relentless logic
with which it carried fundamental assumptions into the practical
affairs of life.


[Sidenote: Dr. George Hickes (1642-1715)]

From Marie de Jars to Anna van Schurman, and then to Bathsua Makin
is a regular and recognized progression of influence. I am unable
to trace any direct influence from Mrs. Makin, though her prestige
and the number of her aristocratic pupils must have made her school
one of the important factors in establishing new ideas. At any rate,
by whatever influences brought about, we have, after about 1680,
several significant discussions of liberal education for woman. One
of the earliest and most surprising of these comes in a sermon by Dr.
George Hickes. Its full title is, _A Sermon Preached at the Church
of St. Bridget, on Easter, Tuesday, being the first of April, 1684.
Before the Right Honourable Sir Henry Tulse, Lord Mayor of London
and Honourable Court of Alderman, Together with the Governors of the
Hospital, upon the Subject of Alms-giving. By George Hickes, D. D.
Dean of Worcester, and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty._

At the close of this sermon on the reasons for alms-giving Dr. Hickes
emphasizes the great obligation resting on those "Who heap up Riches,
and can not tell who shall gather them, I mean those to whom God hath
given great Estates, and no Children." Such people seem to him set
apart by Providence for the endowing of works of public beneficence.
In a comprehensive analysis of the practical ways in which they could
use their wealth we come upon the following remarkable suggestion:

  I will also put you in mind of establishing a Found for Endowing
  of poor Maids, who have lived so many years in Service, and of
  building Schools, or Colleges for the Education of young Women,
  much like unto those in the Universities, for the Education
  of young Men, but with some alteration in the Discipline, and
  Occonomy, as the nature of such an Institution would require.

  Such Colleges might be so ordered, as to become security to your
  Daughters against all the hazard to which they are exposed at
  private Schools, and likewise a security to the Government,
  that the Daughters of the Land should be bred up according
  to the religion now established in it, to the unconceivable
  advantage of the Publick, in rooting out _Enthusiasme_, with her
  Daughter _Schisme_, both of which are upheld by nothing among
  us as much, as by the Women, who are so silly and deceiveable
  for want of Ingenious and Orthodox Education, and not for want
  of Parts. Methinks the Rich and Honourable Ladies of the Church
  of _England_, the _Elect Ladies_ of her Apostolical Communion
  should be zealous to begin, and carry on such a work, as this;
  which upon more accounts than I have mentioned, would make the
  Daughters of _Israel_ be glad, and the Daughters of _Judah_ and
  _Jerusalem_ rejoyce.

Had Dr. Hickes read Anna van Schurman's _May the Christian Maid be a
Scholar?_ Or had he seen the _Prospectus_ and _Essay_ of Mrs. Makin
which had appeared eleven years before he preached his Sermon to the
Lord Mayor?

Among the clergy of the English Church the Reverend George Hickes
must take rank as the earliest and one of the most important
defenders of higher education for women. His Easter sermon antedated
Mary Astell, and his claim was more generous and daring than hers. In
1710, when he published _Controversial Letters_, he included letters
from Susanna Hopton and Lady Gratiana Carew, and he considered them
valuable aids in the presentation of religious truth. It was he who
called Mrs. Bovey "the Christian Hypatia," and he was the chief
encourager of Elizabeth Elstob.

Besides these individual manifestations of approval Dr. Hickes
contributed to the cause of the right education of girls by a
translation of Fénelon's _Traité de l'éducation des filles_ (1688),
under the title _Instructions for the Education of a Daughter,
by the Author of Telemachus. To which is Added, A Small Tract of
Instructions for the Conduct of Young Ladies of the Highest Rank.
With Suitable Devotions Annexed. Done into English and Revised by
George Hicks._ In putting the French treatise into an English dress
Dr. Hickes has not hesitated to make such changes as would bring
the book closer to English needs. This book was so widely read and
so influential in England that rather full extracts may profitably
be given. But it should be noted in advance that the general tone
of this treatise is much more conventional, much less liberal, in
its ideas of education and of opportunity for self-expression than
was Dr. Hickes in his Easter sermon, and in his encouragement of
individual learned women. But it must be remembered that here he is
not writing for mature women with superior minds, but for young girls
of high social rank to whom he wishes to recommend the most exalted
ideals of character, behavior, and general culture. Modest indeed are
the requirements in exact learning:

  Teach her to _Read_ and _Write_ correctly. It is shameful, but
  ordinary, to see Gentlewomen, who have both Wit and Politeness,
  not able yet to pronounce well what they read; they either
  hesitate, or else chant, as it were, in reading; whereas they
  ought to pronounce their Words with a plain and natural Tone,
  such as is also firm and uniform. They are still more grossly
  deficient in Orthography, or in Spelling right, and in the
  manner of forming or connecting Letters in Writing. Accustom her
  then, from the first, to make her Lines strait, and to have her
  Character neat and legible.

  It would also be requisite for her to understand a little
  _Grammar_ of her Native Language; by which it is not meant,
  she should be taught by Rule, as Boys are, _Latin_: Use her
  only without Affectation, not to take one Tense for another; to
  express herself in proper Terms; to explain clearly her Thoughts,
  with Order, and after a short and concise manner. Thus will you
  put her into a Method, by which she may teach her own Children
  afterwards to speak well and truly, without any formal Study.
  It is well known, that in Old Rome, Sempronia the Mother of the
  _Gracchi_, contributed very much to the forming of the Eloquence
  of her Sons, who became afterwards so great Men.

  She ought also to understand the Four first great Rules of
  Arithmetic; you may make good use of them, in teaching her
  thereby to keep your Accompts. This is indeed a troublesome
  Employment to a great many; but an Habit from her Childhood,
  joyn'd with the Easiness of keeping readily, by the Help of these
  Rules, all Sorts of Accompts, tho' never so intricate, will very
  much diminish this Dislike. Now't is sufficiently known how much
  Exactness of Accompts conduces to the good Order in Families.

  After these instructions, which are to hold the first Rank, I
  believe it will not be quite useless, to allow young Ladies
  according to their Leisure, and their Capacity, the _reading_
  of some select prophane Authors, that have nothing Dangerous in
  them for the Passions. This is the Means to give them a Distaste
  of most Plays and Romances; Give them therefore into their Hands
  _Greek_ and _Roman_ Histories, in the best Translations; they
  will see in them wonderful Instances of Courage, of Faithfulness,
  of Generosity, and of the great Contempt of their own private
  Advantage, whenever the Publick was in the Balance. Let them not
  be ignorant of the History of _Britain_, which hath also some
  very great Instances of Brave (no less than of Bad) Actions, that
  hardly any thing in Antiquity will be found to exceed: Those
  Illustrious Patterns which have been set by their own Nation and
  by Persons too of their own Sex, will be apt more strongly to
  influence them.

  Though _Natural Philosophy_ seems not to be adapted to the
  Understanding of Women, or at least not to fall within the Bounds
  of what concerns their Duty; yet _Moral Philosophy_ is, upon both
  Accounts, to be studied by them.[407] _Languages_ are next to
  be considered. It is commonly believ'd in _France_, that a Lady
  that would be well-bred, must learn _Italian_ and _Spanish_; as
  with us, _French_ at least. I see nothing of less Benefit than
  this Study, unless it be where the Lady is oblig'd to it on
  account of Business.... Some, and those the farthest in the World
  from all Pedantry, think it would not be unreasonable for this
  End, to have them learn a little _Latin_. For which, there may
  be a great deal more Reason in those Countries, where this is
  look'd on as the Language of the Church; it being an inestimable
  Fruit and Consolation, say they, to understand the Words of the
  Divine Service, whereat one is oblig'd to attend so often. Yet
  doubtless, every where the Advantages of it are not small, if but
  accompanied with Humility, and season'd with Prudence.

To this restricted course of study is added most careful advice as to
general reading with a particular caution against romances. If Dr.
Hickes's advice had prevailed Steele's Biddy Tipkin and Mrs. Lennox's
Arabella would never have existed:

  But, on the contrary, Young Persons, and Women especially,
  without Instruction and Application, have always a roving
  Imagination. For want of solid Nourishment, their Curiosity
  violently turns them towards Vain and Dangerous Objects. Such
  as have a little Capacity, are in Danger to set up for Wits;
  they read, for this, all the Books that may feed their Vanity;
  they are extremely affected with Romances, with Plays, with
  the Relations of Chimerical Adventures, in which profane Love
  bears a mighty Share; they fill their Minds with empty Notions;
  and, using themselves to the Magnificent Language of Heroes, or
  Heroins, in Romances, they spoil themselves hereby for Converse
  in the World: For all these fine airy Sentiments, these generous
  Passions, these strange Adventures, which the Author of the
  Romance, or Play, hath invented merely for Pleasure, bear no sort
  of proportion, either to the True _Motives_, which are generally
  the Springs of our Actions in the World, and upon which all our
  Affairs do turn; or to the _Mistakes_, which are commonly met
  with in all that is here undertaken.

  A poor raw Girl, whose Head is fill'd with the moving and
  surprising Strains, which have charmed her in her Reading, is
  astonished, not to find in the World real Persons, who may
  answer to these Romantick Heroes. Fain would she live like those
  imaginary Princesses, who are in the Romances, that is, always
  charming, always adored, always above all kind of Want: What a
  Disgust must it be then, for her to descend from this Heroical
  State, down to the meanest Parts and Offices of Housewifery.

A second limit is set in cases where the roving imagination may carry
young women to subjects too high for them:

  Some carry their Curiosity yet much farther still, and set
  themselves even to decide Matters of Religion, as much as if
  they had studied in the Schools of Divinity twice Seven Years;
  and with a Magisterial Air, are for determining some of the
  most Knotty Questions that divide Men of the greatest Learning
  and Capacity; and for settling the Bounds of Truth betwixt the
  several contending Parties, as if they were capable of the
  Employment.

From "An Address to the Right Honourable the Lady ----, From the
Translator," we get a list of books considered by Dr. Hickes as
advisable reading for English girls:

  It must be acknowledg'd, that there is not less difficulty in
  the Chusing good Books to busy one's self withal in _Solitude_,
  than good Friends to Entertain one in _Conversation_. Those
  which I would recommend to a Young Lady, next to the HOLY
  SCRIPTURES, are, THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN; THE LADY'S CALLING;
  and THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TONGUE. After these let her read
  Dr. Cave's PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANITY, to give her an Idea of the
  Lives and Manners of the Ancient Christians; with which she
  may join his LIVES OF THE APOSTLES, and, A COMPANION FOR THE
  FESTIVALS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, by Robert Nelson, Esq. She
  ought not likewise to be unacquainted with A SERIOUS PROPOSAL
  TO THE LADIES, FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF THEIR TRUEST AND GREATEST
  INTEREST, in TWO PARTS; nor with THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AS
  PROFESS'D BY A DAUGHTER OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: These Two,
  being written by one of her own Sex, may probably serve to make
  a deeper Impression upon her, and will be both Instructive and
  Delightful. To these, if you please, you may add, THE LADY'S
  NEW YEARS GIFT; and, JUST MEASURES OF THE PIOUS INSTITUTION
  OF YOUTH, by Mr. Monro. But, chiefly, the Two Volumes of THE
  CHRISTIAN PATTERN, may very Profitably be recommended to her;
  the Christian Exercises and Entertainments, in the Second, she
  will find of very peculiar Service and Consolation to her, in
  all the several Stages of Life; and if she can be brought to be
  in love with the Character herein of _Philothea_, the Work is
  soon done. The _Meditations_ and _Soliloquies_ of St. Augustine,
  deserve likewise to be of the Number of her more intimate
  Companions; together with the DEVOTIONS IN THE ANCIENT WAY OF
  OFFICES, WITH PSALMS, AND HYMNS, AND PRAYERS FOR EVERY DAY IN
  THE WEEK, publish'd by Dr. Hickes: Nothing can be ever sweeter
  or finer than some of the _Meditations_, and particularly the
  _Hymns_. To these let her add a most excellent Book, called,
  THE OLD RELIGION; with the WINTER EVENING CONFERENCES; which,
  together with solid Instruction, will be very divertive: Both by
  Dr. Goodman. That when she approaches the Solemn Assemblies, she
  may do it with that Understanding and Devotion which she ought,
  let her read _Comber_ or _Bennet_ upon the _Liturgy_. That she
  may read the _Scriptures_ in her Closet with a greater Relish,
  let her peruse Mr. _Boyle's Considerations_ on their _Stile_.
  For the _Psalms_, wherein I must needs suppose her particularly
  conversant, she may have _Hatton's Psalter_, or _Patrick's
  Paraphrase_, which are very plain, and will be of excellent Use.
  The rest of the Practical Works of this last Author, will not
  be unworthy her Acquaintance, but especially THE PARABLE OF THE
  PILGRIM, the Pleasantness and Easiness of which will incite her
  to read forward, and will much help to inspire a lovely Idea of
  Religion. For the same Reason, that I recommend the last, I would
  likewise THE MARTYRDOM OF THEODORA, with some few Pieces of like
  Nature. And the TELEMACHUS of our Author will be better, sure,
  for her, than any Romance or Novel besides: This, though written
  in Prose, is perhaps the most compleat Poem that several Ages
  have produced, for the Subject and Disposition of it. She may
  be directed likewise to the _Psyche_ of Dr. _Beaumont_; to Dr.
  _Woodford's Poetical Paraphrases_ on the Psalms and Canticles;
  Sir _Richard Blackmore's Paraphrase_ on Job; the _Davideis_ and
  some of the _Pindaricks_ of Mr. _Cowley_. If she be Curious, her
  Time will not be lost in turning over the best Histories and
  Memoirs. For _Plays_, there is great Danger in giving her but a
  Taste of them, tho' there should be some few that may be read,
  not only Innocently, but Usefully: And great Caution will be
  required, not to be hurt by some that are the best Written, and
  not to fall by them into sundry Inconveniences and Temptations,
  which may not so presently, perhaps, appear; which the Principles
  laid down in this Treatise of _Education_ do sufficiently evince.
  For _Sermons_, at her leisure Hours, when she is disposed to
  read them, there is abundant Choice. Let her not affect to read
  such as are too Learned, or above her Capacity; and especially,
  let her avoid all such as savour of a Party, and that may tend
  to sowre her with Disputes either Civil or Religious. For the
  Study of _Morality_, SENECA'S MORALS, Abstracted by _L'Estrange_,
  is almost the only Piece, that I should offer to her, besides
  the Incomparable Essays of Mr. _Collier_, and his ANTONINUS. I
  mention but a few, among many others excellent in this kind,
  because I would not have her distracted by too great Variety of
  Reading.

The final admonition implies the danger always in the background of
the most liberal eighteenth-century mind, and that is that learning,
even hedged-in and expurgated learning, might make girls bold and
unfeminine:

  That which remains next, is to win young ladies to beware of the
  Reputation of being _Witty_; such a Reputation being constantly
  attended with very great Perils and Inconveniences to them. For
  if you take not Care hereof, they that are of a brisk lively
  Spirit, will continually be intriguing, will be forward to
  speak of everything, and be criticising on Matters beyond their
  Capacity; while they affect to shew their Wit, and study to be
  applauded when they are but troublesome by their Niceness. If
  you can but give them a Relish for the true Delicacy, they will
  presently be asham'd of this Affectation of Wit and Humour; and
  so will avoid splitting upon those dangerous Shelves, which such
  a Temper is ordinarily exposed to. Show them sweetly that the
  Virgin Delicacy, the less it is touched, is the more admired....
  A Maid ought not to speak but for Necessity; nor then but with an
  Air of Diffidence and Deference: she ought not likewise to talk
  of things which are above the common reach of Young Women, even
  though she, herself, may, perhaps, be instructed in them.


[Sidenote: Mary Astell (1666-1739)]

It would be interesting to know whether the next and most pronounced
advocate of higher education, Mary Astell, had read Dr. Hickes's
sermon. Miss Astell[408] was born in Newcastle in 1666. Her father
died when she was twelve; the uncle who is supposed to have educated
her died when she was thirteen; her mother died when she was
eighteen. Beyond these facts nothing is known of her early life. A
record of the education of Anne Killegrew, Anne Kingsmill, and Mary
Astell would be a social document of great significance for the
reign of Charles II. But it was a record too slight to be kept. Of
the books these young ladies read, the studies they pursued, of the
schools they may have attended, of the tutors they had, we get no
hint. Of the early influences that led them to achievements unusual
in their day and circle we know nothing. When we first meet them
their formal education is complete and we can surmise its details
only by doubtful inferences based on later attainments.

At about twenty Mary Astell went to London and there she lived
till her death in 1731, Chelsea being the part of the city with
which she was most definitely associated. There is no available
record of the first seven years of her London life. But during this
time she must have been doing thorough and consecutive reading in
history, philosophy, theology, and politics. And she must have read
analytically, critically, with vigorous independent judgment, for
at twenty-seven she was well ready for the era of controversy on
which she then entered. Her style was also so matured in her first
published work as to indicate a disciplined mind and pen.

In 1693-94 she was in correspondence with John Norris concerning his
theory that God should be the sole object of human love. So acute, so
devout, so ably expressed, were Miss Astell's letters that Mr. Norris
won her consent to an anonymous publication of the correspondence
in 1695 under the title, _Letters concerning the love of God_. In
his Preface Dr. Norris said that he could not express the value he
set upon Miss Astell's letters either as to their ingenuity or their
piety, "the former of which might make them an entertainment for an
angel, and the latter sufficient (if possible) to make a saint of the
blackest devil." He said he had never met any discourses that had so
enlightened his mind and enlarged his heart, had so taken possession
of his spirit, and had exerted such "a general and commanding
influence over his whole soul."

While carrying on this discussion with Mr. Norris another subject had
been more definitely occupying Miss Astell's active mind, and in 1694
she had published her most original and important work, _A Serious
Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their true and greatest
interest_. This appeared in July, 1694, and by 1697 the fourth
edition came out. "By a Lover of her Sex" was the only indication of
authorship. In 1700 she published _Some Reflections upon Marriage_,
a discussion based on the unhappy experiences of her neighbor in
Chelsea, the Duchess of Mazarine. The years 1704-05 show her greatest
activity. In _Moderation Truly Stated_ (1704) she answered Owen's
_Moderation a Virtue_, and in the Preface discussed Davenant's
recently published _Essays on Peace and War_. In _A Fair Way with
Dissenters and their Patrons_ (1704) she attempted to answer Defoe's
_Shortest Way with Dissenters_, while in a Postscript she carried on
her analysis of Owen's views on Moderation. In _An Impartial Enquiry
into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War in this Kingdom_ she took
up another phase of politics--religious controversy, showing herself
a believer in Stuart doctrines of Church and State. _The Christian
Religion as Profess'd by a Daughter of the Church of England_ (1705)
showed the insidious dangers of latitudinarianism and deism within
the Church, and defended the Christian religion as reasonable and
resulting in moral excellence. In 1709 appeared her last pamphlet,
_Bart'lemy Fair, or an Enquiry after Wit_, an attack on Shaftesbury's
_Letter Concerning Enthusiasm_, which she, however, wrongly
attributed to Swift. The Preface to _Bart'lemy Fair_ is a bitter
invective against the Kit-Kat Club.

The pamphlets thus briefly listed are sufficient to show with
what sustained energy Mary Astell entered into the discussions
most vital in her day. Education, religion, politics, and social
questions held her entire attention. She was never side-tracked
into anything light or gay. We find no indications that she had
any interest in art or general literature, that she had any of the
recognized accomplishments, that she put any stress on scientific or
linguistic attainments. She was temperamentally a controversialist,
a propagandist. She was too serious, too much in earnest, to play
with a subject. Her disapprovals were never softened by any humorous
recognition of human foibles. For the graces and amenities of style
she had slight regard. But she was beyond any woman and most men
of her day in her command of the weapons of satire and irony. She
could pierce to the heart of a sham or a sophistry, and she was
merciless in her analysis of a trifling, corrupt, or irreligious
life. She stands as a new type of learned woman. No other woman had
ideas so rigorously thought-out or so firmly expressed. She taught
with authority, not with the timidity, self-distrust, or reticence
supposedly feminine in her time. She did not, write for money or for
fame. She wrote because she had a message.

Many of the actual causes championed by Mary Astell are now dead
issues, but her ideas concerning women, their education, their
increased freedom of action, even in some measure their economic
independence, led her into a field of controversy the problems of
which are even yet but imperfectly solved. In the cause of feminism
she did pioneer work quite amazing in its challenge of contemporary
opinion and in its tempered wisdom. Her fundamental assumption was
that the potentialities of women must be considered undetermined
until they have been given full opportunities for preparation, and
tested by real tasks. "Women are from their very Infancy," she says,
"debarr'd those advantages with the want of which they are afterwards
reproached, and nursed up in those vices which will hereafter be
upbraided to them. So partial are Men to Expect Bricks when they
afford no Straw."

Eleven years later in the Preface to _Reflections on Marriage_, in
the edition of 1706, she wrote with greater bitterness:

  In the first place, Boys have much Time and Pains, Care and Cost
  bestowed on their education, Girls have little or none. The
  former are early initiated in the Sciences, are made acquainted
  with Antient and Modern Discoveries, they Study Books and
  Men, have all imaginable encouragement; not only Fame, a dry
  reward now-a-days, But also Title, Authority, Power, and Riches
  themselves which purchase all things, are the reward of their
  improvement. The latter are restricted, frown'd upon, beat,
  not _for_ but _from_ the Muses; Laughter and Ridicule that
  never-failing Scare-Crow is set up to drive them from the Tree of
  Knowledge. But if in spite of all difficulties Nature prevails,
  and they can't be kept so ignorant as their masters would have
  them, they are stared upon as Monsters, Censur'd, Envyd and every
  way discouraged, or at the best they have the Fate the Proverb
  assigns them: _Virtue is praised and starved_.

Even more caustic is her outburst against the women who accept the
theory of their inferiority and hug their chains:

  She's a Fool who would attempt their Deliverance or Improvements.
  No, let them enjoy the great Honour and Felicity of their tame,
  submissive and depending Temper! Let the Men applaud, and let
  them glory in this wonderful Humility! Let them receive the
  Flatteries and Grimaces of the other Sex, live unenvied by their
  own, and be as much belov'd as one such Woman can afford to love
  another! Let them enjoy the Glory of treading in the Footsteps
  of their Predecessors, and of having the Prudence to avoid that
  audacious attempt of soaring beyond their Sphere! Let them
  Houswife or Play, Dress and be pretty entertaining Company! Or,
  which is better, relieve the Poor to ease their own Compassions,
  read pious Books, say their Prayers, and go to Church, because
  they have been taught and us'd to do so, without being able to
  give a better Reason for their Faith and Practice! Let them not
  by any means aspire to being Women of Understanding, because
  no Man can endure a Woman of Superior Sense, or would treat a
  reasonable Woman civilly, but that he thinks he stands on higher
  Ground, and that she is so wise as to make Exceptions, in his
  Favour, and to take her Measures by his Directions; they may
  pretend to Sense, indeed, since meer Pretences only render one
  the more ridiculous! Let them, in short, be what is call'd
  _very_ Women, for this is most acceptable to all sorts of Men;
  or let them aim at the Title of _good devout_ Women, since Men
  can bear with this; but let them not judge of the Sex by their
  own Scantling: For the great Author of Nature and Fountain of all
  Perfection, never design'd that the Mean and Imperfect, but that
  the most Compleat and Excellent of his Creatures in every Kind,
  should be the Standard to the rest.[409]

In spite of these very real elements of discouragement Mary Astell
proposed a remedy. The basic assumptions of her _Serious Proposal_ in
1694 are nearly identical with those of Bathsua Makin's _Prospectus_,
twenty-one years earlier. They agree that girls have minds worth
training, that education is their natural right, their most reliable
safeguard, and a permanent source of strength and happiness. But here
the likeness ends. Mrs. Makin's inchoate plans contemplated little
more than the ordinary school for housewifery and accomplishments,
with the addition of solid learning for those who could be lured into
it. The total training did not extend beyond the years a girl would
ordinarily spend in a boarding-school, hence the genuine learning she
could gain would be almost negligible. Mary Astell's plan was much
more comprehensive. It was for women as well as for girls. To her
"Religious Retirement" might go women tired of the world, young women
waiting the arrangement of a suitable marriage, heiresses desiring to
escape pursuit, spinsters anxious for some honorable retreat from a
derisive world. All would find a serene and ordered life. But no vows
were to be taken. In fact, one important purpose of the college was
to provide England with virtuous and accomplished wives, through whom
social regeneration might be brought about.

In thus educating wives, however, Mary Astell had no iconoclastic
or alarming notions of female dominance. She is as positive as
the author of _The Ladies Calling_, or of Halifax himself, in her
conception of the husband as the head of the house. She says:

  She then who Marries, ought to lay it down for an indisputable
  Maxim, that her Husband must govern absolutely and intirely,
  and that she has nothing else to do but to Please and Obey. She
  must not attempt to divide his Authority, or so much as dispute
  it; to struggle with her Yoke will only make it gall the more,
  but must believe him Wise and Good in all respects the best,
  at least he must be so to her. She who can't do this is no way
  fit to be a Wife, she may set up for that peculiar Coronet the
  antient Fathers talk'd of, but is not qualified to receive the
  great Reward which attends the eminent Exercise of Humility and
  Self-denial, Patience and Resignation, the duties that a Wife is
  call'd to.[410]

Education can fortify and guide married women and can give them
unending private satisfaction, but can in no way alter their status
or secure them any freedom.

To the unmarried woman the college offered the only means so far
devised whereby they could not only escape from the odium of a single
life, but could have a chance for activity along lines chosen in
accordance with their tastes and capacities.

The aims of the college and the plans as outlined were so reasonable
and put forward with so much eloquence that they attracted
favorable attention. Part II of the _Proposal_ was dedicated to the
Princess Anne, and it is to her that we must give the credit for a
subscription of £10,000 for the necessary buildings.[411] And it is
practically certain that Bishop Burnet, at this time tutor to the
young Duke of Gloucester and so of easy access to Anne, is the one to
whom we must ascribe the withdrawal of that subscription and along
with it the royal sanction so essential an element in the success of
the plan. Bishop Burnet saw in this proposed "Lay Monastery" a source
of plots and cabals dangerous to the Church. And Anne was too devout
and narrow-minded a churchwoman to run any such risks. So the plan
came to no practical realization.

Though the time was probably not ripe for such a college, it is
significant that in the aristocratic circle where Mary Astell moved
there was apparently considerable favorable discussion of the
project. In 1697 Thomas Burnet wrote to the Electress Sophia of Mary
Astell as "a young Ladie of extraordinary piety and knowledge as any
of the age" and comments on her "two little books of proposals to
the Ladies" as showing "both her zeal and judgment in thee advyces
given to her sex, for the reformation of manners, living, studies,
and conversations of the ladies."[412] In the same year Defoe, in his
_Essay on Projects_, referred with praise to Mary Astell, though not
agreeing with her plans in detail. In 1697, also, Evelyn commented
favorably on Mary Astell: He said that he could not omit some
acknowledgment of the satisfaction he had received from her "most
sublime" writings, and he adds concerning her college, "Besides what
lately she has proposed to the Virtuous of her Sex, to shew by her
own Example, what great Things, and Excellencies it is Capable of,
and which calls to mind the Lady of that _Protestant Monastery_, Mrs.
_Farrer_, not long since at _Geding_ in _Huntington-shire_."[413]
George Wheler, in _A Protestant Nunnery_, refers to "_A Serious
Proposal_ written by an ingenious Lady" and gives it the further
compliment of adopting some of its ideas.[414] George Hickes, in
his _Instructions for the Education of a Daughter_ (1708), gives _A
Serious Proposal_ and _The Christian Religion_, by Mary Astell, in
the list of books which he commends to young women. Robert Nelson, in
an _Address to Persons of Quality_ (1715), also praised the _Proposal
to Ladies_ as made "by a very Ingenious Gentlewoman, which was then
well approved by several ladies and others."[415]

The wits of the time are usually accredited with derisive laughter
at the female college. But the chief attacks were from Swift in
_The Tatler_ in 1709, fifteen years after the _Proposal_, Part I,
and twelve years after the second part. Swift's _Tatler_ articles
followed immediately on Mary Astell's _Bart'lemy Fair_, and were
really not so much an attack on a college for women as an attempt to
answer Mary Astell's satiric commentary on the Kit-Kat Club, and on
Steele and Swift in particular. It was a sort of _quid pro quo_ in
which Swift seized upon the weapons most available. The coarseness
of the description of the college must have been very offensive to
Mary Astell as a similar vulgarity of attack in _Three Hours after
Marriage_ must have offended Lady Winchilsea. Swift represents the
professors of the college to be Madonella (Mary Astell), Epicene
(Mrs. Manley), and Mrs. Elstob, a union that would probably have been
as irritating to Mrs. Manley as it was to her virtuous co-adjutors in
academic chairs. The break-up of the college is due to a company of
rakes to whom the ladies collegiate give joyous welcome.

Steele's attacks on Mary Astell are much milder. He represents her as
"Mrs. Comma, the great Scholar," who defends her desired seclusion
by herself announcing to would-be callers that she is "not at home."
Again, she is put in as the foreman of a jury in a Court of Honour,
and is described as a "professed Platonist that had spent much of her
time in exhorting the sex to set a just value upon their persons, and
to make the men know themselves."

That the attention attracted by Mary Astell's writings was not all
contemptuous has been already indicated. Her books were, however,
but one source of her influence. In her later life not only was she
of sufficient repute to make her home in Chelsea a sort of minor
learned salon, but she had considerable personal influence among
younger women of like aspirations. Of three of her friendships with
learned women we have some knowledge. The most intimate of these
was with Lady Elizabeth Hastings, twenty-two years her junior. Lady
Betty went to Ledstone to live in about 1705 and was thereafter only
occasionally in London, so they could not have had much continuous
personal association, but they apparently found themselves in
immediate accord on vital subjects. Lady Betty and her sisters on the
remote Yorkshire estate almost realized in a small way Mary Astell's
ideal of a religious retirement. If the correspondence between them
were only extant it would be invaluable. Elizabeth Elstob is also
given as one of Mary Astell's friends. Miss Elstob was in London
from 1709 to 1715 and came to know Miss Astell during this period.
It was to Miss Elstob that Ballard wrote for information about Miss
Astell when he wished to write her biography, which might seem to
argue a known friendship between the two. But against any theory of
real intimacy is the fact that Miss Astell, a woman of substance and
wide influence, did not exert herself in Miss Elstob's behalf when
she was left penniless and driven into obscurity. The most noted
of Mary Astell's literary friends was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
The culmination of that friendship in the indignant championship by
Mary Astell of Lady Mary's _Turkish Letters_ appears in an essay
dated 1724, but the friendship was of much earlier date. It was not
by wealth or position or beauty or social charm that Mary Astell
gained and held her friends. In person she was "ill-favoured and
forbidding," in manner she was abrupt and even rough in repelling
what displeased her. She defended her own leisure and followed her
own plans with defiance of all social conventions. She had the
instincts of a recluse. She was deeply religious, austere to the
point of asceticism, and her friendships were no matter of mutual
admiration and easy compliances. She was a flaming advocate of Lady
Mary against all detractors, but she stoutly combated Lady Mary's
religious indifferentism. It was by sheer force of intellectual
ability, moral earnestness, and profound convictions that Mary Astell
gained her general repute and by sincerity and an unexpected ardor of
devotion that she held her friends.


[Sidenote: An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (1696)]

Mary Astell's _Serious Proposal_ appeared in 1694 with a second
edition in 1695. In 1696 there appeared another feminist pamphlet
the full title of which was _An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex
in which are inserted the characters of A Pedant, A Squire, A Beau,
A Vertuoso, A Poetaster, A City-critick. C. In a Letter to a Lady
by a Lady._ A second edition in 1696, a third in 1697, a fourth in
1791, and an undated but later edition, testify to its popularity.
This pamphlet was long attributed to Mary Astell, but both internal
and external evidence are against her authorship. There seem to
be reasons for ascribing it to Mrs. Drake, the sister of the Mr.
James Drake who wrote the commendatory poem and essay published
with the _Defence of the Female Sex_.[416] Whoever the author was
she certainly deserves the credit of being the most brilliant woman
writer of her period. In her Preface she says:

  There have been women in all Ages, whose Writings might vie
  with those of the greatest Men, as the Present Age as well as
  past can testifie.... Their names are already too well known,
  and celebrated to receive any additional Lustre from so weak
  Encomiums as mine.... I pretend not to imitate, much less to
  Rival those Illustrious Ladies who have done so much Honour to
  their Sex, and are unanswerable Proofs of what I contend for.
  I only wish, that some Ladies now living among us (whose names
  I forbear to mention in regard to their Modesty) wou'd exert
  themselves, and give us more recent Instances, who are both by
  Nature and Education sufficiently qualified to do it, which I
  pretend not to.

The _Essay_ opens with a statement that women must plead their own
cause, since men no longer enter the lists in their behalf. The most
recent woman's advocate, William Walsh, she dismisses with scant
praise:

  Those Romantick days are over, and there is not so much as a _Don
  Quixote_ of the Quill left to succor the distressed Damsels. 'T
  is true a Feint of something of this Nature was made three or
  four years since by one; but how much soever his Eugenia may
  be oblig'd to him, I am of Opinion the rest of her Sex are but
  little beholding to him. For as you rightly observ'd, _Madam_,
  he has taken more care to give an Edge to his Satyr, than force
  to his Apology; he has play'd a sham Prize, and receives more
  thrusts than he makes.... He levels his Scandals at the whole
  Sex, and thinks us sufficiently fortified, if out of the Story
  of Two Thousand Years he has been able to pick up a few Examples
  of Women illustrious for their Wit, Learning or Vertue.... I
  have neither Learning nor Inclination to make a Precedent, or
  indeed any use of Mr. W's labour'd Common Place Book; and shall
  leave Pedents and School-Boys to rake and tumble the Rubbish of
  Antiquity, and muster all the _Heroes_ and _Heroins_ they can
  find.

The _Essay_ takes up no such serious and practical topics as Mary
Astell discusses. The curious question proposed is, "Whether the
time an ingenious Gentleman spends in the Company of Women, may
justly be said to be misemploy'd, or not." The opinion to be combated
is that of men who declare the company of women to be irksome and
unprofitable. The author gives the old argument that in souls there
is no male and female, and brings Scripture proof that woman was
expressly created as a companion for man. If the divine plan has been
interfered with by the disqualification of women the cause is to be
found not in their minds or natures but in their lack of education.
Men should no more exult over being wiser than women than they would
congratulate themselves on conquering a man whose hands were tied.

But women, even without regular education, know more than they are
supposed to know. At boarding-schools, to be sure, they learn only
needlework, dancing, singing, music, drawing, painting, and other
accomplishments; and of languages they know only their mother tongue
and French, "now very fashionable and almost as familiar amongst
Women of Quality as Men." But after school days they have abundant
leisure and the world of classic literature is open to them in
translations. Ovid, Tibullus, Juvenal, Horace, Plutarch, Seneca, and
Cicero may be read by the woman who knows only her mother tongue,
and Dryden has already given "Divine Samples" of the sweetness
and majesty of Virgil. The graces of France and Italy are equally
at woman's command. Following this account of foreign, especially
classic literature, is an energetic passage, very modern in tone,
attacking the conception dominant in the Augustan age that the term
"learning" applied only to a knowledge of the dead languages.

  Nor can I imagine for what good Reason a Man skill'd in Latin
  and Greek, and vers'd in the Authors of Ancient Times shall be
  call'd Learned; yet another who perfectly understands _Italian_,
  _French_, _High Dutch_, and the rest of the _European_ Languages,
  is acquainted with the Modern History of all those Countries
  ... shall after all this be thought Unlearned for want of those
  two Languages. Nay, though he be never so well vers'd in the
  Modern Philosophy, Astronomy, Geometry, and Algebra, he shall
  notwithstanding never be allow'd that honourable Title....
  Thus you shall have 'em allow a Man to be a wise Man, a good
  Naturalist, a good Mathematician, Politician, or Poet, but not
  a Scholar, a learned Man, that is no Philologer. For my part I
  think these Gentlemen have just inverted the use of the Term, and
  given that to the knowledge of words, which belongs more properly
  to Things. I take Nature to be the great Book of Universal
  Learning, which he that reads best in all, or in any of its
  Parts, is the greatest Scholar, the most learned Man.

Furthermore, ignorance of Latin is no such drawback when one
considers the English language and its riches. Who is nobler than Mr.
Shakespeare? Whose grief more awful than Mr. Otway's? What tenderer
Passion than in the _Maid's Tragedy_? Whose thoughts more beautiful
and gallant than Mr. Dryden's? Her "Indignation, Compassion, Grief,
are all at the Beck of these dramatists." Who can rival Sir George
Etheredge, Sir Charles Sedley, for "neat Raillery and Gallantry"?
Who has such strong "Wit and pointed Satyr" as Mr. Wicherley? Who
can offer such "sprightly, gentile, easie Wit" as Mr. Congreve? For
critics, who can more justly point out beauties and defects than
Mr. Dennis and Mr. Rymer? If for poetry we are inclined, what more
ravishing than the fancy of Cowley and the gallantry of Waller? For
elevation of soul and reverence are there not the _Fairy Queen_ and
_Paradise Lost_? Then as for "satyrists," there are Mr. Butler and
Mr. Oldham. For morals there are sermons, pious, solid, eloquent. For
essays, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, Mr. Osborn, Sir Wm. Temple,
Sir George Mackenzie, Sir Roger L'Estrange.

The second portion of the _Essay_ answers those who accuse women of
inconstancy, dissimulation, impertinence, and vanity. These, the
author maintains, are imperfections of human nature, not especially
of women; and her method of proof is to show typical masculine
exemplifications of these defects. Under vanity are a "Bully," a
"Scourer," a "Fop Poet," a "Beau," a "Sloven"; these being men who
disqualify themselves for agreeable social intercourse by a too
emphatic and egregious desire to bring themselves into notice.

  Of these the most voluminous Fool is the Fop Poet who ... has
  always more Wit in his Pockets than any where else, yet seldom
  or never any of his own there. _Esop's Daw_ was a _Type_ of him;
  for he makes himself fine with the Plunder of all Parties. He is
  a Smuggler of Wit, and steals French Fancies without paying the
  customary Duties. Verse is his _Manufacture_; For it is more the
  labour of his Finger than his brain.... He talks much of _Jack
  Dryden_ and _Will Wycherley_, and the rest of that Set, and
  protests he can't help having some respect for 'em, because they
  have so much for him, and his Writings.... Once a Month he fits
  out a small _Poetical Smack_ at the charge of his Bookseller,
  which he lades with _French Plunder_ new vampt in English, small
  Ventures of _Translated Odes_, _Elegies_ and _Epigrams_ of Young
  Traders, and ballasts with heavy Prose, of his own.... He is the
  Oracle of those that want Wit and the Plague of those that have
  it.... Men avoid him for the same Reason they avoid the Pillory,
  the security of their Ears.

The "Pedant" and the "Country Squire" are both blockheads, and thus
unfitted for rational society. "For my part, I think the Learned and
Unlearned Blockhead pretty equal; for 't is all one to me, whether
a Man talk Nonsense, or unintelligible Sense." These characters are
especially effective. Not Pope himself has a more trenchant and
sharply antithetic picture of the "Vertuoso." Contemporary public
opinion as to the uselessness of the students of grasses, flies,
bugs, shells, coins, etc., received concise and picturesque statement
in the _Defence_.

  What improvements of _Physick_, or any useful Arts, what noble
  Remedies, what serviceable Instruments have these Mushrome, and
  Cockel-shell Hunters oblig'd the World with? For I am ready to
  recant if they can shew so good a Med'cine as Stew'd _Prunes_,
  or so necessary an Instrument as a _Flye Flop_ of their own
  Invention and Discovery.... I wou'd not have any Body mistake
  me so far, as to think I wou'd in the least reflect upon any
  sincere, and intelligent Enquirers into Nature, of which I as
  heartily wish a better knowledge, as any _Vertuoso_ of 'em all.
  You can be my Witness, Madam, that I us'd to say, I thought Mr.
  _Boyle_ more honourable for his learned Labours, than for his
  Noble Birth; and that the _Royal Society_, by their great and
  celebrated Performances, were an Illustrious Argument of the
  Wisdom of the August Prince, their Founder of Happy _Memory_; and
  that they highly merited the _Esteem_, _Respect_ and _Honour_
  paid 'em by the Lovers of Learning all _Europe_ over. But though
  I have a very great Veneration for the _Society_ in general, I
  can't but put a vast difference between the particular Members
  that compose it.

The character of a "Beau" is keen and minute in observation. No
coquette was more admirably dissected. The later _Tatler_ pictures
are inferior in brightness and pointed detail. The whole account
is readable, laughable. Impertinence is defined as the quality of
busying one's self with the trivial, and forcing these petty affairs
on the attention of the uninterested. The author responds in lively
fashion to those who count this a peculiarly feminine trait:

  Thus, when they hear us talking to, and advising one another
  about the Order, Distribution, and Contrivance of _Household
  Affairs_, about the _Regulation_ of the _Family_, the
  _Government_ of _Children_ and _Servants_, the provident
  management of a Kitchin, and the decent ordering of a _Table_,
  the suitable _Matching_ and convenient disposition of
  _Furniture_, and the like, they condemn us for impertinence.
  Yet they may be pleased to consider, that as the affairs of
  the World are now divided betwixt us, the _Domestick_ are our
  share, and out of which we are rarely suffer'd to interpose our
  Sense. They may be pleased to consider likewise, that as light
  and inconsiderable as these things seem, they are capable of no
  Pleasures of Sense higher, or more refin'd than those of _Brutes_
  without our care of 'em. For were it not for that, their Houses
  wou'd be meer _Bedlums_, their most luxurious Treats, but a rude
  confusion of ill Digested, ill mixt Scents and Relishes, and the
  fine Furniture, they bestow so much cost on, but an expensive
  Heap of glittering Rubbish. Thus they are beholding to us for the
  comfortable enjoyment of what their labour, or good Fortune hath
  acquir'd or bestow'd, and think meanly of our care only, because
  they understand not the value of it.

The _Essay_ is, in reality, hardly more than a frame for the
"Characters." It defends the female sex, by the method of denouncing
the "Adversaries of the Sex." Its result as argument is, therefore,
on the whole, negative. But the positive value of the book is
great in its spirited exemplification of a woman's power to form
independent judgments and to write vigorous English.


[Sidenote: Daniel Defoe (1661-1731)]

In 1697, the year in which the fourth edition of Mary Astell's _A
Serious Proposal to the Ladies_ appeared, Defoe published his _Essay
on Projects_. Among plans for joint-stock banks, repairing and
widening of highways, assurance societies, sick clubs, pensions for
widows, etc., comes "An Academy for Women":

  I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs
  in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian
  country, that we deny the advantages of learning to our women.
  We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, while
  I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to
  us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves. One would
  wonder indeed how it should happen that women are conversible
  at all, since they are only beholden to natural parts for all
  their knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch
  and sew, or make baubles; they are taught to read, indeed, and
  perhaps to write their names, or so, and that is the height of
  a woman's education; and I would but ask those who slight the
  sex for their understanding, what is a man (a gentleman I mean)
  good for, that is taught no more?... The soul is placed in the
  body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the lustre of
  it will never appear; and 't is manifest that, as the rational
  soul distinguishes us from brutes, so education carries on the
  distinction, and makes some less brutish than others. This is
  too evident to need any demonstration. But why, then, should
  women be denied the benefit of instruction?... I would ask any
  such, what they can see in ignorance that they should think it a
  necessary ornament to a woman? Or how much worse is a wise woman
  than a fool? Or what has the woman done to forfeit the privilege
  of being taught?... Shall we upbraid women with folly, when 't
  is only the error of this inhuman custom that hindered them from
  being made wiser?

  The capacities of women are supposed to be greater, and their
  senses quicker, than those of the men; and what they might
  have been capable of being bred to, is plain from instances of
  female wit, which this age is not without; which upbraids us
  with injustice, and looks as if we denied women the advantage
  of education for fear they should vie with the men in their
  improvements. To remove this objection, and that women might
  have at least a needful opportunity of education in all sorts of
  useful learning, I propose the draught of an academy for that
  purpose.... I doubt a method proposed by an ingenious lady, in
  a little book called _Advice to the Ladies_, would be found
  impracticable.... When I talk, therefore, of an academy for
  women, I mean both the model, the teaching, and the government
  different from what is proposed by that ingenious lady for whose
  proposal I have a very great esteem, and also a great opinion of
  her wit; different, too, from all sorts of religious confinement,
  and, above all, from vows of celibacy.

  Wherefore the academy I propose should differ but little from
  public schools, wherein such ladies as were willing to study,
  should have all the advantages of learning suitable to their
  genius....

  The building should be of three plain fronts, without any
  jettings or bearing work, that the eye might at a glance see from
  one coin to the other; the gardens walled in the same triangular
  figure, with a large moat, and but one entrance.

Having thus provided against intrigues and escapades he would have no
guards, no eyes, no spies, set over the ladies, but would expect them
to be tried by the principles of honor and strict virtue.

Defoe's arguments in favor of the higher education of women represent
the most advanced thought of his age.

  Methinks mankind, for their own sakes, since, say what we will
  of the women, we all think fit one time or other to be concerned
  with them, should take some care to breed them up to be suitable
  and serviceable, if they expected no such thing as delight from
  them. Bless us! what care do we take to breed up a good horse,
  and to break him well! And why not a woman?...

  But to come closer to the business. The great distinguishing
  difference which is seen in the world between men and women, is
  in their education; and this is manifested by comparing it with
  the difference between one man or woman and another.

  And herein is it I take upon me to make such a bold assertion,
  that all the world are mistaken in their practice about women;
  for I can not think that God Almighty ever made them so delicate,
  so glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so
  agreeable and delightful to man, with souls capable of the same
  accomplishments with men, and all only to be stewards of our
  houses, cooks, and slaves.

  Not that I am for exalting the female government in the least;
  but, in short, I would have men take women for companions, and
  educate them to be fit for it....

  I need not enlarge on the loss the defect of education is to
  the sex, nor argue the benefit of the contrary practice: it is
  a thing will be more easily granted than remedied. This chapter
  is but an essay at the thing; and I refer the practice to these
  happy days, if ever they shall be, when men shall be wise enough
  to mend it.

Defoe asserts that his ideas on this subject were not derived from
Mary Astell, and is even slightly irritated that she was ahead of
him in publication, since he had long before mentally elaborated the
scheme he suggests.


[Sidenote: "Sophia Pamphlets" (1739-40)]

The feminist argument was carried on in what are known as the "Sophia
Pamphlets." The first of these appeared in 1739 and was entitled
_Woman not inferior to Man: or a short and modest vindication of the
natural right of the fair sex to a perfect equality of power, dignity
and esteem with the men. By Sophia a person of Quality._ There was an
immediate answer under the title, _Man superior to Woman; containing
a plain confutation of the fallacious arguments of Sophia in her
late Treatise intitled Woman not Inferior to Man_. In 1740 Sophia
responded with, _Woman's superior excellence over Man or a reply to
the author of a late treatise entitled Man superior to Woman. In
which the excessive weakness of that Gentleman's answer to Woman
not inferior to Man is exposed._ The three pamphlets were published
together in 1757 under the collective title _Beauty's Triumph_.
These pamphlets give an interesting little passage at arms in the
feminist controversy. The subjects taken up in the first pamphlet are
closely modeled on _The Woman as Good as the Man_. "In what esteem
the women are held by the men and how justly"; "Whether women are
inferior to men in this intellectual capacity, or not"; "Whether the
men are better qualified to govern than women, or not"; "Whether the
women are fit for public offices, or not"; "Whether the women are
naturally capable of teaching sciences, or not"; "Whether women are
naturally qualified for military offices, or not,"--these are the
topics discussed. With regard to the education of women Sophia says:

  Men, by thinking us incapable of improving our intellects, have
  entirely thrown us out of the advantages of education, and
  thereby contributed as much as possible to make us the senseless
  creatures they imagine us. So that for want of education, we are
  rendered subject to all the follies they dislike in us.... And
  as our sex, when it applies to learning, may be said at least to
  keep pace with the men, so are they more to be esteemed for their
  learning than the latter: Since they are under a necessity of
  surmounting the softness they were educated in; of renouncing the
  pleasure and indolence to which cruel custom seem'd to condemn
  them to overcome the external impediments in their way of study;
  and to conquer the disadvantageous notions, which the vulgar of
  both sexes entertain of learning in women. And whether it be
  these difficulties add any keenness to a female understanding, or
  that nature has given women, a quicker more penetrating genius
  than to men, it is self-evident that many of our sex have far
  out-stript the men. Why then are we not as fit to learn and teach
  the sciences, at least to our own sex, as they fancy themselves
  to be.... We may easily conclude then, that if our sex, as it
  hitherto appears, have all the talents requisite to learn and
  teach these sciences, which qualify men for power and dignity,
  they are equally capable of applying their knowledge to practice
  in exercising that power and dignity. And since, as we have said,
  this nation has seen many glorious instances of Women, severally
  qualified to have all public authority center'd in them, why may
  they not be as qualified at least for the subordinate offices of
  ministers of state, vice-queens, governesses, etc.?

Sophia has, however, one reservation. Women may not enter the
ministry:

  Thus far I insist there is no _science_ or _public office_ in a
  state which women are not as much qualified for by Nature as the
  ablest of Men. With regard to divinity, our natural capacity has
  been restrain'd by a positive law of God: and therefore we know
  better than to lay claim to what we could not practice without
  sacrilegious intrusion.

The Gentleman, in his answer to Sophia, takes up her claims
_seriatim_ and disposes of them to his own satisfaction.

  Neither Juvenal nor I [he says] deny that Women may acquire some
  superficial Learning. All we contend for is that it is ever evil
  bestowed upon them, inasmuch as it renders them useless to their
  own sex, and a nuisance to ours.... I grant Greece has shewn its
  Sappho, Rome her Cornelia, France has produced a Dacier; Holland
  has brought forth a Schurman; Italy a Doctress; and England now
  boasts an Eliza and a Sophia.

But the whole serio-comic tone of the Gentleman's _Essay_ makes it
difficult of interpretation. Sophia writes as if she were in genuine
earnest in her protest and propaganda. But it seems much less certain
that the Gentleman is not merely playing with the situation.[417] The
identity of the writers has not been discovered. Miss McIlquham[418]
believes Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to be Sophia. But this is hardly
likely, since 1739 is the year Lady Mary went to Italy. A writer
signing himself "Medley," in _Notes and Queries_, suggests that
"Sophia" was Lady Sophia Fermor, the second wife of Lord Cararet,
and thinks she may also have been the "Sophia" of _Letters of Portia
to her Daughter Sophia_, though these were not published till years
later.[419]




CHAPTER IV

MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS ON WOMEN IN SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE


In addition to definite discussions as to the learning appropriate
for women, there were numerous books on general topics pertaining to
women, with incidental but often most illuminating comments on the
advantages or disadvantages of a liberal education. These books also
aid in building up a conception of the prevailing ideas concerning
women apart from technical questions of education.


[Sidenote: The Ladies' Calling (1673, 2d ed.)]

_The Ladies' Calling_, the second edition of which appeared in 1673,
was the most important as well as the most influential of all the
seventeenth-century books on the social and domestic aspects of
the life of women. The book is eminently well-bred, dignified, and
aristocratic in tone, and ardently religious. The authorship of _The
Ladies' Calling_ has long been in dispute. Tradition has persistently
ascribed it to Lady Pakington who, said Lady Winchilsea,

      Of each Sex the two best Gifts enjoy'd,
      The Skill to write, the Modesty to hide.

But if she were the author she has hidden the fact so successfully
as to lose the credit of her work. Modern investigation ascribes the
series of books, _The Whole Duty of Man_, _The Gentleman's Calling_,
and _The Ladies' Calling_, with some degree of certainty to Richard
Allestree,[420] one of the learned and devout men who found in Lady
Pakington intellectual as well as religious sympathy. But it seems
quite probable that Lady Pakington assisted him in _The Ladies'
Calling_. At any rate, whoever the author, the book may fairly be
considered an expression of the ideals of the group surrounding Lady
Pakington, an outgrowth of their discussions. The "Calling" described
is purely religious in tone, and the republication of the book in
1673 gains an added significance when we think of it as a protest
against the social customs of the Restoration court and an appeal
to ladies of high rank, summoning them to a sober sense of their
duties and responsibilities. In an exaltation of Meekness, Modesty,
Affability, and Piety as the genuine and proper Ornaments of Women,
the author states the opposing faults as he has observed them. The
picture he gives of ladies in the best circles is sufficiently
appalling. Under "Modesty" is a protest against "Female swearers."
"An Oath sounds gratingly out of whatever mouth, but out of a woman's
it hath such an uncooth harshness that there is no noise this side
of Hell can be more amazingly odious." Drinking is also reprobated
as "a vice detestable in all, but prodigious in women," "nothing
human being so much a beast as a drunken woman." Modesty also forbids
excessive talkativeness, "that indecency of loquacity" generally
charged to women. It forbids loudness of discourse, "a blustering or
ranting style," or even "unhandsome earnestness." All mannishness
in speech, manner, or dress must be avoided. Public speaking, even
on the part of gifted women, is alien alike to St. Paul and true
modesty. "Incontinence of mind," whereby secrets slip so easily
from the female grasp, is likewise opposed to the sobriety and
self-restraint implied in modesty.

Attractive and important as modesty is, it is outranked in value as a
daily necessity by Meekness, meekness of the will, of the affections,
of the understanding. Women particularly need this endearing quality
of ready submission to authority, for, "since God has thus determined
subjection to be the women's lot, there needs no other argument of
its fitness, or for their acquiescence"; and since they must always
be under the control of parents or husband, they will do well to
cultivate meekness, "the parent of peace."

Affability and compassion are considered natural to women. They also
have a predisposition to Piety, for it is based on Fear and Love,
the "two most pungent passions of the female sex," and is, besides,
their greatest ornament. Devotion, since it "requires a supple gentle
soil," finds feminine softness and pliability very apt and proper for
it.

The second part of _The Ladies' Calling_ comes from generals to
particulars. It takes up women as Virgins, Wives, and Widows.
Modesty and obedience being the recognized virtues of Virgins, their
case is passed over as having been already adequately presented.
"Superannuated Virgins" are less easy to dispose of. "An old Maid
is now thought such a Curse as no Poetic fury can exceed, look'd on
as the most calamitous Creature in Nature." There was no possible
complete evasion of the contempt with which protracted maidenhood
was regarded. If, however, "these superannuated Virgins would behave
themselves with Gravity and Reservedness, addict themselves to the
strictest Virtu and Piety, they would give the world some cause to
believe 't was not their necessity, but their choice, that kept them
unmarried; that they were pre-engaged to a better Amour, espoused to
the Spiritual Bridegroom: and this would give them among the soberer
sort, at least the reverence and esteem of Matrons.... But if, on the
other side, they endeavor to disguise their Age by all the impostures
and gayeties of a youthful dress and behavior, if they still herd
themselves amongst the youngest and vainest company, and betray a
young Mind in an aged Body, this must certainly expose themselves to
scorn and censure."

Under the heading "Antiquated Widows" are similar admonitions to
a life of "assiduous Devotion." "How preposterous is it for an
Old Woman to delight in Gauds and Trifles such as were fitter to
entertain her Grand-children: to read Romances with spectacles, and
be at Masks and Dancings, when she is fit only to act the Antics?
These are contradictions to Nature, the tearing off her Marks, and
where she has writ fifty or sixty, to lessen ... and write sixteen."

This is a long, serious, and very sincere book, and its evident
purpose is to take up all important questions concerning women. But
in point of fact, decorum, morality, piety, are the only subjects
of discussion. Education is not mentioned except in the Preface,
where it is stated that the mental inferiority of women should not
be accepted as a foregone conclusion until they have had the same
opportunities as men.

  Men have their parts cultivated and improved by Education,
  refined and subtilized by Learning and Arts, are like an inclosed
  piece of a Common, which by industry and husbandry becomes a
  different thing from the rest, tho the natural turf owned no
  such inequality. And truly had women the same advantage, I dare
  not say but that they would make as good returns of it; som of
  those few that have bin tried, have bin eminent in several parts
  of Learning.... And were we sure they would have balast to their
  sails, have humility enough to poize themselves against the
  vanity of Learning, I see not why they might not more frequently
  be entrusted with it; for if they could be secured against this
  weed, doubtless the soil is rich enough to bear a good crop.
  But not to oppose a received opinion, let it be admitted, that
  in respect of their intellects they are below men; yet sure in
  the sublimest part of humanity, they are their equals; they have
  souls of as divine an Original, as endless a Duration, and as
  capable of infinite Beatitude.

Aside from this one passage the book is thoroughly conventional in
its conception of the domestic, educational, and social duties and
position of women. There is no hint of revolt, no thought of enlarged
advantages. Whatever is, is right, so far as the position of women is
concerned. The one appeal is for high-mindedness, personal religion,
close adherence to the Church, as a woman's armor of defense. Within
the realm of the spirit God and her own nature have set her free for
lofty flights and great attainments.


[Sidenote: The Lady's New Year's Gift (1688)]

One of the most popular and entertaining of the many books for the
particular advantage of the female sex was _The Lady's New Year's
Gift: or, Advice to a Daughter_, by George Savile, first Marquess
of Halifax. It was printed from a circulating manuscript without
authorization in 1688. The fifteenth edition appeared in 1765. There
was a new edition in 1791. It was translated into Italian and several
times into French.[421] There is no word about education in the book.
It concerns itself entirely with moral, social, and domestic topics.
Vanity, Pride, Censure, Religion, are characteristic headings. Under
"Behaviour" is a satiric description of the women who refuse to grow
old.

  I will add one _Advice_ to conclude this head, which is that
  you will let every seven years make some alteration in you
  towards the Graver side, and not be like the _Girls_ of Fifty,
  who resolve to be always Young, whatever Time with his Iron
  Teeth hath determined to the contrary. Unnatural things carry
  a Deformity in them never to be Disguised; the Liveliness of
  youth in a riper Age, looketh like a new patch upon an old Gown;
  so that a Gay Matron, a cheerful old Fool, may be reasonably
  put into the List of the Tamer kind of Monsters. There is a
  certain Creature call'd a Grave Hobby Horse, a kind of a she
  Numps, that pretendeth to be pulled to a play, and must needs
  go to Bartholomew Fair, to look after the young Folks, whom she
  only seemeth to make her care, in reality she taketh them for
  her excuse. Such an old Butterfly is of all Creatures the most
  ridiculous, and the soonest found out.

This passage is apparently reminiscent of _The Ladies' Calling_
and but emphasizes the early relegation of the lady to the cap and
the chimney-corner. There are other similar social dicta but the
stress of the advice is on Husbands, House, Family, Children, the
Husband bulking so large in the foreground as almost to obscure other
interests. "How to live with a husband" is the central topic. The
general laws on which particular maxims are founded are thus stated:

  You must first lay it down for a Foundation in general, That
  there is _Inequality_ in the _Sexes_, and that for the better
  Oeconomy of the World, the _Men_, who were to be the Lawgivers,
  had the larger share of _Reason_ bestow'd upon them; by which
  means your Sex is the better prepar'd for the _Compliance_ that
  is necessary for the better performance of those _Duties_ which
  seem to be most properly assign'd to it. This looks a little
  uncourtly at the first appearance; but upon Examination it
  will be found that Nature is so far from being unjust to you,
  that she is partial on your side. She hath made you such large
  _Amends_ by other Advantages, for the seeming _Injustice_ of the
  first Distribution, that the Right of Complaining is come over to
  our Sex. You have it in your power not only to free yourselves,
  but to subdue your Masters, and without violence throw both their
  _Natural_ and _Legal Authority_ at your Feet. We are made of
  differing _Tempers_, that our Defects may the better be Mutually
  Supplied: Your _Sex_ wanteth our _Reason_ for your _Conduct_,
  and our _Strength_ for your _Protection_; _Ours_ wanteth your
  _Gentleness_ to soften, and to entertain us. The first part
  of our Life is a good deal subjected to you in the Nursery,
  where you Reign without Competition, and by that means have the
  advantage of giving the first _Impressions_. Afterwards you have
  stronger Influences, which, well manag'd, have more force in your
  behalf, than all our _Privileges_ and _Jurisdictions_ can pretend
  to have against you. You have more strength in your _Looks_, than
  we in our _Laws_, and more power by your _Tears_, than we have by
  our _Arguments_.

The difficulties a wife may meet are fully recognized and the best
ways of surmounting them are suggested. Is her husband unfaithful?
The wife's proper task is Discretion, Silence, affected Ignorance.
Does he drink to excess? Let her reflect that the fault is too
common to be fatal to happiness. Is he ill-humored? The wife has but
to mark "how the Wheels of such a Man's Head are used to move" and
she can manage him at her will. Is he sullen? Watch for "the first
Appearances of Cloudy Weather and be wary till the Fit shall pass."
Possibly he may be a "Close-handed Wretch." This calls forth all
a Wife's powers. She must use kindness, play on his ambition and
vanity, using now and then even "a Dose of Wine to open up a narrow
Mind." A weak and incompetent husband may become, in the hands of "a
dexterous woman," even an asset of some value. She must, of course,
pay deference to him in public, but she can easily see to it that
he is really under her control. "Such a Fool is a dangerous Beast,
if others have the keeping of him; and you must be very undexterous
if when your Husband shall resolve to be an _Ass_, you do not take
care he may be _your Ass_." Marriage is but a prolonged fencing-bout
of wits. The woman works under unavoidable handicaps, but if she
is sufficiently adroit, if she is mistress of artifice, if she
knows the tricks of the game, she may emerge from the conflict
substantially victorious.

The book was written in all seriousness and with tender love for the
daughter Elizabeth for whose guidance it was intended. She is said
to have prized it highly and to have kept it always on her table.
Elizabeth was married early to the third Earl of Chesterfield who
evidently had a humorous appreciation of the book, for he wrote on
the fly-leaf "Labour in vain."


[Sidenote: A Dialogue concerning Women (1691)]

In 1691 there appeared _A Dialogue concerning Women, Being a Defence
of the Sex. Written to Eugenia by W. Walsh._ The Preface by John
Dryden says of women: "For my own part, who have always been their
Servant, and have never drawn my Pen against them, I had rather see
some of them prais'd extraordinarily, than any of them suffer by
detraction: And that in this Age, and at this time particularly,
wherein I find more Heroines than Heroes."

The dialogue is between Misogynes and Philogynes: Misogynes brings up
Solomon, Euripides, Simonides, Lucian, St. Chrysostom, and Juvenal,
the Epigrammatists, Comick Poets, and Satyrists, as a dreadful
array of the ancients against women, showing at least that these
ancients "had a very commendable faculty of calling Names." Misogynes
especially dislikes "the Learned Woman, who runs mad for the love
of hard words, who talks a mixt Jargon, or _Lingua Franca_, and has
spent a great deal of time to make her capable of talking Nonsense in
four or five different languages."[422]

  Do you not think Learning and Politics become a Woman as ill as
  riding astride? [he asks]. Do you not, in answer to these, fetch
  me a _Sappho_ out of Greece; a _Cornelia_, the Mother of the
  _Gracchi_, out of Rome; an _Anna Maria Schurman_ out of Holland;
  and think that in shewing me three Learned Women in three
  thousand years, you have gain'd your point?

Philogynes answers that he shall continue in his opinion that
learning is suitable for women

  'till you have answer'd _Anna Maria Shurman's_ Arguments in
  their behalf, and 'till you have taken away her self, who is one
  of the best Arguments.[423] 'T is possible everybody does not
  know, that she was very well skill'd in the _Hebrew, Chaldee,
  Syriac, Arabick, Turkish, Greek, Latin, French, English, Italian,
  Spanish, German, Dutch, and Flemish_ Languages; that she had a
  very good faculty at Poetry and Painting, that she was a perfect
  Mistress of all the Philosophies, that the greatest Divines of
  her time were proud of her judgment in their own profession, and
  that when we had this character of her she was not above Thirty
  years of Age.[424]

  Or shall I refer you to Mademoiselle _Gournay_ among the
  _French_, or _Lucretia Marinella_ among the _Italians_, who have
  both writ in defence of their Sex, and who are both Arguments
  themselves of the Excellency of it?[425]

  Consider what Time and Charge is spent to make Men fit for
  somewhat; Eight or Nine Years at School; Six or Seven Years at
  the University; Four or Five Years in Travel; and after all this,
  are they not almost all Fops, Clowns, Dunces, or Pedants? I know
  not what you think of the Women; but if they are Fools they are
  Fools with less pains, and less expence than we are.[426]


[Sidenote: Gildon's Letters (1694)]

Charles L. Gildon published in 1694 a volume of miscellaneous letters
and essays. Two of these letters were entitled "Chloe to Urania,
against Womens being Learn'd," and "An Answer to the foregoing
Letter in Defence of Womens being Learn'd." Chloe but transmits the
arguments of her lover Lysander. "Learning will add fresh Pride to
the Sex," he asserts, and will kindle in them an ambition of absolute
Mastery. His second objection is the fundamental one. "Women were by
their Creator design'd for OBEDIENCE not RULE; to be instructed by
their Husbands, not to instruct them; and to Study nothing but their
Household Affairs." If learning were added to the personal charms of
women, not deity itself, Lysander thinks, could maintain the divinely
ordained overlordship of man. A final argument is that learning
will tend to make women unfaithful to their husbands, will give them
"wandering desires." Lysander's antidote for the new ideas that seem
to be perverting women's minds is Halifax's _Advice to a Daughter_,
the authority of which was so well established that Chloe dares utter
no protest against it. Urania, however, easily demolishes Lysander's
objections, asserting that learning makes women humble, that no wise
woman would ever think so wildly as to "attempt the inverting so
prevalent, and inveterate a Custom of the Sovereignty of the Men."
The _Advice to a Daughter_ is a book Urania has little esteem for.
Especially is she indignant at Halifax's advice to women to remain in
the religious faith in which they have been brought up, since, even
if such faith be error, says Halifax, women are not expected to do
the voluminous reading necessary to find out the truth. Women, Urania
maintains, should not govern their actions merely by what a corrupt
age "expects." They have souls to save and must learn the truth and
must have the learning that will guide them to the truth.

Both Lysander and Urania make the curious assumption that learning
would render women more attractive. Lysander thinks it would add
unduly to their power. Urania explains the tendency of the learned
woman to conjugal infidelity by the statement that her uncommon
learning results in an uncommon number of admirers. Let more ladies
have learning and the charm of novelty would vanish.

Urania is so easily superior to Chloe and her lover that we must
recognize in Gildon one of the champions of female learning.


[Sidenote: The Ladies' Dictionary (1694)]

One of the most curious books of the late seventeenth century is _The
Ladies' Dictionary; Being a General Entertainment for the Fair-Sex:
A Work Never attempted in English_. It was printed for "John Dunton
at the Raven in the Poultry, 1694," and is signed by "N. H." who lays
claim to the authorship in the following passage which may be quoted
at length, since from it we also get a characterization of the book,
its proposed scope and aim:

  _It is now near a Twelve-month since I first entered upon this
  Project, at the desire of a worthy Friend, unto whom I owe more
  than I can do for him: And when I considered the great need of
  such a Book, as might be a_ COMPLEAT DIRECTORY _to the Female Sex
  in all_ Relations, Companies, Conditions and States _of Life;
  even from_ CHILDHOOD _down to_ Old-age, _and from the_ Lady _at
  the Court, to the_ Cook-maid _in the Country: I was at length
  prevailed upon to do it, and the rather because I know not of any
  Book that hath done the like; indeed many learned Writters there
  be, who have wrote excellent well of some_ Particular Subjects
  _herein Treated of, but as there is not one of them hath written
  upon all of them, so there are some things Treated of in this_
  DICTIONARY _that I have not met with in any Language. 'T is
  true_, MY OWN EXPERIENCE IN LOVE AFFAIRS, _might_ have furnisht
  _out Materials for such a Work; yet I do not pretend thereby to
  lessen my Obligations, to those_ Ladies_, who by their Generous
  imparting to me their_ Manuscripts, _have furnisht me with_
  several hundred _Experiments and Secrets in_ DOMESTIC AFFAIRS,
  BEAUTIFYING, PRESERVING, CANDYING, PHYSICK, CHIRURGERY, ETC.
  _Proper for my Work, and such as were not taken out of Printed
  Books, or on the Credit of others, but such as are Re-commended
  to me from their own Practice, all which shall be inserted in
  a_ Second Part, _if this_ FIRST _meets with Encouragement, that
  so both together may contain all_ ACCOMPLISHMENTS _needful for
  Ladies, and be thereby rendered perfect.... So that you'll
  find here at one view, the whole Series and Order of all the
  most Heroick and Illustrious Women of all times, from the
  first dawning of the World to this present Age, of all Regions
  and Climate_, from _the Spicy East, to the Golden West, of_
  all _faiths, whether_ Jews, Ethnicks, _or_ Christians, (_and
  particularly an Account of those_ WOMEN MARTYRS _that suffer'd
  in Queen Mary's days: And in the West in 85: And of all_ Eminent
  _Ladies, that have dy'd in_ England _for these last fifty years_)
  _of all Arts and Sciences, both the graver, and more polite; of
  all Estates_, VIRGINS, WIVES and WIDOWS; _of all Complexions and
  Humours, the Fair, the Foul, the Grave, the Witty, the Reserv'd,
  the Familiar, the Chast, the Wanton. Whatever Poets have fancied,
  or credible Histories have Recorded, of the first you have the
  Misteries and Allegories clearly interpreted and explained; of
  the latter the Genuine Relations Impartially delivered_.

The general arrangement of the book is alphabetical, but Mr. "N. H."
is too temperamental to yield entirely to an arbitrary alphabet, and
so, if words are spiritually akin, he does not hesitate to group them
in defiance of their initial letters, as when he puts "Pimp" under
"Bawd," being unwilling to separate the household of Satan. There is,
also, to add to the confusion, unnatural division of subjects. Under
"D," "Diversions for Ladies" begins, but it is continued under "R" as
"Recreations for Ladies." More than one third of the 522 pages of the
book is given to such topics as "Beauty," "How to preserve Beauty,"
"Gracefulness," "Behaviour," "Manners," "Love," "Melancholy Lovers,"
"Occasions of falling in Love," "Passionate Lovers," "Opinions of
the Learned on Love," "Progress of Love," "Kissing," "Wooing,"
"Courtship," and "Wedding."

Mr. "N. H." says he has consulted the most valuable books written for
and against the "Fair-Sex" and has made free use of "Dr. Blancards,
Mr. Blounts, and other Dictionaries." That he had read _The Ladies
Calling_ and _Advice to a Daughter_ is apparent from his treatment of
such topics as, "HUSBAND INDIFFERENT, or, how to make your Life easie
with him," and "VIRGINS, THEIR STATE AND BEHAVIOUR, _particularly
those in years_," where the outline of the thought and, in frequent
instances, the exact phrasing of these recognized authorities are
preserved.

"Religion, a lady's chief ornament," is disposed of in two pages.
Learning takes about four pages. The promise of the author to give a
catalogue of heroic and illustrious women is fulfilled by hundreds of
names from myth and legend, from Roman, Greek, and Hebrew history,
and from Italy and Holland. When he begins his search for the eminent
ladies in England during the last half-century he summons quite a
list, including the Countess of Pembroke, Lady Mary Wroth, Ann Askew,
the daughters of Sir Anthony Cook, Lady Elizabeth Carew, Elizabetha
Joanna Westonia, Lady Jane Grey, the Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs.
Katherine Philips, Anne Broadstreet, and "Astera Behen," but a page
and a half is all he can find to say of all of them together. Mrs.
Behn he describes as "a Dramatic Poetress, whose well-known Plays
have been very taking; she was a retained Poetress to one of the
Theatresses, and writ, besides, many curious Poems." The Duchess of
Newcastle is "a very Charitable and obliging Lady to the World" in
that she "copiously imparted to publick View, her Elaborate Works
... not forgetting to make her own and her Lord's Fame live, when
Monuments shall crumble into Dust."

Taken as a whole, the book is a defense and eulogy of ladies and in
the very brief portion of it dedicated to learned women it champions
their ability and protests against undue limitations of their
activities.


[Sidenote: The Ladies' Diary (1703-1726)]

Among the early efforts to meet the tastes of women and at the same
time coax them along the paths of a more definite mentality, we must
rank _The Ladies' Diary: or, The Woman's Almanack, Containing many
Delightful and Entertaining Particulars, peculiarly adapted for the
Use and Diversion of the Fair-Sex_. One series of these little books
ranges continuously from 1703 to 1726. The _Diaries_ were brought out
anonymously, but Mr. Thoresby records in 1720 that he was visited
by "Mr. Beighton of Coventry, an ingenious gentleman, author of the
Ladies' Diary," so the authorship seems to have been known though
not printed.[427] The announced purpose of the _Diaries_ is "to
promote some Parts of Mathematical Learning amongst the Fair Sex."
To this end Enigmas, Paradoxes, and Arithmetical Questions, are
proposed one year, and prizes given for the answers the next year.
The Paradoxes included forty-five taken from a curious textbook
entitled _Gorden's Geography_. The Enigmas were usually stated and
answered in verse, and sometimes they were in French or Latin. The
arithmetical questions often involved in answer a page or two of
algebraic formulæ or even the processes of geometry or trigonometry.
As a rule the ladies were especially interested in the Enigmas,
leaving the mathematical portions to the men of letters, clergymen,
and schoolmasters who solaced their winter evenings with the stimuli
offered by the _Woman's Almanack_. Yet the editor asserts that even
in mathematics the ladies often proved themselves very skillful. In
the introduction in 1718 he says:

  And, that the rest of the Fair Sex may be encourag'd to attempt
  Mathematics and Philosophical Knowledge, they here see that
  their Sex have as clear Judgements, a sprightly quick Wit, a
  penetrating Genius, and as discerning and sagacious Faculties
  as ours, and to my Knowledge do, and can, carry them thro'
  the most difficult Problems. I have seen them solve, and am
  fully convinc'd, their Works in the Ladies _Diary_ are their
  own Solutions and Compositions. This we may glory in as the
  _Amazons_ of our Nation; and Foreigners would be amaz'd when I
  shew them no less than 4 or 5 Hundred several Letters from so
  many several Women, with Solutions _Geometrical_, _Arithmetical_,
  _Algebraical_, _Astronomical_ and _Philosophical_.

The solemnity with which contributors devoted themselves to the
_Diaries_, the stately compliments interchanged over successful work,
provoke a smile, but yet it must be confessed that no other agency
between 1703 and 1726 offered to women so genuine an intellectual
opportunity. To some women it was literally a perennial joy. Who were
the _Astræa_ and the _Adrastea_ whose names are so often in the prize
list? Who, in particular, was _Anna Philomathes_, who could write up
whole numbers, questions and answers, and who kept at the business
steadily for eleven years? From what homes did the "4 or 5 Hundred
several Letters" of the editor's note come? That the _Tatlers_, the
_Spectators_, and the _Guardians_ should have their thousands of
readers is easily explicable. But do not the now obscure _Diaries_
indicate a more unusual mental energy, a more genuine delight in
personal mental activity? In many a home, geographies, arithmetics,
histories, classical dictionaries, would surround the "Fair-Sex"
as they devoted themselves with leisurely assiduity to the demands
of the _Diary_ for the ensuing year. And a prize or an honorable
mention marked a gratifying mental achievement.


[Sidenote: The Guardian (1713)]

In _The Guardian_, No. 155, we have an account of how melancholy
a thing it is to see a coxcomb at the head of a family. The paper
proceeds:

  This is one reason why I would the more recommend the
  improvements of the mind to my female readers, that a family may
  have a double chance for it; and if it meets with weakness in
  one of the heads, may have it made up in the other. It is indeed
  an unhappy circumstance in a family, where the wife has more
  knowledge than the husband; but it is better it should be so,
  than that there should be no knowledge in the whole house. It
  is highly expedient that at least one of the persons, who sits
  at the helm of affairs, should give an example of good sense to
  those who are under them.

  I have often wondered that learning is not thought a proper
  ingredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune.
  Since they have the same improveable minds as the male part
  of the species, why should they not be cultivated by the same
  method? Why should reason be left to itself in one of the sexes,
  and be disciplined with so much care in the other?

  There are some reasons why learning seems more adapted to the
  female world, than to the male. As in the first place, because
  they have more spare time upon their hands, and lead a more
  sedentary life. Their employments are of a domestic nature, and
  not like those of the other sex, which are often inconsistent
  with study and contemplation. The excellent lady, the lady
  Lizard, in the space of one summer furnished a gallery with
  chairs and couches of her own and her daughters' working; and at
  the same time heard all doctor Tillotson's sermons twice over. It
  is always the custom for one of the young ladies to read, while
  the others are at work; so that the learning of the family is not
  at all prejudicial to its manufactures. I was mightily pleased
  the other day to find them all busy in preserving several fruits
  of the season, with the Sparkler in the midst of them, reading
  over the Plurality of Worlds. It was very entertaining to me to
  see them dividing their speculations between jellies and stars,
  and making a sudden transition from the sun to an apricot, or
  from the Copernican system to the figure of a cheesecake.

  There is another reason why those especially who are women of
  quality, should apply themselves to letters, namely, because
  their husbands are generally strangers to them.

  It is a great pity there should be no knowledge in a family. For
  my own part, I am concerned, when I go into a great house, when
  perhaps there is not a single person that can spell, unless it
  be by chance the butler, or one of the footmen. What a figure is
  their young heir likely to make, who is a dunce both by father's
  and mother's side![428]


[Sidenote: The Ladies' Library (1714)]

Addison and Steele had in mind some publication such as _The Ladies'
Library_ at least three years before it appeared. On April 12, 1711
(No. 37), Addison described in _The Spectator_ the library of a lady
called Leonora.[429] She had assembled her books partly in accordance
with her own taste, partly on the principle that there were some
books no library could do without. The list is an interesting one:

  _Ogleby's Virgil._

  _Dryden's Juvenal._

  _Casandra._

  _Astræa._

  Sir _Isaac Newton's_ Works.

  The _Grand Cyrus_: with a Pin stuck in one of the middle Leaves.

  _Pembroke's Arcadia._

  _Lock_ of Human Understanding: with a Paper of Patches in it.

  A Spelling book.

  A Dictionary for the Explanation of hard Words.

  _Sherlock_ upon Death.

  The fifteen Comforts of Matrimony.

  Sir _William Temple's_ Essays.

  Father _Malebranche's_ Search after Truth, translated into
  English.

  A Book of Novelles.

  The Academy of Compliments.

  _Culpepper_'s Midwifery.

  The Ladies' Calling.

  Tales in Verse by Mr. _Durfey_: Bound in Red Leather, gilt on the
  Back, and doubled down in several Places.

  All the Classick Authors in Wood.

  A Set of _Elzivers_ by the same Hand.

  _Clelia_: Which opened of itself in the Place that described two
  Lovers in a Bower.

  _Baker's_ Chronicle.

  Advice to a Daughter.

  The New _Atalantis_, with a Key to it.

  Mr. Steele's _Christian Heroe_.

  A Prayer Book: With a Battle of _Hungary_ Water by the side of it.

  Dr. _Sacheverell_'s Speech.

  _Fielding_'s Tryal.

  _Seneca_'s Morals.

  _Taylor's_ Holy Living and Dying.

  _Le Ferte_'s Instructions for Country Dances.

After some comment on this list as not in all respects desirable,
Addison stated that it was his purpose soon to suggest a catalogue
of books that would be proper for the improvement of the sex. In
May (No. 79) of the same year a lady named "B. D." reminded _The
Spectator_ of this promise, and urged that in his catalogue of a
Female Library he would pay particular attention to devotional works.
In June (No. 92) _The Spectator_ gives an account of the letters
received by the editor in answer to his call for help in making up
his "Catalogue of a Lady's Library." Book-sellers recommend the
authors they have printed; husbands give the preference to Wingate's
_Arithmetic_, the Countess of Kent's _Receipts, The Government of the
Tongue_. Ladies send in all sorts of advice. "Coquetilla begs me not
to think of nailing Women upon their Knees with Manuals of Devotion,
nor of scorching their Faces with Books of Housewifry." French
romances and plays rank among the most popular sorts of reading. _The
Spectator_ renews his promise to search out in authors ancient and
modern the passages most suitable for women, a work of this nature
being the more necessary since most books are calculated for male
readers.

In August (No. 140) "Parthenia" writes concerning her disappointment
on reading the description of Leonora's Library which she finds no
true guide at all, and she urges _The Spectator_ to more earnest
efforts in behalf of the sex:

  The great desire I have to Embellish my Mind with some of those
  Graces which you say are so becoming, and which you assert
  Reading helps us to, has made me uneasie 'till I am put in a
  capacity of attaining them: This, Sir, I shall never think my
  self in, 'till you shall be pleased to recommend some Author
  or Authors to my Perusal.... I write to you not only my own
  Sentiments, but also those of several other of my Acquaintance,
  who are as little pleased with the ordinary manner of spending
  one's Time as myself: And if a fervent Desire after Knowledge,
  and a great Sense of our present Ignorance, may be thought a good
  presage and earnest of Improvement you may look upon your Time
  you shall bestow in answering this Request not thrown away to no
  purpose.

In spite of all this preliminary discussion the scheme was not
immediately carried out. In November, 1712 (No. 528), "Rachel
Welladay" wrote reproachfully: "You never have given us the Catalogue
of a Lady's Library as you promised." And it was not till 1714
that _The Ladies' Library_ was published by Steele. Though in
three volumes and quite expensive, it became at once so popular
that there was an eighth edition by 1772.[430] The book was said
to be "Written by a Lady," but it is in reality a compilation from
seventeenth-century authors. In the _Athenæum_ (July 5, 1884) is
an article by Mr. Aitkin in which the chief passages are traced to
Taylor's _Holy Living_ (168 pages), Fleetwood's _Relative Duties of
Parents and Children_, _The Whole Duty of Man_, _The Government of
the Tongue_, _The Ladies' Calling_ (208 pages), Locke's _Treatise
on Education_, Lucas's _Practical Christianity and Enquiry after
Happiness_, Scott's _Christian Life_, Tillotson's _Sermons_, Mary
Astell's _Serious Proposal_ (86 pages), Halifax's _Advice to a
Daughter_ (47 pages), Hickes's _Education of a Daughter_. Angry
charges were brought against Steele for his use of such copious
extracts from Jeremy Taylor, as "an infringement on the rights of
the poor orphans who have very little else to subsist on,"[431] and
Mary Astell commented satirically on the consistency of the author
who had shown his teeth against her _Serious Proposal_ and then had
transcribed "above a hundred pages of it" into his _Ladies' Library_.
But no individual cavils interfered with the general approval. The
book was received as an extremely judicious compilation of the
best passages from authoritative sources. _The Ladies' Calling_,
_Advice to a Daughter_, _A Serious Proposal_, and _The Education of
a Daughter_, however unacceptable to modern thought many of their
fundamental assumptions and practical rules may be, represented the
highest and most dignified contemporary views as to the rights and
responsibilities of women. Brought together thus in one survey these
ideas would make a cumulative impression. There was nothing in the
quotations to antagonize or terrify the most conservative religious
readers, yet the total effect of the book would be a recognition of
woman's ability to think on important and difficult questions, and
the outcome would be to give her insensibly a more honorable place in
home, social, and church life.


[Sidenote: The Gentleman Instructed (8th ed., 1728)]

In the _Supplement to The Gentleman Instructed_ there is an animated
presentation of the faults of women. Eusebius, the sage who is to
instruct Neander in the duties of a gentleman, becomes so caustic in
his attacks on women that Emilia presents the matter to a "Juncto"
of ladies assembled to discuss the fashions. Emilia and Lucia are
appointed to wait on Eusebius and explain to him that a "Select
Committee of Ladies" require satisfaction at his hands. Neander
proceeds in lively fashion to lay open the faults of ladies, their
idleness, frivolity, vanity, and ignorance. During an arraignment
so detailed and knowing it is small wonder that the envoys "sate
upon the Tenters," and received the witty summary of their sins with
floods of tears, or with torrents of angry words. On the entrance of
Neander the colloquy takes a milder tone and Eusebius shows that he
has "Balms to heal, as well as Causticks to blister." By a panegyric
of noble and virtuous women he "dashes the _aigre_ with the _doux_,"
and shows that he can speak "like a Gentleman as well as an Orator."
He further modifies his harsh attitude by attributing feminine faults
to defects in education. In answer to Neander's question as to the
"Cause of our Ladies' Misfortune," Eusebius responds:

  It's indeed a Misfortune, but almost Universal; it's spread
  over the whole World, and affects the whole Species. _Emilia_
  has touched the Cause, ill Education: This is the fatal Source
  of their Misery, the true Origin of all their Failings. Young
  Ladies are brought up as if God created 'em merely for Seraglio,
  and that their only Business was to charm a brutish _Sultan_:
  One would think they had no Souls, there is such a Care taken
  of their Bodies; that God had enacted a Salique Law as well
  as the _French_, and excluded the Sex from the Inheritance of
  Heaven.[432]

Later Eusebius has so far conquered the opposition of the two ladies
as to venture upon specific good advice:

  Pretend not in Company to Wit; you will certainly betray your
  Judgment. Women seldom appear more foolish, than when they aspire
  to the Glory of being thought wise. Good God! How was I plague'd
  t'other Day with the Impertinence of Madam H. She commented
  upon _Aristotle_, and Lectur'd us upon the _Summe_ of _Thomas
  Aquinas_. She scorn'd the Female Topick of Modes and Dresses, and
  was for dancing on the high Ropes of _Physicks_ and _Divinity_.
  We were first regaled with _Materia Prima_; then came up a Dish
  of _Occult Qualities_; and at last a whole Plate of Theological
  Terms were flung among the Company. It was as impossible to stop
  her in this learned Career, as a Ship under full Sail, and you
  might have sooner silenc'd a Hurricane, than have fetter'd her
  Ladyship's Tongue. The Sex admir'd her Wisdom, and the Men smil'd
  at her Folly. She is [_sic_] made a Provision of School Jargon,
  and laid it out with much Prodigality, and more Assurance. But
  all her Knowledge stuck on the Superficies of Words, she enter'd
  not into the Sense. So that the Fame of her Parts shrunk under
  Experience, and this Phœnix of women prov'd only a well-taught
  Parrot.[433]

To a eulogy of needlework he adds:

  You may season Works with Reading, for though Women should not
  pretend to commence Doctors, yet I would not have 'em forswear
  Knowledge, nor make a Vow of Stupidity. Indeed it's not necessary
  to Rival the Knowledge of the Sybils, nor the Science of the
  Muses, she should not wade too deep into Controversy, nor
  soar so high as Divinity. These Studies lie out of a Lady's
  Way: They fly up to the Head, and not only intoxicate weak
  Brains, but turn them; They engender Pride, and blow us up with
  Self-conceitedness, and when all these meet, we shall be apt to
  measure Faith by our private Judgment, and set up our ill-shap'd
  Notions against the receiv'd Tenets of our Religion.[434]

Eusebius joins with nearly all contemporary moralists in a
condemnation of romances:

  Let not Romances come within reach of a young Lady: They are
  the Poison of Youth and murther Souls, as sure as Arsenick or
  Rats-bane kills Bodies.... Alas, when a young Creature reads
  over flourish'd Descriptions of conquering Beauties, and captive
  Knights; what a fine Landskip will they draw in her Head? How
  powerfully will they work upon her tender Heart? What a Tumult
  will they raise in her Breast?... How often will they envy a
  Philoclea for having a _Pyrocles_ at her Feet, and how seriously
  will she wish herself in the Place of Pamelia. Nay, it's odd,
  when the Fancy is warm'd, and the Imagination charm'd with the
  advantageous Characters of those Platonick Knights, she may fall
  in Love with the bare Product of _Sidney's_ Brain, and become a
  real Slave to Fable and Fiction.[435]

So convincing was Eusebius that Emilia said on leaving:

  To complete the Favour, be pleas'd to oblige me with your
  Instruction in Writing. Memory is Treacherous, and we often
  forget those Things that should always be remembered: Besides
  the Benefit is too important to be confined to a private Person.
  My Disease is Epidemical, and you will find few Ladies in Court
  untainted: Pray let the Remedy be publick. I will send it to
  the Press with your Leave, and present it to our Sex with a
  Dedication.

Then the ladies took leave of Eusebius and drove home. "They were
as calm as a spring Morning, and of Enemies became _Eusebius's_
Admirers."[436]

In the _Supplement to The Gentleman Instructed_ there is little that
is constructive so far as education is concerned. The faults of women
are wittily and picturesquely phrased, but no substitute scheme of
life is offered. Wherever learning is specifically spoken of it is
with derision.


[Sidenote: Advice to a Lady (1731)]

Lord Lyttleton wrote in 1731, when he was but twenty-two, a poem
entitled "Advice to a Lady" in which he reiterated the commonplaces
of the day. He counsels an "elegance of mind as well as dress,"
but strictly limits the exercise of such mentality as the lady may
possess:

      Nor make to dangerous wit a vain pretence,
      But wisely rest content with modest sense;
      For wit, like wine, intoxicates the brain,
      Too strong for feeble woman to sustain:
      Of those who claim it more than half have none;
      And half of those who have it are undone.

             *       *       *       *       *

      Seek to be good but aim not to be great:
      A woman's noblest station is retreat:
      Her fairest virtues fly from public sight,
      Domestic worth, that shuns too strong a light.

The attitude of the prudent wife towards her husband is also
indicated:

      From kind concern about his weal or woe,
      Let each domestic duty seem to flow,
      The _household sceptre_ if he bids you bear,
      Make it your pride his _servant_ to appear;
      Endearing thus the common acts of life.
      The _mistress_ still shall charm him in the wife.

Dr. Johnson thought this poem showed a mind attentive to life, that
it was vigorously and very elegantly expressed, and that it was
marked by much truth and much prudence. But Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
summarized Lord Lyttleton's platitude in a contemptuous couplet:

      Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet;
      In short, my deary, kiss me! and be quiet.

In 1744 Edward Moore published his _Fables for Ladies_.[437] In
thirteen rather smoothly versified little tales he enforces the
ordinary maxims included in the accepted social creed for women.
Only the last one goes out of the realm of decorum and domesticity.
In "The Owl and the Nightingale" the Nightingale represents the woman
who "minds the duties of her nest" and sings the song taught her by
nature, and so gains applause from man and bird. The opposite type is
represented by the Owl who, puffed up with self-conceit, spends her
time in pedantry and sloth. The owl-like lady vaunts her own wits,
twits her husband with his inferiority, and lets her children go
ragged and dirty.

      With books her litter'd floor is spread,
      Of nameless authors, never read;
      Foul linen, petticoats, and lace
      Fill up the intermediate space.
      Abroad, at visitings, her tongue
      Is never still, and always wrong;
      All meanings she defines away,
      And stands, with truth and sense, at bay.


[Sidenote: Samuel Richardson]

Samuel Richardson was the first to make feminism an issue in fiction.
Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe have the characteristics counted ideal by
Richardson, and both of these young ladies have not only exceptional
facility with the pen, but they have an education superior to that
of most girls of their day, and they have educational ideas far
ahead of their time. Though Clarissa was very young when she died,
she is represented as having accomplished much. In fine needlework
she excelled cloistered nuns, pieces of her work being sent even
to Italy to show the skill of English maidens. She had a pretty
hand at drawing, and, even when her execution was faulty, she was
nevertheless "absolute mistress in the _should-be_ of art." She knew
French and Italian well, and had read the chief poetry in those
tongues as well as in English. She had also begun Latin. She read
aloud fluently and correctly, with grace and dramatic effect. Her
maxim was, "All that a woman can learn above the useful knowledge
proper to her sex, _let her learn_." But she had no patience with a
"learned slattern," and deprecated any education that could turn a
woman away from domestic economy. Pamela was but sixteen when she
married and her education had been in the main that gained through
four years with Lady B. But after her marriage she settles into
a routine of life, one element of which is three hours a day for
study. Italian, French, geography, and arithmetic receive particular
attention. The chief pleasures in her home are intellectual ones.
Her first theatrical season in London presents her in the rôle of
dramatic critic. Ambrose Philips's _The Distressed Mother_ and
Steele's _Tender Husband_ had awakened tears and laughter from a
generation of play-goers, before Pamela, self-appointed censor of
the stage, revealed their immoralities and improbabilities. It is
also Pamela who is chosen to lay bare the absurdities of the Italian
opera. At her husband's wish she writes an extended essay in which
she dissects Locke's _Treatise on Education_ with explanatory and
critical comments. Furthermore, quite apart from these technicalities
of education, Richardson has given to Pamela, Clarissa, and Miss Howe
an independent personality. They are not mere puppets of relatives or
of circumstances. They strive valiantly to direct the course of their
lives according to the dictates of their own reason and conscience.
Parents and husbands are not the arbiters of their destiny. They hold
to their own views in spite of adverse public opinion and private
authority. Nor do they cling to their theories with a mere meek and
silent obstinacy. They argue down all opponents. The whys and the
wherefores are at their tongues' end. Conscience, mind, and will are
in their own keeping.

These striking characteristics of Richardson's heroines present in
concrete form opinions frequently stated by him in his letters. Those
to Lady Bradshaigh are sufficient to indicate the stand he took. This
correspondence belongs in 1750 and 1751. The more important letters
are the following:

  _Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson._

  I own I do not approve of great learning in women. I believe it
  rarely turns out to their advantage. No farther would I have them
  to advance, than to what would enable them to write and converse
  with propriety, and make themselves useful in every stage of
  life. I hate to hear Latin out of a woman's mouth. There is
  something in it, to me, masculine. I could fancy such a one weary
  of the petticoat, and talking over the bottle. You say "the men
  are hastening apace into dictionary learning." The less occasion
  still for the ladies to proceed in their's. I should be ashamed
  of having more learning than my husband. And could we, do you
  think, help shewing a little contempt, finding ourselves superior
  in what the husband ought to excel in. Very few women have
  strength of brain equal to such a trial: and as few men would
  forego their lordly prerogative, and submit to a woman of better
  understanding, either natural or acquired. A very uncomfortable
  life do I see between an ignorant husband and a learned wife. Not
  that I would have it thought unnecessary for a woman to read,
  to spell, or speak English; which has been pretty much the case
  hitherto. I often wonder we can converse at all; much more, that
  we can write to be understood. Thanks to nature for what we have!

  _Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh._

  _Dear Madam_,

  You do not approve of great learning in women. Learning in women
  may be rightly or wrongly placed, according to the uses made of
  them. And if the sex is to be brought up with a view to make the
  individuals of it inferior in knowledge to the husbands they may
  happen to have, not knowing who those husbands are, or what, or
  whether sensible or foolish, learned or illiterate, it would be
  best to keep them from writing or reading, and even from the
  knowledge of the common idioms of speech. Would it not be very
  pretty for the parents on both sides to make it the first subject
  of their inquiries, whether the girl as a recommendation, were
  a greater fool, or more ignorant, than the young fellow; and if
  not, that they should reject her, for the booby's sake?--and
  would not your objection stand as strongly against a preference
  in mother-wit in the girl, as against what is called learning;
  since linguists, (I will not call all linguists, learned men,) do
  very seldom make the figure in conversation that even girls, from
  sixteen to twenty, make.

  If a woman have genius, let it take its course, as well as in
  men: provided she neglect not anything that is more peculiarly
  her province. If she has good sense, she will not make the man
  she chuses, who wants her knowledge, uneasy, nor despise him for
  that want. Her good sense will teach her what is her duty; nor
  will she want reminding of the tenor of her marriage vow to him.
  If she has not, she will find a thousand ways to plague him,
  though she knew not one word beyond her mother-tongue, nor how to
  write, read, or speak properly in that. The English, Madam, and
  particularly what we call the plain English, is a very copious
  and a very expressive language.

  _Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson._

  I will not approve of learning in women. You, not even you,
  shall persuade me to it; that is no farther than I have already
  allowed which I think is pretty extensively; let them study that,
  domestic duties, and other necessary acquirements, and they will
  have employment enough to keep them out of mischief, if their
  inclinations are not strong that way: and if they were as learned
  as the most learned you can name, I have a notion these same
  whisperings must, in some degree, be attended to; and whilst
  they have ears they will be open to flattery and whilst men have
  tongues these ears will be filled with it. Learning cannot change
  nature, but it can make a woman ridiculous, a woman of sense I
  mean. Then, if it was once become customary, all parents would
  think their children qualified, and say, "If, please God, my girl
  shall be a scholar," as the men say of their boys, boobies or
  not: and what figures would most of us make!--Everything moves
  easiest in its own sphere. Indeed, Sir, great learning would make
  strange work of us. You know we are to submit and obey; and it
  is much as ever we can do, often more, in our inferior state of
  knowledge. I speak of acquired learning. What we have from good
  sense and natural genius, nobody can take from us. And the more
  a woman has of those, the better she must appear if along with
  those, she has good nature and humility.

  _Richardson to Lady Bradshaigh._

  Your Ladyship will not "approve of learning in women." I cannot
  help it. But do you not think, Madam, that the woman, who,
  additionally to the advantages she has from nature, "has been
  taught to read and converse with ease and propriety"; who can
  read, spell, and speak English; may not be as justly feared by
  half the pretty fellows of this age, as if she could read and
  understand Latin?

  I do not allow, that because a man is superficial, a woman must
  be so too, for fear she should meet with a husband to whom
  she may have a superior understanding. Do you not remember
  whose these words are? "What a pity it is that true genius
  and merit should be veiled under the cloud of inactivity and
  modesty."--"Strange! (adds this favourite of mine) that people
  will wrap up their talents and hide them."

  In your Ladyship's, of January 6, you say, "I hate to hear
  Latin out of a woman's mouth: there is something in it to me
  masculine. I could fancy such a one weary of the petticoat, and
  talking over a bottle." But, in this case, will not vanity and
  conceit shew themselves, where they are predominant, in a man's
  as much as in a woman's mind? Are there not pedantic men? Miss
  C----[438] is an example that woman may be trusted with Latin and
  even Greek, and yet not think themselves above their domestic
  duties. But after all, I contend not that women should be taught
  either of these languages; nor do I hold languages to be great
  learning, as I hinted in my former. A linguist and a learned man
  may very well be two persons. Meantime, all that I contend for,
  is, that genius, whether in men or women, should take its course:
  that, as the ray of divinity, it should not be suppressed. But
  I acknowledge that the great and indispensable duties of women
  are of the domestic kind; and that, if a woman neglect these,
  or despise them, for the sake of science itself, which I call
  learning, she is good for nothing.

  But would you not, Madam, have called me by some hard name, had I
  supposed the sex, in general, so conceited, so self-sufficient,
  so naturally weak in judgment, as you do? and had I asserted,
  that the more they knew, the worse they would be for it? I
  believe, I have observed in a former, that neither of us will let
  anyone but ourselves speak slightly of the sex.

  _Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson (March 29_, 1751).

  I think we pretty nearly agree, as to learning in women. And
  I was glad to find our opinion corresponding with an author
  esteemed by the judicious. In the letters of Balzac to Mr.
  Chapelain, are the following words: "I could more willingly
  tolerate a woman with a beard, than one that pretends to
  learning. In earnest, had I authority in the civil government, I
  would condemn all those women to the distaff, that undertook to
  write books, that transform their souls by masculine disguise,
  and break the rank they hold in the world."

Few bits of correspondence could be more illuminating. Lady
Bradshaigh holds the conventional mid-century view while Richardson
represents the most advanced feminist ideas of his day. Mrs. Makin,
Mary Astell, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and "Sophia" asked hardly
more than Richardson freely grants.

In his letters to Miss Margaret Collier, Richardson is most earnest
in his defense of literary women. In answer to her complaint that
Fielding's _Voyage to Lisbon_ was counted an inferior work and hence
attributed to her, he "inveighed vehemently" against women who
published anonymously, and wished it in his power to punish those
geniuses of the female sex who studiously "wrapped up their napkin'd
talents," elaborately concealing their "God-_given_ talents." "What
is it that they fear?... Is it that the men will be afraid of them,
and shun them as wives? Unworthy fear! Let the wretches shun and be
afraid of them. Unworthy of such blessings, let such men not dare
to look up to merits so superior to their own; and let them enter
into contract with women, whose sense is as diminutive as their own
souls." Miss Collier answers (with a deep sigh) that a preference
for "little-minded creatures" and an aversion to women of uncommon
understanding is not confined to the wretches he anathematizes, but
is as characteristic of "men of real good sense, great parts, and
many fine qualities." Miss Collier styles Richardson "the vindicator"
of her sex, but he holds his wrath and asks, "Who shall vindicate the
honour of a sex, the most excellent of which desert themselves?"[439]


[Sidenote: Henry Fielding]

Fielding has, in _Tom Jones_, an entertaining learned lady in the
person of Mrs. Western, the sister of Squire Western. She was of
a masculine form, near six foot high, which, added to her manner
and learning, possibly prevented the other sex from regarding her,
notwithstanding her petticoats, in the light of a woman. "She had
considerably improved her mind by study; she had not only read all
the modern plays, operas, oratorios, poems, and romances--in all
which she was a critic--but had gone through Rapin's _History of
England_, Eachard's _Roman History_, and many French _Mémoires pour
servir à l'Histoire_: to these she had added most of the political
pamphlets and journals published within the last twenty years. From
which she had obtained a very competent skill in politics, and could
discourse very learnedly on the affairs of Europe." Squire Western
did not approve of his sister's learned tastes. "You know," he says,
"I do not love to hear you talk about politics; they belong to us,
and petticoats should not meddle."

But in Fielding's attitude towards his sister's work, and in the
personal opinions he expressed in the prefaces to her novels,
we find quite a different tone.[440] Mrs. Western represented a
self-assertive, pretentious woman whose claim to learning was without
justification, and as such Fielding satirized her. For a modest woman
of real learning and ability Fielding had great respect.


[Sidenote: Pompey the Little (1757)]

In Coventry's _Pompey the Little_ is a satirical sketch of a "Lady
Sophister" who had visited most of the courts of Europe and who
affected a character of wisdom. We first meet her at the bedside
of Lady Tempest who is being attended by Dr. Kildarby and Dr.
Rhubarb. Lady Sophister had associated with the _literati_ in France
"where the ladies affect a reputation of science, and are able to
discourse on the profoundest questions of theology and philosophy."
She had somehow caught up with the notion that the soul is not
immortal, and she never found herself in the company of learned men
without launching forth into a discussion of this subject. "This
extraordinary principle, to show that she did not take up her notions
lightly and wantonly, she was able to demonstrate; and could appeal
to the greatest authorities in defence of it. She had read Hobbes,
Malebranche, Locke, Shaftesbury, Woolaston, and many more. But Locke
was her principal favourite, and consequently she rested chiefly upon
him to furnish her with quotations whenever her ladyship pleased to
engage in controversy." She attacks the two doctors with, "Have you
ever read Mr. Locke's controversy with the Bishop of Worcester?"
and hardly waiting to triumph over their confused attempts to
evade the question she proceeds: "What do you esteem the soul to
be? Is it air, or fire, or æther, or a kind of quintessence, as
Aristotle observed--a composition of all the elements?... You know
Mr. Locke observes there are various kinds of matter. But first we
should define matter, which, you know, the logicians tell us is an
extended solid substance. Out of this matter some is made into rose
and peach-trees; the next form which matter takes is animal life;
from whence we have lions and elephants and all the race of brutes:
then the last, as Mr. Locke observes, is thought, and reason, and
volition, from whence are created men; and therefore, you plainly
see it is impossible for the soul to be immortal." Dr. Rhubarb is
dazed by this fluent reasoning, but protests he can recall nothing
in Locke about roses and peach-trees and elephants and lions. "Nay,
sir," cried she, "can you deny me this? If the soul is fire, it
must be extinguished; if air, it must be dispersed; if it be only
a modification of matter, then of course it ceases when matter is
no longer modified; if it be anything else, it is exactly the same
thing: and therefore you must confess--indeed, doctor, you must
confess--that it is impossible for the soul to be immortal."[441]
Before such a rapid fire of phrases the doctors retire discomfited.
It was generally thought that Mr. Coventry meant this sketch for Lady
Orford, but even without this personal reference the passage would
stand as Coventry's estimate of many of the women of his day who were
devoting themselves to metaphysics and knots of divinity.


[Sidenote: Jonathan Swift]

There is no more concise summing up of the arguments generally
advanced against the education of women in the first half of the
eighteenth century than that given by Swift in the opening paragraphs
of his essay entitled _On the Education of Ladies_:

  It is argued that the great end of marriage is propagation;
  that, consequently, the principal business of a wife is to breed
  children, and to take care of them in their infancy: That the
  wife is to look to her family, watch over the servants, see
  that they do their work: That she be absent from her house as
  little as possible: That she is answerable for everything amiss
  in the family: That she is to obey all the lawful commands
  of her husband, and visit or be visited by no persons whom
  he disapproves: That her whole business, if well performed,
  will take up most hours of the day: That the greater she is,
  and the more servants she keeps, her inspection must increase
  accordingly: for, as a family represents a kingdom, so the wife,
  who is her husband's first minister, must, under him, direct
  all the officers of state, even to the lowest; and report their
  behavior to her husband, as the first minister does to his
  prince: That such a station requires much time, and thought,
  and order; and, if well executed, leaves but little time for
  visits or diversions: That a humor of reading books, except
  those of devotion or housewifery, is apt to turn a woman's
  brain: That plays, romances, novels, and love-poems, are only
  proper to instruct them how to carry on an intrigue: That all
  affectation of knowledge, beyond what is merely domestic, renders
  them vain, conceited, and pretending: That the natural levity
  of woman wants ballast; and when she once begins to think she
  knows more than others of her sex, she will begin to despise
  her husband, and grow fond of every coxcomb who pretends to any
  knowledge in books: That she will learn scholastic words; make
  herself ridiculous by pronouncing them wrong, and applying them
  absurdly in all companies: That in the meantime, her househould
  affairs, and the care of her children, will be wholly laid
  aside; her toilet will be crowded with all the under-wits, where
  the conversation will pass in criticising on the last play or
  poem that comes out, and she will be careful to remember all
  the remarks that were made, in order to retail them in the next
  visit, especially in company who know nothing of the matter:
  That she will have all the impertinence of a pedant, without the
  knowledge; and for every new acquirement, will become so much the
  worse.[442]

This essay breaks off abruptly so that we cannot tell in what
spirit Swift planned to carry on the discussion. But in "A Letter
to a Very Young Lady on her Marriage"[443] we get a somewhat fuller
statement showing his contempt for women in general, but indicating
possibilities in the way of improvement in specific cases:

  As divines say, That some people take more pains to be damned,
  than it would cost them to be saved; so your sex employ more
  thought, memory and application to be fools, than would serve
  to make them wise and useful. When I reflect on this I cannot
  conceive you to be human creatures, but a certain sort of species
  hardly a degree above a monkey; who has more diverting tricks
  than any of you, is an animal less mischievious and expensive,
  might in time be a tolerable critic in velvet and brocade, and,
  for ought I know, would equally become them.... It is a little
  hard that not one gentleman's daughter in a thousand should be
  brought to read or understand her own natural tongue, or to be
  judge of the easiest books that are written in it; as any one
  may find, who can have the patience to hear them, when they are
  disposed to mangle a play or novel, where the least word out of
  the common road is sure to disconcert them; and it is no wonder
  when they are not so much as taught to spell in their childhood,
  nor can ever attain to it in their whole lives.... I know very
  well that those who are commonly called learned women, have lost
  all manner of credit by their impertinent talkativeness; but
  there is an easy remedy for this, if you once consider, that
  after all the pains you may be at, you never can arrive in point
  of learning to the perfection of a school boy.[444]

In harmony with this low estimate of the attainments of women is
Swift's famous aphorism, "A very little wit is valued in a woman
as we are pleased with a few words spoken plain by a parrot."[445]
Too much emphasis could easily be given this utterance. It should
be remembered that it was not part of a well-considered theory. It
was merely one of the many unrelated sayings written down when Swift
and Pope resolved to commit to paper all the maxims, epigrams, and
short reflections on life that they could think of in a day.[446] The
philosophy expressed counted for less than witty phrasing.

So, too, with Swift's brutal attacks on Mary Astell's college. It is
given undue significance if it is interpreted simply as an attack on
higher education for women. His derision of the college was an angry
outburst against a particular learned woman who had used her wit to
make fun of the Kit-Kat Club. It was Mary Astell the satirist rather
than Mary Astell the defender of learned women who awakened his
spleen.[447]

On the whole, Swift seems to have been favorably disposed towards
women of genuine and unpretentious learning. His friendly services
to the Irish poetesses, especially to Mrs. Barber and Mrs.
Pilkington, while rather condescending in tone, nowhere indicates
any condemnation of their aspirations in the way of writing and
publishing. In the "Letter to a Very Young Lady" he comments
unfavorably on the women who spend their youth in exploiting their
beauty, and their later years in visits and cards, and says, "Whereas
I have known ladies at sixty, to whom all the polite part of court
and town paid their addresses, without any further view than that
of enjoying the pleasure of their conversation." And he advised the
young wife to seek out good books and elevating conversation in order
to raise herself above the general degrading level of her sex:

  You must improve your mind by closely pursuing such a method of
  study as I shall direct or approve of. You must get a collection
  of history and travels, which I will recommend to you, and
  spend some hours every day in reading them, and making extracts
  from them if your memory be weak. You must invite persons of
  knowledge and understanding to an acquaintance with you, by
  whose conversation you will learn to correct your taste and
  judgment.[448]

More convincing still is Swift's estimate of Stella. From her
childhood he had trained her mind and selected her reading, and we
must assume that he had formed her character and determined her
acquirements according to the feminine model he most admired. When he
praised her it was her intelligence on which he put emphasis. He said
of her:

  Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of mind, or
  who more improved them by reading and conversation.... She was
  well versed in the Greek and Roman story, and was not unskilled
  in that of France and England. She spoke French perfectly,
  but forgot much of it by neglect and sickness. She had read
  carefully all the best books of travel, which served to open
  and enlarge the mind. She understood the Platonic and Epicurean
  philosophy, and judged very well of the defects of the latter.
  She made very judicious abstracts of the best books she had
  read. She understood the nature of government, and could point
  out all the errors of Hobbes, both in that and in religion. She
  had a good insight into physic, and knew somewhat of anatomy;
  in both which she was instructed in her younger days by an
  eminent physician, who had her long under his care, and bore the
  highest esteem for her person and understanding. She had a true
  taste of wit and good sense, both in poetry and prose, and was
  a perfect good critic of style. Although her knowledge, from
  books and company, was much more extensive than usually falls to
  the share of her sex, yet she was so far from making a parade
  of it, that her female visitants, on their first acquaintance,
  who expected to discover it by what they call hard words and
  deep discourse, would be sometimes disappointed, and say, "They
  found she was like other women." But wise men, through all her
  modesty, whatever they discoursed on, could easily observe that
  she understood them very well, by the judgment shown in her
  observations, as well as in her questions.[449]

Swift did not consider a woman as a slave or a toy. An alert mind,
a fund of varied information, an intelligent interest in books and
general affairs, seemed to him necessary qualifications in a woman
who would be a suitable companion for a man of sense.


[Sidenote: Alexander Pope]

Pope was interested in questions of education and general learning.
His own training had not come through the regular channels of
public schools and university, so perhaps as an observer _ab extra_
the defects of the system were more apparent to him than to
those brought up in it. At any rate he protested against corporal
punishment, against the monotony of a narrow and fixed curriculum,
against vague metaphysics and dry-as-dust textual criticism. But in
this general discussion he did not touch upon the question of woman's
education. His attitude towards learned ladies was a personal one.
When he was in love with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the luster of
her "heavenly mind," her learning, and her wisdom, were celebrated
along with the grace and beauty depicted by Kneller.[450] But when
she was no longer in favor she became "that dang'rous thing, a female
wit."[451] In _The Rape of the Lock_ he addressed the wayward goddess
of the Cave of Spleen as:

      Parent of vapors and of female wit,
      Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit,
      On various tempers act by various ways,
      Make some take physic, others scribble plays.[452]

The "women-wits" apparently protested against these lines, or at
least Lady Winchilsea did, and he responded with a conciliatory
_Impromptu to Lady Winchilsea_, six lines of which are as follows:

      In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore,
      And cite those Sapphos we admire no more:
      Fate doomed the Fall of every Female Wit;
      But doomed it then, when first Ardelia writ.
      Of all examples by the world confess'd,
      I knew Ardelia could not quote the best.

But Pope is never as undisguisedly himself in eulogy as he is in
satire, and his real opinions probably came out when he and Gay and
Arbuthnot sat down to write a play which should adequately represent
their separate and combined hostilities. The assignment to Pope of
the character of Phœbe Clinket, the authoress, shows not only his
attitude towards Lady Winchilsea, but probably towards the tribe of
women wits as well.[453] "Most women have no characters at all"[454]
is Pope's general summary; and the highest compliment he could pay
to Martha Blount, the woman for whom he cared most, was that she had
"Sense and Good Humour."[455] In any comparison with Stella, Martha
Blount seems a very commonplace personage to rank as a poet's friend.


[Sidenote: Bishop Burnet]

Bishop Burnet opposed Mary Astell's plan for a college, and he
disliked any pushing into public affairs by women. "I thought," he
said, "there were two sorts of persons that ought not to meddle in
affairs, though upon very different accounts. These were churchmen
and women. We ought to be above it, and women were below it." And
when he first heard of Lady Margaret Kennedy, he was unwilling to
meet her because of her unfeminine interest in politics.

Yet Bishop Burnet was not absolutely opposed to the education
of women. When he gave instructions as to the choice of a wife,
"a good understanding" and "a liberal education" were among the
characteristics to be sought. His objection to Mary Astell's plan was
due to his fear that a lay monastery such as she described might be
hostile to the interests of the Church. He even advocated academies
devoted to "women's education and religious retreat," and he thought
that "monasteries without vows" might be set on foot in such a
fashion as to be "the honor of a Queen on her throne."[456]

He also found especial pleasure in the society of educated women.
When he finally met Lady Margaret Kennedy, he fell in love with her
in spite of her politics. They were married in 1671, and when, after
her death, he summed up her character, he put particular stress on
her intellectual attainments. "She was a woman," he wrote, "of much
knowledge, had read vastly; she understood both French, Italian
and Spanish; she knew the old Roman and Greek authors well in the
translations; she was an excellent historian and knew all our late
affairs exactly well, and had many things in her to furnish out much
conversation."[457]

Bishop Burnet's second wife was Mrs. Mary Scott, whom he married in
Holland about 1687. In the _Life of Burnet_ it is said of her: "With
these advantages of birth, she had those of a fine person; was well
skilled in drawing, music, and painting; and spoke Dutch, English,
and French equally well. Her knowledge in matters of divinity was
such as might rather be expected from a student than from a lady. She
had a fine understanding and sweetness of temper, and excelled in all
the qualifications of a dutiful wife, a prudent mistress of a family,
and a tender mother of children."[458]

Bishop Burnet's third wife has already been noted as a religious
writer. Her work was brought to completion and publication through
his encouragement and coöperation.

He also chose intellectual women as friends. He corresponded with
Mrs. Wharton, and wrote frequent poems to her, and said he "rejoiced
in her life and friendship beyond all things of this world." Nor did
the fact that she was an authoress disturb him. He even wrote verses
in imitation of her verses.[459]

It is evident that Dr. Burnet enjoyed the individual woman of alert
intelligence and trained mind, but that he deprecated any but the
most carefully guarded schemes for a general extension of educational
advantages to women.


[Sidenote: John Wesley]

John Wesley was always susceptible to the charms of women, but his
lack of discrimination and insight in regard to them led to several
disastrous affairs of the heart, and finally, at forty-eight, to a
more disastrous marriage. These circumstances must be taken into
consideration in reading his various utterances on married life. In
a tract on _Marriage_ he wrote that the duties of a wife may all be
reduced to two: 1. She must recognize herself as the inferior of her
husband. 2. She must behave as such. No such order of precedence had
prevailed in the Epworth rectory, and the mother he almost worshiped
would have scorned such rules. They grew rather from his unhappy
union with the domineering, suspicious, obstinate Mrs. Vazeille. When
he wrote to her, "Be content to be a private, insignificant person,
known and loved by God and me. Leave me to be governed by God and my
own conscience. Then shall I govern you with gentle sway, and show
that I do indeed love you, even as Christ the Church"; he was not so
much expressing his idea of inevitable masculine authority, as he was
trying to calm one woman whose jealous frenzies destroyed his private
happiness and threatened to injure his work.[460]


[Sidenote: John Duncomb: The Feminead (1751)]

John Duncomb's _Feminead: or, Female Genius_, was written in 1751
when he was but twenty-two. It is a tame and feeble production, but
since it antedates Mr. Ballard's _Memoirs_ and the _Eminent Ladies_,
Mr. Duncomb's glorification of female genius should have at least the
credit of being an original idea. And however halting the expression,
his poem embodied a genuine enthusiasm that puts it in line with
the newer ideas of the mid-eighteenth century. The list of learned
ladies presented is not a long one. Comedy writers and writers of
personal memoirs are sorrowfully and briefly dismissed as followers
of a wanton muse. The virtuous ladies celebrated are led, of course,
by the chaste Orinda. Those who succeed her are Lady Winchilsea, Mrs.
Cockburn, Mrs. Rowe, the Countess of Hertford, Viscountess Irwin,
Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Madan, Mrs. Leapor, Miss Carter, Mrs. Brooks, Miss
Ferrar, Miss Pennington, Miss Mulso, and Miss Highmore. Several of
these ladies find their only commemoration here. The Viscountess
Irwin is deserving of "a grateful tribute from all female hands"
because she rescued her sex's cause from the aspersions cast upon
it by Mr. Pope in his _On the Characters of Women_. The poetical
epistle of the Viscountess in rebuttal of his charges proved
to be a true Ithuriel's spear, and disarmed the witlings. Miss
Pennington (afterwards Mrs. Peckard) wrote two odes on "Cynthia"
and the "Spring" that appeared in Dodsley's _Collection_, volume V.
Miss Pennington's _The Copper Farthing_, a burlesque imitation of
Philips's _Splendid Shilling_, was printed in Dilly's _Repository_,
volume I. She died in 1759, aged twenty-five. The others in the list
are spoken of elsewhere in these pages, so need no further comment
here.

The poems open with an invocation to Richardson as "The sex's
friend and constant patron." And there is a passage of national
congratulation over the freedom with which British nymphs wander in
the groves of Wisdom:

      Ev'n now fond Fancy in our polish'd land
      Assembled shews a blooming, studious band:
      With various arts our reverence they engage,
      Some turn the tuneful, some the moral page;
      These led by Contemplation, soar on high,
      And range the Heavens with philosophic eye;
      While those surrounded by a vocal choir,
      The canvas tinge, or touch the warbling lyre.

Young Mr. Duncomb of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was looking
up his illustrations of female genius at the same time that Mr.
Ballard of Magdalen, Oxford, was getting his elaborate _Memoirs_
ready for the press. And each writer was apparently influenced in
his views by some specific woman scholar or writer whom he knew and
admired, and through whom he was led into a championship of the
general cause. As the learned Miss Elstob, and the pretty coin-loving
sister, stimulated Mr. Ballard, so Susanna Highmore apparently
gave direction to Mr. Duncomb's enthusiasm. He loved Miss Highmore
(1730?-1812) through a protracted courtship of more than twelve
years. She is the "Eugenia" of his poem and is described as "The
Muse's pupil from her tenderest years." She was the daughter of
Joseph Highmore, the artist. She belonged to the Richardson coterie
and was one of the group to whom he read _Sir Charles Grandison_. Her
sketch of the scene forms the frontispiece to the second volume of
Mrs. Barbauld's _Correspondence of Samuel Richardson_. Her _Fidelio
and Honoria_ is the best known of her writings.


[Sidenote: George Ballard: Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain]

In 1752 there was published at Oxford a significant book entitled
_Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain, who have been Celebrated
for their Writings or Skill in the Learned Languages Arts and
Sciences_. The author of this book was George Ballard of whose
obscure life but a few chance details have reached our day. This is
the more to be regretted since he was evidently a person of marked
individuality. He was born in Campden, Gloucestershire, in 1706.
His father was a poor man, and it was necessary for the children
to be put early to work. Since George was sickly an easy trade was
found for him and he was apprenticed to a stay-maker, or woman's
habit-maker. His literary tastes were early apparent. At fourteen
he read Fox's _Acts and Monuments of the Church_, various books of
polemical divinity, and a number of books against dissenters. He
had antiquarian tastes, and while still young began a collection of
coins. Our most definite picture of him is as a young man of twenty,
still a stay-maker, but already well known as an indefatigable
collector. In the summer of 1726 Mr. R. Graves wrote to Mr. Hearne as
follows:

  At Campden in Gloucestershire lives one Mr. Ballard, a Taylor,
  who hath a Daughter, a very pretty Girl, of about fourteen Years
  of Age, that hath an extraordinary Genius for Coins, & hath made
  an odd Collection of them. Mr. Granger (who came from thence
  last Night in his Return from London) saw her, and speaks much
  of her, w^{ch} I took the more notice of because he is himself
  a good Judge of Coins, & hath an admirable Collection of them,
  especially of English ones. But, it seems, this young Girl is
  chiefly delighted with those that are Roman.[461]

In February of the next year he wrote again:

  The bearer is the young tailor of Campden who has collected so
  many odd coins.... The young Man, whose name is George Ballard
  has been all about the Country to pick up old money, and has got
  a great Number.... When he has gott any new that I have not seen,
  he brings 'em to me to tell him whose they are.... I suppose he
  will bring some of them with him to shew you.[462]

In March Mr. Hearne recorded the visit of Mr. Ballard:

  Yesterday, in the afternoon, called upon me Mr. George Ballard,
  a young man (a Tayllour) of Campden in Gloucestershire, of whom
  I have heard Mr. Graves speak more than once. This Ballard is an
  ingenious, curious young man, & hath pickt up abundance of old
  Coins, some of w^{ch} he shewed me. He hath been at many places
  about the country for that End. He hath also pickt up many of our
  Historians, & other English Books, & takes great delight in them,
  but he is no scholar. He is a mighty admirer of John Fox & talks
  mightily against the Roman Catholicks, tho' I told him, that
  there are fifteen thousand Lyes in Fox, & brought him to some
  sense of the Abuses frequently put upon the poor Catholicks.

  He shewd me an old Ed. w^{ch} is the first of _Historia
  Britannica_. Mr. Ballard told me, about a week ago he met with a
  curious old Paint upon Board (an original, as he takes it) done
  excellently well, of Queen Catharine, the divorced wife of Henry
  VIII.

  Mr. Ballard hath a sister (which Mr. Graves used to talk also of)
  equally curious in Coins and Books with himself. He told me, she
  is twenty-three years of Age.[463]

  There came with Mr. Ballard, one Mr. Ellys, who deals in Laces
  etc. and is Brother in law to Mr. Ballard, having married
  another (one elder) Sister of Mr. Ballard's, by whom he hath 2
  children.[464]

In May of the same year Mr. Hearne wrote:

  Yesterday Mr. Graves of Mickleton called upon us. He told me,
  that young Ballard the Taylor of Campden is out of his time, &
  hath very good business at his trade, but that he is now learning
  Latin, going twice a day for that end to the School-master
  there, and that he hath a great mind to come and enter of [_sic_]
  some College or Hall in Oxford, but Mr. Graves gives him no
  encouragement, judging it better (& so I think too) to keep to
  his Trade. This young Ballard's Great Uncle was a Doctor of
  Physick. Mr. Graves hath promised to send me some account of
  him.[465]

In spite of the contradictory statements as to the age of the
attractive, coin-loving sister, there emerges from these letters a
sufficiently definite picture of a household in which at least two
talented young people were carrying on researches in line with the
best antiquarian work of the day.

We are not told when Mr. Ballard took up Anglo-Saxon. The letters to
and by Mr. Hearne when Ballard was twenty-one and twenty-two do not
mention Anglo-Saxon as one of his interests. Six years later we find
him on intimate terms with Elizabeth Elstob whose Evesham School was
but a few miles from Campden. It does not seem improbable that Miss
Elstob introduced this promising young scholar to her own chosen
field of work. He was, at any rate, so impressed by the disproportion
between her learning and her toil-bound life that he became her
knight-errant and finally set in motion influences that resulted
in her freedom. Whether Miss Elstob introduced him to Anglo-Saxon,
or merely joined her ripe scholarship to his young enthusiasm,
their common interest results in a warm friendship that found in
Anglo-Saxon its firmest bond.

We have one interesting bit of testimony to the ardor with which
Mr. Ballard pursued the new language. He needed an Anglo-Saxon
dictionary, but not being able to buy one he borrowed, from Mr.
Browne Willis, _Somner's Dictionary_, and made a very beautiful
transcript of it, with Thwaites's additions. This transcript was one
of the manuscripts bequeathed by Mr. Ballard to the Bodleian. It was
a tremendous piece of work, and it is small wonder that Mr. Ballard
celebrated its completion by a "festival."[466]

The advice given by Mr. Graves, that the ambitious young stay-maker
should "keep to his trade," was perforce followed. Most of his life
was spent as a tailor at Campden, but in spite of this his fame for
scholarship grew apace. In 1750 Lord Chedworth and the gentlemen of
his hunt, who annually in the hunting season spent about a month at
Campden, heard of his attainments, and they offered him an annuity
of £100 for life in order that he might prosecute his studies. He
gratefully accepted £60 and set out at once for Oxford. He was made
one of the eight clerks of Magdalen College, receiving his rooms
and commons free. His life at Oxford was but a continuation of his
activities at Campden. He had begun vast collections on various
subjects and these he pushed nearer to completion. At his death,
however, which occurred in 1755 and was occasioned, it was thought,
by too strenuous application to study, the only work he had published
was the _Memoirs_. He left to the Bodleian forty-four volumes of
manuscripts and original letters, including copies of some of his own
writing, and all carefully indexed.[467]

The preparation of the _Memoirs_ was well under way before he went
to Oxford, for Mr. G. Russell wrote to him, May 15, 1759: "The work
you are now engaged in, will I hope rescue us in a great measure from
the too just accusation our neglect in Biography has occasioned,
and you have this additional satisfaction in prospect, that as the
Fair Sex are the subject, so they will be the Protectresses and
Guardians of your performance. Their smiles, like a benign planet,
will gradually ripen it to perfection, and their breath embalm it
to posterity."[468] The original manuscript of the _Memoirs_ was in
the possession of Mr. Gough and was sold with the rest of his books
in 1811.[469] A copy of the first edition, in the Bodleian, contains
manuscript notes in the handwriting of the author.[470] A second but
inferior edition came out in 1775.

When the _Memoirs_ appeared in 1752, it attracted little attention.
The _Monthly Review_ for February, 1753, is not laudatory. The editor
regrets that Mr. Ballard did not go farther back than the fourteenth
century, that he has vainly spent his industry in rescuing from
oblivion some ladies who might better have been left there, and
finally that "so extraordinary a genius and so excellent a woman as
Mrs. Cockburn, is wholly unnoticed in this work." Other criticisms
reached Mr. Ballard from private sources. They were based almost
entirely on religious and party lines. Mr. Ballard's answer to a
letter from Dr. Lyttleton, Dean of Exeter, will sufficiently indicate
the tone of these criticisms. It was written May 22, 1753:

  The day before I received your first epistle a Gent. of my
  acquaintance brought me the _Monthly Review_ for February, that
  I might see what the candid and genteel authors of that work had
  said of mine. They observe to the publick, that _I have said_
  C. Tishem was so skilled in the Greek tongue, that she could
  read Galen in its original, which very few Physicians are able
  to do. Whether this was done maliciously, in order to bring the
  wrath of the Æsculapians upon me, or inadvertently, I cannot
  say: but I may justly affirm, that they have used me very ill in
  that affair; since if they had read with attention, which they
  ought to have done before they attempted to give a character of
  the Book, they must have known that the whole account of that
  Lady (which is but one page) is not mine, but borrowed with
  due acknowledgement from the _General Dictionary_. They are
  likewise pleased to inform the world that I have been rather
  too industrious in the undertaking, having introduced several
  women who hardly deserved a place in the work. I did not do
  this for want of materials; neither did I do it rashly, without
  advising with others of superior judgment in those affairs, of
  which number Mr. Professor Ward was one. But those pragmatical
  Censors seem to have but little acquaintance with those studies,
  or otherwise they might have observed that all our general
  Biographers, as Leland, Bale, Pits, Wood, and Tanner, have
  trod the very same steps; and have given an account of all the
  authors they could meet with, good and bad, just as they found
  them: and yet, I have never heard of any one that had courage or
  ill-nature enough, to endeavour to expose them for it. While I
  was ruminating on these affairs, three or four letters came to
  my hands, and perceiving one of them come from my worthy friend
  the Dean of Exeter, I eagerly broke it open, and was perfectly
  astonished to find myself accused of _party zeal_ in my book; and
  that from thence the most candid reader might conclude the author
  to be both a Church and State Tory. But after having thoroughly
  considered all the passages objected to, and not finding the
  least tincture of either Whig or Tory principles contained in
  them, I began to chear up my drooping spirits, in hopes that I
  might possibly outlive my supposed crime; but, alas! to my still
  greater confusion! when I opened my next letter from a Tory
  acquaintance, I was like one thunderstruck at the contents of it.
  He discharges his passionate but ill-grounded resentment upon me
  most furiously. He tells me, he did not imagine Magdalen College
  could have produced such a rank Whig. He reproaches me with want
  of due esteem for the Stuart Family, to whom he says I have shown
  a deadly hatred, and he gives me, as he imagines, three flagrant
  instances of it. 1. That I have unseasonably and maliciously
  printed a letter of Queen Elizabeth's, in order to blacken the
  memory of Mary Queen of Scots, and that, too, at a time when her
  character began to shine as bright as the Sun. 2dly. That I have
  endeavoured to make her memory odious, by representing her as
  wanting natural affection to her only son, in my note at p. 162,
  where he says I have printed part of a Will, etc. And 3dly, tho'
  she was cut off in such a barbarous and unprecedented manner,
  yet she has fallen unlamented by me. I am likewise charged with
  having an affection to Puritanism; the reasons for which are,
  my giving the Life of a Puritan Bishop's Lady, which it seems
  need not have been done by me, had I not had a particular regard
  for her, since it had been done before by Goodwin who reprinted
  her Devotions. And not content with this, I have blemished my
  book with the memoirs of a Dissenting teacher's wife, and have
  been kind enough to heighten even the character given her by her
  indulgent husband; and that I am very fond of quoting Fox and
  Burnet upon all occasions. These are thought strong indications
  of the above-mentioned charge. It may be thought entirely
  unnecessary to answer any of the objections from Exeter, after
  having given you this Summary of my kind Friend's Candid Epistle;
  but to you, Sir, to whom I could disclose the very secrets of my
  soul, I will endeavour to say a word or two upon this subject,
  and make you my Confessor upon this Occasion; and I will do it
  with as much sincerity as if I lay on my death-bed. Before I was
  fourteen years old, I read over Fox's Acts and Monuments of the
  Church, and several of the best books of Polemical Divinity,
  which strongly fortified me in the Protestant Religion; and gave
  me the greatest abhorrence to Popery. And soon after I perused
  Mercurius Rusticus, The Eleventh Persecution, Lloyd, Walker's
  Sufferings of the Clergy, and many others, which gave me almost
  as bad an opinion of the Dissenters. But then I learned in my
  childhood _to live in Charity with all Men_, and I have used my
  best endeavours to put this doctrine in practice all my life
  long. I never thought ill, or quarrelled with any man merely
  because he had been educated in principles different to mine;
  and yet I have been acquainted with many papists, dissenters,
  etc. and if I found any of them learned, ingenuous, and modest,
  I always found my heart well-disposed for contracting a firm
  friendship with them: and notwithstanding that, I dare believe
  that all those people will, with joint consent, vouch for me,
  that I have ever been steady in my own principles.

  I can truly affirm that never any one engaged in such a work,
  with an honester heart, or executed it with more unbiassed
  integrity, than I have done. And indeed, I take the unkind
  censures passed upon me by the furious uncharitable zealots of
  both parties, to be the strongest proof of it. And after all, I
  dare challenge any man, whether Protestant, Papist, or Dissenter,
  Whig or Tory, (and I have drawn up and published memoirs of
  women who professed all those principles) to prove me guilty
  of partiality, or to shew that I have made any uncharitable
  reflections on any person, and whenever that is done, I will
  faithfully promise to make a public recantation. I wish, Sir,
  you would point out to me any one unbecoming word or expression
  which has fell from me on Bishop Burnet. Had I had the least
  inclination to have lessened his character, I did not want proper
  materials to have done it. I have in my possession two original
  letters from Bishop Gibson and Mr. Norris of Bemerton, to Dr.
  Charlett, which, if published, would lessen your too great esteem
  for him. And what, I beseech you, Sir, have I said in praise of
  Mrs. Hopton and her pious and useful labours, which they do not
  well deserve, and which can possibly give any just offence to
  any good man? I dare not censure or condemn a good thing merely
  because it borders upon the Church of Rome. I rather rejoice that
  she retains anything I can fairly approve. Should I attempt to do
  this, might I not condemn the greater part of our Liturgy, etc.?
  and should I not stand self-condemned for so doing? I cannot for
  my life perceive that I have said anything of that excellent
  woman, which she does not merit; and I must beg leave to say
  that I think her letter to F. Turbeville deserves to be wrote in
  letters of gold, and ought to be carefully read and preserved by
  all Protestants. Mary Queen of Scots fell under my notice, no
  otherwise than as a learned woman. The affairs you mention would
  by no means suit my peaceable temper. I was too well acquainted
  with the warm disputes, and fierce engagement both of domestic
  and foreign writers on that head, once to touch upon the subject.
  And indeed, unless I had been the happy discoverer of some secret
  springs of action which would have given new information to the
  public, it would have been excessive folly in me to intermeddle
  in an affair of so tender a nature, and of so great importance.

  I have often blamed my dear friend Mr. Brome for destroying his
  valuable collections, but I now cease to wonder at it. He spent
  his leisure hours pleasantly and inoffensively, and when old
  age came on, which not only abates the thirst, but oftentimes
  gives a disrelish to these and almost all other things, which do
  not help to make our passage into eternity more easy, he then
  destroyed them (I dare believe) in order to prevent the malicious
  reflections of an ill-natured world.

  I have always been a passionate lover of History and Antiquity,
  Biography, and Northern Literature: and as I have ever hated
  idleness, so I have in my time filled many hundred sheets with my
  useless scribble, the greater part of which I will commit to the
  flames shortly to prevent their giving me any uneasiness in my
  last moments.[471]

The bitter feeling indicated by this letter, and the sense of
disappointment resulting from criticisms so unsympathetic, must have
been considerably mitigated by the noble list of subscribers with
which the book was ushered into the world.[472] That would indicate
at least a financial success, and doubtless appreciation came from
many unrecorded sources.

Mr. Ballard's book is of interest if it were only as a _tour de
force_ in the way of collecting materials from scattered sources.
He sought far and wide for the facts he chronicles. All available
biographical dictionaries, general histories, county histories,
genealogical records, wills, funeral sermons, epitaphs, published
works, private manuscripts,--all became the subjects of his
indefatigable inquiries. He sought interviews, he wrote letters, he
cajoled information from the most unlikely recesses. And he had an
eye for picturesque and personal detail, so that out of his rapid and
often disordered assemblage of facts it is possible to reconstruct,
in many instances, a vivid impression of real women in their form and
habit as they lived. That closer scholarship should now and then find
inaccuracies in his statements is no more than should be expected,
and should in no degree invalidate his claim to recognition as having
done an invaluable piece of research in a biographical realm entirely
new.

The _Memoirs_ is a handsome volume of 474 pages and contains sixty
more or less extended biographies. Except for Queen Elizabeth the
longest notice is in the twenty-four pages devoted to Margaret
Roper, and the accounts range from that down to eight or ten lines.
The order is approximately chronological. The lives are divided
into two portions with separate dedications. The first one reads,
"To Mrs. Talbot of Kineton in Warwickshire the Following Memoirs of
Learned Ladies in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries are most
humbly inscribed as an acknowledgement of my sincere and high regard
for her and Mr. Talbot and as a small Testimony of Gratitude for
Extraordinary Favours conferred by Both of Them upon their most
obliged and most devoted humble servant George Ballard." The second
dedication was, "To Mrs. Delany the Truest Judge and Brightest
Pattern of all the Accomplishments which adorn her Sex these Memoirs
of Learned Ladies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries are
most humbly inscribed by her obedient servant George Ballard."

In the Preface Mr. Ballard comments on the value of biographical
records and then proceeds to a justification of his own work:

  The present age is so far from being defective in this respect,
  that it hath produced a greater number of excellent biographers
  than any preceding times: and yet, I know not how it hath
  happened, that very many ingenious women of this nation, who
  were really possessed of a great share of learning, and have, no
  doubt, in their time been famous for it, are not only unknown to
  the public in general, but have been passed by in silence by our
  greatest biographers.

  When it is considered how much has been done on this subject
  by many learned foreigners, we may justly be surprized at this
  neglect among the writers of this nation; more especially, as it
  is pretty certain, that England hath produced more women famous
  for literary accomplishments, than any other nation in Europe.

       *       *       *       *       *

  Those, whose memoirs are here offered to the publick, I have
  placed in the order of time in which they lived; omitting none,
  of whom I could collect sufficient materials. For as there may
  yet be some learned women of those times, whose characters I am
  an entire stranger to; so there are others, whom I well know to
  have been persons of distinguished parts and learning, but have
  been able to collect very little else relating to them. Such as,
  Lady Mary Nevil, Lady Anne Southwell, Lady Honor Hay, Lady Mary
  Wroath, Lady Armyne, Lady Ranelagh, Lady Anne Boynton (famous
  for her skill in ancient coins, and noble collection of them)
  Lady Levet, Lady Warner, Gentlewomen; Mrs. Mabilla Vaughan, Mrs.
  Elizabeth Grimstone, Mrs. Jane Owen, Mrs. M. Croft, Mrs. Aemillia
  Sawyer, Mrs. Makins (who corresponded in the learned languages,
  with Mrs. Anna Maria à Schurman), Mrs. Gertrude More, Mrs.
  Dorothy Leigh, together with many other learned and ingenious
  women, since the year 1700; of those latter I have had the good
  fortune to make very considerable collections: and among the
  former, I had drawn up an account of Mrs. Carew, in the same
  manner with the other memoirs, but omitted printing it by mere
  accident.

The motto on the title-page, "_Et sane qui Sexum alterum ad studia
idoneum negant, iam olim rejecti, fuere ab omnibus philosophis_,"
expresses the spirit of the book. Mr. Ballard was perfectly genuine
in his admiration of learned women. In his impressionable youth he
had found his sister as intelligent in collecting old coins and books
as he himself. Later the most learned Anglo-Saxon scholar he knew
was Miss Elstob. His fervent recognition of his sister's genius,
his high sense of Miss Elstob's learning, are but a forecast of the
direction of his mature work. He had known two brilliant women,
hence he had a belief in the possible intellectual achievements of
women. He had seen one of these women, in spite of her constructive
and advanced scholarship, consigned to poverty and oblivion, and a
sense of injustice took possession of his mind. The championship
of Miss Elstob passed over into championship of all learned women.
His _Memoirs_, he hopes, will remove "that vulgar prejudice of the
supposed incapacity of the female sex." To accomplish this end he
relies in the main on a cool and unemphasized recital of facts. But
now and then he allows himself to protest against some especial
injustice. For instance, under the "Memoirs of Mary Countess of
Pembroke," he says of her translation of the Psalms:

  But then we are informed by Sir John Harington, and afterwards by
  Mr. Wood, and from him by the late learned Dr. Thomas, that she
  was assisted by Dr. Babington then chaplain to the family, and
  afterwards Bishop of Worcester; for, say they, 't was more than
  a woman's skill to express the sense of the Hebrew so right, as
  she hath done in her verse; or more than the English or Latin
  translation could give her. This argument has likewise been made
  use of by a certain divine to divest another worthy Lady of the
  honour of an excellent performance, in the composition of which
  was shown some skill in that primitive language. But why this
  should be thought a cogent argument to prove it, I am very much
  at a loss to know; it being not so much as pretended, so far as
  I can be informed, that there is more skill required, or greater
  difficulties to be met with in acquiring that language, than
  there is in attaining an exact knowledge in the Greek and other
  tongues, which all the world knows numberless women have been
  perfectly well versed in.

  And that the female sex are as capable of learning this as any
  other language, appears so plain from many undeniable instances
  of it, as to render any farther disproof as to that assertion
  unnecessary. Let those who doubt of it, read what St. Jerom has
  recorded of the noble Lady Paula and her daughter Eustochium.
  The Lady Paula's character he solemnly professes himself, and
  that upon a most solemn occasion, to have drawn not in the way of
  a Panegyric, but to have related everything with the strictest
  veracity; and therefore will not, I hope, be suspected of
  flattery, when he tells us that she, in her old age, did speedily
  learn it; and understood the language so well as to speak it.

  Or if this be referring them too far back to antiquity, let them
  reflect on the extraordinary learning and abilities of Mrs. Anna
  Maria à Schurman; who was not only well skilled in Greek and
  Latin, but in the Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Chaldaic, etc. And we
  are told [in Evelyn's _Numismata_] that Ludovisia Sarracennia, a
  Physician's daughter of Lyons, understood and spoke Hebrew and
  Greek at the age of eight years. To let pass many other foreign
  examples, I shall only observe that our own Kingdom produced
  several women in the last century, who were famous for their
  skill in Hebrew, etc. Particularly a young lady of the North
  family, who was well versed in the Oriental languages. Mrs. Bland
  a Yorkshire gentlewoman was so well skilled in it, that she
  taught it to her son and daughter. Likewise the late Mrs. Bury of
  Bristol, and others, of whom I need say no more here, since they
  will be remembered in this catalogue.

Again, under "Lady Pakington," the question of Hebrew comes up. One
gentleman has told him that _The Whole Duty of Man_ and the other
treatises by the same author could not be by a woman because they
were too deeply learned, and another gentleman wrote that the "many
quotations from Hebrew writers" precluded female authorship. But Mr.
Ballard answers:

  And since skill in the Hebrew language is made use of as a
  convincing argument (tho, for my part, I can not find one Hebrew
  quotation in the whole book) he may please to understand, that
  besides the justly celebrated Mrs. Anna Maria à Schurman, and
  many other foreign ladies, we have had several domestic examples
  of _Women_ who have been famed for their skill in that primitive
  language, viz., Lady Jane Gray, Lady Killigrew, a Lady of the
  Nottingham family, another Lady of the North family, Lady
  Ranelagh, Mrs. Bury, and Mrs. Elizabeth Bland of Beeston in
  Yorkshire.


[Sidenote: Poems by Eminent Ladies (1755)]

The success of Mr. Ballard's _Memoirs_ in 1752 led to the production
in 1755 of _Poems by Eminent Ladies_, "Printed for R. Baldwin, at the
Rose, in Pater-Noster-Row."[473] The brief Preface reads in part as
follows:

  These volumes are perhaps the most solid compliment that can
  possibly be paid to the Fair Sex. They are a standing proof that
  great abilities are not confined to the men, and that genius
  often glows with equal warmth, and perhaps with more delicacy,
  in the breast of a female. The Ladies, whose pieces we have here
  collected, are not only an honour to their sex, but to their
  native country; and there can be no doubt of their appearing to
  advantage together, when they have each severally been approved
  by the greatest writers of their times. It is indeed a remarkable
  circumstance, that there is scarce one Lady, who has contributed
  to fill these volumes, who was not celebrated by her contemporary
  poets, and that most of them have been particularly distinguished
  by the most lavish encomiums either from _Cowley_, _Dryden_,
  _Roscommon_, _Creech_, _Pope_, or _Swift_.

  There is indeed no good reason to be assigned why the poetical
  attempts of females should not be well received, unless it can
  be demonstrated that fancy and judgment are wholly confined
  to one half of our species; a notion, to which the readers of
  these volumes will not readily assent. It will not be thought
  partiality to say that the reader will here meet with many pieces
  on a great variety of subjects excellent in their way; and that
  this collection is not inferior to any miscellany compiled from
  the works of men.

       *       *       *       *       *

  The short accounts of the several writers, prefixed to each of
  their poems, were compiled from the best materials we could meet
  with. The life of Mrs. _Behn_ in particular, (which is very
  entertaining) is extracted from _The Lives of the Poets_, by Mr.
  Theophilus Cibber and others. For many of the rest we are obliged
  to Mr. _Ballard's_ entertaining Memoirs of Learned Ladies.

The two unimpressive volumes of this publication make rather more
interesting reading than most miscellanies, but there is no hint
of latent genius. The ladies are merely clever versifiers. They
manage the heroic couplet with the mechanical skill of Pope's lesser
imitators. Their verses jingle in the close with sufficient accuracy.
Pope's antitheses and balanced structures, his oratorical figures,
his use of pungent personal portraiture, are characteristics that
find many enfeebled echoes. In subject-matter and general tone the
books present an impeccable front. The authors would be sure to
prefer Steele's _Ladies' Library_ to Mrs. Pilkington's _Love in
Excess_, yet they are not conspicuously strait-laced. The poems are
nearly all occasional and gain thus a note of reality, and, though
no lady attains to genuine humor or actual lightness of touch, there
are evidences of a brightness of spirit, a vivacity, a quickness
of repartee, that remove the poems from the realm of the purely
imitative and conventional.


[Sidenote: Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain (1755)]

Among the literary curiosities of the eighteenth century are two
books by Thomas Amory. One of these, _Memoirs of Several Ladies of
Great Britain_, appeared in 1755 in two volumes. The first volume of
the second work, _The Life of John Buncle_, was published in 1756,
and a second volume appeared in 1766. When he began the _Memoirs_
he had planned to extend the series to eight volumes, but he did
not carry it beyond the second volume of _John Buncle_. The full
title of the _Memoirs_[474] indicates its character as a medley of
unrelated observations, disquisitions, and opinions. _John Buncle_
has a less erratic plan, some order being given by the fact that
the hero engages in seven successive matrimonial ventures in the
course of his travels through Yorkshire and the Lake District. But
the books are alike in aim, both being an exposition of Christian
Deism. John Buncle's wives are all either able advocates of
Socinianism when he meets them, or they have minds so attempered
that on hearing the tenets of that faith they ardently embrace it.
The ladies in both books are introduced with a Defoe-like apparatus
of seemingly accurate details as to dates, locations, and particular
circumstances. Although these ladies have had a great variety of
romantic adventures and differ somewhat as to wealth and social
position, they are essentially alike in character and function, the
one purpose of the author being through them to exemplify and explain
his religious beliefs. The interesting point is that Mr. Amory in
creating ideal and learned defenders of his views should have chosen
young ladies. And this was deliberately done. He states it as his
conviction "that the faculties and imagination of women's minds
properly cultivated may equal those of the greatest men," and he
advocates a higher education for young women of sufficient fortune:
"It would be so far from making them those ridiculous mortals
Molière has described under the character of learned ladies; that it
would render them more agreeable and useful, and enable them by the
acquisition of true sense and knowledge, to be superior to gayety,
dress and dissipation. They would be glorious creatures then. Every
family would be happy."

In accordance with this view his young ladies in the _Memoirs_ and
_John Buncle_ have not only virtue, wealth, and beauty, but learning
of the most specialized and difficult sort. One girl of twenty had
been for five years studying under the tutelage of a Scotchman
and had attained great proficiency in "arithmetic, Algebra, and
fluxions." On her first interview with the author she discoursed for
ten uninterrupted pages on the method of fluxions and so wrought
upon her hearer's admiration that "for a full quarter of an hour
after she ceased he sat looking at her in the greatest astonishment."
But he recovered sufficiently to secure the mathematical prodigy as
his fourth wife. Another "master in the fluxionary way" was a Mrs.
Benslow, and most of the ladies found a perennial source of joy in
algebra and arithmetic. But the realm in which their minds luxuriated
was that of speculative theology. They read books on religious
faiths, ancient and modern, they discussed the most abstruse problems
of metaphysics, and they carried ethical problems into the most
attenuated ramifications.

The lady who seems to be in all ways Mr. Amory's ideal is Miss
Harriot Eusebia Harcourt. She appears in both books, and in
definiteness of personality is superior to any of the other
characters. It is not impossible that Amory gives under her name
a highly idealized portrait of some one he knew. The _Biographium
Femineum_, published in 1766, was so impressed by Miss Harcourt as
to catalogue her among distinguished Englishwomen, but the entire
account seems to be based on Amory's characterization. She is also
admitted as a real person in _Female Biography_, by Miss Mary Hays,
in 1803, and in Rose's _New Biographical Dictionary_, in 1839. But
Miss Harcourt is almost certainly a fictitious character. If any
woman had really accomplished what is described in Amory's books, it
is incredible that there should have been no contemporary notice of
so novel an experiment.[475]

According to Amory, Miss Harcourt was born in 1705. She received a
learned education supplemented by nine years of travel in Europe with
her father who secured for her the best masters in the languages
of the different countries, so that she became an accomplished
linguist. On the death of her father in 1733 she inherited a large
fortune which she was free to spend according to her own ideas.
Her acquaintanceship with noble nuns in various parts of Europe
had convinced her that a life similar to theirs, but outside the
Catholic Church, would be ideal. She thereupon returned to England
and with eleven like-minded ladies she organized a society of
"Reformed Recluses." On her estate in Richmondshire she built a
beautiful cloister as a winter residence. In the summer the Society
occupied a charming villa on the Green Island, a part of her father's
property in the western islands of Scotland. Amory says that he was
shipwrecked on this island and that during his long stay there he
became intimately acquainted with the details of Miss Harcourt's
scheme of life. On so agreeable a theme he allowed his imagination
free rein. The magnificent situation of the Green Island gave full
scope for descriptions of wild and romantic scenery.[476] For the
things wrought by the hand of man in the grounds about the villa,
he had but to take hints from some of the great English gardens,
notably that at Stowe. The Elysium, the marble busts, the Rotunda,
at Stowe, were almost certainly the original of his Elysian Fields,
groups of marble statues, and Orbicular Building. And as these
external details stimulated his fancy to the production of an
Aladdin-like garden, so such suggestions as those of Mary Ward's
"Institute," or especially Mary Astell's "Protestant Nunnery,"
stimulated his active mind into working out the details of such a
plan. He described not only the constitution of such a society, its
financial status, and its general aims, but he went into all the
minutiæ of dress, meals, social customs, diversions, occupations. The
ladies paid £500 on entrance, they took no vows of celibacy, they had
no prioress, they lived well, they had abundant service, they dressed
richly. The badge of their order was a large diamond cross. No one
was admitted who had not a taste for music. Musical composition,
playing on different instruments, singing, painting, and drawing
were the elegant diversions. There was a large and well-selected
library, and the ladies made researches according to their taste,
with the proviso that once a week they must read to the rest the
result of their labors--a sort of multifarious and inchoate seminar.
The approved papers were recorded in a club book called _Didaskalia_.
These ladies being Christian deists and having minds unclouded by
the mists of superstition, enthusiasm, and atheism, spent much time
in rational devotion. Mr. Amory becomes ecstatic as the picture of
this ideal society grows under his hand and finally declares that
if he were a woman of fortune he would at once seek out this happy
society of religious recluses with a certainty that no other life on
the globe could offer such felicity. He approves of Miss Harcourt's
last act which was to will her large fortune as an endowment for this
cloistral house. A fanciful dream, but one that constantly brings
to mind Tennyson's _Princess_. Only to Amory's Green Island there
came no disrupting influences of love and childhood. He left his
ladies still enjoying their learned seclusion, and filling volume
after volume of the _Didaskalia_, painting great pictures, producing
original oratorios, making abstruse speculations, and serving God
with calm hearts.[477]




CHAPTER V

SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE LEARNED LADY IN COMEDY


The artificial comedy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in
England is of genuine significance as a social document. Its purpose
was to hold up to ridicule whatever in contemporary life, especially
the life of the every-day middle-class world, could be counted
foolish or absurd. In its pages nearly every phase of ordinary
human activity could look upon its more or less distorted image,
and the taste and temper of the times are pretty fairly measured
by the personages accepted by dramatists, actors, and audiences as
legitimate sources of comic appeal.

Literature offered a surprisingly rich field to the writers of
comedy. Tragedies and comedies, the new Italian opera, farces,
pantomimes, harlequinades, pastoral dramas, were parodied,
burlesqued, and criticized on the stage. Individual authors,
theater-managers, actors, and actresses, were ever-recurring figures
in the popular comedy. Quite a little library might, for instance, be
gathered of the satiric representations of Colley Cibber, Theophilus
Cibber, and Susanna Maria Cibber.

Other popular comic types were heroes and heroines marked by national
characteristics. An illuminating social study might be made of the
Irishman in comedy, the many ancestors of Sheridan's "Sir Lucius
O'Trigger," as "Sir Teague O'Divelly," "Sir Calligan O'Bralligan,"
"Mr. O'Connor MacCormack," "Major O'Flaherty," and the rest of the
truculent, honey-tongued, generous, blundering tribe. There are stage
Scotchmen and Welshmen represented by "Sir Pertinax MacSycophant,"
"Mr. Apreece," and their congeners. The Frenchman as valet,
music-master, dancing-master, and villain-in-ordinary to the heroes
is ubiquitous.

Or we might study the professions. Physicians line up on the stage
as quacks, charlatans, conscious impostors. Lawyers are pictured as
men whose sole purpose is to hide ignorance and knavery in a cloud
of words, and to empty the pockets of their clients in a trumped-up
pursuit of justice.

The Church does not escape. The Puritan who in Restoration drama
was represented as a psalm-singing, whining, long-faced hypocrite,
concealing a vicious life under a pretense of rigid sanctity, was
replaced as a comic type in the early eighteenth century by the
non-juror, and when later Wesley's tabernacle and Foote's play-house
were competing for popular favor, it was the Methodist who obtained
the bright reversion, there being ascribed to him all the cant and
hypocrisy of his forbears.

Society is likewise represented in all its follies and vices. Of
genuine social importance is a study of the long line of "fops,"
"coxcombs," "pretty fellows," "beaux," "macaronies," "dudes," as they
were variously called, from "Sir Solomon, the Cautious Coxcomb," in
1669, through "Sir Fopling Flutter," "Sir Courtly Nice," "Sir Novelty
Fashion," "Lord Foppington," "Sir William Mode," "Mr. Apeall," "Sir
Brilliant Fashion," "Lord Trinket," "Brisk," "Flutter," "Sparkish,"
and the rest of the inane tribe, with their laces and frills, their
powdered wigs, their enameled snuff-boxes, their ivory combs and
pocket-mirrors, their muffs and canes, their inordinate vanity,
affectation, and empty-headedness.

Learning, too, found its place on the stage. From the establishment
of the Royal Society in 1662, the work of the Gresham professors was
the theme of unbridled ridicule. The virtuoso who spent his whole
time with a telescope investigating the geography of the moon or
with a microscope determining the nature of the bloom on a plum; the
anatomist, the geologist, the antiquarian, were counted fair game for
the satirist.


I. THE LEARNED LADY AS A COMIC TYPE

In this multifarious activity of the comic spirit it would be strange
if any pretense to learning on the part of women should escape.
And we are, in fact, presented with a motley procession of mock
Minervas. Even as early as Jonson there was some recognition of the
comic potentialities of the learned lady as a type. In _Epicœne_
(1609) Morose is warned against matrimony by Truewit who recounts
the ways in which a learned wife could shatter his peace. Proud to
show her Latin and Greek, she might talk all day like a parrot; or,
cunning in controversy, she might attack the very knots of divinity;
or, considering herself a critic, she might "censure _poets_, and
authors, and stiles, and compare 'hem, DANIEL with SPENSER, IONSON
with tother youth, and so foorth."[478] But this summary seems to be
less a reflection of contemporary life than an echo from Juvenal's
Sixth Satire.[479] More bitterly satirical is Jonson's representation
of the "Collegiate Ladies," "an order between courtiers and
country madams, that live from their husbands." But these ladies
make no pretense to learning. Lady Haughty and her coadjutors are
frivolous, affected, profligate women whose "college-grammar" and
"college-honours"[480] have no significance beyond the amorous
intrigue for which their order was founded. The play reads as if
there had been some contemporary organization at which Jonson's
satire was directed, but no record of such an organization is extant.
At any rate, the satire was against women who considered themselves
emancipated from conjugal life, rather than against learned women
as such. In _The Devil is an Ass_ (1616) Jonson brings into some
prominence "a Lady Projectress" who is said to deserve the gratitude
of the commonwealth of ladies for her great undertakings in their
behalf. But her solid service is in the realm of Spanish fashions and
new cosmetics.

Jasper Mayne, in _The City Match_ (1639), has a fling at the "new
foundation" and "the philosophical Madams" in a manner even more
contemptuous than that of Jonson. He also presents a Mrs. Scruple,
a Puritan school-mistress learned in religious lore, who can
expound the Scriptures, who "works Hebrew samplers and teaches to
knit in Chaldee." Her pupil Dorcas makes "religious petticoats,"
substituting church histories for flowers, and sanctifying cushionets
and smock-sleeves with holy embroideries. But it seems to be the
religious zeal that is here satirized, with only an incidental
reflection on the learning implied in a knowledge of Hebrew and
Chaldee.

These remote hints did not result in the establishment of a stage
type. It was through Molière that the learned lady took her place
in English comedy. The immediate object of Molière's attack was the
coterie of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, a salon established about 1615.
The avowed purposes of this exclusive literary circle were to rid
the French tongue of impurities, to cultivate _le beau_ and _le vrai
bel amour_ and _bel conversation_. They had a vocabulary peculiar to
themselves, and they devulgarized French by calling common things by
uncommon names. They improvised stories and rhymes, played literary
games, called themselves by _noms de Parnasse_, and held exalted
views on friendship, love, and marriage, which they endlessly
discussed. In the time of its greatest power some of the most noted
men and women of France belonged to this salon, but gradually
pedantry and affectation had crept in, and the extravagances of the
later _Précieux_ and _Précieuses_ in thought, speech, and manners
awakened the ridicule of Molière. In his Preface to _Les Précieuses_
(1659) he protested that the true _Précieuses_ could not rightly be
vexed at a satire meant only for those absurd people who wretchedly
imitated them. But it is nevertheless apparent that his play was an
attack on the whole assembly of learned or pseudo-learned ladies and
gentlemen who made up the salon, with particular attention to the
ladies. In this play he satirized especially _bel amour_, poetic
improvisation, and fine language.

Thirteen years later he returned to the general subject in a
more elaborate play, _Les Femmes Savantes_ (1672), where, in the
characters of Armande, Bélise, and Philaminte, he represented the
false delicacy of the learned ladies, the absurdities of their
struggle for pure diction, their puerile literary enthusiasms, their
affected interest in science and philosophy, their neglect of all
the ordinary duties of life, and the essential hypocrisy of their
professedly platonic attitude towards husbands and lovers.

Molière's plays were well known to the earliest English playwrights
of the Restoration.[481] Etherege had seen _Les Précieuses_[482]
on the French stage, and the impression it had made upon him was
evidenced by his Sir Fopling Flutter, a brilliant English version
of Molière's Mascarille, but Etherege nowhere takes up the ideas
represented by Madelon and Cathos. Wycherley had personally known
the circle of the Hôtel de Rambouillet during his stay in France
from 1655 to 1660,[483] and he could not have failed to know of
the sensation created by Molière's attack on the noted salon. And
throughout his work he was profoundly influenced by Molière in his
general conception of true comic material and methods. But apparently
the learned-lady theme did not appeal to him as especially suitable
for English treatment. Or possibly the very fact of his close
association with some of the most brilliant members of the salon made
him averse to a satiric representation even of their absurdities.

The first comedy to show any direct influence of Madelon and Cathos
is Dryden's _Mock Astrologer_ (1668).[484] Donna Aurelia is like
her ancestors in _Les Précieuses_ in her attempts at fine language.
She is unable "to speak ten words without some affected phrase that
is in fashion." In direct imitation of the French damsels she calls
her looking-glass "the counsellor of the graces," and urges upon her
maid fashionable language and pronunciation. In her effort to secure
striking phraseology she does not rise above the constant use of
"furious." She has a "furious inclination" for the occult sciences,
a "furious tender" for Don Melchor, and a ghost is a "furiously
furious" appearance. Her indigence of epithets puts her far behind
Molière's nimble-tongued young ladies, but she certainly strives to
be in the same class.

The influence of Molière became more apparent after the presentation
of _Les Femmes Savantes_ in 1672. In Dryden's _Marriage à la Mode_
(1672) is a really vital and entertaining picture of a lady with a
literary fad. Melantha is one of the sprightliest and most convincing
of the comedy heroines before Congreve's Millamant. Melantha is a
Sicilian town lady, young, fair, and rich; a finished coquette,
an inveterate news-monger, a hanger-on of the court. She would,
she says, rather be "_mal traitée_ at court than deified in the
town." She accordingly overdoes what she considers to be court
characteristics. Especially does she ape the French. French dances
and clothes, French plays and ballets, French words, all that's
writ in France, fill her with rapture. Her lover does not win her
by his face or fortune, but by his rapid fire of French terms.
Melantha belongs to the cult of the _précieuses_ in her joy over fine
language. An Indian gown, a gimp petticoat, a new point gorget, are
tossed to her maid Philatio as a reward for any new words she may
bring in. Melantha counts it an ignominy to use vulgar, threadbare
words that are fit for nothing but to be thrown to peasants. She
practices her vocabulary with her glances at the mirror, and makes
up effective sentences into which she may run new acquisitions such
as _naïveté_, _sottises_, _embarrass_, and is most unhappy when they
prove recalcitrant and are lost in the rapid interplay of talk.

Melantha is an admirable example of social satire, a delightfully
audacious representation of a contemporary folly. France was
the recognized home of culture and good-breeding. No courtier
or fashionable lady could be counted as having the last word in
refinement who had not spent some time on French soil, and the
French language was one of the most important studies of the higher
classes in England. What was taken for granted in court circles
became, of course, the _ne plus ultra_ of the ambitious town lady.
But her hastily acquired and imperfect knowledge would lead to
mistakes and over-emphasis, the result being a character of genuinely
comic import. For the stage interpretation of Melantha actresses
doubtless had many a social model among the town ladies with violent
court aspirations. Cibber says that Melantha was "as finish'd an
Impertinent as ever flutter'd in a Drawing-Room," and that she
contained "the most compleat System of Female Foppery that could
possibly be crowded into the tortured Form of a Fine Lady." And chief
among her fopperies was her preciosity, a characteristic marked in
most of the learned ladies represented in seventeenth and eighteenth
century comedy.

Mrs. Behn's _Sir Patient Fancy_ came out late in 1678 and was based
for its chief intrigue on Molière's _Le Malade Imaginaire_ which had
appeared in 1673. But the character of Lady Knowell, "an affected
learned woman," reverted to _Les Femmes Savantes_. She is the young
stepmother of Lord Knowell's marriageable son and daughter and is
of considerable importance in the general movement of the play, but
her real function is to present a caricature of a learned lady. She
understands Greek, Latin, and Italian. She cannot endure "divine
Homer" in a translation: "_Ton d'apamibominous prosiphe podas ochus
Achilleus!_ Ah how it sounds! which English't dwindles into the most
grating stuff:--Then the swift-footed _Achilles_ made reply." As
she looks upon the frivolous young girls of the play she exclaims:
"I'm for the substantial pleasure of an Author. _Philosophemur!_ is
my Motto.... Oh the delight of Books! When I was their age I always
employed my looser Hours in reading--if serious, 't was _Tacitus_,
_Seneca_, _Plutarch's Morals_, or some such useful Author; or in an
Humour gay, I was for Poetry, _Virgil_, _Homer_, or _Tasso_."

To this emphasis on the classics is added a preciosity which consists
of misdirected attempts to use impressive language. Lady Knowell is
an early and not very amusing Mrs. Malaprop. Her "hard words" are
sometimes legitimate words to which she attaches a wrong meaning,
as in the sentence, "There is much Volubility in Human Affairs,"
when she means "variability." But most of her words are compounded
of portions of others each one of which contains some shade of
her meaning; as, "Were I querimonious [querulous, acrimonious] I
should resent the affront"; "Notwithstanding your Exprobations
[expostulations, disapprobations]"; and "I saw your Reclination
[revolt, declination] from my Addresses." These bungling attempts to
play with language are too far-sought, too puzzling, to bring instant
laughter, but they suffice to establish Lady Knowell as at least a
would-be precursor of Mrs. Malaprop a century later.

The young ladies make sport of Lady Knowell. Lucretia does not
approve of her learning. "Methinks," she says, "to be read in the
Arts, as they call 'em, is the peculiar Province of the other Sex."
Isabella is of much the same opinion, yet she feels that women might
easily surpass most University men: "Indeed the Men ... boast their
Learning and Languages; but if they can find any one of our Sex
fuller of Words, and to so little Purpose as some of their Gownmen,
I'll be content to change my Petticoats for Pantaloons and go to a
Grammar-school."

In Shadwell's _Sullen Lovers_ (1669) is a Lady Vaine who calls
herself a "Virtuosa" and is learned in medicaments. She boasts of
her serviceableness with her "_Flos Unguentorum, Paracelsian_, and
_Green-salve_," and praises the _Album Grecum_ as a salve of her own
concoction.

Of much more interest is Shadwell's _Bury-Fair_ (1689). The chief
characters are Lady Fantast, Mrs. Fantast, and Lady Fantast's
stepdaughter, Gertrude Oldwit, and their attendant cavaliers. The
central action, the joke played on the Fantast ladies in imposing
on them a barber dressed up to impersonate a French count, is taken
from _Les Précieuses_. But Lady Fantast and her daughter have their
direct ancestry in Philaminte and Armande in _Les Femmes Savantes_.
Wildish who had at first loved Mrs. Fantast, but, on finding her a
_précieuse_, had transferred his affections to Gertrude, is Molière's
Clitandre, while Gertrude herself and Mr. Oldwit are the Henriette
and Chrysale of the French play. The common sense of the play is
embodied in Wildish, Gertrude, and Mr. Oldwit. Lady Fantast is not
herself especially learned, but all her ambitions in that line
have been concentrated on her daughter. "I have bred my daughter a
linguist," she proudly exclaims when the young lady quotes Latin. The
two ladies converse as follows:

  _Mrs. Fan._ To all that, which the World calls Wit and Breeding,
  I have always had a natural Tendency, a _penchen_, deriv'd, as
  the Learned say, _Ex traduce_, from your Ladyship: Besides the
  great Prevalence of your Ladyship's most shining Example has
  perpetually Stimulated me, to the Sacrificing all my Endeavours
  towards the attaining of those inestimable Jewels; than which,
  nothing in the Universe can be so much a _mon gre_, as the
  _French_ say. And for Beauty, Madam, the Stock I am enrich'd
  with, comes by emanation from your Ladyship; who has been long
  held a Paragon of Perfection; Most _Charmant_, most _Tuant_.

  _L. Fan._ Ah, my dear Child: I! Alas, Alas! Time has been, and
  yet I am not quite gone; but thou hast those Attractions, which I
  bewail the want of: Poetry, Latin, and the French tongue.

  _Mrs. Fan._ I must confess, I have ever had a Tendress for the
  Muses, and have a due Reverence for _Helicon_, and _Parnassus_,
  and the Graces: But Heroick Numbers upon Love and Honour are
  most Ravissant, most Suprenant; and a Tragedy is so Touchant! I
  dye at a Tragedy; I'll swear, I do.

Lady Fantast has an adoration of French equal to that of Melantha.
"No Conversation," she says, "can be refin'd and well-drest without
French to lard it." The false count wins his way with the ladies when
he professes to believe them French:

  _Count._ Me vil gage a hundred Pistol, dat dat fine Ladeè and her
  ver pretty Sister, are de French Ladeè.

  _L. Fan._ We have often bewailed the not having had the honour to
  be born French.

  _Count._ Pardon me, is impossible.

  _Mrs. Fan._ _Monfoy, je parle vray!_ we are meer English
  _assurement_.

  _Count._ _Mon foy, je parle vray!_ vat is dat Gibberish? Oh,
  lettè me see; de Fader is de Lawyere, an she learne of him at de
  Temple: is de Law French. I am amazè! French Lookè, French Ayre,
  French Mien, French Movement of de Bodee! Morbleu. Monsieur, I
  vil gage 4,500 Pistol, dat dese two Sister vere bred in _France_,
  yes. Teste bleau, I can no be deceive.

  _Mrs. Fan._ _Jee vous en prie_, do not; we never had the blessing
  to be in _France_; you do us too much Honour. Alas, we are forc'd
  to be content with plain _English_ Breeding: you will bring all
  my blood into a blush. I had indeed a _penchen_ always to French.

The barber-count makes fun of the French of the ladies Fantast, but
in one of the conversations the joke is turned the other way, for
Mrs. Fantast's learning very nearly proves fatal to the count:

  _Mrs. Fan._ You know very well what the Poet says:

      _Res est Solliciti plena timoris amor._

  _Count._ Ver well, Madam, you be de most profound Ladee, and de
  great Scholar.--[_Aside._] Morbleu, she vill findé me out! Begar,
  I can no read.

  _Mrs. Fan._ No, no assurement, pretty well read in the Classic
  Authors. Or so. Monsieur _Scudery_ says very well:

      _L'amour est une grande chose._

  _Count._ Hee bee ver pretty Poet too.--Begar she will puzzle me.

  _Mrs. Fan._ Poet, Monsieur! he writ Romances.

  _Count._ Ah, Madam, in France we callè de Romance, de Posie.

  _Mrs. Fan._ And as Monsieur _Balzac_ says, _Songez un peu_.

  _Count._ Dat _Balzac_ write de very good Romance.

  _Mrs. Fan._ Indeed! I never heard that.

  _Count._ Je vous assure.--A pox on her reading!

Gertrude is the foil to Mrs. Fantast and she sees no necessity for
the punctilious breeding of the ladies Fantast. "Breeding! I know
no Breeding necessary, but Discretion to distinguish Company and
Occasions; and Common Sense, to entertain Persons according to their
Ranks; besides making a Curt'sie not awkwardly, and walking with
one's Toes out."

To so low-bred a view of manners Mrs. Fantast can only exclaim, "_Ars
non habet Inimicum præter Ignorantem_"; but Gertrude responds: "A
Lady may look after the Affairs of a Family, the Demeanor of her
Servants, take care of her Nursery, take all her Accounts every Week,
obey her husband, and discharge all the Offices of a good Wife, with
her Native Tongue; and this is all I desire to arrive at."

The two ladies are especially obnoxious to Mr. Oldwit, who exhausts a
Billingsgate vocabulary in his irritation at their follies. He sums
up his misery in the exclamation, "He that would have the Devil more
damn'd, let him get him to marry a She-Wit!"

Mr. Thomas Wright's _The Female Vertuosos_ (1693) is confessedly
drawn from "the great Original of French Comedy." Ten of the
characters and most of the situations are plainly modeled on _Les
Femmes Savantes_, but the name of the play and the idea of ridiculing
the new science may have been suggested by Shadwell's _The Vertuoso_,
a popular attack on the Royal Society. Wright gains a trace of
originality by transferring his chief learned ladies from the realm
of word-mongery to that of pseudo-science. The tone of the play is
indicated by the prefixed quotation from Dryden's translation of
Juvenal's Sixth Satire:[485]

      Oh what a Midnight Curse has he, whose Side
      Is pester'd with a Mood and Figure Bride!
      Let mine, ye Gods! if such must be my Fate,
      No Logic learn, nor History translate,
      But rather be a quiet, humble Fool:
      I hate a Wife to whom I go to School.

The three "Vertuosos" are Lady Meanwell, Mrs. Lovewit, and Catchat.
Mrs. Lovewit has been making laboratory experiments in behalf of the
_literati_. She has collected all the plays that ever came out and is
planning to put them in a limbeck and extract all the quintessence
of wit that is in them to sell by drops to the poets of the age.
Mrs. Meanwell has just made the great discovery that rain comes from
clouds. With a housewifely objection to the wet streets of London
and a corresponding sense of civic responsibility, she has invented
a way of keeping the streets as dry and clean as a drawing-room
the year round. She has just been to the Lord Mayor to propose her
scheme, which is to erect a series of posts similar to the lamp-posts
newly set up in London, equip them with great bellows, and have city
watchmen to blow the clouds away. Catchat is interested in astronomy.
Through a telescope she has seen men in the moon and been almost
embarrassed by the loving looks cast upon her by the amorous sparks
of that shining world.

While science is the main interest in this play, the other accepted
traits of the learned woman are not neglected. Catchat, for instance,
has been nurtured on the _Grand Cyrus_ and theoretically accepts
its cold guidance in matters of love. But her platonic ideals
fade before her desires, and she becomes the most impassioned
husband-hunter of the throng. Literary criticism is not omitted. Mr.
Maggot Jingle's poem "To the Countess of _Squeezingham_ upon her
AGUE" gains rapturous praise from the ladies. The maid Lucy is about
to be discharged for having committed "the horrid, scandalous, and
exorbitant Offence" of saying that "Cowley, the wretched Cowley, was
as good a poet as the incomparable Sir Maggot Jingle."

The domestic infelicity of Lord and Lady Meanwell is described as a
result of the lady's learning. Lord Meanwell says of her, "My wife
is a terrible Dragon when she is out of Humour; she makes indeed a
High Boast of her Philosophy but she is not a bit the less Cholerick
for it, and her Morals that teach her to look upon all Things with an
indifferent Eye have not the least Influence on her Passions." Lady
Meanwell is a virago before whose hard words her husband shrinks into
cowed submission.

As an outcome of their combined wits these ladies are about to open
an "Academy of _Beaux Esprits_," where they may communicate to
each other such discoveries as they make, and which shall serve as
an "Apollo's Levee" to the Sapphos of the Age, and as a Sovereign
Tribunal for all new books.

Congreve's contribution to the learned lady in comedy comes in _The
Double Dealer_ (1694), in the admirable figure of Lady Froth, "a
coquet pretender to poetry, wit, and learning." Her pet affectation
is that of an extravagant passion for her husband, Lord Froth, the
solemn coxcomb of the play, and her affections have been bound up
with her literary aspirations even from the days of their courtship.
She had known love and sleepless nights and whimsies and vapors, but
she had also known how to give them vent.

  _Cynthia._ How pray, Madam?

  _Lady Froth._ O I writ, writ abundantly;--do you never write?

  _Cynthia._ Write what?

  _Lady Froth._ Songs, elegies, satires, encomiums, panegyrics,
  lampoons, plays, or heroic poems.

By virtue of her learning and her lord's title Lady Froth assumes
superiority over Cynthia, the modest, sensible heroine.

  _Lady Froth._ My Lord Froth is as fine a gentleman and as much
  a man of quality! Ah, nothing at all of the common air!... I
  think I may say he wants nothing but a blue ribbon and a star to
  make him shine, the very phosphorus of our hemisphere. Do you
  understand those two hard words?... Being derived from the Greek
  I thought you might have escaped the etymology.

Her ladyship is also an author and has written an heroic poem on her
connubial bliss. She communicates this fact to Brisk, the foolish
critic.

  _Lady Froth._ Did my lord tell you? yes, I vow, and the subject
  is my lord's love to me. And what do you think I call it? I dare
  swear you won't guess--'The Syllabub'; ha! ha! ha!

  _Brisk._ Because my lord's title's Froth, egad; ha! ha! ha! deuce
  take me, very _à propos_ and surprising, ha! ha! ha!

  _Lady Froth._ He! ay, is not it?--And then I call my lord
  Spumoso, and myself--what d' ye think I call myself?

  _Brisk._ Lactilla, maybe;--'gad I can not tell.

  _Lady Froth._ Biddy, that's all, just my own name.

Lady Froth was certainly not without a competent critical apparatus
for writing poetry since she declares herself familiar with Bossu,
Rapin, Dacier upon Aristotle, and Horace. The wittiest portion of the
play is based on Molière's scene where the lady critics praise the
foolish poet. In Congreve the foolish poet is a woman and the critic
a man, but the comic situation is essentially the same.

  _Lady Froth._ Then you think that episode between Susan, the
  dairy-maid, and our coachman, is not amiss; you know I may
  suppose the dairy in town as well as in the country.

  _Brisk._ Incomparable, let me perish!--But then being an heroic
  poem, had not you better call him a charioteer? charioteer sounds
  great; besides, your ladyship's coachman having a red face, and
  you comparing him to the sun; and you know the sun is called
  Heaven's charioteer.

  _Lady Froth._ Oh, infinitely better! I am extremely beholden to
  you for the hint; stay, we'll read over those half a score lines
  again. (_Pulls out a paper._) Let me see here, you know what goes
  before,--the comparison, you know. (_Reads._)

      For as the sun shines every day.
      So, of our coachman I may say--

  _Brisk._ I'm afraid that simile won't do in wet weather; because
  you say the sun shines every day.

  _Lady Froth._ No, for the sun it won't, but it will do for the
  coachman; for you know there's most occasion for a coach in wet
  weather.

  _Brisk._ Right, right, that saves all.

  _Lady Froth._ Then, I don't say the sun shines all the day, but
  that he peeps now and then; yet he does shine all the day too,
  you know, though we don't see him.

  _Brisk._ Right, but the vulgar will never comprehend that.

  _Lady Froth._ Well, you shall hear--Let me see. (_Reads._)

      For as the sun shines every day,
      So, of our coachman I may say,
      He shows his drunken fiery face,
      Just as the sun does more or less.

  _Brisk._ That's right, all's well, all's well--"More or less."

  _Lady Froth._ (_Reads._)

      And when at night his labour's done,
      Then too, like Heaven's charioteer the sun.

  Ay, charioteer does better.

      Into the dairy he descends,
      And there his whipping and his driving ends;
      There he's secure from danger of a bilk,
      His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk.

  For Susan, you know, is Thetis, and so--

  _Brisk._ Incomparably well and proper, egad!--But I have one
  exception to make;--don't you think bilk (I know it's good
  rhyme), but don't you think "bilk" and "fare" too like a
  hackney-coachman?

  _Lady Froth._ I swear and vow, I am afraid so--And yet our Jehu
  was a hackney-coachman when my lord took him.

  _Brisk._ Was he? I'm answered, if Jehu was a
  hackney-coachman.--You may put that in the marginal notes
  though, to prevent criticism, and say, "Jehu was formerly a
  hackney-coachman."

  _Lady Froth._ I will; you'd oblige me extremely to write notes on
  the whole poem.

In 1697 there appeared a play by "W. M." entitled _Female Wits_. Up
to this time the character of the learned lady had been general in
type and based pretty closely on Molière, but with _Female Wits_ the
satire became personal. The point of the play was that the three
"wits" should be recognized as representing specific ladies. Calista
was Catherine Cockburn, a beautiful young girl who at seventeen had
had the misfortune to have a tragedy brought out at the Theater
Royal.[486] She was treated rather gently, being merely bantered
for pretending to understand Latin and Greek. On being asked if she
had read Cicero's _Oration_ she answered, "I know it so well as to
have turned it into Latin." Marsilia was Mrs. Manley, two of whose
tragedies, _The Royal Mischief_ and _The Lost Lover_, had appeared
the preceding year.[487] She is represented as having a play in
rehearsal. In the meantime she has a new project on the stocks. She
is going to show the superiority of the moderns to the ancients by a
revision of "Catiline's Conspiracy." The first speech is to remain
as it is in the original, while the others, re-written with all the
ornaments of modern rhetoric, will show up, by contrast, the poverty
of the Latin style. The sample she gives of her new version was
undoubtedly a fling at heroic tragedy. Her address to Rome begins:
"Thy fated Stones, and thy cemented Walls, this Arm shall scatter
into Atoms. Then on thy Ruins will I mount! Mount, my aspiring
Spirit, mount! Hit yon azure Roof and justle Gods!" Mrs. Wellfed, "a
fat female author," was at once known to stand for Mrs. Pix,[488]
a writer of intolerable tragedies and poor comedies, and noted for
her love of good living. Except for the personal reference this play
offers little that can be of interest.

Vanbrugh's _Æsop_ (1699) is a play adapted from Boursault. Æsop is
the sage to whom successive people bring their problems. To each
one he gives a solution in a verse fable. Hortensia, the heroine of
one of these episodes, is described by her maid as "the wise Lady,
the great scholar, that nobody can understand." She loves "Words of
Erudition," and waxes eloquent on philosophical abstractions. There
is something in her nature that soars too high for the vulgar, but
she hopes to find in Æsop a kindred soul because, as she says, "His
Intellects are categorical." But Æsop scorns her fine language. "Now
by my Faith, Lady," he answers, "I don't know what _Intellect_ is;
and methinks _categorical_ sounds as if you call'd me Names. Pray
speak that you may be understood; Language was designed for it,
indeed it was."

When Hortensia's lover asks Æsop's advice as to the best way to
manage a "Philosopheress," the wise man advises retreat while there
is yet time. The little apologue of "The Linnet and the Nightingale"
embodies his views and is the most trenchant expression so far come
upon of the supposed permanent opposition between learning and the
eternal feminine:

      Once on a time, a Nightingale
          To Changes prone;
      Unconstant, fickle, whimsical,
          (A Female one)
      Who sung like others of her kind,
          Hearing a well-taught Linnet's Airs,
      Had other matters in her mind,
          To imitate him she prepares.
      Her Fancy strait was on the Wing:
          I fly, quoth she,
          As well as he;
          I don't know why
          I should not try
      As well as he to sing.
      From that day forth she chang'd her Throat:
      She did, as learned Women do,
          Till every thing
          That heard her sing
      Wou'd run away from her--as I from you.

In Charles Gildon's _Comparison between the Two Stages_ (1702) we
have a discussion by two gentlemen, Rambler and Sullen, and a critic,
Chagrin, as to the comparative merits of Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn
Fields. The most important reference to women playwrights is in the
following passage:

  _Rambler._ Proceed to the next.

  _Sullen._ "The Lost Lover, or, The Jealous Husband."

  _Rambler._ I never heard of that.

  _Sullen._ Oh this is a Lady's!

  _Crit._ How's that?--Audetg; viris contendere virgo?

  _Rambler._ See how Critick starts at the naming a lady.

  _Crit._ What occasion had you to name a Lady in the confounded
  work you're about?

  _Sullen._ Here's a Play of hers.

  _Crit._ The Devil there is. I wonder in my heart we are so lost
  to all Sense and reason: What a Pox have the Women to do with
  the Muses? I grant you the Poets call the Nine Muses by the names
  of Women, but why so? not because the Sex had anything to do with
  Poetry, but because in that Sex they're fitter for Prostitution.

  _Rambler._ Abusive, now you're abusive Mr. Critick.

  _Crit._ Sir I tell you we are abus'd: I hate these
  Petticoat-Authors; 't is false Grammar, there's no Feminine for
  the Latin word, 't is entirely of the Masculine Gender, and the
  Language won't bear such a thing as a she-Author.

  _Sullen._ Come, come, you forget your self; you know 't was a
  Lady carry'd the Prize of Poetry in France t'other day; and I
  assure you, if the Account were fairly stated, there have been in
  England some of that Sex who have done admirably.

  _Crit._ I'le hear no more on 't: Come Sir, drink about.

  _Rambler._ To the Fair Author of The Fatal Friendship.

  _Crit._ Ay, come; away with it, anything that the Glass may go
  round....

In Farquhar's _The Inconstant_ (1703) one lady, named "Bisarre"
because of her odd, capricious ways, illustrates Pope's "Most women
have no character at all," so briskly does she change from "a
starch'd piece of Austerity" to a pert madcap. As a prude she takes
rank among the learned ladies. She has a grave, reverend air, and is
dubbed "a Plato in Petticoats." She wins the affections of Captain
Duretete--a man socially hampered by a University education--when
she talks to him in his own language. "The Forms that Logicians
introduce," she begins in pedantic tone, "and which proceed from
simple Enumeration, are dubitable." Duretete interrupts in an
ecstasy, "She's mine, Man; she's mine: My own Talent to a T. I'll
match her in Dialectics, faith. I was seven Years at the University,
Man, nurs'd up with _Barbara_, _Celarunt_, _Darii_, _Ferio_,
_Baralipton_. Did you know that 't was Metaphysics made me an Ass?"
Bisarre is the only heroine whose learning wins her a husband.

In Mrs. Centlivre's _The Basset Table_ (1705) the charming young
Valeria has a lover whom she intends to marry, but she is too much
occupied with scientific research to have any time for darts and
flames and lover's sighs. Fortunately Ensign cares so much for
Valeria and her ducats that he is able to endure the tediousness of
courtship in which laboratory experiments supersede passion.

  _Ensign._ 'T is true, that little She Philosopher has made me
  do Penance more heartily than ever my Sins did; I deserve her
  by mere dint of Patience. I have stood whole Hours to hear her
  assert, that Fire cannot burn, nor Water drown, nor Pain afflict,
  and Forty ridiculous Systems....

  _Sir Jam._ And all her Experiments on Frogs, Fish, and Flies, ha,
  ha, without the least contradiction.

  _Ensign._ Contradiction, no, no, I allow'd all she said, with,
  undoubtedly, Madam,--I am of your Mind, Madam, it must be
  so--Natural Causes, &c.

  _Sir Jam._ Ha, ha, ha, I think it is a supernatural Cause, which
  enables thee to go thro' this Fatigue; if it were not to raise
  thy Fortune, I should think thee mad to pursue her.

He cannot edge in a word of love so absorbed does she declare herself
to be in observing the circulation of blood in a fish's tail. Valeria
is quite ahead of her time in her passion for dissection. She has
devoted her pretty dove to the cause of research, and offers her
jewels in return for her cousin's fine Italian greyhound, likewise
to be used in her pursuit of anatomical secrets. When accused of
cruelty she exclaims in quite a modern tone, "Can Animals, Insects,
or Reptiles be put to a nobler use than to increase our Knowledge?"
She loses her sailor lover by breaking in upon his sea lingo with a
request that he should speak, "properly, positively, laconically,
and naturally" and by deluging him with questions about mermaids and
the inhabitants of the stars. He quickly determines that he doesn't
regard a "Philosophical Gimcrack the value of a cockle-shell," and
considers the lovely young Valeria as "fitter for Moorfields than
Matrimony." She turns away from him with a sigh at the time wasted on
a being so irrational as a suitor, and devotes herself again to the
"immense Pleasures of dear, dear Philosophy."

Lady Reveller and her woman, Alphiew, sharply criticize Valeria for
her unfeminine occupations.

  _Lady._ Will you ever be weary of these Whimsies?

  _Val._ Whimsies! Natural Philosophy a Whimsy! Oh! the unlearned
  World.

  _Lady._ Ridiculous Learning!

  _Alp._ Ridiculous, indeed, for Women; Philosophy suits our Sex as
  Jack Boots would do.

  _Val._ Custom would bring them as much in Fashion as Furbeloes,
  and Practice would make us as valiant as e'er a Hero of them all;
  the Resolution is in the Mind--Nothing can enslave that.

  _Lady._ My Stars! this Girl will be mad, that's certain.

  _Val._ Mad! so Nero banish'd Philosophers from Rome, and the
  first Discoverer of the Antipodes was condemn'd for a Heretic.

  _Lady._ In my Conscience, Alphiew, this pretty Creature's
  spoil'd. Well, Cousin, might I advise, you should bestow your
  Fortune in founding a College for the Study of philosophy, where
  none but Women should be admitted; and to immortalize your Name,
  they should be called Valerians, ha, ha, ha.

  _Val._ What you make a jest of, I'd execute were Fortune in my
  Power.

The heroine of Charles Johnson's _The Generous Husband_ (1711),
Florida, is described as a "Pretender to Learning, a Philosophress."
She is young, beautiful and with a tolerable dower. But she is
invincibly opposed to marriage. She gives caustic analyses of the
lawyer, the courtier, the soldier, the country squire, proposed by
her father with matrimonial intent. "I'll not be married," she says,
"I'll not submit myself to the uneven Temper of a Humourist; I'll
neither be a Prop to a Fool's Fortune, nor a Bar to a Libertine's
Pleasure." "I hate Men, I hate the Cumber of a Family, everything
concurs to discourage me, to make me fear it, to make it my Aversion.
Study has nothing in it but what is serene and calm." When her father
urges the loss of her inheritance if she does not marry, her unmoved
answer is, "I shall have still a good Book--which I am persuaded
I shall love much better than a bad Husband--I'll tell you, Sir,
for these three Years that I have been acquainted with Aristotle,
we have not had the least difference together." Various lovers
present themselves. One of them says he trembles whenever he visits
her because she puts him so in mind of his schoolmaster, but he
determines to stand "a little Ear-bating before Marriage"--encouraged
thereto by the lady's money--with the hope of devising effective
restraints after marriage. Another bold lover ventures upon her
in her study where she sits surrounded by books and mathematical
instruments. He is disguised as a traveling _Japanese_ philosopher,
and she enters upon the conversation with a learned salutation--_Vir
Colendissime si tu illorum Eruditorum_, but he begs her in the name
of Dr. Bentley not to repudiate her "vernacular Idiom," and the
interview proceeds in the English tongue. All goes prosperously until
the pseudo-philosopher speaks of love. She dismisses him with "What a
terrible Solecism in good Manners has this Fellow committed--_Nunquam
minus solus quam cum solus_; excellent _Scipio_--I admire that
thought." She yields to love only when the learned Mr. Dypthong, who
has "corrected every Nod in Homer," appears as a suitor. He has just
escaped from the "_Gothic_ Persecution of a sort of _Animalcula_
call'd Punsters" and comes to her as an Oracle of Reason. This is the
right approach and his victory is assured when he praises her noble
easy _Odes_ that Horace would not blush to own, her immortal Sonnet
on _Cato_, her mastery of "both the Ethos and the Pathos." She pays
him in kind with honeyed compliments from the Muses and the Graces.
They discuss the Cartesian system, and the Epicurean, the Peripatetic
and the Platonic Schools of Thought. The inhabitants of the moon come
in for passing notice. The soul and the mind receive analysis. This
sort of courtship suits her. 'T is thus a "Philosophress" should
be wooed. She balks a little at the marriage articles, praying Mr.
Grub to alter the savage style of them into something more genteel,
at least in so far as to let the dates be "Calendar and Ides"; the
pounds and pence, "Sesterces and Talents." But she yields the point
on making the unhappy discovery that to be learned and polite in
dower articles would be illegal, that the law demands tautology,
verbiage, an impertinent jargon. It is only when Mr. Dypthong is
unmasked a villain that Florida becomes "sick of Letters," lays
aside the "Severity of Thought" along with her big folios, and
accepts the paternal choice in the way of a husband. Her father,
whose slightest remarks have received pitiless logical analysis
from his daughter, who is urged to maintain silence or to speak
"positively--laconically--naturally," whose arguments are met with
classic quotations that are but as gibberish to his uninstructed ear,
hands her over to a husband with a sigh of relief. His conclusion is,
"Wit in a Woman is like Mettle in a blind Mare." The lover agrees
that "a She-Understanding shou'd always be passive." Learning, he
says, may give a woman more Sail, but she's sure to lack Ballast!

In January, 1717, there appeared a farce at Drury Lane entitled
_Three Hours after Marriage_. It was the joint work of Gay, Pope, and
Arbuthnot, but the character of the learned lady, Phœbe Clinket,[489]
was by Pope. Phœbe is not an important person in the plot. She was
evidently drawn merely to caricature a learned lady, in this case an
authoress. She comes upon the stage in an ink-stained dress with pens
stuck in her hair. Her maid carries strapped to her back a desk on
which Phœbe writes:

  _Maid._ I had as good carry a raree-show about the street. Oh!
  how my back akes!

  _Clink._ What are the labors of the back to those of the brain?
  Thou scandal to the muses, I have now lost a thought worth a
  folio, by thy impertinence.[490]

  _Maid._ Have I not got a crick in my back already, that will make
  me good for nothing, with lifting your great books?

  _Clink._ Folio's, call them, and not great books, thou monster
  of impropriety. But have patience, and I will remember the three
  gallery-tickets I promis'd thee at my new Tragedy.

  _Maid._ I shall never get my head-cloathes clear-starch'd at
  this rate.

  _Clink._ Thou destroyer of learning, thou worse than a book-worm!
  Thou hast put me beyond all patience. Remember how my lyric ode
  bound about a tallow-candle; thy wrapping up snuff in an epigram;
  nay, the unworthy usage of my Hymn to _Apollo_, filthy creature!
  read me the last lines I wrote upon the _Deluge_, and take care
  to pronounce them as I taught you.

  _Maid._ (_Reads with an affected tone._)

      Swell'd with a dropsy, sickly Nature lies,
      And melting in a diabetes, dies.

  _Clink._ Still without Cadence!

  _Maid._

      Swell'd with a dropsy--

  _Clink._ Hold. I conceive ...

      The roaring seas o'er the tall woods have broke,
      And whales now perch upon the sturdy oak.

  Roaring? Stay. Rumbling, roaring, rustling. No; raging seas.
  (_Writing._)

      The raging seas o'er the tall woods have broke,
      Now perch, thou whale, upon the sturdy oak.

  Sturdy oak? No; steady, strong, strapping, stiff. Stiff? No;
  stiff is too short.

      What feast for fish! Oh too luxurious treat!
      When hungry dolphins feed on butchers meat.

  _Foss._ Niece, why, niece, niece! Oh, _Melpomene_, thou goddess
  of tragedy, suspend thy influence for a moment, and suffer my
  niece to give me a rational answer.

The main portion of the first act is devoted to a development of the
satiric representation of an authoress, and the character is given
special point by the fact that it was intended for Lady Winchilsea.
Probably no woman of the time was more cruelly pilloried. Exactly
why Pope chose to give so disagreeable a picture of her it would
be difficult to say, but fortunately one is not obliged to give a
reasonable basis for Pope's satirical sketches. For the occasion
it is sufficient to say that her dramatic attempts were not to his
taste, and that some obscure personal irritation led him to take the
opportunity of this play to speak his mind.

In minor points the character might be counted fairly applicable to
Lady Winchilsea. Her learning, her devotion to literary pursuits, her
fecundity in verse, her opposition to amatory themes, her detestation
of the modern stage, are all characteristics that tally with the
burlesque portrait. Lady Winchilsea was also very religious, and
though herself maid of honor to Mary of Modena and so necessarily
much in the corrupt Restoration court, was even unnecessarily strict
and severe on the subject of morals and manners. This prudishness was
satirized by Phœbe Clinket's boast that she is "unwilling to stand
even on the brink of an indecorum," as a result of which delicacy she
has never allowed in her plays "the libertinism of lip-embraces," and
this in spite of the fact that Aristotle never actually prohibited
kissing on the stage. But in the main points of Phœbe Clinket's
self-confidence and her determination to push her play at all hazards
to the point of public presentation, there is no hint of a likeness
to Lady Winchilsea, who was exceedingly modest and deprecatory
about her work. She never willingly allowed her dramatic writings
to pass beyond a small domestic and literary circle, nor out of her
voluminous verse did any but a very small portion reach publication
with her permission. Furthermore, the tragedy of _The Universal
Deluge_ attributed to Phœbe Clinket bears no resemblance to any
extant work by Lady Winchilsea.

Taken as a whole, quite apart from any personal application, Phœbe
Clinket is the most detestable picture of a learned lady in any
of the comedies. She is vain, boastful, and superficial; she is a
pedant, a prude, and a hypocrite; and there are no mitigating traits.

Colley Cibber put on his play _The Refusal_ at Covent Garden in 1721
and published it the same year. It is a close version of _Les Femmes
Savantes_, the rich, middle-class family of Sir Gilbert Wrangle in
Cibber's play being the counterpart of the wealthy bourgeois family
of Chrysal in Molière. The action follows that of Molière's play,
and Molière gives the model for many of the important situations
and conversations. Curll called _The Refusal_ merely "a Sampler,
whereon Monsieur Molière's Stitching may easily be perceived from
Mr. Cibber's canvas."[491] But Cibber's play is a success in that it
is a brilliant English adaptation of the French original. The two
characters that represent learned ladies are Lady Wrangle and her
daughter Sophronia.

Sir Gilbert thus describes his wife to Mr. Frankly: "She's a great
plague to me. Not but my lord bishop, her uncle, was a mighty good
man; she lived all along with him; I took her upon his word; 't was
he made her a scholar; I thought her a miracle; before I had her I
used to go and hear her talk Latin with him an hour together; and
there I--I--I played the fool." Throughout the play Sir Gilbert is
very evidently a member of "the hen-pecked fraternity." Lady Wrangle
has an important place in but two scenes and in both of these she
endeavors to domineer over her husband. In the scene with the maid he
is completely cowed, and in the scene of the wedding contract he is
triumphant only because of abundant friendly backing. Lady Wrangle's
quarrelsome, jealous disposition is perhaps more in evidence than
her learning, but she has learning too. She quotes Latin whenever
possible and is herself an authoress.

The famous scene in Molière where the maid Martine is to be dismissed
for her indifference to Vaugelas and the laws of grammar, becomes in
Cibber a similar hurly-burly against the maid and the cook for having
used a sheet of one of Lady Wrangle's productions in which to wrap
the roast. The maid--"a brainless ideat," "a dunce," "an illiterate
monster," "an eleventh plague of Egypt," according to the energetic
vituperation of her mistress--seeing the leaf to be blotted and
blurred took it for waste paper.

  Blurred! you driveller! Was ever any piece perfect, that had not
  corrections, erasures, interlineations, and improvements! Does
  not the very original show, that when the mind is warmest, it is
  never satisfied with its words:

      _Incipit et dubitat; scribit, damnatque tabellas,_
      _Et notat, et delet; mutat, culpatque probatque._

The leaf in question is a part of Lady Wrangle's translation of the
passion of Byblis. Her husband calls it the passion of Bibble-Babble,
and says, "If a line on't happens to be mislaid, she's as mad as a
blind mare that has lost her foal; she'll run her head against a
stone-wall to recover it. All the use I find of her learning is, that
it furnishes her more words to scold with."

Lady Wrangle's creed as expressed to Charlotte is, "Refine your soul;
give your happier hours up to science, arts, and letters; enjoy
the raptures of philosophy, subdue your passions, and renounce the
sensual commerce of mankind." She, however, claims Frankly as her
lover, a virtuous and platonic one, to be sure, but so irrevocably
hers as to preclude significant attentions to others. When she learns
of his open love to Charlotte--she exclaims, "I thought virtue,
letters, and philosophy had only charms for him: I have known his
soul all rapture in their praises." And her indignation that he
should "contaminate his intellects with such a chit of an animal"
changes her platonic love into the most jealous hate. Her philosophy
as to the proper conduct of the passions has no influence on her
actions.

Sophronia is unlike her prototype Armande, in that Cibber converts
her some time before the end of the play and she takes a husband
with a delight equal to that of Charlotte herself. Sophronia was,
on her father's second marriage, when he was foolishly enamoured
of Lady Wrangle's Latin, put into the hands of the Bishop to be
made by him into a second prodigy of learning. She had also the
advantage of being instructed by her stepmother in the doctrines of
platonic love. Her learning, her doctrine of the union of souls, her
enthusiasm for poetry, all give an effect of genuineness. Her lover
Granger understands her well. He grants her "half mad with learning
and philosophy," but still "a fool of parts and capable of thinking
right." Frankly had formerly made love to her in conventional
fashion, but to him she had shown herself a marble-hearted lady, a
proud and haughty prude. But Granger knows how to approach her. He
humors all her romantic notions, chimes in with all her raptures
in the air, scouts all love that is but an affair of the veins and
the arteries, exalts only the sexless union of harmonious minds and
souls, quotes Latin, declaims blank verse, makes slow and delicate
and utterly submissive and reluctant approaches to so mundane a
thought as marriage, and finally she falls a victim to blandishments
so adroitly mingled. Granger's words, like Hybla drops, distil
upon her sense; faint philosophy deserts her; and "like a wounded
dove" she "trembling hovers to her mate for succour" in the most
approved romantic style. When her stepmother says accusingly, "What
then becomes of your Platonic system?" she answers, "Dissolved,
evaporated, impracticable, and fallacious all: you'll own I have
labour'd in the experiment, but found at last, that to try gold in a
crucible of virgin-wax was a mere female folly." And she closes the
play with

      In vain, against the force of nature's law,
      Would rigid morals keep our hearts in awe;
      All our lost labours of the brain but prove,
      In life there's no philosophy like love.

The characters of Lady Wrangle and Sophronia with their affectations
and useless learning are emphasized by the natural, sensible
Charlotte who serves as a foil. She is a gay, laughing, wheedling,
fascinating little rogue with a quick wit, and a genius for common
sense. She cannot believe that a soul was crammed into a body just
to spoil sport and she gives her whole nature free play. She loves
Mr. Frankly and says so, and she avows her preference for marriage
as against philosophical mysteries. Her praises are recited by
Mr. Frankly in the words, "As she does not read Aristotle, Plato,
Plutarch, or Seneca, she is neither romantic nor vain of her
pedantry; and as her learning never went higher than Bickerstaff's
Letters, her manners are consequently natural, modest and agreeable."

In Bickerstaff's _Lionel and Clarissa_ (1768), Sir John Flowerdew
seems quite in advance of his age in securing a tutor for his
daughter and in considering "a little knowledge" necessary for
a woman. "I am far," he says, "from considering ignorance as a
desirable characteristic; when intelligence is not attended with
impertinent affectation, it teaches them [women] to judge with
precision, and gives them a degree of solidity necessary for the
companion of a sensible man." This, however, is a cool statement of
theory. When his daughter outwits him and marries the tutor, he has a
violent reaction in favor of the straitest training a maid can have:

        Girls like squirrels oft appear,
      In their cages, pleased with flav'ry,
      But, in fact, 't is all but knav'ry;
        Less thro' love than out of fear:
      Only on their tricks relying,
      Let them out, their hands untying,
        And You'll see the matter plain.
      Once there's naught their flight to hamper,
      Presto--whisk-away they scamper;
        Never to return again.
      Wou'd you manage lasses rightly,
      You must watch them daily, nightly,
      Shut them close, and hold them tightly;
        Never loose an inch of chain:
      Freedom, run-aways will make 'em,
      And the devil can't o'ertake 'em.

Except for _Lionel and Clarissa_ there were after Cibber's _Refusal_
few representations of the learned lady as a comic type, until after
the revival of the comedy of manners under Sheridan and Goldsmith.
The sentimental comedy was occupied in rescuing super-sensitive,
over-refined, delicate, tearful, and helpless heroines from the
plots of abnormally dark villains, and in bestowing the prizes thus
captured on the high-minded, self-conscious Sir Charles Grandisons
who posed as heroes of the play. Comic types fell by the way until
Goldsmith succeeded in his knight-errantry in behalf of the goddess
of fun, and routed sensibility, and sentimentality. And the learned
ladies in the comedy after 1770 represent a new kind of learning,
and the ladies themselves are in many respects unlike their sisters
of an earlier date.


II. THE NOVEL-READING GIRL AS A COMIC TYPE

The learned-lady theme had an interesting variant in the
novel-reading girl. This type, as it appeared in comedy and fiction,
is also of French origin. It finds its direct ancestry in Molière's
_Les Précieuses_ (1659), a satiric representation of the vogue of
the French romances, most of which appeared in the twenty-five years
before _Les Précieuses_.[492]

Along with the vogue of the romances came the critical comment.
Scarron's _Roman Comique_ (1651) burlesqued La Calprenède. Boileau's
_Héros de Romans_ (1664) and _L'Art Poétique_ (1674) satirized
especially the romances of Scudéry. The two satires that showed the
effect of the romances on the minds of young girls were Molière's
_Les Précieuses_ and later Furetière's _Roman Bourgeois_ (1666).

These romances and satires were almost as well known in the original
to cultivated Englishmen as they were to Frenchmen. There were
also numerous translations. Between 1647 and 1660 _Polexandre_,
_Cassandre_, _Ibrahim_, _Artemène_, _Clélie_, _Almahide_,
_Cléopâtre_, all appeared in English versions, and some of them
several times. And the satires were also promptly translated. There
is no better illustration of the general English familiarity with
those romances than that furnished by the letters Dorothy Osborne
wrote to Sir William Temple in 1652-54. The Hôtel de Rambouillet
coterie itself could hardly have been more nearly letter perfect in
the details than was this young English lady. Her reading becomes
so absorbing that her grave lover finds it necessary to caution her
against the "late hours" reported to him. She is penitent, but her
enthusiasm is unabated. Parts of _Cléopâtre_, she says, pleased her
more than anything she had ever read in her life. She confesses that
she cried an hour together over the sad story of Almanzor, and was so
angry with Alcidiana that she could never love her after. But she is
no uncritical admirer of the heroes and heroines. Her sense of humor
does not forsake her. She laughs at _L'Amant Jaloux_, in _Cyrus_, as
one who seeks his own vexation, and _L'Amant mon Aimé_ was "an ass."
Sir William's interest in the romances is hardly less than Dorothy's.
She sends him the separate volumes as she completes them, and there
is a lively interchange of impressions and comments on various
characters and situations.[493]

After the Restoration the fondness for romances may have been
somewhat lessened by the new passion for the theater. But
romance-readers were still numerous. Pepys tells us that his wife
sat up till twelve over the _Grand Cyrus_. Again he says, "I find
my wife troubled at my checking her last night in a coach in her
long stories out of the _Grand Cyrus_ which she would tell, though
nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner." However, he must
have repented of his rigor, for we find him later calling at Martin's
his book-seller's, where he bought _Cassandre_ and some other French
books for his wife's closet. And Mr. Pepys himself confesses to at
least one Sunday devoted to French romances.[494]

That Mr. and Mrs. Pepys were not alone in their tastes is made
evident by contemporary arraignment of the romances as harmful
influences. Mr. Pepys records a conversation with a Mr. Wilson who
protested passionately against them as perverters of history. _The
Ladies' Calling_ (1673) brings the matter home to daily life:

  There is another thing to which some devote a very considerable
  part of their time, and that is the reading Romances, which seems
  now to be thought the peculiar and only becoming study of young
  ladies. I confess their youth may a little adapt it to them when
  they were Children, and I wish they were always in their event
  as harmless; but I fear they often leave ill impressions behind
  them. Those amorous passions which 't is their design to paint
  to the utmost life are apt to insinuate themselves into their
  unwary Readers, and by an unhappy inversion a Copy shall produce
  an Original. When a poor young Creature shall read there of some
  triumphant Beauty, that has I know not how many captiv'd Knights
  prostrate at her feet, she will probably be tempted to think it a
  fine thing; and may reflect how much she loses time, that has not
  yet subdued _one_ heart; and then her business will be to spread
  her nets, lay her toils to catch somebody who will more fatally
  ensnare her. And when she has once worried herself into an amour,
  those authors are subtil Casuists for all difficult cases that
  may occur in it, will instruct in the necessary artifices of
  deluding parents and friends, and put her ruin perfectly in her
  own power. And truly this seems to be so natural a consequent of
  this sort of study, that of all the divertisements that look so
  innocently, they can scarce fall upon any more hazardous. Indeed
  't is very difficult to imagine what mischief is done to the
  world by the false notions and images of things: particularly
  of Love and Honour, those noblest concerns of human life,
  represented in these mirrors.[495]

The popularity of the French romances and the protests they aroused
would naturally make the romance-loving girl a type of genuine social
interest, and it is surprising that this element of Molière's _Les
Précieuses_ was not sooner taken up in English comedy. There were, to
be sure, occasional references to romance-reading something in the
style of Molière. In Shadwell's _Bury-Fair_ (1689), for instance,
Gertrude is apparently familiar "with Romances and Love and Honour
Plays," and she complains that all the lovers talk so in the style
of the romances that a girl knows in advance just what compliments
she must listen to.[496] And in Wright's _Female Vertuosos_ (1693)
Sir Maurice says, "O' my Conscience, Women's Heads, now-a-days, are
so stuff't up with their Trash of Romances and Poetry, that there is
no Room left in 'em for Reason, or Common Sense." Later he bewails
his fate more bitterly: "This Plague of Wit has infected all my
Servants, even my little Boy, forsooth, can not turn the Spit now
without a _Pharamond_ or a _Cassandra_ in his hand." But it was not
till Steele's _Tender Husband_ in 1705 that the romance-reading girl
appeared in England as a developed type. Steele's Biddy Tipkin[497]
is nearly half a century later than Molière's Madelon and Cathos, but
they are her unquestioned ancestors.

In Molière's play the two country girls endeavor to apply to real
life the ideas they have gained from the romances. Gorgibus, the
father of Madelon and uncle of Cathos, is a worthy citizen whose
common-sense views of life subject him to the scornful raillery of
the young ladies. He endeavors to provide them with good husbands,
but his straightforward methods shock their romance-tutored minds.
To be greeted at the first interview with marriage proposals is a
crude and coarse proceeding. If Cyrus had married Mandane, and Clélie
had married Aronce at once, what would have become of Mademoiselle
de Scudéry's romances _Artemène_ and _Clélie_? The dull Gorgibus,
and the lovers he has brought are hopelessly ignorant of _le carte
de Tendre_, ignorant of the regions known as _Billets-doux_,
_Petits-soins_, _Billets-galants_, _Jolis-vers_, and the other
exactly marked stages of a well-wrought courtship. The young ladies
even doubt the reality of their relationship to Gorgibus, and they
reject the names Cathos and Madelon in favor of Polixène and Aminte.
Gorgibus attributes all their vagaries to the reading of romances,
and in the climax of his irritation exclaims to the stock of
offending volumes, "_Et vous, qui êtes cause de leur folie, sottes
billeveseés, pernicieux amusements des esprits oisifs, romans,
vers, chansons, sonnets et sonnettes, puissiez-vous être à tous les
diables!_"

The fundamental idea and many of the satiric details in the
presentation of Biddy Tipkin in Steele's _The Tender Husband_ exactly
follow the French model. Biddy's reading is identical with that of
Madelon and Cathos, but wider in scope. She refers familiarly to
passages or characters in _Cléopâtre_, _Cassandre_, _Pharamond_,
_Ibrahim_, _Artemène_, _Clélie_, and _Almahide_, showing that she
had practically covered the field of romance. She is an heiress under
the charge of her uncle, Hezekiah Tipkin, a banker of Lombard Street,
and his sister, "an antiquated virgin with a mighty affectation for
youth." Pounce, a lawyer on the lookout for a rich match for his
client, the impecunious Captain Cleremont, describes Biddy thus:
"Well then, since we may be free, you must understand, the young
lady, by being kept from the world, has made a world of her own.
She has spent all her solitude in reading romances, her head is
full of shepherds, knights, flowery meads, groves, and streams, so
that if you talk like a man of this world to her, you do nothing."
But Cleremont, quite equal to the situation, responds, "Oh, let
me alone--I have been a great traveller in fairy-land myself, I
know Oroondates; Cassandra, Astræa, and Clelia are my intimate
acquaintance." Pounce predicts success for the fluent Captain, but
there are other plans for Biddy. Her guardians wish her to marry her
cousin, Humphry Gubbin, a country lout, familiarly known as "Numps."
Her attitude towards him and towards her prosaic aunt appears in the
following conversation:

  _Niece._ Was it not my gallant that whistled so charmingly in the
  parlour before he went out this morning? He's a most accomplished
  cavalier.

  _Aunt._ Come, niece, come; you don't do well to make sport with
  your relations, especially with a young gentleman that has so
  much kindness for you.

  _Niece._ Kindness for me! What a phrase is there to express the
  darts and flames, the sighs and languishings, of an expecting
  lover!

  _Aunt._ Pray, niece, forbear this idle trash, and talk like other
  people. Your cousin Humphry will be true and hearty in what he
  says, and that's a great deal better than the talk and compliment
  of romances.

  _Niece._ Good madam, don't wound my ears with such expressions;
  do you think I can ever love a man that's true and hearty? What a
  peasant-like amour do these coarse words import! True and hearty!
  Pray, aunt, endeavour a little at the embellishment of your style.

  _Aunt._ Alack-a-day, cousin Biddy, these idle romances have quite
  turned your head.

  _Niece._ How often must I desire you, madam, to lay aside
  that familiar name, cousin Biddy? I never hear it without
  blushing--Did you ever meet with a heroine in those idle
  romances, as you call 'em, that was termed Biddy?

  _Aunt._ Ah! cousin, cousin, these are mere vapours, indeed;
  nothing but vapours.

  _Niece._ No, the heroine has always something soft and engaging
  in her name; something that gives us a notion of the sweetness of
  her beauty and behaviour; a name that glides through half-a-dozen
  tender syllables, as Elismonda, Clidamira, Deidamia, that runs
  upon vowels off the tongue; not hissing through one's teeth,
  or breaking them with consonants. 'T is strange rudeness those
  familiar names they give us, when there is Aurelia, Sacharissa,
  Gloriana, for people of condition; and Celia, Chloris, Corinna,
  Mopsa, for their maids and those of lower rank.

  _Aunt._ Look ye, Biddy, this is not to be supported. I know not
  where you learned this nicety; but I can tell you, forsooth, as
  much as you despise it, your mother was a Bridget afore you, and
  an excellent house-wife.

  _Niece._ Good madam, don't upbraid me with my mother Bridget, and
  an excellent house-wife.

  _Aunt._ Yes, I say she was; and spent her time in better learning
  than you ever did--not in reading of fights and battles of dwarfs
  and giants, but in writing out receipts for broths, possets,
  caudles, and surfeit-waters, as became a good country gentlewoman.

  _Niece._ My mother, and a Bridget!

  _Aunt._ Yes, niece, I say again, your mother, my sister, was a
  Bridget! the daughter of her mother Margery, of her mother Sisly,
  of her mother Alice.

  _Niece._ Have you no mercy? Oh, the barbarous genealogy!

  _Aunt._ Of her mother Winifred, of her mother Joan.

  _Niece._ Since you will run on, then I must needs tell you I am
  not satisfied in the point of my nativity. Many an infant has
  been placed in a cottage with obscure parents, till by chance
  some ancient servant of the family has known it by its marks.

  _Aunt._ Ay, you had best be searched--That's like your calling
  the winds the fanning gales, before I don't know how much
  company; and the tree that was blown by it had, forsooth, a
  spirit imprisoned in the trunk of it.

  _Niece._ Ignorance!

  _Aunt._ Then a cloud this morning had a flying dragon in it.

  _Niece._ What eyes had you, that you could see nothing? For
  my part I look upon it to be a prodigy, and expect something
  extraordinary will happen to me before night.... But you have a
  gross relish of things. What noble descriptions in romances had
  been lost, if the writers had been persons of your gout?

  _Aunt._ I wish the authors had been hanged, and their books
  burnt, before you had seen 'em.

  _Niece._ Simplicity!

  _Aunt._ A parcel of improbable lies.

  _Niece._ Indeed, madam, your raillery is coarse--

  _Aunt._ Fit only to corrupt young girls, and fill their heads
  with a thousand foolish dreams of I don't know what.

  _Niece._ Nay, now, madam, you grow extravagant.

  _Aunt._ What I say is not to vex, but advise you for your good.

  _Niece._ What, to burn Philocles, Artaxeres, Oroondates, and the
  rest of the heroic lovers, and take my country booby, cousin
  Humphry, for a husband!

  _Aunt._ Oh dear, oh dear, Biddy! Pray, good dear, learn to act
  and speak like the rest of the world; come, come, you shall marry
  your cousin and live comfortably.

  _Niece._ Live comfortably! What kind of life is that? A great
  heiress live comfortably! Pray, aunt, learn to raise your
  ideas--What is, I wonder, to live comfortably?

  _Aunt._ To live comfortably is to live with prudence and
  frugality, as we do in Lombard Street.

By mere force of contrast the way is open for the smooth-tongued Mr.
Cleremont. He meets the ladies in the park with such phrases as "the
cool breath of the morning," "the season of pearly dews and gentle
zephyrs," and Biddy is enraptured. After the adroit withdrawal of the
aunt by Pounce, Cleremont well maintains with Biddy his reputation as
a traveler in fairy-land, and assumes likewise the military prowess
without which no romance hero was complete. He soon cleverly turns
the conversation to a proposal of marriage, but Biddy understands the
laws of romance too well to yield immediately. They part in the true
spirit of _Cassandre_.

  _Cler._ We enjoy here, madam, all the pretty landscapes of the
  country without the pains of going thither.

  _Niece._ Art and nature are in a rivalry, or rather a
  confederacy, to adorn this beauteous park with all the agreeable
  variety of water, shade, walks, and air. What can be more
  charming than these flowery lawns?

  _Cler._ Or these gloomy shades--

  _Niece._ Or these embroidered valleys--

  _Cler._ Or that transparent stream--

  _Niece._ Or these bowing branches on the banks of it, that seem
  to admire their own beauty in the crystal mirror?

  _Cler._ I am surprised, madam, at the delicacy of your phrase.
  Can such expressions come from Lombard Street?

  _Niece._ Alas, sir! what can be expected from an innocent virgin
  that has been immured almost one-and-twenty years from the
  conversation of mankind, under the care of an Urganda[498] of an
  aunt?

  _Cler._ Bless me, madam, how have you been abused! Many a lady
  before your age has had an hundred lances broken in her service,
  and as many dragons cut to pieces in honour of her.

  _Niece._ Oh, the charming man! [_Aside._]

  _Cler._ Do you believe Pamela was one-and-twenty before she knew
  Musidorus?[499]

  _Niece._ I could hear him ever. [_Aside._]

  _Cler._ A lady of your wit and beauty might have given occasion
  for a whole romance in folio before that age.

  _Niece._ Oh, the powers! Who can he be?--Oh, youth unknown--But
  let me, in the first place, know whom I talk to, for, sir, I am
  wholly unacquainted both with your person and your history. You
  seem, indeed, by your deportment, and the distinguishing mark of
  your bravery which you bear, to have been in a conflict. May I
  not know what cruel beauty obliged you to such adventures till
  she pitied you?

  _Cler._ Oh, the pretty coxcomb! [_Aside._]--Oh, Blenheim,
  Blenheim! Oh, Cordelia, Cordelia!

  _Niece._ You mention the place of battle. I would fain hear an
  exact description of it. Our public papers are so defective;
  they don't so much as tell us how the sun rose on that glorious
  day--Were there not a great many flights of vultures before the
  battle began?

  _Cler._ Oh, madam, they have eaten up half my acquaintance.

  _Niece._ Certainly never birds of prey were so feasted; by
  report, they might have lived half-a-year on the very legs and
  arms our troops left behind 'em.

  _Cler._ Had we not fought near a wood we should never have got
  legs enough to have come home upon. The joiner of the Foot Guards
  has made his fortune by it.

  _Niece._ I shall never forgive your General. He has put all my
  ancient heroes out of countenance; he has pulled down Cyrus and
  Alexander, as much as Louis-le-Grand--But your own part in that
  action?

  _Cler._ Only that slight hurt, for the astrologer said at my
  nativity, nor fire, nor sword, nor pike, nor musket shall destroy
  this child, let him but avoid fair eyes--But, madam, mayn't I
  crave the name of her that has so captivated my heart?

  _Niece._ I can't guess whom you mean by that description; but if
  you ask my name, I must confess you put me upon revealing what I
  always keep as the greatest secret I have--for would you believe
  it, they have called me--I don't know how to own it, but they
  have called me--Bridget.

  _Cler._ Bridget?

  _Niece._ Bridget.

  _Cler._ Bridget?

  _Niece._ Spare my confusion, I beseech you, sir; and if you have
  occasion to mention me, let it be by Parthenissa,[500] for that's
  the name I have assumed ever since I came to years of discretion.

  _Cler._ The insupportable tyranny of parents, to fix names on
  helpless infants which they must blush at all their lives after!
  I don't think there's a surname in the world to match it.

  _Niece._ No! What do you think of Tipkin?

  _Cler._ Tipkin! Why, I think if I was a young lady that had it
  I'd part with it immediately.

  _Niece._ Pray, how would you get rid of it?

  _Cler._ I'd change it for another. I could recommend to you three
  very pretty syllables--What do you think of Cleremont?

  _Niece._ Cleremont! Cleremont! Very well--but what right have I
  to it?

  _Cler._ If you will give me leave, I'll put you in possession
  of it. By a very few words I can make it over to you, and your
  children after you.

  _Niece._ O fie! Whither are you running? You know a lover should
  sigh in private, and languish whole years before he reveals his
  passion; he should retire into some solitary grove, and make the
  woods and wild beasts his confidants. You should have told it to
  the echo half-a-year before you had discovered it, even to my
  handmaid.

  _Cler._ What can a lover do, madam, now the race of giants is
  extinct? Had I lived in those days there had not been a mortal
  six foot high, but should have owned Parthenissa for the paragon
  of beauty, or measured his length on the ground--Parthenissa
  should have been heard by the brooks and deserts at midnight, the
  echo's burden and the river's murmur.

  _Niece._ That had been a golden age, indeed! But see, my aunt has
  left her grave companion and is coming toward us--I command you
  to leave me.

  _Cler._ Thus Oroondates, when Statira[501] dismissed him her
  presence, threw himself at her feet, and implored permission but
  to live. [_Offering to kneel._]

  _Niece._ And thus Statira raised him from the earth, permitting
  him to live and love.

But Biddy has not the cold constitution of the romance heroines
and she presently acknowledges that she finds in herself all the
symptoms of a raging amour. "I love solitude," she soliloquizes,
"I grow pale, I sigh frequently. I call upon the name of Cleremont
when I don't think of it--His person is ever in my eyes, and his
voice in my ears--Methinks I long to lose myself in some pensive
grove, or to hang over the head of some warbling fountain, with a
lute in my hand, softening the murmurs of the waters." And in spite
of her reluctance to abridge courtship and so shut off "all further
decoration of disguise, serenade and adventure," she finally consents
to an immediate elopement, declaring that if Oroondates had been as
pressing as Cleremont _Cassandra_ would have been but a pocket-book.

Biddy, her aunt, and her two suitors, form the most delightful group
of characters in the comedy of manners before Goldsmith and Sheridan.
And Biddy can hold her own against any of the heroines except
Congreve's Millamant. Nance Oldfield created the character in 1705
and it continued to be a favorite on the stage. The play was given
several times nearly every year to 1736 and occasionally afterwards,
so that the character of Biddy was one often before the public.

There are also other indications that the topic of romance-reading
was one of continued interest. In 1748 there appeared the second
edition of an anonymous work entitled _The Lady's Drawing-Room. Being
a Faithful Picture of the Great World._ One chapter entitled "The
Adventures of Marilla" presents a character following in the wake
of "Biddy Tipkin" and antedating the _Female Quixote_ by perhaps a
decade:

  MARILLA was a young Lady, who, from her most early years,
  discover'd an uncommon Capacity, and, as she grew up, made a
  wonderful Progress, not only in those Accomplishments usually
  allowed to her own Sex, but also in some of those which more
  properly appertain to ours. While a Child herself, she despis'd
  all childish Diversions, and, as she was not a Companion for
  those of riper Years, instead of playing with those of her own,
  she amus'd herself with Reading, in which she took such an
  infinite Delight, that, for a Book she had never seen before, she
  would forego any other Satisfaction could be offer'd her; and,
  tho' any one who had been present when she was thus employ'd,
  and saw with what Swiftness her Eye pass'd from the Top of
  every Page to the Bottom, would have thought it impossible for
  her to receive much Advantage from the Contents, yet was her
  Apprehension so acute, and her Memory so retentive, that whatever
  she look'd over in this Manner was as much her own, as if she
  had been the author of it.--What could be more amazing than
  to hear a Girl, of ten or eleven Years of Age, quote Passages
  from Pliny, Livy, and Sallust, talk of the Policies of Princes,
  compare their several Interests, and the Motives on which War
  and Peace were made, and make such Observations on them as could
  rarely be contradicted! What might not have been expected from
  such a Genius when Time had ripen't it to Perfection?--She had
  also strong Notions of Philosophy, Morality, and Divinity, and
  had only such Books, as tended to the Improvement of her Mind,
  been thrown in her Way, she had doubtless made one of the most
  shining Characters that any Age or Nation has produced; but
  unhappily, she was likewise too well acquainted with Cassandra,
  Cleopatra, Grand Cyrus, Pharamond, and other fabulous Treatises,
  which poison'd her Way of Thinking, and gave her a certain
  Bent of Mind, to which she ow'd all the Misfortunes of her
  future Life. Indeed, I think, there cannot be any Thing more
  pernicious to Youth, than the suffering them to read those idle
  and voluminous Adventures, which have no Foundation either in
  Truth, or good Sense, and I heartily wish, for the Sake not
  only of the young Lady I am speaking of, but of many others
  whose Reason has been perverted by them, tho' perhaps not in an
  equal Degree, that the Government would forbid all such Books
  from being sold or printed.... Marilla was always obliging,
  and affable to every Body, but those who, as I said before,
  declared themselves her Lovers; now was this owing to either the
  Insensibility of her Heart, or to an Imagination, that all who
  address'd her were unworthy to do so, but to those romantick
  Notions she had imbib'd, by reading in what Manner the fictitious
  Ladies of Antiquity had behav'd. She has often, since Time and a
  melancholy Experience of the World, has mortify'd this Foible,
  confess'd, That at that Time, she thought it the most audacious
  and presuming Thing in the World for a Man, to make any publick
  Declaration of his Passion, 'till he had suffer'd the Pangs of
  it, in secret, for three or four Years.--That, even then, he
  ought not to do it, unless Fortune had presented him with the
  Opportunity of ushering it in by some extraordinary Service, and
  that, whenever he express'd himself on that Head, it should be in
  such ambiguous Terms, and with so much Timidity, that it should
  rather be from his alter'd Countenance, and despairing Air The
  Object of his Affections should perceive he lov'd her, than by
  any Words he could be able to speak.--Then, as to her own Part
  in this Farce, it seem'd to her the utmost Indecency in a Woman
  to listen to any amorous Proposals, 'till the Lover had griev'd
  himself to a Skeleton, and was on the Point of falling on his own
  Sword; nor, when he had arriv'd at that Pitch of Desperation,
  was she to vouchsafe him any greater Favour than a Command
  to live.--That, after seven Years, she might, tho' with an
  infinite Shew of Reluctance, allow him to kiss her Hand, confess
  she pity'd him, but no more;--And, if he persevered a second
  Apprenticeship in the same Manner, perhaps, that is, if she found
  none more worthy, reward his faithful Service, by giving herself
  to him.

  These, she acknowledged, were the Ideas she had of Love and
  Courtship; but, none of her Admirers acting in any Degree
  answerable to them, she look'd on all the Professions of Love
  made to her, as so many Affronts, and return'd them only with
  picquant Repartees, or sullen Silence.

In 1752 Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, in _The Female Quixote_, gave an
even more detailed picture of a girl obsessed by romances. Arabella
was left motherless when very young, and her father lived in
retirement with her on a vast estate in a remote province. She
was very beautiful, and she was trained under the best masters in
dancing, French, and Italian. But this excellent education had less
influence on Arabella than the great store of French romances left
by her mother who had bought them to relieve the tedium of life in
the lonely castle. Supposing these romances to be pictures of real
life, Arabella founded all her notions and expectations on them. She
was on the alert for love adventures, and she misinterpreted the
most ordinary actions or phrases into some romantic possibility.
Arabella had a good mind, lively wit, a sweet temper, a thousand
amiable qualities, but her romantic notions permeated her thoughts
and feelings till she became involved in constant absurdities.
Generosity, courage, virtue, love, were of value to her only as
interpreted by the romances. Her lover, a courteous, frank, handsome
man of the ordinary world, found all his attractions clouded over
when he unfortunately fell asleep over some chapters in the romances
especially selected for his admiration and imitation.

Mrs. Lennox's story satirizes nearly all the salient characteristics
of the French romances. She burlesques their length and the
ever-recurring histories, adventures, episodes. The romance
conception of courtship and marriage, the lady's power of life
and death over her lover, the exaggerated military prowess of the
lover, the emphasis on unknown but illustrious birth, the bombastic
language, the use of disguises, abductions, banishments, the long,
argumentative conversations, the odd romance letters with high-flown
superscriptions and signatures, and florid, stilted style, the
romantic falsification of history, are some of the many elements
clearly portrayed by Mrs. Lennox. But in spite of the minute accuracy
of her work, Mrs. Lennox's Arabella yields in definiteness of
impression as well as in veracity and charm to Biddy Tipkin.

Shortly after _The Female Quixote_ came a little poem by Mrs. Monk
entitled "On a Romantick Lady" in which a lover says to his mistress:

      This poring over your _Grand Cyrus_
      Must ruin you, and will quite tire us.
      It makes you think, that an affront 't is,
      Unless your lover 's an _Orontes_,
      And courts you with a passion frantick,
      In manner and in stile romantick.
      Now tho' I count myself no Zero,
      I don't pretend to be an hero.
      Or a by-blow of him that thunders,
      Nor are you one of the sev'n wonders.
      But a young damser very pretty,
      And your true name is Mistress _Betty_.

With Mrs. Lennox and Mrs. Monk we seem to come to the end of
the satire on the romance-reading girls. But in 1756 we find in
Murphy's _Apprentice_ a young man, a Mr. Gargle, an apothecary's
apprentice, whose wits have gone astray through reading romances.
"An absurd, ridiculous, a silly empty-headed coxcomb," exclaims his
exasperated father, "with his _Cassanders_ and his _Cloppatras_,
and his trumpery; with his Romances, and his damn'd plays and
his _Odyssey_ Popes, and a parcel of fellows not worth a groat!"
Charlotte, Mr. Gargle's innamorata, was "as innocent as water-gruel"
before he taught her to read play-books; but she was not permanently
injured by them, for before she had read far her father locked her
books away and confined her in her room. In the projected romantic
escape Charlotte is all practicality and good sense, but Mr. Gargle
demands rope-ladders, moonlight, emotions, attitudes, and poetical
quotations, and so spoils all.

But Mr. Gargle lags behind his generation. Romances were being
rapidly replaced by the novel. Between 1740 and 1753 _Pamela_,
_Joseph Andrews_, _Jonathan Wild_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, _Tom Jones_,
_Amelia_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_ had established the new
species. And the romance-reading girl speedily gives way to the
novel-reading girl.

The first representative of this type comes in 1760 in George
Colman's _Polly Honeycomb_, at the very end of the period we are
considering. In the Prologue Colman shows a clear recognition of the
change of type. He says:

      Hither in days of yore, from Spain or France,
      Came a dread sorceress, her name ROMANCE.
      O'er Britain's isle her wayward spell she cast,
      And common sense in magick chain bound fast.
      In mad sublime did each fond lover wooe,
      And in heroicks ran each _billet-doux_:
      High deeds of chivalry their sole delight,
      Each fair a maid distress'd, each swain a knight.
      Then might _Statira Oroondates_ see,
      At tilts and tournaments, arm'd cap-a-pie.
      She too, on milk-white palfrey, lance in hand,
      A dwarf to guard her, pranc'd about the land.

             *       *       *       *       *

      But now, the dear delight of later years,
      The younger sister of ROMANCE appears:
      Less solemn in her air, her drift the same,
      And NOVEL her enchanting, charming, name.
      ROMANCE might strike our grave forfathers' pomp,
      But NOVEL for our buck and lively romp!
      Cassandra's folios now no longer read,
      See, two neat pocket-volumes in their stead!
      And then so _sentimental_ is the stile.
      So chaste, yet so bewitching all the while!
      Plot, and elopement, passion, rape, and rapture,
      The total sum of ev'ry dear--dear--Chapter.
      'T is not alone the small-talk and the smart,
      'T is NOVEL most beguiles the female heart.
      Miss reads--she melts--she sighs--Love steals upon her--
      And then--Alas, poor girl!--goodnight, poor honour!

When Colman published the play he prefixed a list of one hundred and
eighty-two novels which purports to be an "Extract from the catalogue
of one of our most popular circulating libraries; from which extract
the reader may, without any great degree of shrewdness, strain the
moral of this performance."[502] Of these books over one hundred
are in the form of "Lives," "Memoirs," or "Adventures." The list
contains the principal novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett,
but the majority of the books have passed into the limbo of the
forgotten, if, indeed, they ever existed. Polly gets her books from a
circulating library in London, or purchases them from the bookseller,
and she keeps up with the new books as they come out, but she does
not mention any of the books in Colman's list. _The History of Sir
George Truman and Emilia_, _The British Amazon_, _The Adventures of
Tom Ramble_, _The History of Dick Carless_, _History of Amelia_, are
the only novels she speaks of by the title. Her familiarity with
novels in general is such that she merely refers to the characters
in an offhand fashion. Nurse indicates the scope of Polly's reading
in "Yes, yes, you are always reading your simple story-books. The
_Ventures_ of Jack this, the history of Betsey t'other, and Sir
Humphreys, and women with hard Christian names."[503] But Polly
merely refers to Clarinda and to Julia, to Betsey Thompson, to Sally
Wilkins, as girls who eloped because they had obstinate, ill-natured
parents; to Bob Lovelace as a writer of charming letters; to poor
Clarissa and ugly Mr. Soames; to Nancy Howe and Mr. Hickman; to poor
Sophy Western as one locked up by an irate father; to Tom Jones, a
foundling and yet a gentleman's son. She means to marry Scribble,
though they "go through as many distresses as Booth and Amelia."
She belabors Mr. Ledger with "I hate you; you are as deceitful as
Blifil, as rude as the Harlowes, and as ugly as Dr. Slop." After she
has assailed this unwelcome suitor from Change-alley with "You are a
vile book of Arithmetick, a table of pounds, shillings, and pence;
you are uglier than a figure of eight, and more tiresome than the
multiplication-table," she rejoices over her successful vituperation.
"Ha, ha, ha! there he goes! ha, ha, ha! I have out-topped them all;
Miss Howe, Narcissa, Clarinda, Polly Barnes, Sophy Willis, and all of
them. None of them ever treated an odious fellow with so much spirit.
This would make an excellent chapter in a new Novel. But here comes
papa; in a violent passion, no doubt. No matter: It will only furnish
materials for the next chapter."

Though it is apparent that Polly was reading Richardson and Fielding,
yet the book that held temporary ascendancy over her imagination was
_Sir George Truman_. By a clever device she is introduced reading the
book and giving lively comments thereon:

  _Polly._ Well said, Sir George! Oh, the dear man. But so--"With
  these words the enraptur'd baronet [_reading_] concluded his
  declaration of love."--So!--"But what heart can imagine,
  [_reading_] What tongue describe, or what pen delineate, the
  amiable confusion of Emilia?"--Well, now for it!--"Reader, if
  thou art a courtly reader, thou hast seen, at polite tables, iced
  cream crimsoned with raspberries; or, if thou art an uncourtly
  reader, thou hast seen the rosy-finger'd morning dawning in the
  golden East;" Dawning in the golden East! Very pretty.--"Thou
  hast seen, perhaps, [_reading_] the artificial vermilion on
  the cheeks of Cleora, or the vermilion of nature on those of
  Sylvia; thou hast seen--in a word, the lovely face of Emilia was
  overspread with blushes." This is a most beautiful passage, I
  protest! Well, a Novel for my money!--[_reading_] "Sir George
  touched at her confusion, gently seized her hand, and softly
  pressing it to his bosom [_acting it as she reads_] where the
  pulses of his heart beat quick, throbbing with tumultuous
  passion, in a plaintive tone of voice, breathed out, 'Will you
  not answer me, Emilia?'" Tender creature!--"She, half raising
  [_reading and acting_] her downcast eyes, and half inclining
  her averted head, said in faltering accents,--yes, Sir!" Well,
  now!--"Then, gradually recovering, with ineffable sweetness she
  prepared to address him: when Mrs. Jenkinson bounced into the
  room, threw down a set of china in her hurry, and strewed the
  floor with porcelain fragments: Then turning Emilia round and
  round, whirled her out of the apartment in an instant, and struck
  Sir George dumb with astonishment at her appearance. She raved;
  but the baronet resuming his accustomed effrontery...." Novels,
  Nursee, novels! [exclaims Polly.] A novel is the only thing to
  teach a girl life, and the way of the world, and elegant fancies,
  and love, to the end of the chapter!... Do you think, Nursee, I
  should have had such a good notion of love so early, if I had not
  read novels?... Oh, Nursee, a Novel is the only thing!... Lord,
  Nursee, if it was not for novels and love-letters a girl would
  have no use for her writing and reading.

It is from her precious novels that the energetic young Polly has
a head so full of intrigues and contrivances. Rope-ladders or tied
sheets and a feather-bed under the window, disguises, letters in
lemon-juice, ink concealed in a pin-cushion, and paper and pens in
a fan, all the devices of a thwarted amour, are as the alphabet
of intrigue to Polly. No wonder the cautious Mr. Ledger finally
withdraws his suit. "She'd make a terrible wife for a sober citizen.
Who can answer for her behaviour? I would not underwrite her for
ninety _per cent._" Mr. Honeycomb attributes all Polly's vagaries to
"these damn'd story-books," and concludes, "A man might as well turn
his daughter loose in Covent-Garden, as trust the cultivation of her
mind to A CIRCULATING LIBRARY."

Lydia Languish in Sheridan's _Rivals_ (1775) carries us beyond the
limits of this study, but Lydia must be mentioned here because she
brings this topic to a natural chronological close and because of her
relationship to the characters already noted. Judged from the point
of view of the books selected, Biddy, Marilla, and Arabella belong
to the romance-readers, as opposed to Polly Honeycomb and Lydia
Languish, the novel-readers. But the lists of Polly and Lydia are far
from identical. Lydia is, indeed, quite up to date in her novels.
Nine of the fifteen she mentions were first published between 1768
and 1773.[504] And her reading is much less sensational and trashy
than that of Polly. The bustling, executive Polly cannot for a moment
be considered the real ancestor of Lydia. It is on Biddy Tipkin that
Lydia is more nearly modeled. The points of similarity between _The
Tender Husband_ and _The Rivals_ have often been noted, and it is in
the Biddy and Lydia portion that this kinship is closest. Lydia with
her two suitors and her aunt make up a group fundamentally like the
one of which Biddy is the center, though, of course, Biddy's "Urganda
of an aunt" is infinitely less amusing than "the old weather-beaten
she-dragon," Mrs. Malaprop, and Numps and Captain Cleremont are but
faint forerunners of Bob Acres and Captain Absolute. But the original
conception, the general relationship of these characters, their
function in the play, are much the same. Biddy and Lydia are alike in
occasional details and almost identical as type characters. And Lydia
as a heroine given over to mischievous reading is like the other
heroines in arousing in the harassed guardian or parent numerous
protests against romances and novels. Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony
Absolute sum up all that has been said in the earlier plays. Mrs.
Malaprop would not have young women become "progenies" of learning,
and her ideal maid who goes to school at nine to learn a "little
ingenuity and artifice," "a supercilious knowledge of accounts," with
a little geography and reading, pretty well represents the amount
of education the ordinary young girl was getting. And Sir Anthony
protests against the inevitable evils consequent on teaching girls to
read:

  All this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read.
  Had I a thousand daughters, by Heavens! I'd as soon have them
  taught the black art as their alphabet!... Madam, a circulating
  library in a town is, as an evergreen tree, of diabolical
  knowledge ... it blossoms through the year!




SUMMARY


[Sidenote: Material not easily accessible]

In any attempt to trace a single line of thought or a social tendency
through a long and remote period the difficult accessibility of the
material must be premised. It is disheartening to note how many of
the desired facts lurk in corners and byways, and are come upon
almost by chance. A stray allusion followed up may lead to some
rich little pocket of information, while laboriously conducted
explorations prove futile. It is the discovery of these pockets
of ore that constitute the rewards of the adventure. But such
satisfaction is constantly clouded by a sense of the pockets that
have been missed. Whatever discoveries reward the investigator, there
is always a tantalizing sense of having hardly more than passed the
outlying boundaries of what might be found.

Along with sins of omission it is regrettably certain that there
must be sins of commission. In individual instances the discovery
of further material might result in a somewhat different evaluation
of the literary or historic significance of the person concerned.
And certain it is that fuller records would reveal force and charm
in many a woman presented now by but a meager array of unsuggestive
biographical facts.

A final difficulty results from a carelessness as to dates in
contemporary records of the period studied, especially with regard
to minor people, so that chronology is sometimes led into a dim and
confused region of conjecture and approximation.

[Sidenote: Women in literary biography]

Omission of important persons, mistakes in emphasis, an occasional
dubious chronology, are due in part to the general condition of
literary biography till long after the middle of the eighteenth
century. The details regarding men were often meager and inexact, but
much more so was this the case with regard to women. When Ballard
began the preliminary studies for his memoirs of learned ladies he
found the utmost difficulty in getting any reliable data. He refers
to Leland, Bale, Pits, and Tanner as men whose works he had studied
for general method. But from none of these could he get direct aid in
his own field of research. Various records of Oxford and Cambridge
could render but incidental service, Edward Philips's _Threatrum
Poetarum_ (1675); John Aubrey's _Brief Lives_ (known as early as
1680); William Winstanley's _Lives of the most famous English Poets_
(1687); Gildon's edition of Langbaine's _Dramatic Poets_, with a
second volume on Poets in 1688, were somewhat more helpful. But in
all these put together there were only a few pages devoted to women.
John Shirley's _Illustrious History of Women_ (1686) and Juncker's
_Catalogue of Learned Women_ (1692) have practically nothing to offer
towards a history of learned English women. John Evelyn's _Numismata_
(1697) gives a list of renowned persons "worthy the honour of
_Medal_," in the course of which he mentions some instances of the
"Learned, Virtuous and Fair Sex," beginning with Boadicea. Thirteen
Englishwomen are in the list, but with only the briefest notice.
Giles Jacob's _Poetical Register_ (1724) goes more into detail, but
in his two volumes there are only fifteen pages of female biography.
Mrs. Cooper includes no woman in her _Muse's Library_ (1737) and
Hayward in his _The British Muse_ (1738) makes but one quotation
from a woman. John Wilford's _Memorials and Characters_ (1741) was
compiled with the idea of presenting examples of piety and virtue.
Of the eighty-one women noted only a few come within the category
of learned women. Thomas Birch in his _Illustrious Persons of Great
Britain_ (1752) includes no women but Queens.

The meager gleanings from the best biographical records before 1752
put stronger emphasis on the importance of George Ballard's _Memoirs
of Several Ladies of Great Britain_ as a book of original research,
and as the first source of detailed and ordered, and, in general,
accurate information concerning the learned women of England.[505]

Of later sources the first is Theophilus Cibber's _Lives of the
Poets_ (1753). Rather full accounts of fourteen women are given
by Cibber, eight of them being names not included in Ballard's
book.[506] The _Eminent Ladies_ (1755) was but a weak compilation of
poems with brief and perfunctory comment. In the _New and General
Biographical Dictionary_, published in 1761, the most imposing
biographical work of the period, out of more than five thousand names
less than twenty English women of letters are listed.

The first book after Ballard to take up female biography exclusively
appeared in 1766 and is entitled: _Biographium Femineum. The Female
Worthies: or, Memoirs of the Most Illustrious Ladies of all Ages and
Nations, who have been Eminently distinguished for their Magnanimity,
Learning, Genius, Virtue, Piety, and other excellent Endowments,
conspicuous in all the various Stations and Relations of Life, public
and private. Containing (exclusive of Foreigners) The Lives of above
Fourscore British Ladies, who have shone with a peculiar Lustre, and
given the noblest proofs of the most exalted Genius, and Superior
Worth. Collected from History, and the most approved Biographers,
and brought down to the present Times_ (1766). This book is based
on Ballard, Cibber, and _Eminent Ladies_, but also, unfortunately,
accepts Amory as an authority.

In 1779 William Alexander published _The History of Women_, in two
volumes. Mr. Alexander has comparatively little to say about learned
women. He wrote, he said, to "amuse and instruct the Fair Sex,"
hoping thus to lure them from poring over novels and romances. He
avoided technical and foreign terms and all citation of authorities
as being "perplexing to the sex," and while his book professes to
be a sort of propagandist tract for female education, he so abhors
female pendantry and so laments fair eyes dimmed by severe and
intense study that his book is a distinct reaction from the dignified
earlier ideals. Dr. Johnson admits no women into the society of his
fifty-two _English Poets_ (1779-81). The _Biographia Britannica_
(1778-93) includes Mary Beale and ten literary women. All of these
except Mrs. Delany had appeared in Ballard or Cibber. Mary Hays's
_Female Biography_, published in England in 1803 and in America in
1807, in three volumes, includes celebrated women in "all Ages and
Countries." It is based on Ballard and the other authorities already
indicated. The uncritical character of the book is indicated by the
remark of Miss Hays, "My book is intended for women and not for
scholars." Robert Southey, in 1809, in his _Specimens of the Later
English Poets_, begins with the time of James II. Out of two hundred
and twenty-three poets represented, seventeen are women. In the
thirty-two volumes of Chalmers's _General Biographical Dictionary_
(1812) about thirty English learned ladies are briefly noted. In
Campbell's _British Poets_ (1819) there is but one woman, Katherine
Philips, among the one hundred and seventy names he gives. Alexander
Dyce, in _Specimens of British Poetesses_, in 1827, gives brief
extracts in chronological order from eighty-three authors, but with
only the slightest possible apparatus of notes and dates. The purpose
of Mr. Dyce was to exhibit the progress of English women in poetry,
and his book was planned and partly executed before he happened upon
the _Eminent Ladies_, a reprint of which appeared about 1780. On a
perusal of that book he found it so unimportant a precursor as not
to interfere with his plan. Over half of Mr. Dyce's work is given to
women after 1750. Of the forty-nine before that period, beginning
with Juliana Berners and ending with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, very
few are represented by more than two or three pages of quotation.
Lady Winchilsea, owing doubtless to Wordsworth's recent eulogy of
her, is given eleven pages. Mr. Dyce did considerable independent
research, for he quoted from a good many poems by women not mentioned
by previous authors. Wordsworth had planned a similar work and had
made extracts for it, "lucid crystals," he says, "culled from a
Parnassian Cave seldom trod."

About the middle of the nineteenth century various books, such as
Miss Costello's _Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen_ (1844), Mrs. Hale's
_Woman's Record_ (1853), Jane Williams's _Literary Women of England_
(1861), Julia Kavanagh's _English Women of Letters_ (1863), with
other compilations treating especially of late eighteenth-century
fiction but recognizing also the works of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and
Mrs. Haywood, seemed to indicate a recrudescence of interest in the
work of women. But in most of these books the treatment is so vague
and popular as to be of little use.

Of more value than formal condensed statements in biographical
compilations are autobiographies, letters, contemporary allusions,
works in prose and verse, prefaces, and early individual biographies.
Thanks to a steadily growing interest in the period 1660 to 1800,
there has been an accumulation during recent years of special
critical editions of early works, of manuscripts published after long
years of oblivion, and of reprints of valuable productions. It is in
particular to this class of material that the student must go in an
attempt to evolve personalities from scattered facts.

[Sidenote: The term "learned"]

The term "learned" as applied to women demands careful chronological
definition. It would be used to-day, without any strong bias of
approval or disapproval, to describe a woman who in some reputable
realm of learning has a competent apparatus of the facts involved,
and a mind trained to order and interpret these facts. Such
intellectual activity would be differentiated from creative work in
poetry, fiction, and drama. But the phrase "learned women" as used
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had no such specialized
application. The contemporary defenders of "The Excellency of the
Female Sex" give the widest and loosest possible meaning to the term.
It sometimes stood for the most solid attainments, but it was also
made to cover very rudimentary intellectual strivings. An avowed
taste for reading, the faintest interest in physical phenomena, the
composition of slight little poems, the writing-out of prayers and
meditations, even the copying of extracts into a common-place book,
could, in applause or derision, be counted as learned occupations.
This wide inclusiveness results inevitably in the practical
breaking-down of any set of qualities as necessarily connoted by the
term "learned."

Equally undiscriminating was the use of examples whereby to establish
the possible mentality of women. History and tradition were of equal
authority, the Muses and Sibyls counting as much as the great names
of later days. The uncritical lists of learned ladies record as of
apparently equal importance the "physical fancies" of the Duchess of
Newcastle and the exact botanical knowledge of Elizabeth Blackwell;
the playful coquetting with foreign tongues by some society ladies
and the close linguistic attainments of Miss Elstob or Mrs. Collyer;
the wide sweep of general information of Mrs. Delany and the minute
investigation into the field of early English by Mrs. Cooper.

A similar ill-defined use of the term "learned" is inevitable in
the present attempt to estimate the intellectual tendencies of the
seventeenth and eighteenth century women. In the evaluation of the
work of individual women as their names arise critical standards
can be given due weight. But in general it is not the object of
this study to test the scholastic, scientific, or literary work of
the women of the period by modern academic ideas of excellence. The
purpose here is rather to show the number of women whose interests
were intellectual, whose chosen pursuits had to do with books
and things of the mind, and who were demanding a new freedom of
self-expression, new training, and new opportunities.

Still another preliminary statement seems necessary. The period from
1650 to 1760 is a rich and crowded one. Even when regarded from a
single comparatively barren point of view such as an account of
learned women, it offers too much material for a single volume. To
keep at all within limits it is necessary to hold the presentation
of each learned woman merely to those points in her life and work
that have to do with her as an exponent of new ideals for women, or
as marking by her own achievements new feminine possibilities in the
arts, in learning, or in letters. Complete presentation would involve
almost a separate volume for each important woman. Many of the women
here studied offer interesting subjects for further investigation. A
new insight into the religious, the social, and the domestic life of
the period would be given by full biographies of such women as Anne
Killigrew, Lady Winchilsea, Bathsua Makin, Mrs. Cooper, and indeed of
many others. Such studies would be invaluable as a contribution to
the history of the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: Periods in intellectual progress of women]

A retrospect of the progress of the intellectual freedom and the
systematic education of women in England does not reveal an orderly
acceleration from period to period. There are, instead, periods of
activity followed by periods of quiescence. Two such periods, one of
activity, one of quiescence, may be noted before the Restoration.

The reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth have been called the golden
age for learned women,[507] and even a cursory glance over these
years serves to justify that reputation. Theoretical statements by
distinguished foreigners such as that by Castiglione; the opinions
of such men as Vives and Hyrde, of Mulcaster, Ascham, Udall, and
Erasmus; the example of the royal family and many great nobles in
securing the most learned instruction for their daughters; the
influence of at least two learned queens, Catherine of Aragon and
Elizabeth; the actual scholarship of many distinguished women; the
warm praise of this scholarship by the most eminent men, made up
a general atmosphere strongly stimulating to learned attainment
by women. Individual opportunities of so high a character, and a
reception so genial and even eager towards the intellectual activity
of women did not again recur in England. But this golden age remains
as hardly more than a brilliant picture; it has practically no
important place in the progress of the education of women. The
advantages given to women were nullified, so far as initiating more
widespread activities is concerned, by two inherent defects. The
learning of women had no legitimate purpose or outcome beyond the
home. It was the object of adulation and flattery, but it seldom came
into competition with the work of men where it could be judged on its
merits. It had always a small audience favorably disposed in advance.
Learning was a kind of high-class individual accomplishment purely
for home consumption. A second defect was that learning belonged only
to the daughters of the nobility or of the very rich. Even within
these bounds it was sporadic, depending entirely on the opinion of
the head of the family.

A gradual decline of interest in scholarship as an appropriate
pursuit for damsels of high lineage was apparent even in Elizabethan
days, and the change from Tudor ideals became marked in the period
from the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration.[508] James looked
upon women with contempt. Queen Anne's mother, Sophia of Mecklenburg,
was a highly gifted woman who, after her retirement from public life,
devoted her leisure to astronomy, chemistry, and other sciences.
But Anne had none of her mother's intellectual interests. She cared
only for fine dresses and jewels, progresses and masks, and gay
frivolous entertainments.[509] So she brought no literary ideals or
ambitions to counteract the king's cold indifference to education in
general. Under Charles I and Henrietta Maria there might readily have
arisen in a new and lighter form some educational ideals or schemes
favorable to women, for the King loved music and painting and had
well-developed literary tastes, and the Queen had great respect for
the French salons of her day and was interested in the general ideas
of the _précieuses_. But the troubled times of the Civil War turned
the minds of both men and women to sterner tasks. And it is perhaps
not strange that this period proves the most barren one in English
history so far as the education of girls is concerned.

At the Restoration we enter upon a new era of feminine activity.
The beginnings of this era do not, however, coincide sharply with
1660, but belong at least a decade earlier. The chief women writing
and studying between 1650 and 1675,[510] the Duchess of Newcastle,
Mrs. Philips, Mary North, Dorothy Osborne, Margaret Blagge, Lady
Pakington, the Countess of Warwick, Mrs. Hutchinson, and Lady
Fanshawe, brilliantly ushered in this new period. With the coming
of peace and national security women were apparently conscious not
only of a new freedom, but of a new power and a new demand for some
form of personal expression. After the unusual services rendered by
them in war-times they could not settle down at once into the tame
concerns of peace. This does not refer particularly to the women
counted the heroines of the Civil War. It refers rather to the
general emotional excitement and freeing of the spirit consequent on
war activities. There was on the part of women a blind and unfocused
but persistent and stimulating sense that larger and more varied
opportunities were awaiting them. Latent powers had been stirred
into self-consciousness and could not again be lulled into the old
quiescence.

It was not only the inevitable burdens and responsibilities of war
that had stirred women to new life. They could not fail to share
in the new sense of personal importance and power that came to the
people as a whole in their victorious struggle with autocracy. But
it must be observed that along with this consciousness of national
and political self-realization there was, under the Puritans, stern
repression in matters of social and religious life. At the coming of
Charles, however, all this was changed. With disastrous suddenness
people found themselves free to follow with all gayety of spirit
wherever their pleasure-loving instincts led. That such breaking of
bonds resulted in an almost incredible outburst of immorality should
not be allowed to obscure the fact that there was also a remarkable
freeing of the mind from conventional standards. For good or for evil
the individual found himself free to give energetic expression to his
individual tendencies. By this freedom, by this license, women as
well as men were profoundly moved.

The new impulses thus brought into being did not, however, give
rise to anything like orderly and progressive activity on the part
of women. The century following 1660 is seen to be an inchoate
assemblage of beginnings. It is rich with a promise that comes to no
decisive result. The path, instead of leading to some well-marked
fortress or to some mount of vision, loses itself in unmeaning
meanders.

There is, indeed, after the middle of the eighteenth century, even
an appearance of retrogression in the attention devoted to learned
pursuits for women. It is not till the end of that century that
the movement acquires new momentum. Until we come to Catharine
Macaulay, the novelists in the last quarter of the century, and Mary
Wollstonecraft at its end, we have little that is new in theory or
striking in achievement. From 1760 to 1775 no new woman writer of
distinction appears. On ideals of education and conduct, Dr. James
Fordyce, Mrs. Barbauld, and Mrs. Chapone, the recognized arbiters,
are tame compilers of bromidic maxims with little of the dignity and
spirit of the best writers on feminism six or seven decades earlier.
The actual accomplishment of the period before 1760 was a destruction
of old placidities, a restlessness of discussion, rather than a
movement reaching definite achievement. But this discussion and the
many individual examples of literary or learned accomplishment on the
part of women were together slowly having their collective effect.
Finally salons came and gave social prestige to the women who could
think and talk brilliantly, and gave a tremendous impetus, if not
to actual learning, yet to the idea that a woman should have sense,
intelligence, a wide knowledge of books, and an understanding of
history and current affairs.

From Catharine Macaulay to about the time of Tennyson's _Princess_
is a period possessing considerable unity and one that would reward
minute study. Such an investigation would bring us close to the
establishment of great schools for the higher education of women and
their consequent entrance upon a new era, an era that should look
back with astonishment and respect to such ancestors as Anna van
Schurman, Bathsua Makin, Dr. Hickes, and Mary Astell.

[Sidenote: The learned woman and a public]

One of the most promising characteristics of the work of women is
the emergence of learning from the aristocratic seclusion of the
"golden age." In Tudor times it was in courtly circles only that
learning was counted appropriate for women. Elizabeth Lucar stands
as a solitary record of a lady from the wealthy middle class whose
accomplishments were similar to those in the palaces of the great.
But a significant change is to be noted in the century initiated
about 1660. Duchesses and countesses are listed with wives and
daughters of the clergy, of rich merchants, of needy tradesmen. From
the Duchess of Newcastle to Mary Leapor, the gardener's daughter, the
roll shows that aristocratic restrictions are no longer in full force
in the realm of letters. In intimate connection with this change is
the fact that authorship is no longer a private, home affair. The
days when Margaret Roper was praised because she found her father and
husband a sufficient audience had passed forever. The work of women
was no longer a carefully tended flower of the hot-house. It must
grow in the open. To be sure, women hesitated to publish. The Orindas
and Astræas and Philomelas and Ardelias, whom Richardson derides as
"the lovely dastards" of the sex, show how women sought protecting
pseudonyms. But publish they did. They craved readers. The applauding
males of their households were no longer adequate. Under the spell of
a thousand traditional timidities and reluctancies they yet desired
to see their words on the printed page, and they secretly coveted a
public.

Furthermore, women were thinking of authorship as a tool and as
a weapon, not merely as a private resource. Mrs. Behn, the first
English woman to write definitely for money, was but the precursor
of various women in succeeding years who came to regard the products
of their minds as of pecuniary significance. Especially is this true
towards the end of the period. When we find Mrs. Haywood and Mrs.
Manley writing fiction of a sort that will sell, Mrs. Blackwell
doing superb botanical work in order to pay the fine imposed on her
husband, or Mrs. Collyer writing that she may supplement a meager
income and educate her children, we may not have come upon great
art or literature, but we have come upon a new idea for women, the
possible economic value of their work. It was not an idea that
reached any but the most meager fruition, but at least the seed of a
new thought was sown.

A third change was a respect for literature as a weapon, sometimes
of offense, but mainly of defense and propaganda. The women who had
ideals to promulgate, causes to urge upon the indifferent, or evils
to be meliorated, found that talking at home was weak and futile.
They must secure a public, and so the pamphlets poured forth. In
fact, the fundamental difference between the golden age of the
Tudors and the much less agreeable period for learned women after
the Restoration was this matter of a public. Learning for home
consumption only and as an elegant resource was sterile. However
feeble intrinsically, learning and letters used for a purpose and
submitted to a public had within it the seeds of vitality and the
promise of a future.

[Sidenote: Large number of intellectual women]

Of greater significance still is the large number of women who
gave themselves to intellectual pursuits. From Mrs. Philips to
Mrs. Collyer the roll is impressively long. Macaulay's statement
concerning the illiteracy of the women of the period may have
some justification, but the exceptions are so numerous as almost
to disprove the rule. And all the way down the line there is the
suggestion that many other women of like tastes and attainments
have been lost in obscurity. Many extant productions have
been preserved only by chance. Dorothy Osborne's letters, the
biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson and Lady Fanshawe, Celia Fiennes's
travels, Lady Winchilsea's grand folio, to name but a few, escaped
destruction mainly through the undisturbed continuity of the family
life, and possibly the inertia, of their possessors. And where a
few manuscripts have been saved, many more have doubtless been
destroyed. The loss to learning and letters is probably slight.
But in estimating the strength of a tendency the numbers who were
affected by it count as important testimony. Every woman whose
mind was alert, demanding intellectual sustenance, and struggling
towards self-expression, adds a further fraction of proof as to the
vitality of the new impulse. And, while not susceptible of absolute
verification, the general tantalizing consciousness of many shadowy
presences of women whose ideas and efforts never reached the printed
page is a not unimportant factor in one's personal conviction as to
the very large number of women who were affected by the new unrest
and the new aspiration hidden away under the ordinary routine of
thought and work. But even without any such shadowy presences the
list is long enough to be convincing.

[Sidenote: Types of work but scantily represented]

In an attempt to tabulate the variety of ways in which women sought
self-expression, we note first those fields of endeavor in which
their work was but scantily represented. In some cases these areas of
restricted productivity are characteristic of the age in general, in
some cases, the outcome of limitations imposed on women in particular.

One type of the woman interested in letters becomes practically
non-existent in the period under discussion, and that is the
patroness whose rank and wealth and intellectual tastes summoned
about her a brilliant coterie of poets and men of science to whom
she extended substantial aid. The patroness plays no important part
in English life after Elizabethan times. Lady Bedford is the last
noted representative. Mary North's little circle of literary ladies,
and the Matchless Orinda's "Circle of Friendship" are coteries, but
without a Lady Bountiful as the center. Lady Pakington comes nearer
the type in her assemblage of Church of England divines. But on
the whole the patroness and salon are not revived till the time of
the _bas bleus_ in the mid-eighteenth century, and then only in a
modified form.

In the fine arts the attainments of women were slight and amateurish.
Mary Beale was the only portrait-painter of distinction, and in
landscape-painting no woman is represented by valuable canvases.
But the same state of affairs held true of English men. With the
solitary exception of Mr. Riley all of the noted portrait-painters
in England before 1760 were foreigners. The landscape artists, too,
were foreigners, or were mere copiers of the Italian or Flemish
masters. So the deficiency of women in the fine arts may justly be
counted but a part of the general national deficiency. The immediate
and permanent success of women on the stage has been sufficiently
emphasized. But it should also be noted that acting was a career
necessarily limited to a comparatively small number of women.

Many kinds of work more or less professional in character were but
slightly represented. Except for governesses in great families and
the mistresses of boarding-schools for girls there were no women
teachers, hence teaching as an ultimate goal was eliminated as a
determining factor in the kind of intellectual work pursued. Even the
governesses were not chosen for scholarship, but for character and
good-breeding. They had to do only with little children, and had no
need for learning. And the school-mistresses secured outside masters
for the various studies and accomplishments, confining their own work
to morals and general management.

Women had so long had home medicaments to make and administer, the
mistress of a great estate had so long been the sole resort in
matters concerning the health of her dependents, that we might
expect medicine to be one of the first important new fields conquered
by women, but such was not the case. The Duchess of Newcastle, to
be sure, gave her fancy free rein in the wide fields of anatomy and
physiology. But besides such young women as Elizabeth Bury, renowned
for her knowledge of simples and her skill in diagnosis, and Jane
Barker who followed her brother's lead in reading medical works,
there are no English women on record before 1760 as having given
themselves with any serious interest to the study of medicine. The
only possible exception would be in midwifery. In this department of
medical or surgical practice women had the matter almost in their own
hands. Mrs. Pilkington says that her father, Dr. Van Lewen, was the
first man midwife in England. There must, then, have been developed
among women considerable knowledge and practical skill. But their
work was in no sense of professional rank. There was no definite
training required, there was no way of applying standardized tests of
excellence, and there was no organization among the women themselves.
And almost no women attempted to put into book form the results of
their experience. Mrs. Jane Sharp's _The Midwives' Book_ (1671) is a
solitary exception. Mrs. Cellier's book advocating the maintenance
of a "Corporation of Skilful Midwives" is the only suggestion I have
found looking towards professional training and recognition such as
nurses now receive.

In housekeeping matters women were also in the main content to do the
work without any formal statements of the mysteries of their art.
There was much passing about of receipts for cookery, for toilet
preparations, for curative drinks and salves, but when these were
collected and published, it was usually the work of some enterprising
book-seller. Mrs. Hannah Woolley, Mrs. "A. M.," and Mrs. Hannah
Glasse, are the only women I have come upon who could even in the
faintest way foreshadow the great mass of present-day writing on
questions of domestic science.

Although the satire in some of the comedies would indicate that women
were manifesting some interest in the new discoveries through the
telescope and the microscope, and were sometimes giving themselves
to laboratory experiments in dissection, there is no serious record
of any real research in science by women. Even Mrs. Blackwell's
exquisite and accurate botanical work is an artistic rather than
a scientific achievement so far as she herself is concerned.
Her botanical facts were not entirely the result of personal
investigation.

To be "the breeders of children in their low age" had always been
so unquestionably the province of women that they would supposedly
be past-masters in that art, and it might be expected that they
would use the first freedom of their pen to write such things as
would suit the tastes and needs of children. Again, such is not the
case. But it must be recognized that there was nowhere any catering
to the literary needs of children. Bunyan's _Book for Boys and
Girls_ (1680), Mason's _Little Catechism_ (1693), Watts's _Divine
and Moral Songs for Children_ (1720) represent a few attempts to
render religious truth more palatable to the child's mind, but real
literature for children did not begin till 1744. Mr. Newberry's
_Little Pretty Pocket Book_ of that year initiated a kind of
literature the vast extent of which can now hardly be estimated. And
in the earliest period of literature for children Mrs. Collyer's
_Christmas Box_ and Miss Fielding's _Little Female Academy_, both in
1749, must take an honorable place.

One more kind of work for which women have manifested exceptional
ability in modern times is in the conduct of humanitarian
enterprises. Traditionally they were the loaf-givers. The new thing
was to organize generosity into permanent efficiency and to make it
operative beyond the limits of the family estate. Mrs. Bovey and
Lady Elizabeth Hastings are early instances of women devoting time,
mentality, and money to the development of systematic benevolence.
But there were few women whose economic independence and sense of
civic responsibility were so happily united.

Still another realm in which women to-day are finding large
opportunity was practically closed to the women of earlier times,
and that is public speaking. Except among the Quakers no woman spoke,
on any subject whatsoever, before an audience. She might sing or she
might act with applause. But talking was outside her bounds. Acting
was but repeating the words of others; singing was a gift of the
gods; but talking to an audience, whether to delight or instruct,
carried plain implications of self-conscious superiority in knowledge
or power. It was incredibly unfeminine and not to be endured. On this
topic the authority of St. Paul was still unquestioned.

If from the women who are to-day preparing for some sort of
professional work, we should exclude all who expect to teach, all
who are planning to enter upon some sort of scientific research,
all who are training themselves for public speaking, all who are
preparing for the effective management of large enterprises, all who
are writing on domestic or medical matters, the scope of feminine
activity would be almost unbelievably narrowed. These various kinds
of work are now recognized channels through which whatever ability
a woman may have may find expression. But in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries if a woman had a good mind and felt impelled
to use it, none of these avenues were normally open to her. It is
difficult to imagine what the withdrawal of all these opportunities
would mean in the reduction of adequate stimuli to good work. Hence
the few women who did pioneer work in these various departments must
have been moved by some strong urgency of the spirit. They were
adventurers lured by the fascination of the new and the untried,
and their effort is significant even when the region they conquered
proved to be but the barren edge of a great continent.

It was in writing that women were least hampered, and, as has been
stated, it was in writing that we find their work most varied and
abundant.

[Sidenote: Women playwrights]

As playwrights they were especially successful in comedy. Mrs. Behn
and Mrs. Centlivre take a very creditable rank in the comedy of
lively intrigue and social satire. Tragedy appealed to more women
writers than did comedy, but they were less successful in that
realm. Tragedy was considered so inherently virtuous that the most
high-minded could find in it edification, and young girls who were
forbidden attendance on comedies were freely allowed to witness
tragedies. For this reason women writers with dramatic aspirations,
but to whom the license of the comedy was distasteful, applied
themselves to tragedy. That Catherine Cockburn's _Fatal Friendship_
should be counted the best of these tragedies is perhaps a sufficient
condemnation of the entire series. But it must be again remembered
that it was not an age in which any writers excelled in tragedy. The
heroic plays of Dryden, the domestic tragedy of Otway, and here and
there a play of some contemporary vogue, such as Ambrose Philips's
_Distressed Mother_ and Addison's _Cato_, practically make up the
list. Of the tragedies recorded by Genest between 1660 and 1760
very few of those having any but the most ephemeral success are by
contemporary authors. Hence the failure of women in this realm is in
accordance with the trend of the times.

[Sidenote: Fiction]

Novels did not come into existence till so late in the period under
discussion that we have little chance to test women in this field
which later proved to be peculiarly their own. Mrs. Behn's romances,
with their realistic detail, their high-wrought emotions, scenic
setting, and didactic intent, gave early examples of what might be
done. But it is not till after Richardson that women had conspicuous
success in works of fiction. After Mrs. Behn and before 1760 we have
only the scandalous annals of Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Haywood, Miss
Barker's inchoate autobiographic tales, Mrs. Lennox's satiric novel,
and the didactic stories of Mrs. Collyer and Miss Fielding.

[Sidenote: Poetry]

In an age when facile versifying was counted a gentleman's
accomplishment, and when the heroic couplet offered a form in which
mechanical precision could be tested by the rule of the thumb, it
would be strange if women with some literary knack did not write
poetry. And it is true that nearly every woman who wielded a pen
trained it sometimes into the conventional pindarics or heroics. But
on the whole, with most women writers poetry was but an occasional
resource. It was not their chosen _métier_. There were, in fact, but
two women, Mrs. Philips and Lady Winchilsea, who took their stand on
poetry as their life's achievement. Orinda had grace, tenderness,
and fine feeling. Ardelia had subtlety of intuition, a delicate
independence of taste, and an occasional high excellence of form and
phrase. By these qualities these two women are marked off from the
poetasters of their day and have some permanent importance. But the
mass of verse by women was undistinguished. It offers, however, some
interesting general characteristics.

Compared to the total amount of verse by women, religious verse
takes an unexpectedly small place. In no case that I can recall
were a woman's religious poems her best work. The most popular as
well as the most turgid and commonplace sort of religious writing
was the Scripture paraphrase. Poems of pure devotion, of prayer
and of praise, are less often found. In such as do occur we might
expect the personal note, something winged and lyrical. But they
are disappointingly timid and imitative. We have various proofs
that there was no absolute lack of poignant spiritual conflict and
endeavor during this period, but religious emotion was apparently so
accustomed to decorous forms that it could not be driven into the
nakedness of soul consequent upon religious abasement or ecstasy.
The best religious verse of the period avoids strong emotions. It
consists of gentle moralizing touched by personal feeling. There is
a note of genuineness in the emphasis on fortitude, on self-control
and self-abnegation, and on melancholy endurance. But the most that
can be said for the religious poetry by women is that it was about
on a par with contemporary religious poetry by men. It was an age of
strong church affiliations and of theological discussion, but it was
not an age that invited the expression of fervent religious emotion.

There is also little genuine love poetry. There is much that is
friendly and affectionate, but almost nothing that is impassioned.
This, however, is a negation applicable to all verse of the period.
Few memorable love lyrics are to be found in English verse between
Waller's _Go, lovely rose_, and the songs of Robert Burns. But women
had been so long emancipated from reason and traditionally given
over to the feelings that love poetry, at least of the sentimental
variety, might have been thought their natural output. As a matter of
fact, the case was quite otherwise. The poetry by women had not, in
general, what would be termed a feminine tone. Women do not seem to
have given their instincts free play when they took up the poetical
quill. Poetry was either a trifling temporary resource or it was a
serious, even solemn affair, and must concern itself with weighty
matters of vice and virtue. The style in poetry is consequently much
less effective than in prose. There is almost nowhere through all the
mass of this verse any brightness of fancy, any playfulness of wit,
any mollifying sense of humor. There is little lightness of touch,
there are few felicities and unforgettable lines. And there is more
of scorn, indignation, and didacticism than of sweetness and light.

[Sidenote: Autobiography and letters]

In various departments of prose women writers reached an excellence
considerably above the general prose average of the time. This is
especially true in certain rather new branches of writing. The
fragments of autobiography that have come down to us are almost
without exception fresh, unpretentious, and delightful pieces
of work. The records given us by the Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs.
Hutchinson, Miss Barker, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth Elstob,
and others, simply whet the appetite for more. If Anne Killigrew and
Anne Kingsmill and Bathsua Pell and Lady Elizabeth Hastings, and
very many other ladies, had left similar records we should have a
legacy of simple, straightforward, and individual prose worth reams
of pindarics or theological discussions. The intimate personal appeal
of the subject-matter seemed to make for a picturesqueness and homely
vigor of style. The only women who wrote biography--the Duchess of
Newcastle, Lady Fanshawe, and Mrs. Hutchinson--wrote about their
husbands, so they were, in reality, carrying on the autobiographical
element. And their success is perhaps due to an intimate knowledge of
the facts, and a strong personal interest such as had animated the
sketches of their own childhood. At any rate, these three _Lives_
rank in interest with Evelyn's _Mrs. Godolphin_ and Roger North's
_Lives of the Norths_. Letters belong in the same general realm, and
offer some of the most entertaining writing of the period. There are
many reasons for thinking that letter-writing was a more general
feminine resource than existing records would indicate. Such letters
as are now extant have been preserved almost by accident. They were
not counted of contemporary importance and very few of them reached
publication before the nineteenth century. Yet the list is fairly
representative.

We have the letters of Margaret Blagge to Mr. Godolphin; those of
the Osborne ladies, Dorothy, Martha, and Sarah; Orinda's epistles to
Poliarchus; Mrs. Evelyn's letters to her son's tutor; Mrs. Rowe's
to the Duchess of Somerset; Mrs. Delany's to numerous friends; Miss
Talbot's to Miss Carter; Miss Carter's to a host of correspondents;
Mrs. Cockburn's to her lovers and to her niece; and Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu's records from many lands as well as her early letters to
Mr. Montagu. As a body of documentary material these letters are
invaluable. And they are interesting reading. The keen eye for dress
and customs would have qualified some of these ladies for the novel
of manners. There are pungent character sketches and witty comment on
social foibles. These letters show often a humor and gayety of spirit
such as find entrance into no other forms of feminine writing. And
the style is almost uniformly easy and natural. Dorothy Osborne's
objection to stilted and pedantic letters could have been applicable
to few women letter-writers. They had no thought of a public and so
escaped the snare of professionalism in tone. The letters contain
records of love and of grief, of moments of vivid emotion, of deep
spiritual experience, of friendships and of hatreds, of hopes and
despairs, and because all these came from the mind and the heart of
the writer they are told in a convincing manner.

[Sidenote: Travels]

Another similar realm is that of travels. When women went on tours
they saw everything that was to be seen. And they set down the
details with infinite patience. Celia Fiennes has no literary style
at all, but no other description of England between 1650 and 1760
contains so much detail worth remembering. She was the most spirited
and indefatigable of travelers, and this intensity of interest found
its way into her book and communicates itself to the reader. Had she
kept her diary with any remotest thought of publication she might
have been more lucid, but she might also have been less vigorous,
individual, and picturesque. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's _Turkish
Letters_ created a sensation, as well they might, for as a writer of
travels she out-distanced all competitors.

The kinds of prose writing so far indicated were all animated by
personal experience and interest. That is certainly one secret
of their charm. And it is to be observed that they are marked by
qualities of observation and analysis later proved natural to
women by their success in fiction. But there is another department
of writing less naturally associated with women in which they
were nevertheless conspicuous for merit, and that is some form of
controversial writing.

[Sidenote: Propaganda]

When women espoused and defended a cause, it was with a heat of
personal conviction that robbed them of self-consciousness and
contributed to vigor and animation of style. Even earlier women,
such as Anna van Schurman and Mrs. Makin, who felt that to be
convincing they must show their ability to argue with the most rigid
scholastic apparatus, now and then had passages of high-wrought
feeling or indignation that burst the trammels of their logical
form, and carry even to modern readers a sense of the intensity of
conviction that moved the writer. Bathsua Pell's _Essay_ in 1673 is
an admirable piece of propagandist writing. No defender of higher
education in the early days of women's colleges was more pungent
in attack, or tossed off the unmeaning arguments of opponents with
more contemptuous ease. In writing on the higher education of women
it is with the zeal of an enthusiast that Mary Astell marshals the
details of her new scheme. She had thought her plan through to the
end and she describes it with clearness and precision. Its noble
possibilities give rise to seriousness and dignity of style. And when
her mind is overborne by a recognition of the many foolish women
and the scornful men who would render her ideals abortive, she is
roused to passages of energetic satire. She is even acrimonious and
vituperative. There is nothing soft or appealing or feminine about
her work. If she convinces it will not be by the arts of her sex, but
by argument and caustic attack. She does not entreat, she commands
and instructs. The anonymous author of the _Defence_ describes, with
keen analysis, picturesque phrasing, and gay raillery, the beaux,
the clodpate squires, the pedants, and the virtuosi of her day. Few
contemporary satiric portraits are of more penetrating wit. "Sophia"
of pamphlet fame carries on the successful propagandist writing.
And Lady Winchilsea's one prose essay is indicative of her vigorous
possibilities in speech when her ideas and feelings were involved.
One point concerning the generally dignified tone of these essays
in defense of women should be noted, and that is that they were not
the outcome of personally bitter experiences or disappointments on
the part of the authors. The writing was informed rather by a sense
of high civic idealism and responsibility. Though the advancement of
women is presented as a matter of justice, and of importance to women
as individuals, the arguments always turn to a larger conception, and
that is the service rendered to Society and the Church by educated
women.

[Sidenote: Religious experience and controversy]

In religious controversy, also, women excelled. A practical or
personal cause was not imperative. They wrote with equal vehemence,
sincerity, and will to convince, when they were defending an abstract
principle as when they were protesting against injustice, or trying
to further some specific reform. Lady Masham, Susanna Hopton, Mary
Astell, and Mrs. Cockburn sufficiently illustrate the success of
women as disputants. The fact that nearly all the topics on which
these religious controversialists wrote are now dead issues, and that
the writing has inevitably passed into oblivion along with the ideas
it championed, should not be allowed to obscure the very evident
contemporary respect accorded women as redoubtable antagonists and
able advocates. There were also women who wrote little, such as Lady
Pakington and Lady Conway, to whom the best men of the day gave
high esteem for the soundness of their patristic and philosophical
learning, and for the acuteness of their thinking.

Writers on personal religious experience or on hortatory subjects
do not reach so high a grade of work. The prodigious industry of
various compilers, annotators, and note-takers--the true Church of
England "sermon-tasters"--such as Lady Brooke and Lady Halkett, is
less indicative of learning than of a pronounced religious bias. And
in prose, as in verse, the free and natural expression of spiritual
experience was not characteristic of the age.

That more of this controversial and religious writing was not
published can hardly be counted a loss to literature. Religious
meditations quicken the inner life, and the effort to put religious
emotions and beliefs into some literary form must contribute to
a more active mentality, but the resultant printed page is not
necessarily of permanent interest. The ardors and acrimonies, the
labyrinthine twisting of arguments, the niceties of interpretation,
the array of authorities, are all a leaden weight to the modern
reader. And most meditations on virtues and vices are hardly more
stimulating. But we cannot pass the great mass of these religious
writings without noting what a new impression they give us of social
England, especially in the second half of the seventeenth century.
A student of Restoration comedy sees the court of England in its
most frivolous and morally repellent aspect. But these women whose
minds were so set on religion were all members of the aristocracy.
Margaret Blagge, Anne Killigrew, and Anne Kingsmill, women of the
most sincere and ardent piety, were in intimate association with
the courts of Charles II and James II. Lady Pakington, Lady Brooke,
Lady Halkett, Lady Masham, Lady Russell, Mary Astell, Lady Elizabeth
Hastings, and, later, Lady Huntington, were all by rank or especial
opportunity in the highest and most exclusive social circles and so
in contact with the profligacy of the court. Their extreme assiduity
in all matters of religion, in church attendance, in private prayer,
in meditation, in self-examination, in their austere moral standards,
were a violent reaction from the evil life about them. In the homes
and small social circles where their influence could be felt was
being prepared a body of moral indignation, a desire for uprightness
and purity of life, that gave to Jeremy Collier's attack on the stage
in 1698 so overwhelming a response, and that was the sustaining force
back of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: Work of women compared with contemporary work by men]

The writing done by women between 1660 and 1760 is more impressive
from its amount and variety than from any high excellence of
its component parts. A mere calling of the great names of the
period--Milton, Bunyan, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Addison, and Steele--is
adequate to show that no woman of the time is comparable to these men
in mental stamina and energy, or in deft literary manipulation. The
dramatic work by women presents no such brilliant social satire as we
find in Etherege and Wycherley, no wit so penetrating and sparkling
as in Congreve's _Way of the World_, no humor so innocent and likable
as in Steele's _Tender Husband_. In poetry Orinda and Ardelia make
but a poor showing beside the giants of the day. There are no women
writers on literary criticism even approaching the mastery of Dryden.
There are no essayists with the light touch and social ease of
Addison and Steele. There are no novelists to be ranked with Defoe,
Richardson, and Fielding.

These rather damaging negations amount, however, in the final
analysis, only to a statement that among the comparatively small
number of women writers no one reached the pre-eminence of the eight
or ten most distinguished literary men. But the same statement
could be made concerning the crowd of men striving for success in
authorship. Of most men it could be said that their best endeavors
left wide unconquered fields between them and the elect. It is,
indeed, much to say of women that, untrained, with no stimulus of
money or fame, a considerable number of them yet attained to an
honorable place in writers of a class below the best, and that
in some realms such as autobiography, biography, travels, and
letter-writing, and in writing inspired by some social reform, some
propaganda of religion or ethics, they rank among the best of their
time. The same may be said of their work in pure scholarship. Miss
Elstob, Miss Carter, and Mrs. Collyer, in their respective fields of
Anglo-Saxon, Greek, and German, were exact and thorough beyond the
demands of contemporary standards.

But even if there were not many successes to record, the great amount
of work done by women would still carry its own sort of proof.
In establishing the existence of a tendency it is not the single
brilliant example, the genius, the persons of extraordinary ability,
that count. It is rather the aims, ambitions, attempts, of many
persons variously striving in the same general direction.

[Sidenote: Comedy an embodiment of current opinion]

The general seventeenth and eighteenth century opinion concerning
learned women finds fairly complete statement in contemporary
comedy. The persistence of the learned lady as a comic type serves
incidentally as corroborative proof of the increasing attention given
by women to learned pursuits, for no stage type remains amusing from
year to year unless personages at least moderately correspondent to
the type exist in sufficient numbers to count as a factor in social
life. A basis of reality is necessary to give the type currency. But
the comedy is more important as voicing a general critical estimate
of values. A character does not hold its own as a comic type unless
to the mass of theater-goers it presents itself as out of focus
with common sense. A moral or social judgment is implied. The laugh
that followed Biddy Tipkin and Polly Honeycomb and Lydia Languish
was a recognition of the absurdity involved in regulating real life
by the rules of romance, and the underlying protest against too free
access to fiction was quite in line with the diatribes of various
grave moralists. So, too, with the learned lady. The comic character
gained its point from the assumption on the part of the playwright
and the audience that there was a fundamental incongruity between
the lady and her learning. Learning did not belong to the lady, and
when she assumed it she was thereby justly betrayed into all sorts
of humiliations and absurdities. Back of every picture there was,
consciously or unconsciously, the critical judgment. Learning and
ladies do not coalesce. Either the lady abandons the learning or the
learning spoils the lady.

There are two kinds of learned ladies represented in the comedy. In
the case of young, lovely, and well-dowered girls, learning was but
a foible. When convinced of its absurdity, these desirable maidens
put aside their big folios and became the properly humble, adoring,
and ignorant wives of the heroes whose sound good sense had shown
them their folly. The unpleasanter elements of the comic portraits
belong to dissatisfied wives whose souls were still bent on amorous
adventure; to obsolescent ladies unwilling to confess the decay of
their charms; to the old and the homely whom no bravery of attire
and no battery of glances and graces could restore to the marriage
market. To ladies of both classes Platonism is a name to conjure
with. All physical manifestations of love are abhorrent to them. The
mystic union of souls is as much as the truly refined can tolerate.
To the young learned ladies this doctrine of austerity has at first a
genuine appeal, but is quickly proved impracticable and fallacious.
To the other ladies virtue is but a screen to mask their discredited
charms.

The knowledge of the learned ladies is as spurious as their virtue.
They profess an intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek, and French
seems their native tongue. They are at ease in the jargon of
philosophical systems. They follow the telescope with the ardor of
the Royal Society itself. Their studies are full of mathematical
books and instruments. The scalpel and microscope lead them along
the path of anatomical research. But in all this parade of learning
there is no real scholarship. The ladies are pretentious and
conceited, flaunting their false Latin and Greek before all comers,
claiming to have explored the depths of knowledge when their short
swallow-flights have scarcely brushed the surface.

The comedy may be said to embody the ordinary view as to the
unsuitableness of learning for women. This implied critical negation
is given a positive analogue in the actual training given to girls.
Their early education was not neglected as is shown by the numbers of
masters and tutors provided for the young daughters of good families.
And from six to fourteen many girls were sent to the numerous
boarding schools for young misses. But whether at home or in school
the teaching included little more than deportment, accomplishments,
and housewifery. These were what, in the language of Mr. Verney,
would render a girl "considerable in the eyes of God and man." Hannah
Wood's school was the most advanced of these minor schools for girls,
and Sarah Fielding's _Little Female Academy_ depicts the best that
was done for younger girls. In any case education apparently ceased
at fifteen or sixteen.

The schools provided for girls represent what it was in general
thought that they needed. The comedy represents the absurdity of
trying to pass these limits. Confirmatory of these views would
be many private expressions by both men and women. There were,
of course, hundreds of intelligent men to whom any change in the
status of women seemed hostile to the best interests of society. And
there were hundreds of women who flouted all thoughts of learning
as essentially, eternally unfeminine. _The Spectator_ records that
at a certain period in the court of France it was counted a mark
of ill-breeding to pronounce hard words right and that ladies not
infrequently took occasion to use such words "that they might show
a Politeness in murdering them." And the diatribes in the English
feminist pamphlets from Bathsua Makin to "Sophia" show how many women
in high circles boasted of ignorance as one of their charms.

[Sidenote: Advanced opinions of a minority]

But we come to quite a different state of affairs when we consider
the opinions of the progressive minority. The proposed schemes for
higher education, although without immediate practical result, are
notable indications of a new era of thought. Bathsua Makin's was
the first formulated plan. But her effort to graft new fruit on the
old stock resulted in a singular mixture. Her impassioned desire to
induct girls into the excellencies of higher learning was hampered
in various ways. She could not lessen the attention paid to the
accomplishments; she could not venture to push the school age beyond
sixteen; and she could not make her beloved linguistics compulsory.
What she did accomplish was not in the establishment of an ordered
system. It was rather the impress of her tastes and advanced ideas on
the minds of individual pupils. The girls who went from the Tottenham
High Cross School to various distinguished homes in England had no
alarmingly fluent or exact knowledge of Latin, Greek, or Hebrew. But
they had all at least been invited to look within the portals of the
palace of learning and some had found it rich and alluring. To all
had come a new conception of the learning possible to women. Mrs.
Makin's court prestige, her reputation for prodigious scholastic
attainments, her courage, originality, and independence, made her a
dignified and an authoritative figure. It is a matter of regret that
full annals of her school were not preserved.

The education proposed by Dr. Hickes in his remarkable sermon in
1683, ten years after Mrs. Makin established her school, was not
analyzed into details. But when he suggested for women seminaries of
learning similar to Oxford and Cambridge with only such changes in
the instruction and the regimen as might be found advisable to fit
them for their lives as women, and when he urged rich and childless
women to make their wealth serve humanity by founding such colleges
for girls, he was too far ahead of his time to meet any immediate
practical response, or even any opposition.

The next plan came from Mary Astell. This was a matured scheme.
Her college was to be a sort of conventual retreat without vows
and with an emphasis on the intellectual as well as the religious
life. Publicity, college honors, degrees, were not thought of.
There were to be no required studies, nor does she suggest even an
orderly progression of lectures. The heterogeneous character of her
proposed clientèle forbade any rigidity of plan. Mary Astell seems
to have looked about her and found many women to whom the customary
régime offered no satisfactory place. There were widows who did not
choose remarriage, spinsters unwelcome in the homes allotted them
by kinship, girls with dowries too slender to make an advantageous
marriage probable, young heiresses subject to the too adventurous
pursuit of impecunious lovers and so in need of a haven pending
marriage. All these uncoördinated needs were to be met by the new
institution. The plan was to provide agreeable surroundings wherein
women could tranquilly and without hostile criticism work out their
own salvation. Practical beneficence, teaching, study in various
realms, religious meditation, were the avenues open to individual
choice. To the women who remained permanently in the college a life
of dignified achievement was possible. Upon the young women who were
destined to be wives and mothers in important homes would be exerted
an influence tending to ennoble them in their domestic relations,
and the learning they had gained would prove a resource amidst the
distractions and trials of life. The plan included too much, and
the adjustments rendered necessary by its captivating flexibility
would have taxed any organizer to the utmost. Perhaps it is as well
that the scheme was not put to the test of practice. Mary Astell's
contribution was in the idea she set forth and in her eloquent
defense of that idea.

It is surprising that Defoe's plan for a woman's college should have
been coincident with Mary Astell's, yet independent of it. Defoe's
fertile imagination creates curious buildings in which to house his
Academy. He evidently considers Mary Astell's plan as too loose in
general structure and too religious in tone to be practicable. He
narrows his work down to such studies as are given in public schools.

After Defoe we hear of no further plans for higher education. But
the idea lingered in the minds of many. Richardson in _Clarissa
Harlowe_ suggests such an institution, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
says that it was her youthful ambition to be foundress of a college.
In Mrs. Centlivre's _Basset Table_ the learned young Valeria is
advised to found a woman's college in which the pupils shall be
called "Valerians." The most curious and interesting embodiment of
the scheme was that by Thomas Amory. The fullness and realistic
precision of detail in his account of the "Hertfordshire Religious
Retirement" were such as to make his heroine, the foundress, accepted
as an historical personage. The fictitious narrative is, however, of
especial significance as showing the persistence of Mary Astell's
abortive plan.

In complete harmony with these various schemes for giving women
greater intellectual freedom was the attitude in many private
homes. It is quite surprising to discover how many studious girls
had a favorable home environment. Elizabeth Jocelyn's grandfather,
a distinguished bishop, conducted her studies. Mary North's father
"fostered her little assemblage of female _literati_." Lady Pakington
was taught by the learned Sir Norton Knatchbull. Lucy Apsley's father
spurred her on to outdo her brothers in Latin, and Mr. Hutchinson
fell in love with her for her poetry and learning. Dudleya North had
the same teachers and studies as her brothers until they went to the
University. Damaris Cudworth's mind was her father's joy and pride
and Locke was her tutor. Bishop Burnet provided for his daughter Mary
all possible opportunities in books and art. John Evelyn cherished
the intellectual tastes of his daughter and showed her writings and
paintings with pride. Anne Baynard, Anna Hume, Elizabeth Singer,
were girls whose early literary tendencies found paternal approval
and aid. William Elstob gave fullest sympathy and guidance to his
ambitious young sister, the _indefessa comes_ of his studies. And
Elizabeth Carter's intellectual needs ruled the household.

These protected home studies were not unlike the opportunities
offered girls in Tudor times and had the same disadvantages. There
were no ordered courses of study. The depths and shallows of a girl's
learning were largely dependent on the tastes of her father or tutor.
She entered upon such a line of work as offered itself, prepared
herself for it as she went along, and achieved what she could. As
compensations for a training so desultory were the concentration and
zest of the work, the undisciplined ardor of the pioneer, contact
with great books and men of well-seasoned learning.

It is important to note that these scattered homes where the daughter
found herself free to develop learned tastes were doubtless more
numerous than is at first apparent. We know of a few such homes
because of chance published records. But there must have been many
homes where the lettered leisure such as we find in the Evelyn
family, in Lord Winchilsea's at Eastwell, and in Archbishop Secker's
at Canterbury, was shared in to the fullest extent by the ladies of
the household. No daughter of the family might attain to notice as a
writer, but the result of such reading and thinking would be a high
level of general intelligence which might, in the mass, be of more
significance than authorship.

More important still as indicative of a new era is the favor accorded
learned women by many men of high standing. The adulation given the
Duchess of Newcastle may have been inspired by her rank and wealth,
but Jeremy Taylor, Cowley, and the Earl of Roscommon had no such
reason for their homage to Orinda. The clergymen who gathered at
Lady Pakington's rejoiced in her great learning. Dryden gave to Anne
Killigrew such praise as awaits few poets and artists. The Norths
gave honorable public recognition of Dudleya North's remarkable
linguistic attainments. The family circle at Eastwell applauded Lady
Winchilsea's poems. Mrs. Blackwell's work received formal recognition
from the most learned doctors of the day. Of the early novel-writers
Richardson is so well recognized as the sex's champion, and as the
champion of learned ladies in particular, that his services need no
further emphasis. Fielding's satirical picture of Mrs. Western ends
with the conclusion that "petticoats should not meddle," but he more
than turns the scale by the opinions he expresses in the Prefaces to
his sister's books. Most men of ability preferred as companions women
of good minds and a fair stock of ideas. Even Bishop Burnet, while
afraid of general education, praises the intellectual endowment and
learned attainments of each of his three wives. And Swift, though
contemptuous of the race of women, for close comradeship chose
Stella, a woman of wit, sense, and learning, in preference to some
one of the doll or clinging-vine type. And his amiability, though
rather too condescending, towards various literary ladies, may in
part offset his brutal general statements. The fact is, nearly every
woman of learned or literary attainments was accorded praise--even an
undue meed of praise--from her immediate circle and from at least a
few of her distinguished contemporaries.

Furthermore, publication of worthy work was made a matter of
urgency. Dr. Hickes did all in his power to bring Elizabeth Elstob's
Anglo-Saxon work before the learned public of his day, and it was
he who insisted on the publication of Susanna Hopton's letters.
Lady Masham's _Letters of the Love of God_ were brought out only on
the insistence of John Norris. Mrs. Cockburn's early philosophical
writings received immediate praise from Bishop Burnet, John Norris,
and John Locke. But for Archbishop Secker Miss Carter's _Epictetus_
would have remained in manuscript. It was through Bishop Burnet's
insistence that his wife's _Meditations_ were published.

And still one more debt must be recorded, for some of the most
important books in behalf of women were written by men. From Gerbier
to Ballard the list is an interesting one. No woman ventured on
statements so astounding as those which Poulain de la Barre deduced
from his fundamental assumption of the equality of the sexes. His
arguments may have been but an academic pushing of a principle to
its logical conclusion, or his book may even have been satirical
in intent, but the English translation was evidently made in all
seriousness and served as a basis for "Sophia's" most audacious
claims. Specific attempts to bring female genius into knowledge and
repute were by men. John Duncomb's _Feminead_ in 1751 leads the list,
and before 1760 we have the _Poems by Eminent Ladies_ of Bonnell and
Thornton, the _Lives_ by Theophilus Cibber, the exaltation of learned
women in _John Buncle_, and, chief of all, the monumental work by
George Ballard.

In summary it seems fair to say that while there was a general
opinion adverse to the learning of women and suspicious of it, there
were yet many men who seriously held views that would not sound
antiquated in any modern defense of the higher education of women.

[Sidenote: Education in relation to the Church]

In all the discussions of plans for the intellectual training of
women two suggestive limitations are to be noted. One is that nearly
all men and women who favored the higher education did so because
of the advantage it would be to the Church. The Quakers recognized
the right of women to speak in public because they believed such
action authorized by the Scriptures, but the freedom so granted did
not go beyond religious topics. Susanna Wesley's ministry to her
husband's parishioners was excusable only because her teaching was
in the service of the Church. And the clergymen of high rank who
favored learned women did so because the piety of these women would
probably prove more advantageous if it were trained. Even Ballard put
extra emphasis on the ladies who read the Scriptures in Hebrew and
Greek. And it was probably ethical rather than literary standards
that precluded any mention in his record of women such as Mrs. Behn,
Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Haywood. In all Ballard's many pages I do not
recall even a hint that his learned ladies could be accused of any
irregularities of life or doctrine. And it is because women are
naturally devout that Amory chooses learned young ladies to expound
his new religion.

The basis of Bishop Burnet's objection to Mary Astell's college was
that a body of women thus set apart for learning might conceivably
prove inimical to the Church. The isolated learned lady under the
charge of some wise husband or father could presumably be guided in
right paths or suppressed. But who could give bonds for a college of
learned women? It was the attitude towards the Church that turned the
scale against or in favor of higher education. In point of fact, no
woman--not even the most profligate--wrote against religion. On the
contrary, all women of letters--even the most profligate--wrote in
favor of religion. Genuinely, or as a matter of convention, they all
upheld virtue and the authority of the Church.

[Sidenote: Outcome of education not foreseen]

A second limitation is that the ultimate outcome of any greatly
increased intellectual freedom for women was but dimly descried.
If women were permitted to pursue learning into remote fastnesses,
if they were allowed to thread their difficult way through the
entanglements of philosophical disputations, if they were encouraged
to look out upon the follies of life with satiric or reformatory
intent, further steps in independence would seem an inevitable
sequence. But such steps were not only not taken, they were not even
foreseen. Nor did the most advanced men and women make any claims
extending beyond the freedom to read, write, and think according to
their own desires. Home duties and relationships remained unchanged.
Bathsua Makin said that higher education was not designed to
make wives self-assertive, but more reasonably and intelligently
submissive. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mary Astell, the two most
advanced and independent women of their day, are at one with the
theory of the divinely ordained headship of man. Their bitterness of
tone contains no thought of change, no hint of rebellion. Women were
still under the dominion of fathers and husbands. The difference was
that these fathers and husbands were in numerous instances willing
to accord a very much enlarged freedom. But the next step was not
taken by virtue of which the final right of decision as to her own
thought and action would have belonged to the woman herself.

There was, furthermore, no claim made by women for any part in public
life. Mary Wollstonecraft's suffrage programme of 1791, mild as it
was, would have seemed to Mary Astell an incredible overturning
of feminine ideals. Mary Astell and her congeners could not see
that the putting of educational weapons into the hands of women
was a concession carrying with it all later demands of feminism.
The advocates of higher education for women were blind to the
potentialities of the situation. There was no immediate following-up
of theory into action. The idea of woman as a self-sufficing,
self-directing individuality, responsible for her own destiny,
and capable of playing an important part in civic and national
affairs, did not come into clear outline until two centuries after
Mary Astell's pronunciamento. In the period before 1760 we become
aware of a moving on the waters. We are conscious of a great stir
of preparation as for a crisis. Many paths converge towards one
goal, but no goal is reached. Plans and achievements and favorable
utterances seem to halt in mid-air.

A detailed study of the various ways in which women sought for
fuller and richer intellectual life shows in what isolation they
worked, with what lack of leadership, with what a depressing sense
of the futility of their uncoördinated efforts. The beginnings of
the new ideals for women were so modest and unassuming, so casual,
so without self-consciousness, that at the time they could hardly be
recognized as beginnings. Evidences of a new vitality appear in the
retrospect as numerous and promising, but in reality each thinker of
new thoughts stood out alone, a solitary champion, scarcely realizing
that in other parts of the field other champions were fighting under
the same banners. We can now bring together many rather advanced
statements in favor of educating girls. But these were often mere
passing isolated utterances. There was nothing like an organized
propaganda, no body of public opinion growing steadily in mass and
power till it became dominant. There are hundreds of blades pushing
up through the dark earth, but the field is never quite ripe for
harvest. There is so much reasoning, so much able thought, so much
sincerity of feeling and aspiration, and there are so many women
reaching out into new mental realms, that a decisive revolution of
opinion seems often imminent. But the world listens unconvinced, and
in the actual affairs of life apparently applies the old standards.

What was actually accomplished in the century before 1760 was a
lavish sowing of seed, a steady infiltration of new ideas, a breaking
up of old certainties as to woman's place in domestic and civic life,
and an accumulation of examples proving women capable of the most
varied intellectual aptitudes and energies.


THE END




BIBLIOGRAPHY


I. BOOKS BY WOMEN BEFORE 1760

  "A. M." _Mrs._ The Cook's New Year's Gift, Cookery refined, or
  The Lady, Gentlewoman and Servant-maid's Companion. London, 1697,
  1700.

  ASTELL, MARY. Letters concerning the Love of God. London, 1695.

  ---- A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of
  their True and Greatest Interest. London, 1694. Fourth edition,
  1697.

  ---- Some Reflections on Marriage. London, 1700.

  ---- Moderation Truly Stated. London, 1704.

  ---- A Fair Way with Dissenters. London, 1704.

  ---- An Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil
  War in this Kingdom. London, 1704.

  ---- The Christian Religion as Professed by a Daughter of the
  Church of England. London, 1705.

  ---- Bart'lemy Fair or an Enquiry after Wit. London, 1709.

  "A. W." A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia. Written by
  a young Gentlewoman, Mrs. A. W. [Anna Weamys]. London, 1690.

  BACON, LADY ANNE. An Apology for the Church of England.
  [Translated from the Latin treatise by Bishop Jewel.] London,
  1564.

  BARBER, _Mrs._ MARY. Poems. London, 1734.

  BARKER, JANE. Poetical Recreations.... In Two Parts. Part I.
  Occasionally written by Mrs. Jane Barker. Part II. By Several
  Gentlemen of the Universities and Others. London, 1688.

  ---- The Entertaining Novels of Mrs. Jane Barker. London, 1715,
  1719.

  ---- A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies, or Love and Virtue
  Recommended.... By Mrs. Jane Barker, of Wilsthorp, near Stamford,
  in Lincolnshire. London, 1723.

  BEHN, _Mrs._ APHRA. Works. Edited by Montague Summers. Six
  volumes. London, 1915.

  BELL, _Mrs._ SUSANNA. The Legacie of a Dying Mother to her
  mourning Children. London, 1672.

  BLACKWELL, _Mrs._ ELIZABETH. A Curious Herbal containing Five
  Hundred Cuts of the most useful Plants which are now used in the
  Practice of Physic. Two volumes. London, 1739.

  BROOKE, LADY ELIZABETH. Selections from the Writings of Lady
  Elizabeth Brooke in The Lady's Monitor. London, 1828.

  BURNET, _Mrs._ ELIZABETH. A Method of Devotion. London, 1713.
  (Third edition.)

  BURY, _Mrs._ ELIZABETH. Diary (Published in abridged form).
  Bristol, 1721.

  CARTER, ELIZABETH. Poems on Particular Occasions. London, 1738.

  ---- An Examination of Pope's Essay on Man. [Translated from the
  first treatise of Crousaz.] London, 1738.

  ---- Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy Explained for the Use of
  the Ladies. In Six Dialogues on Light and Colour. Two volumes.
  London, 1739.

  ---- The Moral Discourses of Epictetus. Translated by Elizabeth
  Carter. Two volumes. Dutton and Company, New York, 1899. [First
  edition, 1758.]

  ---- Poems on Several Occasions. London, 1762.

  ---- Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine
  Talbot. From the Year 1741 to 1770. To which are added Letters
  from Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Vesey between the Years 1763 and 1787.
  Four volumes. London, 1809.

  CELLIER, _Mrs._ ELIZABETH. Malice Defeated. London, 1680.

  ---- A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital and raising
  a revenue of 5000_l_ or 6000_l_ a year by and for the Maintenance
  of a Corporation of Skilful Midwives. London, 1687. Printed in
  Harleian Miscellany. (Park.) Vol. IV.

  CENTLIVRE, _Mrs._ SUSANNA. Works. Three volumes. London, 1761.

  CHANDLER, MARY. A Description of Bath. London, 1744. (Sixth
  edition.)

  CHIDLEY, _Mrs._ KATHERINE. The Justification of the Independent
  Churches of Christ. London, 1641.

  CHUDLEIGH, LADY. The Ladies' Defence. London, 1699.

  ---- Poems. London, 1703.

  ---- Essays. London, 1710.

  COCKBURN, _Mrs._ CATHERINE. The Works of Mrs. Catherine Cockburn,
  Theological, Moral, Dramatic, and Poetical. Edited by Thomas
  Birch. Two volumes. London, 1751.

  COLLYER, _Mrs._ MARY. Felicia to Charlotte: Being Letters from a
  Young Lady in the Country to her Friend in Town. Vol. I, 1744.
  Vol. II. 1749.

  ---- A Christmas Box, Consisting of Moral Stories, adapted to the
  Capacities of Little Children and calculated to give them early
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INDEX


  _Abbot and the Learned Woman, The_, 12

  _Abel, The Death of_, 232

  _Abels, Der Tod_, 232

  _Academia: or the Humours of Oxford_, 145

  Actresses, 81-84, 433

  Adams, Eleanor N., 176

  Addison, Joseph, 174, 437, 444

  _Adventures of Rivella_, 209

  _Advice to a Daughter_, 324, 326

  _Æsop_, 387-88

  _Agnes de Castro_, 105

  Aitkin, George, 232

  Alexander, William, 423

  Algarotti, 256

  "A. M.," Mrs., 92

  Amory, Thomas, 167, 367-71, 422, 450

  _Amours of Bosvil and Galesia_, 162, 163, 164, 165

  _Ane Godlie Dreame_, 21

  _Anecdotes of Painting_, 84

  _Anglia_, 74

  _Anglo-Saxon Grammar_, 176-79

  Anne, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery, 32-33

  _Apology, Mrs. James's_, 103

  _Apology for the Church of England, An_, 103

  "Arabella," 411-12

  Arbuthnot, John, 393

  "Ardelia," 139, 152, 444.
    _See_ Winchilsea, Lady

  _Armenian Nunnery, The_, 41

  _Art of Cookery, The_, 92

  _Arte of English Poesie, The_, 18

  Arundel, Daughters of the Earl of, 13

  Arundel, Mary, Countess of, 14

  Ascham, Roger, 14, 426

  Ashton, John, 259, 260, 263

  Askew, Ann, 113, 326

  "Aspasia," 121

  Astell, Mary, 35, 100, 101, 111, 200, 246, 291, 297-305, 311, 313,
        341, 347, 350, 370, 442, 443, 444, 450, 454, 455

  "Astræa," 106, 130, 160, 209
    _See_ Behn, Mrs.

  _Athenæ Oxoniensis_, 140, 190

  Aubrey, John, 20, 21, 22, 54, 421


  Bacon, Lady, 13, 23

  _Bailey's Dictionary_, 217

  Ballard, George, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 31, 35, 67, 77, 119,
        140, 178, 179, 181, 185, 224, 252, 353, 354-65, 366, 421, 422,
        452, 453

  Barber, Mrs. Mary, 218-22, 224, 251

  Barker, Miss Jane, 161-65, 262, 434, 437, 439

  _Barker, Mrs. Jane. Ein Beitrag zur Englischen Literaturgeschichte_,
        161

  Barksdale, Clement, 273

  Barnard, Mr., 123

  Barnes (or Berners), Juliana, 4

  Barre, Poulain de la, 286-90

  _Basset Table, The_, 389-91

  _Bath, A Description of_, 251

  Baynard, Anne, 144-45, 451

  Beale, Mary, 84-85, 88, 433

  Bedford, Lady, 28, 29, 433

  Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 129-31, 134, 136, 326, 366, 378-79, 424, 431, 436,
        437, 453

  Beighton, Mr., 327

  Bell, Mrs. Susanna, 95

  Bellamy, Daniel, 264-67

  Betterton, Mrs., 82, 83

  _Bevis of Hamtoun, Sir_, 3

  _Bibliographica_, 42

  Bickerstaff, 398-99

  "Biddy Tipkin," 403-09, 418-19, 446

  _Biographia Britannica_, 84, 423

  _Biographia Dramatica_, 136, 188

  _Biographium Femineum_, 32, 145, 368, 422

  Birch, Thomas, 110, 421

  Birch, Una, 271

  Blackwell, Mrs. Elizabeth, 185-87, 425, 431, 435, 452

  Blagge, Mrs. Margaret, 428, 440, 444
    _See_ Mrs. Godolphin

  Blake, William, 268

  Bland, Mrs., 160-61, 365

  Blount, Martha, 350

  Boarding-schools for Girls, 258-68

  Bohemia, Princess of, 26

  _Bold Stroke for a Wife, A_, 134

  _Book for Boys and Girls_, 89, 435

  Boulting, William, 4

  Bourne, Henry, 102

  Bovey, Mrs. Catherine, 118, 119-20, 124, 435

  _Bowyer, Anecdotes of_, 103, 104, 180, 187, 193, 243

  Bracegirdle, Anne, 82, 83

  Bradshaigh, Lady, 338-41

  Brathwait, Richard, 24

  Breton, Nicholas, 22

  _Brief Lives_, 20, 21, 54, 421

  Brightland, John, 177

  _British Muse, The_, 190

  _British Quarterly Review_, 114

  Broadstreet, Anne, 326

  Brooke, Lady Elizabeth, 93, 443, 444

  Brooke, Henry, 223

  Brooke, Mrs., 352

  _Brookiana_, 223

  Bruce, James, 187

  _Brumoy's Greek Theatre_, 135, 242

  Brydges, Sir Egerton, 53

  Buckingham, Duchess of, 126

  _Buncle, The Life of John_, 167, 234, 367, 368, 453

  Bunyan, John, 89, 435

  Burleigh, Lady, 12

  Burnet, Mrs. Elizabeth, 98

  Burnet, George, 107, 108

  Burnet, Gilbert, 144, 145, 196, 197, 350-51, 450, 452, 454

  Burnet, Thomas, 303

  Bury, Mrs., 99-100, 365

  _Bury-Fair_, 380-82, 402

  _Busy Body, The_, 134, 135-36


  "Calista," 386 (Mrs. Cockburn)

  Campbell, Thomas, 423

  Cannon, Mary Agnes, 9

  Carew, Lady Elizabeth, 326

  Carey, Lady Elizabeth (Spencer), 29

  Carey, Lady Elizabeth (Tanfield), 33, 34

  Carey, Lady Letice, 34

  Carlisle, Anne, 84

  Caroline, Queen, 184

  Carter, Elizabeth, 77, 243, 245, 255-57, 352, 440, 445, 451, 452

  Carter, Thomas, 35, 41

  _Castara_, 24

  Castiglione, Baldasar, 18, 426

  "Catchat," 383

  Catherine, Queen, 6, 7, 426

  _Cato_, 199, 437

  Cellier, Mrs. Elizabeth, 90-91, 434

  Centlivre, Mrs. Susanna, 132, 133-37, 389-91, 436, 450

  Centlivre, Mrs., German Studies of her Plays, 137

  _Century of Distichs_, 13

  Chalmers, Alexander, 12, 422, 423

  Chambers, Mary C. E., 38

  Chandler, Mary, 251

  Chapone, Mrs., 182-85

  _Characters_, 23

  Charity Schools, 268-71

  Charles I, 84, 427

  Chidley, Katherine, 36-37

  _Child and His Book, The_, 89

  Children's Books, 89, 233

  _Choice Manuall_, A, 31

  _Christmas Box, A_, 233, 435

  Christopherson, Dr., 11

  Chudleigh, Lady, 147-50

  Cibber, Colley, 135, 229, 395-98

  Cibber, Mrs. Susanna, 83

  Cibber, Theophilus, 84, 128, 129, 146, 155, 208, 212, 251, 366, 393,
        422

  Circulating Libraries, 414-15

  _City Match, The_, 375

  _City of Learned Women, A_, 4

  Claire, Countess Dowager of, 20

  _Clarissa Harlowe_, 337-38, 450

  "Clinket, Phœbe," 349, 393-95

  Cockburn, Mrs. Catherine, 104-11, 245, 248, 352, 386, 437, 440, 443

  Coke, Daughters of Sir Anthony, 12, 13, 27, 326

  Cole, Dr., 11

  Coleman, Mrs., 81

  Collet, Mary, 40, 42

  Collier, Jeremy, 118, 130, 152, 444

  Collier, Margaret, 341-42

  Collyer, Mrs. Mary Mitchell, 131, 231-35, 425, 431, 435, 437, 445

  _Collyer, Mrs. Mary Mitchell: A Romanticist of the Mid-Century_,
        234-35

  Colman, George, 413-18

  Colville, Lady Elizabeth, 20

  _Comparison between the Two Stages_, 82, 388-89

  _Confessio Amantis_, 3

  Congreve, William, 121, 384-86, 444

  _Conjugal Duty_, 147-49

  _Conscious Lovers, The_, 137, 234

  Conway, Lady, 112-14, 443

  _Cook's New Year's Gift, The_, 91

  Cooper, Mrs. Elizabeth, 187-93, 421, 425, 426

  _Cortegiano, Il_, 18

  Cotterell, Sir Charles, 55, 58, 59

  _Countess of Lincoln's Nurserie, The_, 30, 31

  _Countess of Montgomerie's Urania, The_, 29

  _Court Poems_, 199

  Coventry, Francis, 125, 126

  Cowley, Hannah, 137

  Creed, Elizabeth, 88

  Cudworth, Damaris, 450.
    _See_ Masham, Mrs.

  Cumberland, Margaret, Countess of, 31

  _Cursor Mundi_, 2

  Curtis, Sarah, 87

  _Cyclopædia of Education_, 37, 42, 44, 276


  _Damoiselles à la Mode_, 377

  Dancy, Elizabeth, 11

  D'Anvers, Mrs. Alicia, 145-46

  Danvers, Elizabeth, 20

  Davenport, Cyril, 42

  _David Simple_, 235-37, 239

  Davies, Lady Eleanor, 37

  Davies, Sir John, 277

  Davys, Mrs. Mary, 231

  Debate in the House of Lords, 202-04

  _Defence of the Doctrine of Resurrection of Body_, 109

  Defoe, Daniel, 303, 311-13, 444, 450

  Delany, Dr., 219, 221, 226, 252, 253

  Delany, Mrs., 87, 183-85, 203, 251-54, 262, 361, 362, 423, 425

  Denton, Nancy, 24, 25

  De Quincey, Thomas, 346

  _Devil is an Ass, The_, 375

  _Dialogue concerning Women, A_, 322-23

  _Diary._ _See_ Evelyn, John

  _Diary._ _See_ Godolphin, Mrs.

  _Diary._ _See_ Oldys, William

  _Diary._ _See_ Pepys, Samuel

  _Diary._ _See_ Thoresby, Ralph

  _Diary._ _See_ Warwick, Countess of

  Dictionary of Painters, 84

  _Discourse concerning the Love of God_, 101

  _Discourse of the Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship_, 56

  _Distressed Mother, The_, 338, 437

  _Divine and Moral Songs for Children_, 89, 435

  _Double Dealer, The_, 384-86

  Drummond, Robert B., 12

  Dryden, John, 106, 129, 140, 144, 179, 211, 366, 377, 437, 444, 451

  Duncomb, John, 352-54, 453

  _Dunton, John, Life and Errors of_, 103

  Dyce, Alexander, 19, 21, 37, 423, 424


  _Early Metrical Tales_, 21

  Eckenstein, Lina, 1

  _Education of a Daughter, Instructions for the_, 266, 291

  Education of Girls, Higher, 271-315

  _L'Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes_, 27

  _Eleonora's Adventures_, 204

  _Eliza's Babes_, 127

  Elizabeth, Queen, 19, 23, 27, 53, 426, 427

  _Elogium Heroinum_, 26, 274

  Elstob, Elizabeth, 169-85, 246, 304, 305, 353, 363, 425, 439, 445,
        451, 452

  Elstob, William, 171, 172, 173, 176, 179, 181, 451

  _Eminent Englishwomen, Memoirs of_, 424

  _Eminent Persons, Letters of_, 171, 357, 361

  _Enchiridion_, 197

  _English Gentleman, The_, 24

  _English Historical Review_, 1

  _English Poets_, 423

  _Entertaining Novels_, 161, 162

  "Ephelia," 138, 139.
    _See_ Philips, Joan

  _Epicœne_, 374

  _Epictetus_, 197, 256, 452

  Erasmus, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 17, 275, 426

  _Essay in Defence of the Female Sex_, 305-11

  _Essay on Nature and Obligations of Virtue_, 109

  _Essay on Projects_, 303, 311-13

  _Essay on Samplers_, 260

  _Essay to Revive Antient Education of Gentlewomen_, 280-86

  Etherege, George, 130, 376, 444

  Evelyn, John, 19, 44, 52, 77, 80, 87, 141, 278, 303, 421, 440, 450,
        451

  Evelyn, Mary, 87, 141-43

  Evelyn, Mrs., 51, 141-43, 440

  _Evesham, History of_, 181

  _Experiences of God's Gracious Dealing_, 95

  _External Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth_,
        369


  Fage, Mary, 36

  _Fair Counsellor, The_, 149

  _False Delicacy_, 137

  _Fame's Roule_, 36

  _Familiar Letters between Characters of David Simple_, 236

  _Familiar Letters and Poems_, 249

  Fanshawe, Lady, 45, 74-76, 80, 428, 432, 439

  "Fantast, Lady," 380-82

  "Fantast, Mrs.," 380-82

  Farquhar, George, 106, 389

  _Fatal Friendship_, 105, 106, 437

  _Felicia to Charlotte_, 234

  Fell, Mrs. Margaret, 111-12, 113

  _Fells of Swarthmore Hall, The_, 111

  _Female Biography_, 368, 423

  _Female Poems_, 138

  _Female Poets_, 127

  _Female Spectator, The_, 216

  _Female Vertuosos, The_, 382-84, 402

  _Female Wits_, 132

  _Feminead_, 352-54, 453

  _Feminine Influence on Poets_, 29

  _Femmes poètes, Les, au XVI^e siècle_, 28

  _Femmes Savantes, Les_, 376, 377, 378, 380, 395

  Fénelon, François de Salignac, 266, 291

  Fenn, Mr., 108

  Ferrar, Miss, 352

  Ferrar, Nicholas, 40, 41

  Feugère, Leon, 28

  Field, Mrs., 89

  Fielding, Henry, 201, 235, 236, 342-43, 452

  Fielding, Sarah, 89, 233, 235-37, 245, 437, 447

  _Fielding, Miss Sarah, als Romanschriftstellerin_, 239

  Fiennes, Celia, 165-69, 432, 441

  Finch, Anne, 112-14. _See_ Conway, Lady

  _Floris and Blanchefleur_, 3

  Fordyce, Dr. James, 429

  _Fortnightly Review_, 1

  _Fortunate Parish Girl, The_, 204

  _Fountain of Gardens, A_, 114

  _Four hundred new sorts of Birds_, 260

  Fox, George, 112

  Foxcroft, H. C., 351

  French Romances, 195, 400-04, 410, 412, 413

  "Froth, Lady," 384-86


  "Galesia," 163. _See_ Barker, Jane

  Galindo, Beatrix, 6

  Gay, John, 174, 199, 393

  _General Biographical Dictionary_, 12, 422, 423

  _Generous Husband, The_, 391-93

  Genest, John, 77, 83, 132, 188, 241

  _Gentleman Instructed, Supplement to The_, 333-36

  _Gentleman's Magazine, The_, 123, 187, 189, 240, 241, 246

  _George Barnwell_, 205

  Gerbier, Balthaser, 44

  Gerbier, Charles, 26-27, 274, 452

  _German Literature in England before 1790_, 232

  _Gesner, Solomon, Influence of, upon English Literature_, 232

  Gethin, Lady Grace, 102-03

  Gibbon, Hester, 269

  Gibson, Susan Penelope, 87

  Giffard, Lady Martha, 59, 61, 64, 155-56

  Gildon, Charles, 82-83, 323-24, 388-89, 421

  _Gildon's Letters_, 323-24

  Glasse, Mrs. Hannah, 92, 434

  Godfrey, Elizabeth, 34, 40, 68, 89

  Godolphin, Mrs. Margaret, 76-81

  _Goody Two Shoes_, 89

  Gorges House, 258

  Gosse, Edmund, 57, 213

  _Gossip in a Library_, 213

  Gournay, Marie de Jars de, 27, 290, 323

  Grandison, Sir Charles, 354

  Gray, Thomas, 167

  Greatrakes, Valentine, 113

  Grey, Elizabeth, Countess of Kent, 31

  Grey, Lady Jane, 14-16, 20, 27, 326

  Grierson, Mrs. Constantia, 218, 221, 222-25, 226

  Grinæus, Symon, 9

  _Guardian, The_, 329-30

  _Guy of Warwick_, 2


  Habington, William, 24

  Hale, Mrs., 424

  Halifax, Marquess of, 319-22, 324

  Halkett, Lady Anne, 93-95, 443, 444

  Hand-work, 254, 260-64

  Haney, J. L., 232

  "Harcourt, Miss Harriot Eusebia," 368-71

  Harley, Lady Brilliana, 31

  Hastings, Lady Elizabeth, 120-24, 174, 182, 304

  Hays, Mary, 368, 423

  Hayward, Thomas, 190, 421

  Haywood, Mrs. Eliza, 134, 212-18, 230, 424, 431, 437, 453

  _Hearne's Collections_, 177, 180, 181

  _Henrietta_, 241

  Henry VIII, 4, 5, 6, 426

  Henry, Aurelia, 374

  Hepburn, Anne, 109

  _Herbal, A Curious_, 185-87

  Heron, Cecilia, 11

  Herrod, St., 1

  Hertford, Countess of, 352

  Hickes, Dr. George, 67, 120, 126, 170, 172, 174, 177, 266, 270,
        290-96, 297, 303, 448, 452

  Highmore, Miss, 353

  Hilda, St., 1

  Hildegard, St., 1

  Hill, Georgiana, 26, 45, 52, 111

  _History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy_, 216

  _History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless_, 213, 216

  Hogarth, William, 269

  Holdsworth, Dr. Winch, 109

  _Home Life under the Stuarts_, 34, 89

  _Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory_, 172-76

  _Honey on the Rod_, 127

  Hopton, Mrs. Susanna, 100, 291, 443, 452

  "Hortensia," 387-88

  _Hortus Deliciarum_, 1

  Hroswitha, 1

  _Hudibras_, 104

  Hudson, Lady Anne, 26, 274

  Hughes, Helen Sard, 231, 233, 234

  Hume, Alexander, 20

  Hume, Anna, 35, 451

  _Huntington, Lady, and Her Friends_, 125

  Huntington, Lady Selina, 124-27, 444

  Hutcheson, Archibald, 269

  _Hutchinson, Lucy, and the Duchess of Newcastle_, 74

  Hutchinson, Mrs., 45, 69-74, 80, 428, 432, 439, 450

  _Hutchinson, Memoirs of Colonel_, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73

  Hyrde, Richard, 7, 8, 426


  _Idler, The_, 267

  _Illustrations of Literary History_, 178, 179, 180, 181

  _Illustrious Persons of Great Britain_, 421

  Inchbald, Mrs., 136

  _Inconstant, The_, 389

  _Ingenii Muliebris, De_, 273

  _Institutione Fæminæ Christiannæ_, 7

  Isabella, Queen, 6


  Jacob, Giles, 191, 421

  James I, 14

  James, Mrs. Eleanor, 103

  Janeway, James, 89

  Jocelyn, Elizabeth, 29-30, 95, 450

  _John Inglesant_, 41, 113

  Johnson, Charles, 391-93

  Johnson, Samuel, 123, 239, 240, 241, 242, 261, 336

  Johnstone, Grace, 68, 69

  Jones, Mary, 247-48

  Jonson, Ben, 29, 129, 374, 375

  Juncker, Christian, 421

  _Justification of the Independent Churches of Christ_, 36

  Juvenal, 314, 374


  _Katherine, Queene, Parre's lamentation of a sinner_, 14

  Kavanagh, Julia, 130, 424

  Keats, John, 56, 57

  Kello, Esther, 35

  Kemys, Mary and Anne, 269

  Ken, Bishop, 269

  Kennedy, Lady Margaret, 350-51

  Kidder, Edward, 263

  Killigrew, Anne, 85-86, 139-41, 150, 297, 426, 439, 444, 451

  Killigrew, Mrs. Katherine, 13

  Kingsmill, Anne, 150, 297, 439, 444
    _See_ Winchilsea, Lady

  Knight, Mrs. Helen C., 125

  "Knowell, Lady," 378-79


  Labadie, Jean de, 273

  _Ladies' Calling, The_, 52, 316-19, 320, 326, 402

  _Ladies' Defence, The_, 147-50

  _Ladies' Diary, The_, 327-29

  _Ladies' Dictionary, The_, 324-27

  _Ladies, Fables for_, 336-37

  Ladies, Italian learned, 249-50

  _Ladies' Library, The_, 119, 330-33, 366

  _Ladies of Great Britain, Memoirs of Several_ (Amory), 367-71

  _Ladies of Great Britain, Memoirs of Several_ (Ballard), 5, 9, 10,
        11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 31, 35, 100, 119, 252, 276, 352, 353,
        354-65, 366

  _Ladies' Museum, The_, 242

  _Ladies, On the Education of_, 344-45

  _Ladies, Poems by Eminent_, 224, 246, 249, 352, 365-66

  _Ladies, Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy explained for_, 256

  _Lady, Advice to a_, 336

  _Lady, Letter to a Very Young_, 345-46, 347

  _Lady, The_, 2, 4

  _Lady's Drawing-Room, The_, 410-11

  _Lady's Magazine, The_, 102

  _Lady's New Year's Gift, or Advice to a Daughter_, 319-22, 324, 326

  _Lady Vane's Memoirs_, 204

  "Lætitia," 196

  Lagno, Isadore del, 4

  Law, William, 123, 269

  Lead, Mrs. Jane, 114-15

  _Leading Women of the Restoration_, 68, 69

  Leapor, Mary, 246-47, 352, 430

  _Learned Maid, or Whether a Maid may be a Scholar_, 273

  "Learned," The Term, 424-26

  Lebrixa, Francisca de, 6

  Lee, Francis, 114

  _Legacy of a Dying Mother_, 95

  Leland, John, 11

  Lennox, Mrs. Charlotte, 135, 195, 239-43, 246, 411-12, 413, 437

  _Letter touching a College of Maids_, 273

  _Letters concerning the Love of God_, 101, 297

  _Levellers, The_, 259

  _Lilliputian Magazine, The_, 233

  Lioba, St., 1

  _Lionel and Clarissa_, 398-99

  _Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century_, 103, 170, 171, 172,
        178, 180, 246, 251

  _Little Catechism with Little Verses_, 89, 435

  _Little Female Academy_, 233, 237-38, 435, 447

  Little Gidding, 40-42, 44, 270

  _Little Pretty Pocket Book_, 233, 435

  _Lives of the English Poets_ (Winstanley), 190, 421

  _Lives of the Poets_ (Cibber), 84, 128, 129, 146, 155, 208, 212,
        251, 366, 421, 453

  Locke, John, 100, 101, 102, 107, 109, 338, 343, 452

  London, Bishop of, 26

  _Looking-Glass for Children_, 89

  _Lost Lover, The_, 208

  Lounsbury, Thomas, 192

  _Love in Excess_, 366

  _Love's Labour's Lost_, 37

  "Lovewit, Mrs.," 383

  Lowndes, W. T., 189

  Lucar, Elizabeth, 16, 430

  Lumley, Lady Joanna, 14

  "Lydia Languish," 418-19, 446

  Lynacre, Dr., 6

  Lyttleton, Lord, 336

  Luther, Martin, 25


  Macaulay, Catherine, 429, 430

  Macaulay, T. B., 142, 431

  Madan, Mrs., 248-49

  Major, Elizabeth, 127

  Makin, Mrs., 44, 341, 426, 441, 448

  Malcolm, James P., 267

  Manley, Mrs. de la Rivière, 106, 119, 132, 151, 208-11, 230, 304,
        424, 431, 437, 453

  Manly, Mrs. Arabella, 260

  _Manners and Customs in London in the Eighteenth Century_, 267

  Manning, Anne, 9

  "Marilla," 410-11, 418

  "Marinda," 155. _See_ Monck, The Hon. Mrs.

  Marinelli, Lucrecia, 27, 53, 323

  "Marissa," 149. _See_ Lady Chudleigh

  _Marriage à la Mode_, 377

  "Marsilia" [Mrs. Manley], 387

  Mary, Princess, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17

  Mary Salome, Mother, 38

  Masham, Lady Damaris, 100-02, 443, 444, 452

  Mason, Mr., 89, 435

  Masters, Mary, 249-50

  Mayne, Jasper, 375

  McIlquham, Miss, 315

  "Meanwell, Lady," 383-84

  "Melantha," 378

  Melville, Elizabeth, 20

  Mendoza, Doña Maria Pacheco, 6

  _Method of Devotion_, 98

  _Midsummer Night's Dream, A_, 38

  _Midwives' Book, The_, 90

  Miles, Dudley, 376

  "Millamant," 377

  _Millennium Hall_, 271

  Milton, John, 25

  "Miss" and "Mrs.," 76-77

  _Mock Astrologer, The_, 377

  _Modern Language Notes_, 27

  Molière, J. B. P., 368, 375, 376, 396, 400, 402, 403

  _Molière, Influence of, on Restoration Comedy_, 376

  Monck, The Hon. Mrs., 155

  Monk, Mrs., 412-13

  Monroe, Paul, 37, 42, 44, 276

  Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth, 263

  _Montagu, Lady Mary, and her Times_, 194, 196, 199

  Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 66, 193-208, 262, 305, 315, 336, 341,
        349, 424, 439, 440, 441, 450, 454

  Montagu, Mr. Wortley, 196, 198, 199

  Moore, Edward, 336-37

  More, Cresacre, 9, 10, 11

  More, Henry, 113

  _More, Henry, The Life of_, 114

  More, Sir Thomas, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 45

  _More, The Household of Sir Thomas_, 9

  Mores, Edward Rowe, 172, 177

  Morgan, Charlotte E., 231

  Morwen, Dr. John, 11

  _Mother's Legacie to her Unborne Childe, The_, 29

  _Mother's Will to an Unborn Child, The_, 95

  Mozans, H. J., 1, 4, 6

  Mulcaster, Richard, 17, 426

  _Muses' Library, The_, 189-93, 421


  Naish Court, 270

  Nelson, Robert, 303

  _New Atalantis, The_, 119, 151, 209, 210

  Newbery, John, 89, 435

  Newcastle, Duchess of, 45, 46-54, 127-28, 141, 326, 393, 425, 428,
        430, 434, 439, 451

  Newcome, Mrs., 104

  _New English Drama_, 136

  _New General Biographical Dictionary_, 5, 368

  _New Help to Discourse_, 25

  _New Shakspere Society Series_, 24

  Nichols, John, 103, 104, 170, 171, 172, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183,
        187, 193, 243, 246, 251

  _Nine Muses; or Poems on the Death of John Dryden_, 106

  Norris, John, 100, 101, 107, 297, 452

  North, The Hon. Miss Dudleya, 143, 365, 450, 451

  North, Mary, 59-61, 428, 450

  North, Roger, 60, 440

  _Norths, The Lives of the_, 60, 440

  _Notabilità e della eccellenza delle donne e difetti degli uomini_,
        27

  _Notes and Queries_, 21, 25, 26, 29, 43, 44, 77, 89, 93, 119, 162,
        188

  _Numismata_, 20, 141, 364


  _Occasional Thoughts_, 101, 102

  Ogilvius, Johannes, 179

  _Old English Scholarship in England from 1566 to 1800_, 176

  "Oldwit, Gertrude," 380-82

  Oldys, William, 85, 189-90

  Opdyke, L. E., 18

  _Orations of Divers Sorts_, 50

  "Orinda," 53, 54-59, 63, 64, 139, 141, 154, 160, 162, 257, 433, 438,
        444, 451.
    _See_ Mrs. Katherine Philips

  _Oroonoko_, 130-31

  _Osborne, Dorothy_, 51, 58, 61-66, 80, 155, 156, 157, 400-01, 428,
        432, 440

  Osborne, Mrs. Sarah, 62, 156-57

  Overbury, Sir Thomas, 23

  Overing, Mrs., 259


  Pakington, Lady, 66-67, 80, 316, 317, 365, 428, 433, 443, 444, 450

  "Pamela," 338

  Paper-cutting, 261, 271-72

  _Paradise Lost_, 25

  Parker, Chief Justice, 178

  Parr, Queen Catherine, 8, 14

  _Partonope of Blois_, 3

  _Patch-work Screen, A_, 161, 162, 262

  Patroness, The, 22, 28, 432-33

  _Pearl, A Chain of_, 35-36

  "Peggy's" Accounts, 43

  Pell, John, 277

  Pembroke, Countess of, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 326, 364

  Pen, Miss Margaret, 86, 87

  Pendarves, Mrs. (_See_ Delany, Mrs.)

  Pennant, Thomas, 32, 33

  Pepys, Mrs., 86, 87

  Pepys, Samuel, 128, 377, 401

  _Percy Society Publications_, 68

  _Peregrine Pickle_, 204

  Perwick, Mrs., 42

  _Peveril of the Peak_, 51

  Philips, Constantia, 205, 246

  Philips, Joan, 138-39

  Philips, Mrs. Katherine, 42, 54-59, 141, 160, 230, 248, 326.
    _See_ "Orinda"

  Phillips, Ambrose, 338, 437

  Phillips, Edward, 190, 191, 421

  Phillips, John, 20

  "Philomela," 157, 158, 160.
    _See_ Rowe, Mrs.

  _Philosophical and Physical Opinions_, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50

  _Pious Englishwomen in the Seventeenth Century_, 92

  Pix, Mrs., 132-33

  Plügge, Georg, 239

  _Poetical Recreations_, 161

  _Poetical Register, The_, 191, 421

  _Polite Conversation_, 52, 222

  _Political and Social Letters of a Lady of Quality_, 156-57

  _Polly Honeycomb_, 204, 213, 214, 413-18, 446

  _Pompey the Little_, 126, 204

  Pope, Alexander, 109, 130, 136, 174, 199, 201, 202, 211, 215, 218,
        219, 226, 235, 245, 248, 261, 348-50, 353, 366, 393, 444

  Pope, Emma Field, 2

  Portland, Duchess of, 184-85

  _Positions_, 17

  Powell, Thomas, 23

  _Power of Love, The_, 209

  _Précieuses, Les_, 375, 376, 380, 400

  Priests, Josias, 259

  Primrose, Lady Diana, 36

  _Princess, The_, 370, 430

  _Protestant Nunnery, A_, 270

  Prude, John, 144

  Pseudonyms or Initials
    "A. C." [Lady Cokaine?]
    "A. M.," Mrs.
    "Ardelia" [Lady Winchilsea]
    "Astræa" [Mrs. Behn]
    "Corinna" [Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas]
    "Ephelia" [Joan Philips]
    "Galesia" [Jane Barker]
    "Lætitia" [Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]
    "Marinda" [The Hon. Mrs. Monck]
    "Marissa" [Lady Chudleigh]
    "Orinda" [Mrs. Katherine Philips]
    "Philomela" [Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe]
    "Stella" [Hester Johnson]

  Putnam, Emily James, 2, 4

  Puttenham, George, 18

  _Pylades and Corinna_, 212


  _Queen-like Closet, The_, 91

  _Quixote, The Benevolent_, 241

  _Quixote, The Female_, 195, 240-41, 411-12

  _Quixote, The Spiritual_, 241


  Radegunde, St., 1

  Rainbow, Bishop, 31, 32

  _Ratione Studii, De_, 7

  Reading Lists:
    Vives and Hyrde, 8;
    Mr. Bellamy's list, 266-67;
    Dr. Hickes's list, 294-95;
    list in _Essay in Defence of Female Sex_, 307-08;
    Steele: _Ladies' Library_, 330-33;
    Leonora's Library, 330;
    Polly Honeycomb's novels, 414-17;
    Lydia Languish's novels, 418-19

  _Reasons Humbly Presented_, 103

  Reed, Bertha, 232, 233

  _Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning_, 22

  _Reflections on Marriage_, 298, 300

  _Refusal, The_, 395-98, 399

  _Restitution of Prophecy, The_, 37

  Reynolds, Myra, 150, 151, 369, 393

  Richardson, Samuel, 235, 238, 245, 337-42, 354, 444, 450, 452

  Riches, Catherine. _See_ Mrs. Bovey

  Richmond, Countess of, 5

  _Rise of the Novel of Manners_, 231

  _Rivals, The_, 418-19

  _Rival Widows_, 188-89

  _Roger de Coverley, Sir_, 119

  _Romantic Novel, An Early_, 231

  _Romantick Lady, On a_, 412-13

  Roper, Margaret, 7, 8, 9-11, 362, 430

  Rose, G. H., 368

  Rowe, Mrs. Elizabeth, 87, 157-60, 251, 262, 263, 352, 440

  _Royal Hospital, Scheme for Foundation of_, 90

  _Royal Mischief, The_, 208

  _Rudiments of Grammar_, 6

  Russell, Lady Rachel, 76, 90, 96-98, 351, 444


  Salmon, Mrs., 42, 54

  _Salomon, Les Proverbes de_, 35

  Savage, Richard, 201

  _Saxon Homilarium_, 179-81

  Schiff, Mario, 27

  _Scholemaster, The_, 14

  Schools for Girls before 1660, 37-45

  Schurman, Anna Maria van, 28, 174, 271-76, 290, 315, 323, 364, 365,
        441

  Scott, Mrs. Mary, 351

  Scott, Mrs. Sarah, 270-71

  Scott, Walter, 51

  _Scottish Text Society_, 21

  _Scowrers, The_, 263

  Secker, Archbishop, 243, 256, 451, 452

  _Secret History of Queen Zarah_, 208

  _Select Colloquies_, 12

  _Serious Proposal to the Ladies, A_, 102, 298, 301, 305, 311

  _Sermon on Alms-giving, A_, 290

  _Seventeenth Century Studies_, 57

  Seward, Mr. Thomas, 181

  Shadwell, Thomas, 129, 130, 380-82, 402

  _Shakespeare Illustrated_, 241

  Sharp, Jane, 90, 434

  Sheridan, R. B., 418-19

  Shirley, John, 421

  Shorthouse, J. Henry, 40, 41, 113

  Siddons, Mrs., 83

  Singer, Elizabeth [_See_ Mrs. Rowe]

  _Sir Charles Grandison_, 245

  _Sir Patient Fancy_, 378-79

  Sir Roger de Coverley, 119, 120

  Smith, Florence, 101, 297, 301, 302, 303

  _Social Life in Reign of Queen Anne_, 260

  _Social Life under the Stuarts_, 40, 68

  Society for Encouragement of Learning, 193

  "Society of Friendship," 57

  Somerset, Daughters of Duke of, 13

  Somerset, Duchess of, 251, 262, 263

  _Song of Three Children Paraphrased_, 146

  "Sophia," 111, 313-15, 341, 442, 448, 453

  "Sophronia," 395-98

  Southey, Robert, 423

  _Specimens of British Poetesses_, 19, 423

  _Specimens of Later English Poets_, 423

  _Spectator, The_, 260, 261, 447

  _Spence's Anecdotes_, 196

  Sprint, Mr., 147

  _Stage, History of the English_, 81

  _Stage, Some Account of the English_, 77, 83, 132, 188, 241

  Stainforth, Rev. A. J., 127

  Stanglmaier, Karl, 161

  Steele, Sir Richard, 119, 121, 174, 209-11, 304, 330-33, 338, 366,
        403-09, 444

  "Stella," 348, 350, 452

  Strype, John, 37

  _Studies in Chaucer_, 192

  _Sullen Lovers_, 380-82

  Swearing in England, 52

  Swift, Jonathan, 52, 174, 178, 218-31 (_passim_), 303, 444, 452

  Symonds, Emily, 193, 194, 196, 199


  _Table Talk_, 25

  Talbot, Catherine, 77, 243-46, 256, 440

  _Tatler, The_, 121

  Taylor, Jeremy, 56, 451

  _Telemachus_, 266

  Telford, John, 115

  Temple, Sir William, 61-66 (_passim_)

  _Tender Husband, The_, 338, 403-09, 418-19, 444

  Tennyson, Alfred, 370, 430

  _Term Catalogues_, 35, 68, 85, 90, 92, 144

  _Theatrum Poetarum_, 20, 190, 421

  Thomas, Edward, 29

  Thomas, Miss Elizabeth, 211-12

  Thoresby, Ralph, 87, 160, 161, 174, 179, 197, 268

  Thornton, Mrs. Alice, 44

  _Three Hours after Marriage_, 153, 304, 393-95

  _Through England on a Side Saddle_, 165-69

  Thwaites, Mr., 174

  Tindale, Mr., 181

  _Token for Children_, 89

  _Tom of All Trades_, 23

  _Tom Jones_, 342-43

  _Tour in Scotland_, 32, 33

  _Tragedy of Marian, The_, 33-34

  _Traité de l'éducation des filles_, 291

  _Treatise on Education_, 338

  _Treatise on the Lord's Prayer_, 7

  Trotter, Catherine, 132
    _See_ Mrs. Cockburn

  _Troy Book_, 3

  _Truman, Sir George_, 417

  _Turkish Letters_, 207-08

  Tutchin, Mrs. Elizabeth, 259


  Udall, Nicholas, 17, 426

  Upham, A. H., 74, 306


  "Valeria," 389-91, 450

  Vanbrugh, Sir John, 387-88

  Vazeille, Mrs., 352

  Verney, Molly, 259, 262

  Verney, Sir Ralph, 24, 25, 447

  _Victoria History of Yorkshire_, 122, 123

  _Vindication of the Church of England_, 103

  _Vindication of Mr. Locke's Christian Principles_, 109

  _Virtuous Woman Found, The_, 68

  Vives, Juan Luis, 7, 426

  _Vives and the Renascence Education of Women_, 5-10 (_passim_)


  Walker, Dr., 68, 69

  Walker, Mrs. Elizabeth, 95

  Walker, John, 171

  Walpole, Horace, 84

  Walsh, Marie Donegan, 4

  Walsh, William, 322

  Wanley, Mr., 178

  Ward, Henry, 114

  Ward, Mary, 38-40

  _Ward, Mary, A Foundress of the Seventeenth Century_, 38

  _Ward, Mary, The Life of_, 38

  Warwick, Countess of, 68-69, 80, 428

  _Warwicke, M., Specialties in the Life of_, 68

  Watson, Foster, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

  Watts, Isaac, 89, 435

  _Way of the World, The_, 444

  Webb, Mrs. Maria, 111, 114

  "Wellfed, Mrs.," 387

  Wentworth, Lady Arabella, 45

  Wesley, John, 230, 351-52

  _Wesley, John, The Life of_ (Telford), 115

  _Wesley, John, The Life of_ (Winchester), 115, 116, 117

  _Wesley's Journal, The Heart of_, 230

  Wesley, Mrs. Susannah, 115-17

  "Western, Mrs.," 342-43, 452

  Westmoreland, Jane, Countess of, 14

  Weston, Jane, 19-20, 23, 53, 326

  Wharton, Mrs., 144, 351

  _What Ann Lang Read_, 213

  Wheler, Sir George, 270

  Whicher, G. F., 212, 213, 215, 216

  White, Mrs. Elizabeth, 95

  Whitgift, John, 37

  _Wife, A_, 23

  _Wife, The_, 217-18

  Wilford, John, 123, 421

  Williams, Jane, 12, 424

  Wills, Henry, 119

  Winchester, C. T., 115

  Winchilsea, Lady, 129, 150-55, 174, 304, 349, 352, 382, 393-95, 424,
        426, 432, 438, 451, 452

  Winstanley, William, 190, 421

  "W. M.," 132, 386-87

  Wollstonecraft, Mary, 429, 455

  _Woman as Good as the Man, The_, 286-90

  _Woman in Italy_, 4

  _Woman in Science_, 1, 4, 6

  _Woman under Monasticism_, 1

  _Womankind in Western Europe_, 4

  _Woman's Record_, 424

  Women artists, 84-88, 433

  Women book-sellers, 229

  Women, Catalogue of Learned, 421

  Women, Education of, Current opinion embodied in Comedy, 445-47

  Women, Education of, Opinion of minority on, 448-53

  Women, Education of, in relation to the Church, 453-54

  _Women, Education of, during the Renascence_, 9

  _Women of England, Literary_, 12, 424

  _Women of Florence_, 4

  _Women, Illustrious History of_, 421

  Women, Learned, and a Public, 430-31

  _Women of Letters, English_, 130, 424

  Women in Literary Biography, 420-24

  Women in medicine, 433-34

  Women novelists, 437

  Women playwrights, 436-37

  Women in practical benevolence, 435

  Women printers, 216

  Women in propaganda, 441-42

  Women in religious controversy, 442-44

  Women, Religious verse by, 438

  Women in science, 434-35

  Women, Work of, compared with contemporary work by men, 444-45

  Women writers of autobiography and letters, 439-41

  Women writers on practical subjects, 89-92

  _Women's speaking justified_, 112

  _Wonder, The_, 134, 136

  Wood, Anthony à, 190

  Wood, Mrs. Hannah, 264-67, 447

  Woolley, Mrs. Hannah, 91, 92, 434

  Wordsworth, William, 40, 168

  _Works of the Learned_, 109

  _Worthies of Yorkshire and Lancashire_, 32

  Wotton, William, 22, 23

  "Wrangle, Lady," 396-98

  Wright, Thomas, 382-84, 402

  Wright, Thomas, 4

  Wroth, Lady Mary, 29, 326

  Wycherley, William, 130, 444


  Young, Arthur, 167

  Young, Edward, 201

  Young, Francis Berkeley, 21, 22




  The Riverside Press

  CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS

  U . S . A




FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mozans, H. J.: _Woman in Science_. Chapter, "Woman's Long
Struggle."

[2] For the work of these nuns see Mozans: _Woman in Science_;
Eckenstein, Lina: _Woman under Monasticism_.

[3] For Hroswitha's plays see _Fortnightly Review_, March, 1896, pp.
443-50; _The English Historical Review_, July, 1888.

[4] Putnam, Emily James: _The Lady_, p. 71.

[5] I am indebted to Miss Emma Pope for the following citations.

[6] _Guy of Warwick_, E.E.T.S., vol. 25, ll. 63 ff.

[7] _Floris and Blanchefleur_, E.E.T.S., vol. 14, ll. 16 ff.

[8] _Sir Bevis of Hamtoun_, E.E.T.S., vols. 46-48, ll. 3671 ff.

[9] _Partonope of Blois_, E.E.T.S., vol. 109, ll. 5912 ff.

[10] Gower: _Confessio Amantis_, E.E.T.S., vol. 82 (part 2), ll. 1327
ff.

[11] Lydgate: _Troy Book_, bk. I, ll. 1606 ff.

[12] Mozans: _Woman in Science_, p. 63.

[13] See Wright, Thomas: _Womankind in Western Europe_; Mozans:
_Woman in Science_; Boulting, William: _Woman in Italy_; Walsh, Marie
Donegan: "A City of Learned Women," _The Catholic World_, 1902;
Lagno, Isadore del: _Women of Florence_, tr. by Mary G. Steegman;
Putnam, Emily James: _The Lady_.

[14] Ballard, George: _Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain_,
p. 5.

[15] _Ibid._, pp. 9-27; Watson, Foster: _Vives and the Renascence
Education of Women_, pp. 2-3. _New and General Biographical
Dictionary_.

[16] Mozans: _Woman in Science_, p. 68; Watson, _Vives and the
Renascence Education of Women_, pp. 6-8; Prescott, W. H.: _History of
the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella_, vol. II, pp. 93-194, _passim_.

[17] Watson, Foster: _Vives and the Renascence Education of Women_,
p. 7.

[18] _Ibid._, p. 11. Mr. Watson gives a full analysis of the
treatises appearing between these dates.

[19] Watson, Foster: _Vives and the Renascence Education of Women_,
p. 43.

[20] _Ibid._, p. 56.

[21] Watson, Foster: _Vives and the Renascence Education of Women_,
p. 117.

[22] _Ibid._, pp. 166-68. Margaret Roper is given as an illustration
of the beneficial effects of learning.

[23] _Ibid._, pp. 57-63, "What Books to be Read and What Not." See
also pp. 203-06.

[24] _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (11th ed.), under "Princess Mary."

[25] See More, Cresacre: _The Life of Sir Thomas More_, first
published about 1631, and edited by Reverend Joseph Hunter, 1828;
Watson, Foster: _Vives and the Renascence Education of Women_, chap.
V, "The School of Sir Thomas More"; Ballard, _Memoirs_, pp. 38-61;
Manning, Anne: _The Household of Sir Thomas More_; Cannon, Mary
Agnes: _Education of Women during the Renaissance_.

[26] More, Cresacre: _The Life of Sir Thomas More_ (ed. 1726), p. 128.

[27] Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 39.

[28] Watson, Foster: _Vives and the Renascence Education of Women_,
p. 187.

[29] Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 58.

[30] More, Cresacre: _Life of Sir Thomas More_ (ed. 1726), p. 138.

[31] Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 43.

[32] More, Cresacre: _The Life of Sir Thomas More_ (ed. 1726), p. 141.

[33] Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 49.

[34] Drummond, Robert B.: _Erasmus, His Life and Character_, vol. II,
p. 168.

[35] Erasmus: _Select Colloquies_ (edited by Merrick Whitcomb), p.
179.

[36] Ballard (_Memoirs_, pp. 180-210) gives full account of the
daughters of Sir Anthony Coke; see also, Williams, Jane: _Literary
Women of England_; Chalmers, Alexander: _Gen. Biog. Dict._ (ed.
1812), vol. 10.

[37] Ballard: _Memoirs_, pp. 138-43.

[38] Ballard: _Memoirs_, pp. 121-23.

[39] _Ibid._, p. 120.

[40] _Ibid._, pp. 79-97.

[41] _Ibid._, p. 145.

[42] Ascham: _Scholemaster_, bk. I, no. 7; Ballard: _Memoirs_, pp.
98-118.

[43] Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 36.

[44] Mulcaster, Richard: _Positions_, chap. 38.

[45] Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 127.

[46] Puttenham, George: _The Arte of English Poesie_, lib. III, chap.
XXI.

[47] Translation of _Cortegiano_ by L. E. Opdyke (1903), bk. III, p.
172.

[48] Ballard: _Memoirs_, pp. 243-47.

[49] Aubrey: _Brief Lives_, vol. I, p. 193.

[50] Scottish Text Society, 1902, p. 4.

[51] _Notes and Queries_, 2d Series, vol. VIII, pp. 247, 312.

[52] Ballard: _Memoirs_, pp. 259-66; Young, Francis Berkeley: _Mary
Sidney, Countess of Pembroke_. (Full and discriminating account of
Lady Pembroke as patroness and author.)

[53] The only record of Lady Pembroke's scientific tastes. Aubrey's
testimony is, unfortunately, not entirely to be relied on. [Young:
_Mary Sidney_, p. 154.]

[54] Wotton, William: _Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning_,
p. 349.

[55] New Shakspere Society Series, vol. VI, p. 173.

[56] Habington, William: _Castara_, Preface to "The Second Part."

[57] Brathwait, Richard: _The English Gentleman_ (ed. 1633), p. 264.

[58] _Memoirs of the Verney Family_, vol. III, pp. 72-74.

[59] Luther, Martin: _Table Talk_ (edited by William Hazlitt), no.
dccxxv.

[60] Milton, John: _Paradise Lost_, bk. IV, 299.

[61] _Notes and Queries_, 4th Series, vol. IV, p. 195. For many years
the superior advantages accorded English women was a stock subject
of national self-congratulation. In the light of this fact we read
with interest a comment by De Segur in 1803: "The English women live
much in the same manner as those of Turkey, with the exception of
walls and keepers. Without being so much overlooked, they suffer
equal constraint. However great the superiority they may be sensible
they possess above their husbands, they are obliged to respect and
to fear them; and they endeavor to acquire their love as a matter
of necessity. Such is also the lesson they give to their children,
and it may be remarked that they recommend it to them rather as a
political measure than as a duty. In fact, they can command only by
obeying; and when it is said that a woman is happier in England than
in any other country, it is only saying that she is prepared, by her
education, to be more satisfied than another woman with a mediocrity
of happiness." (Hill, Georgiana: _Women in English Life_, vol. II, p.
89.)

[62] _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. II, p. 214.

[63] See Schiff, Mario: _La Fille d'alliance de Montaigne: Marie
de Gournay_. (An account of her life; a list of her works; her two
essays in defense of women, and an account of her relations with Anna
van Schurman. Reviewed in _Modern Language Notes_, 1911.)

[64] Feugère, Leon: _Les femmes poètes au XVI^e siècle_.

[65] Thomas: _Feminine Influence on the Poets_, pp. 335-40.

[66] This edition, brought out by Messrs. Blackwood, "is accompanied
by a long preface or dissertation containing many particulars
relating to the authoress and her relatives, and to a number of
ladies of high station and polished education, who, during the period
intervening between the Reformation in England and the Revolution in
1688, distinguished themselves by publishing works characterized by
exalted piety and refined taste." (_Notes and Queries_, 1st Series,
vol. IV, p. 410.) I have not had access to this edition.

[67] Ballard: _Memoirs_, pp. 265-66.

[68] Two hundred and five letters published by The Camden Society in
1854.

[69] _Biographium Femineum_, vol. II, p. 193. From Funeral Sermon by
Bishop Rainbow on the text, "Every wise woman buildeth her house"
(Proverbs XIV, 1): Coleridge, Hartley: _Worthies of Yorkshire and
Lancashire_, p. 291.

[70] Mr. Pennant's _Tour in Scotland_ (ed. 1790), part II, pp. 355-62.

[71] _Ibid._, p. 360.

[72] _The Tragedy of Mariam_, Malone Society Reprint, "Introduction."

[73] Godfrey, Elizabeth: _Home Life among the Stuarts_, p. 103.

[74] Carter, Thomas T.: _The Life of Nicholas Ferrar_, p. 102.

[75] The _Term Catalogues_ illustrate the permanence of this
interest. Edward Cocker was one of the best-known calligraphers
in the second half of the seventeenth century. One of his works
is _England's Penman, or Cocker's new Copy-Book, containing all
the curious Hands practised in England and our neighboring Nations
with admirable directions peculiar to each Hand. So also the Breaks
of Secretary, Roman, and Italian Letters; with the exemplifying
Court-hand, and an exact copy of the Greek alphabet._ (1679.)

[76] Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 188.

[77] Dyce: _Specimens_, p. 510.

[78] Dyce: _Specimens_, pp. 271-80.

[79] Strype, John: _The Life and Acts of John Whitgift_, vol. III, p.
383.

[80] Monroe, Paul: _Cyclopædia of Education_, under "Women, Higher
Education of."

[81] _Love's Labour's Lost_, Act IV, Sc. 2. (1591.)

[82] _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act III, Sc. 2. (1594-95.)

[83] See Chambers, Mary C. E.: _The Life of Mary Ward_, ed. by Henry
James Coleridge; Mary Salome (Mother): _Mary Ward, a Foundress of the
Seventeenth Century_.

[84] Much has been written concerning the life of Little Gidding. In
1790 Mr. G. P. Peckard, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and
the husband of a descendant of the Ferrar family, published _Memoirs
of the Life of Mr. Nicholas Ferrar_ (reprinted in Wordsworth's
_Ecclesiastical Biography_, vol. IV). In 1828 and again in 1837
appeared _Brief Memoirs of Nicholas Ferrar_, by the Reverend T. M.
Macdonogh (based on an unpublished _Life_ by Bishop Turner, extracts
from which had been published in _The Christian Magazine_ in 1761).
An abridgment of Peckard's _Memoirs_ appeared in 1852. In 1855 came
the most important of the works on Ferrar. It was _Nicholas Ferrar,
Two Lives_, by J. E. B. Mayor, Cambridge. The Reverend Thomas
Carter's _Nicholas Ferrar, his Household and Friends_, came out in
1892. In 1880 Mr. J. Henry Shorthouse described Little Gidding in
chapter IV of _John Inglesant_. In 1896 Emma Marshall, in _A Haunt
of Ancient Peace_, also introduced the life of Little Gidding into
a fictitious narrative. In 1899 the _Story Books_ of Little Gidding
were edited by E. C. Shorland. In _Archæologia_ for 1888 is Captain
J. E. Ackland's "Catalogue of the Gidding Concordances." In Thomas
Hearne's _Caii Vindiciæ_, vol. II, pp. 713-94, is "Remains of the
Maiden-Sisters' Exercises at Little Gidding." In _Bibliographica_ is
an account of the Bindings. See also Godfrey's _Social Life under the
Stuarts_, pp. 209-15.

[85] Carter, T. T.: _Life of Nicholas Ferrar_, p. 127.

[86] _Bibliographica_, vol. II, pp. 129-49. Article by Cyril
Davenport.

[87] See p. 54.

[88] Monroe: _Cyclopædia of Education_, under "Private Schools."

[89] _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. XI, p. 279.

[90] Monroe, Paul: _Cyclopædia of Education_, under "Gerbier"; _Notes
and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. III, p. 317.

[91] Hill, Georgiana: _Women in English Life_, vol. I, p. 150.

[92] See p. 46.

[93] See p. 74.

[94] See p. 69.

[95] See _The Philosophical and Physical Opinions, Written by her
Excellency, the Lady Marchionesse of Newcastle_, London, 1655
(containing Lord Newcastle's "Epistle to justifie the Lady Newcastle,
and Truth against falsehood, laying those false and malicious
aspersions of her, that she was not Author of her Books." Also "To
the Reader," "To the Two Universities," "An Epilogue" and several
brief introductory epistles); _Philosophical Letters: or, Modest
Reflections Upon some Opinions in Natural Philosophy, Maintained by
several Famous and Learned Authors of this Age, Expressed by way of
Letters: By the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess,
the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle_, London, 1664 (containing "To
His Excellency the Lord Marquis of Newcastle," "To the most Famous
University of Cambridge" and "To the Reader"); _A True Relation of
the Birth, Breeding, and Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of
Newcastle, Written by Herself. With a Critical Preface, etc., by Sir
Egerton Brydges, M.P. Printed at the private Press of Lee Priory_,
1814 (taken from _Nature's Pictures drawn by Fancy's Pencil_);
_The Lives of William Cavendish Duke of Newcastle, and of his wife
Margaret Duchess of Newcastle. Written by the thrice noble and
illustrious Princess, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle_, ed. by Mark
Antony Lower, M.A., London, 1872 (a reprint of the first edition of
1667); _The Life of William Cavendish Duke of Newcastle to which is
added, The True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life by Margaret,
Duchess of Newcastle_, ed. by C. H. Firth, M.A., Scribner, 1886;
_Letters and Poems in Honour of the Incomparable Princess, Margaret,
Dutchess of Newcastle, Written by Several Persons of Honour and
Learning. In the Savoy_, 1676; Ballard: _Memoirs_, pp. 299-306;
Walpole, Horace: _Royal and Noble Authors_.

[96] _Philosophical and Physical Opinions_, Duke of Newcastle's
"Epistle."

[97] _Ibid._, "To the Reader."

[98] _Philosophical and Physical Opinions_, "To the Reader," pp.
100-101.

[99] _Philosophical and Physical Opinions_, Duke of Newcastle's
"Epistle."

[100] _Ibid._, "Address to the Two Universities."

[101] _Life of Duke and Duchess of Newcastle_ (ed. Frith), p. xxxi.

[102] Scott, Sir Walter: _Peveril of the Peak_, chap. XLV.

[103] Osborne, Dorothy: _Letters_ (ed. Parry), pp. 92, 111.

[104] On swearing note the following extract from a sixteenth-century
writer: "There is no regyon nor countrie that doth use more swearynge
than is used in Englande, for a chyld that scarse can speake, a
boy, a gyrle, a wenche, now-a-days wyl swere as great othes as an
old knave and an old drabbe.... As for swearers a man nede not
to seke for thym, for in the Kynges courte and lordes courtes in
cities, borowes and in townes, and in every house, in maner there is
abbominable swerynge, and no man dothe go about to redresse it, but
doth take swearyng as for no sinne, which is a damnable synne; and
they the which doth use it, be possessed of the Devill, and no man
can helpe them but God and the Kynge." (Hill, Georgiana: _Women in
English Life_, vol. I, p. 116.)

See p. 317 for reprobation of "female swearers" in _The Ladies'
Calling_ (1671). Swift's _Polite Conversation_ (1738) bears the same
implication as to the manners of good society in the first quarter of
the eighteenth century.

[105] The "Matchless Orinda" gives us an inkling of the way some of
this praise should be discounted. It seems that Waller was reported
to have said that he would give all his own poems to have been the
author of a poem written by the Duchess of Newcastle. On being taxed
with insincerity he answered that he could "do no less in Gallantry
than be willing to devote all his own Papers to save the Reputation
of a Lady, and keep her from the Disgrace of having written anything
so ill." (_Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus_, Letter XLII.)

[106] _Life of the Duchess of Newcastle_ (ed. Brydges), "Critical
Preface."

[107] Aubrey: _Brief Lives_, vol. II, pp. 153-54.

[108] Keats, John: _Letters to his Family and Friends_, pp. 29-30.

[109] Philips, Mrs. Katherine: _Letters from Orinda to Poliarchus_,
Letter XIV. This letter also appeared in the Preface to her _Works_
in 1768.

[110] Giffard, Lady: _Her Life and Letters_, p. 41.

[111] _The Lives of the Norths_, vol. III, p. 289.

[112] _Ibid._, Editor's Preface.

[113] Giffard, Lady Martha: _Her Life and Letters_, p. 27.

[114] Osborne, Dorothy: _Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William
Temple_. "Introduction."

[115] That the letters narrowly escaped destruction is indicated by
the following letter written by Mrs. Sarah Osborne in 1770 to Sir
George Osborne, Dorothy's great-nephew: "Mrs. Temple did lend me
these letters to read with injunction not to shew them. I very much
doubt if she would send them to London.... Most of these letters
were in the tender stile with sensible sentiments, indeed I believe
Mrs. Temple burnt them after I had read them, she said she would,
as indeed I think she should, such letters can never be exposed to
advantage, there were many wrote after her marriage, they soon grew
tame and flat to what was before."

[116] Giffard, Lady: _Her Life and Letters_, pp. 38-39.

[117] _Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple_, p. 100.

[118] Ballard gives the arguments in favor of Lady Pakington.

[119] Johnstone, Grace: _Leading Women of the Restoration_, p. 101.

[120] _Percy Society Publications_, vol. XXII. See also biographies
of the Countess of Warwick by C. Fell Smith (1901) and Mary Palgrave
(1901).

[121] _Term Catalogues._

[122] _Autobiography_ (_Percy Society Publications_, vol. XXII, p.
21).

[123] Godfrey, Elizabeth: _Social Life under the Stuarts_, p. 138.

[124] Johnstone, Grace: _Leading Women of the Restoration_, pp. 107,
117.

[125] _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_ (Bohn ed.), Preface, p. ix.

[126] Hutchinson, Mrs. Lucy: _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_, p. 16.

[127] _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_, p. 14.

[128] _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_, pp. 56-62.

[129] _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_, p. 478.

[130] _Anglia_: vol. 36, "Lucy Hutchinson and the Duchess of
Newcastle."

[131] _The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe, 1600-1672_, p. 22.

[132] _Ibid._, p. 5.

[133] The use of "Miss" and "Mrs." between 1660 and 1750, and even
later, is often confusing. The use of "Mrs." for all reputable
persons of the female sex, even children, prevailed during the
seventeenth and into the eighteenth century. On the tombstone of
Milton's daughter, a child under six months we read, "1657. Mar. 20.
Mrs. Kathern Milton." (_Notes and Queries_, 7th Series, vol. VII,
p. 494.) _A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Written
by a Young Gentlewoman, Miss A. W._ (1651, 2d edition, 1690), is a
striking exception. There was sometimes a distinction between the
married and the unmarried in that the latter had the Christian name
after the "Mrs." as when Evelyn speaks of "Mrs. Margaret Blagge,"
but this custom was by no means invariable. The prefix "Miss" began
soon after the Restoration to be used as a term of reproach. January
9, 1662, Evelyn says of Roxalana, "She being taken to be ye Earl of
Oxford's _Misse_ (as at this time they began to call lewd women)."
In 1669 Flecknoe, in _Epigrams of All Sorts_, wrote a poem to Mary
Davis, the King's mistress, under the title "To Miss Davis." In
1675 appeared "_The 'Miss' displayed; with all her Wheadling Arts
and circumventions, By the Author of the First Part of the 'English
Rogue.'_" In 1683, in Miss Barber's _Poems_, was a poem entitled "To
the Town Miss," and in one of her novels (about 1715) she speaks of
the "Town Miss" who pretends to modesty. In 1690 we find the _Dutch
Whore, or, the Miss of Amsterdam_.

"Miss" in a reputable sense belonged to very young girls. In 1675
Lady Russell speaks of her daughter Rachel, who was then four years
old, as "our Miss." When the little girl is thirteen her grandfather
calls her "Mrs. Rachel." (_Lady Russell's Letters_, vol. I, pp.
14, 139.) In 1723, in _The Gentleman Instructed_, we read "As soon
as Reason begins to sparkle, Miss is led to the drawing-room." The
proper age for "Miss" seems a little advanced in two quotations made
by Mr. Aitkin (_Life of Steele_, vol. I, p. 162) from _Lillie's
Original and Genuine Letters sent to the Tatler and Spectator_.
One young lady says: "Being arrived at sixteen I have left the
boarding-school, and now having assumed the title of Madam instead
of Miss am come home." A second quotation seems to indicate a still
further extension of the proper age for Miss; "Let no woman after the
known age of twenty-one presume to admit of her being called Miss
unless she can fairly prove she is not out of her sampler."

Actresses were usually called "Mrs." in the bills. The first use
of "Miss" that I can find is in 1685 in D'Urfey's _Commonwealth
of Women_, where a part was played by "Miss Nanny" (Genest: _Some
Account of the English Stage_, vol. I, p. 443). In D'Urfey's _Don
Quixote_ Altesidora was played by "Miss Cross." Genest (vol. II, p.
70) says: "She was called _Miss_ because she was quite a girl ...
she was afterwards called Mrs. Cross ... the case was the same with
several other actresses--Cibber in _The Lady's Last Stake_ calls
two of the female characters _Miss_ Notable and _Mrs._ Conquest,
tho' they are both unmarried--but one is a girl and the other a
woman." "Miss Cross" was "Mrs." on the bills within a year. "Miss
Younger" came into the house at seven years old. Later she became
"Mrs. Younger." So with Miss Mountfort, Miss Santlow, Miss Sherburn,
Miss Booth, Miss Rogers, and other young actresses who entered the
theatrical profession between 1700-1715.

By 1750 "Miss" for unmarried women is pretty well established.
The list of subscribers to Ballard's _Memoirs_ (1752) contains
many ladies called "Miss." _The Connoisseur_, November 25, 1754,
said: "Every unmarried woman is now called 'Miss.'" But "Mrs." for
reputable unmarried women beyond girlhood was occasionally used
through the century. Elizabeth Carter was always "Mrs. Carter," while
her friend Catharine Talbot, about the same age, was "Miss Talbot."
In _Humphrey Clinker_ (1771) Tabitha Bramble, though a spinster, is
"Mrs." Sir Walter Scott called Joanna Baillie "Mrs." in the beginning
of the nineteenth century. _Notes and Queries_ (7th Series, vol. VII,
pp. 104-256) calls attention to the fact that as late as 1889 "Mrs."
was in many places considered the correct title for upper-class
unmarried female servants.

[134] Evelyn, John: _Life of Mrs. Godolphin_ (ed. Edward William
Harcourt of Nuneham Park), p. 10.

[135] _Ibid._, p. 24.

[136] Evelyn, John: _Life of Mrs. Godolphin_, p. 8.

[137] _Ibid._, p. 184.

[138] Evelyn, John: _Life of Mrs. Godolphin_, p. 215.

[139] Fitzgerald: _History of the English Stage_, vol. I, pp. 60-62.

[140] "Gildon, in the Comparison between the two stages, 1702,
attacks Mrs. Bracegirdle's private character.

"'_Sullen._ But does that Romantick Virgin still keep up her
reputation?'

"'_Critick._ D' ye mean her reputation for acting?'

"'_Sullen._ I do; but if I were to be saved for believing that
single article, I could not do it: 't is all, all a juggle, 't is
legerdemain; the best on 't is, she falls into good hands, and the
secrecy of the intrigue secures her; but as to her innocence, I
believe no more on 't than I believe of John Mandevil.'

"Tom Brown, in his description of the playhouse, is still more
severe on Mrs. Bracegirdle.... Among Tom Brown's Letters from the
Dead to the Living, there is one from Mrs. Behn to the famous Virgin
Actress--and another from the Virgin to Mrs. Behn.

"Gildon and Tom Brown seem to have had no foundation for their ill
nature, but the extreme difficulty with which an actress at this
period of the stage must have preserved her chastity.

"Mrs. Bracegirdle was perhaps a woman of cold constitution.

"Anthony Aston says--'Mrs. Bracegirdle, that Diana of the stage, had
many assailants on her virtue, as Lord Lovelace and Mr. Congreve,
the last of which had her company most; but she ever resisted his
vicious attacks, and, yet was always uneasy at his leaving her--she
was very shy of Lord Lovelace's company, as being an engaging man,
who drest well; and as, every day, his servant came to her, to ask
her how she did, she always return'd her answer in the most obeisant
words and behavior, that she was indifferent well, she humbly thanked
his Lordship ... her virtue had its reward, both in applause and
specie; for it happen'd, that as the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire,
Lord Halifax, and other Nobles, over a bottle, were extolling Mrs.
Bracegirdle's virtuous behavior, "Come," says Lord Halifax--"You all
commend her virtue, etc., but why do we not present this incomparable
woman with something worthy her acceptance?"--his Lordship deposited
200 guineas, which the rest made up to 800, and sent to her with
encomiums on her virtue.'" (Genest: _Some Account of the English
Stage_, vol. II, pp. 376-78.)

[141] Walpole, Horace: _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. II, p. 381.

[142] Walpole, Horace: _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. II, 537-44;
Pilkington: _Dictionary of Painters_, 1770; _Biographia Britannica_,
vol. II, p. 30; Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. II.

[143] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. II, pp. 224 ff.

[144] At Admiral Killigrew's sale in 1727 were six of his niece's
canvases. They were Venus and Adonis, A Satyr playing on a Pipe,
Judith and Holofernes, A woman's head, Graces dressing Venus, and her
own portrait.

[145] Pepys, _Diary_: May 7, June 30, July 26 and 29, Aug. 7, 21, 22,
Sept. 3, 27, Oct. 10, 1665.

[146] For a list of the books for children published by Newbery and
Carnan see the 1768 edition (a fifth edition) of _Goody Two Shoes_
(_Notes and Queries_, 4th Series, vol. VIII, p. 510). Cf. Mrs.
Field's _The Child and His Book_ and Elizabeth Godfrey's _Home Life
under the Stuarts_, chap. XIII.

[147] See pp. 233-39.

[148] _Term Catalogues_, Easter, 1671, Easter, 1690.

[149] _Lady Russell's Letters_, vol. I, p. 70 n.

[150] See _Pious Englishwomen of the Seventeenth Century_. Derby,
1845. The list of names given in this book is as follows: Lady
Falkland, Lady Carberry, Lady Sunderland, Lady Capel, Mrs. Basire,
Lady Mary Wharton, Margaret Lady Maynard, Anne Lady Halkett, Lady
Jane Cheyne, Countess of Derby, Countess of Dorset; with notices
of Sibylla Egerton, Lady Sophia Chaworth, Isabella Fotherby, Alice
Duchess Dudley, Lady Grace Grenville, Mary Perry, Lady Mary Hastings,
Lady Pakington, Lady Digby, Mary Evelyn, Elizabeth Lady Guildford,
Lady Newland, Lady Cholmondely, Katharine Lady Neville, Barbara Lady
Longueville, Mrs. Susannah Hopton, Anne Baynard, Catharine Bovey,
Mrs. Mary Astell, Lady Elizabeth Hastings. (_Notes and Queries_, 6th
Series, vol. VII, p. 355.)

[151] Hill, Georgiana: _Women in English Life_, vol. I, p. 191.

[152] Published Easter, 1671.

[153] Lady Russell's Letters, vol. II, pp. 72-85.

[154] Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 390.

[155] Florence Smith: _Mary Astell_, p. 109.

[156] Bourne, H.: _Life of Locke_, vol. II, p. 213.

[157] _Occasional Thoughts_, p. 169. See _The Lady's Magazine_, 1774,
for an article on Lady Masham.

[158] Dunton: _Life and Errors_, p. 334; Nichols: _Anecdotes of
Bowyer_, p. 609; _Ibid._: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. I, p. 305;
Dryden: _Works_ (ed. by Scott), vol. x, p. 110.

[159] Nichols: _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 612.

[160] Cockburn: _Works_, vol. I, p. vi.

[161] Mrs. Cockburn: _Works:_ Letters to G. Burnet, Dec. 9, 1701;
Feb. 2, 1703-04, vol. II, pp. 153, 166. Also Letter from Mrs. Burnet,
vol. I, p. xvii.

[162] Mrs. Cockburn: _Works_, vol. I, p. xx.

[163] _Ibid._ See Letters to Mr. Cockburn, June 23 to Sept. 21, 1707;
Letters to Mr. Fenn, July 18 to Oct. 31, 1707.

[164] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. xii.

[165] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 171.

[166] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 174.

[167] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. xxv.

[168] Mrs. Cockburn: _Works_, vol. II, p. 206.

[169] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. xi.

[170] Hill, Georgiana: _Women in English Life_, vol. I, p. 248.

[171] Webb, Maria: _The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall_.

[172] Ward's _Life of Henry More_ (1710). _Encyclopædia Britannica_,
11th ed., under "More, Henry"; _Dictionary of National Biography_,
under "Lady Conway"; Webb, Mrs. Maria: _The Penns and Penningtons of
the Seventeenth Century_, pp. 297, 313.

[173] _British Quarterly Review_, July, 1873, pp. 181-87.

[174] Winchester: _Life of Wesley_, p. 1. Telford: _Life of Wesley_,
p. 52.

[175] Winchester, _Life of Wesley_, p. 9.

[176] _Ibid._, p. 8.

[177] _Life of Wesley_, pp. 10-11.

[178] Manley, Mrs.: _The New Atalantis_, vol. III, p. 245; Ballard:
_Memoirs_, p. 440; cf. _Notes and Queries_, 2d Series, vol. IX, pp.
221-22; Wills, Henry: ed. of _Sir Roger de Coverley_, pp. 170-74.

[179] _A History of the County of Yorkshire_, vol. I, p. 499.

[180] _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. 5, p. 778.

[181] _Ibid._, vol. 6, p. 42.

[182] _Ibid._, vol. 6, p. 99.

[183] _Ibid._, vol. 10, p. 36.

[184] _Lady Huntingdon and her Friends_. Compiled by Mrs. Helen C.
Knight, p. 18.

[185] Coventry, Francis: _Pompey the Little_, bk. I, chap. XL.

[186] This conception of a divinely authorized aristocracy governed
by a special set of laws tallies with the opinion formulated by Dr.
George Hickes in a sermon preached before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen
of London in 1684. Dr. Hickes justified the presence of the poor in
the body politic, as necessary to the very existence of the State:

"But this Civil Equality is morally impossible, because no
Commonweal, little or great, can subsist without Poor. They are
necessary, for the establishment of Superiority, and Subjection
in Humane Societies, where there must be Members of Dishonour, as
well as Honour, and some to serve and obey, as well as others to
command. The Poor are the Hands and Feet of the Body Politick, the
_Gibeonites_ and _Nethinims_ in all Countries, who hew the Wood,
and draw the Water of the Rich. They Plow our Lands, and dig our
Quarries, and cleanse our Streets, nay, those, who fight our battels
in the defence of their Country, are the _Poor Souldiers_, who, as
the Legions of _Blæsus_ once complained in a Mutiny, sell their
lives for seven pence a day. As there must be Rich to be, like the
Centurian in the Gospel, in Authority: so there must be Poor, to whom
they may say, _Go unto one, and he goeth, and to another come, and he
cometh_; but were all equally rich, there could be no subordination,
none to command, nor none to serve. But in such case, the Body
Politick must dissolve, as the Natural body was like to do in the
Fable of _Agrippa_, when the rest of the Members would work no longer
for the Belly, which, they thought did nothing at all."

[187] In 1656 there appeared a book by Elizabeth Major entitled
_Honey on the Rod, or a Comfortable Contemplation for one in
Affliction, with Sundry Poems. By the Unworthiest of the Servants of
the Lord Jesus Christ._ In 1652 had appeared anonymously _Eliza's
Babes, or the Virgin's Offerings_. A detailed examination of the two
books leads to a surmise that they are by the same author. What is
probably a unique copy of _Eliza's Babes_ is in the British Museum.
(_Notes and Queries_, 7th Series, vol. III, p. 502.)

[188] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. II, p. 168.

[189] Lady Winchilsea: _Circuit of Apollo_, note. (Ed. Reynolds,
Myra.)

[190] Behn, Aphra: _Works_, 6 vols.; Cibber, _Lives of the Poets_,
vol. III, pp. 17-23.

[191] _The Epistle to Augustus_, ll. 290-91.

[192] Kavanagh, Julia. _English Women of Letters_, vol. I, chap. II.

[193] See p. 386.

[194] See p. 388.

[195] Genest, _Some Account of the English Stage_, vol. II, p. 104.

[196] See pp. 104-09.

[197] Mrs. Inchbald: _The British Theatre_, vol. XI; Cibber: _Lives
of the Poets_, vol. IV, pp. 58-61.

[198] Centlivre, Susanna: _Works_. "To the World."

[199] Hobohm: _Das Verhältniss von Sus. Centlivre's "Love at a
Venture" zu Thomas Corneille's "Le Gallant Double."_ (Hall. Diss.
1900.) Wüllenweber: _Mrs. Centlivre's Lustspiel "Love's Contrivance"
und seine Quellen_. (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Strube: _Sus. Centlivre's
Lustspiel "The Stolen Heiress" und sein Verhältniss zu "The Heir"
von Thomas May_. (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Grober: _Das Verhältniss von
Sus. Centlivre's Lustspiel "The Gamester" zu Reynard's Lustspiel
"Le Joneur."_ (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Weidler: _Das Verhältniss von
Mrs. Centlivre's "The Busy Body" zu Molière's "L'Etourdi" und Ben
Jonson's "The Divill is an Ass."_ (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Ohnsorg: _John
Lacy's "Dumb Lady," Mrs. Centlivre's "Love's Contrivance" und Henry
Fielding's "Mock Doctor" in ihrem Verhältniss zu einander und zu
ihrer gemeinshaftlichen Quelle_. (Rostock. Diss. 1900.) Poelchau:
_Susannah Centlivre's Tragödie "The Cruel Gift" in ihrem Verhältniss
zur Quelle Boccaccio's Decameron IV_. (Hall. Diss. 1905.)

[200] See p. 85, 86.

[201] See mezzotint engraving by Becket in 1686 edition of her poems.

[202] See pp. 85-86.

[203] _The Lives of the Norths_, vol. I, p. 7; vol. III, pp. 262, 295.

[204] Verses by that "Excellent Poetess, Mrs. Wharton," with other
poems to her, were published with "The Idea of Christian Love," by
Mr. Edward Young of Salisbury. _Term Catalogues._ (Mich. 1688.)

[205] _A Sermon at the Funeral of the late learned and ingenuous Mrs.
Ann Baynard, Daughter and only Child of Dr. Edward Baynard, Fellow
of the College of Physitians. Together with some remarkable passages
of her life, preached at the Parish Church of Barn(e)s in Surrey,
June 6, 1697. By John Prude, A.M., Chaplain to his Grace the Duke of
Norfolk; and Curate of St. Clement's Danes. Term Catalogues._ (Trin.
1697.)

[206] _Biog. Fem._, p. 42.

[207] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. III, pp. 177-86.

[208] Mr. Sprint's sermon was printed under the title _The
Bride-Woman's Counsellor. Being a Sermon Preach'd at a Wedding,
May the Eleventh, 1699 at Sherbourne in Dorsetshire._ It was from
1 Cor. VII, 34, "But she that is Married careth for the things of
the World, how she may please her Husband." He explains that "Man
was all Affibility and Sweetness of Temper" before the Fall, the
chief responsibility for which was properly placed on Eve and her
female descendants. God had also fully indicated her function when
he deliberately created her for the Profit and Comfort of Man. "A
good wife," continues Mr. Sprint, "should be like a Mirrour which
hath no Image of its own, but receives its Stamp and Image from the
Face that looks into it: So should a good Wife endeavour to frame
her outward Deportment, and her inward Affections according to her
Husband's." She must not only obey his commands but she must bring
"under unto him the very Desires of the Heart to be regulated by
him so far, that it should not be lawful for her to will or desire
what she herself liked, but only what her husband should approve and
allow." Mr. Sprint printed his sermon only because of attacks by some
"ill-natur'd Females." He gets his revenge by saying that he has not
met among all his accusers one woman "whose Husband is able to give
her the Character of a dutiful and obedient Wife."

[209] Lady Chudleigh's summary of the arts of a successful wife is
exemplified in a serious book published anonymously entitled _The
Fair Counsellor, or, The Young Lady's Conduct after Marriage_.
Charlotte is instructing Olivia in "The Art of Management." A woman
must recognize that she is confined to her husband for life and
hence she should make it her business to please. She should learn to
reflect his moods as in a glass. To all wayward humors she should
oppose passive obedience and non-resistance. If he should come home
intoxicated she should "by all the little innocent Arts of Love and
fond Endearments decoy him to his Bed." An illustrative example of
what may be done by gentleness and submission is the experience of
Sir Toby Testy and his wife. Sir Toby became so warm with anger
one day as to cane my Lady. She retired in tears to her own room,
explaining to him later that it seemed better to her to bemoan her
fate in silence than to expose his unkindness to a censorious world.
The outcome was that he clasped her in his arms with a thousand
endearing protestations, and never disobliged her again to his dying
day.

[210] Winchilsea, Lady: _Poems_ (ed. Reynolds, Myra); "A Fragment."

[211] That Lady Winchilsea's work was pretty well known before 1713
is evident from an interesting passage in Mrs. Manley's _The New
Atalantis_ (1709). Some invisible spectators are being taken about
under the guidance of "Intelligence." They are observing the daily
parade of coaches on the "Prado" when Intelligence calls attention to
a lady in one of the coaches. "The Lady," he says, "once belonged to
the Court, but marrying into the Country, she made it her Business
to devote herself to the Muses, and has writ a great many pretty
Things: These Verses of the Progress of Life, have met with abundance
of applause, and therefore I recommend them to your Excellency's
Perusal." _The Progress of Life_ is then quoted entire and Astræa
comments: "The Lady speaks very feelingly: We need look no further
than this, to know that she's herself past that agreeable Age she so
much regrets. However, I am very well pleas'd with the Thought that
runs thro'; if she had contracted something of the second and third
stanza, it had not been the Worse. I presume she's one of the Few
that write out of Pleasure, and not Necessity. By that means its her
own Fault, if she publish any Thing but what's Good; for it's next to
impossible to write much and write well." (Vol. I, p. 186.) In the
_Key_ the "Lady" thus spoken of is said to be "Col. Finch's Lady once
a Maid of Honour." Mrs. Manley's version of _The Progress of Life_
shows several slight verbal variations from the form published in
1713. Two lines on Parnassus in the second stanza appeared in 1713 as
more orthodox lines on Canaan. But when Miss Seward's mother taught
her the poem in 1763, it was the old and not the 1713 version that
she used. (Winchilsea, Lady: _Works_, ed. Reynolds, p. lxxiii.)

[212] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. III, pp. 201-03.

[213] Thoresby: _Diary_, May 13, 1709; May 1, 1713; April 22, 1716;
Sept. 2, 1716.

[214] The most complete account of Miss Barker is in an inaugural
dissertation by Karl Stanglmaier, Berlin, 1906, entitled _Mrs. Jane
Barker. Ein Beitrag zur Englischen Literaturgeschichte_.

[215] "To Mrs. Jane Barker on her most Delightful and Excellent
Romance of Scipina, now in the Press."

"To my Ingenius Friend Mrs. Jane Barker, on my Publishing her Romance
of Scipina."

Both of these poems are in Part II of _Poetical Recreations_ (1688).
The second one is by Benjamin Crayle.

[216] _Amours of Bosvil and Galesia_, pp. 3-4.

[217] In the second edition of the _Entertaining Novels_ (1719), in
a dedication to the Countess of Exeter, Miss Barker says, "Was it
not Burleigh House with its Park, &c., that formed in me the first
idea of my Scipio's country retreat? Most sure it was, for when I
composed my Romance I knew nothing further from home than Burleigh
and Warthorp." These two seats of the Exeter family are about seven
miles from Wilsthorp. (_Notes and Queries_, Series IX, no. 10, p.
171.) Miss Baker lived at Wilsthorp which is near Stamford and only
about forty miles from Cambridge.

[218] Barker, Jane: _Poems, passim_.

[219] _Poems_: "To my Unkind Strephon."

[220] In _Amours of Bosvil and Galesia_ and _A Patch-Work Screen_.

[221] _Amours_, p. 11.

[222] Mr. Barker studied at both Universities.

[223] _Amours_, p. 13.

[224] _A Patch-Work Screen_, p. 10.

[225] _Ibid._, p. 56.

[226] _Poems_, "On the Apothecary's Filing my Bills amongst the
Doctors."

[227] _Poems_: "A Farewell to Poetry with a Long Digression on
Anatomy."

[228] _Poems_: "A Virgin Life."

[229] _Amours_, pp. 44-46.

[230] _Amours_, p. 47.

[231] Celia Fiennes: _Through England on a Side Saddle_,
Introduction, pp. ix-xi.

[232] Celia Fiennes: _Through England on a Side Saddle_, p. 99.

[233] _Ibid._, p. 114.

[234] Between 1767 and 1771.

[235] Celia Fiennes: _Through England on a Side Saddle_, p. 163.

[236] _Ibid._, p. 165.

[237] In Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 139, is this
statement: "From another of Miss Elstob's letters in the same
collection [letters to Mr. Ballard] it appears that Dr. Hickes was
her grandfather by the mother's side; a circumstance which may
account for her proficiency, if not for the origin of her Saxon
studies." I have not as yet found confirmation of this relationship.
In the letters and dedications to him the brother and sister put
forward no claim to relationship, and in the letter Dr. Hickes wrote
in behalf of William Elstob and in those written in approbation of
Miss Elstob's work, there is no indication that he was asking help
for his grandchildren. The _Dictionary of National Biography_ says
that Dr. Hickes "left no children," a statement slightly ambiguous,
for while it conveys the impression that he had no children, it
might be literally true even if Jane Elstob were his daughter, for
she died about twenty-four years before he did. Nichols in _Literary
Anecdotes_ speaks of an Elstob pedigree "accompanied by another
pedigree of Mrs. Elstob's mother." These were on a single leaf
fastened into Richard St. George's _Visitation of the County of
Durham_ (1615), among the MSS. of the Harleian Collection.

[238] Walker, John: _Letters of Eminent Persons_, vol. I, pp. 243-40;
Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, pp. 112-40, "The Elstobs."

[239] Preface to Miss Elstob's _Homily on the Birthday of St.
Gregory_.

[240] Nichols, _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 130. "Dissertation
on Letter Founders," by Edward Rowe Mores.

[241] Mr. Rowe Mores, in _Dissertation on Letter Founders_, says
of Miss Elstob: "In her latter years she was tutoress in the
family of the Duke of _Portland_, where we have visited her in her
sleeping-room at _Bulstrode_, surrounded with books and dirtiness,
the usual appendages of the folks of learning. But if any one wishes
to see her as she was when she was the favorite of Dr. _Hudson_ and
the _Oxonians_, they may view her portraiture in the initial G of
_The English Saxon homily on the birthday of St. Gregory_." This
portrait is repeated in his _Grammar_.

[242] In the "G" of Gregorium is a portrait of Mr. Thwaites as St.
Gregory. (Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 131.)

[243] _Letters of Eminent Men addressed to Ralph Thoresby, F. R. S._

[244] A new edition of this _Homily_ was brought out by William
Pickering, Leicester, 1839.

[245] _Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory_, p. ii.

[246] This _Grammar_ is "remarkable for being the first effort
to present the study of Old English through the medium of modern
English." (Adams, Eleanor N.: _Old English Scholarship in England
from 1566-1800_, p. 92.)

[247] July 31, 1715, Mr. Hearne wrote to Mr. Hickes thanking him
for his "excellently learned _Thesaurus_," and for Mrs. Elstob's
_Grammar_. He comments on her Preface as "judicious, learned, and
elegant." He is particularly pleased with her remarks on the author
of the "Dissertation on reading the Classicks, and forming a just
stile." This gentleman was of St. Edmund's Hall and was always looked
upon as a vain, flashy person. "I look'd upon him as the most unfit
Person I knew of a Scholar to write upon this Subject.... His book
hath been sufficiently ridiculed & condemned her by y^e best Judges."
(_Hearne's Collections_, vol. IV, p. 83.)

[248] An interesting fact in connection with the publication of the
_Grammar_ has to do with the type. Some years after the printing of
the _Homily_ the house of the printer, Mr. Bowyer, was burned and
all the Anglo-Saxon type was destroyed. They could not have printed
the _Grammar_ had not Lord Chief Justice Parker provided the funds
for cutting new type. In 1753 Mr. N. Bowyer, son of the printer of
the _Grammar_, sent this type, as a curiosity, to Mr. Edward Rowe
Mores with this letter: "I make bold to transmit to Oxford, through
your hands, the Saxon punches and matrices, which you were pleased
to intimate would not be unacceptable to that learned Body. It would
be a great satisfaction to me if I could by this means perpetuate
the munificence of the noble Donor, to whom I am originally indebted
for them, the late Lord Chief Justice Parker, afterwards Earl of
Macclesfield, who, among the numerous Benefactors which my father
met with, after his house was burnt in 1712-13, was so good as to
procure those types to be cut, to enable him to print Mrs. Elstob's
Saxon Grammar. England had not then the advantage of such an Artist
in Lettercutting as has since arisen: and that as my father received
them from a great Patron of Learning, his son consigns them to the
greatest Seminary of it." (Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. II,
pp. 355-59.) In 1768 Mr. Edward Rowe Mores presented these punches
and matrices to the Society of Antiquaries, and the Reverend Mr.
Pegge at that time communicated to the Society some account of
William and Elizabeth Elstob. (_Archæologia_, 1804, vol. I, p.
xxv.) The difficulty in getting good type is shown by the following
letters: May 19, 1713, Mr. Robert Nelson wrote to Mr. Wanley: "Pray
do me the favor to write out the Saxon characters for Mr. Bowyer,
as you have kindly promised; despatch in this affair is of great
consequence because my Lord Chief Justice Parker does intend to
assist towards repairing this misfortune by giving him a set of
press letters, and is very uneasy that he is not ready to begin
his friend's book which requires these characters to perfect it."
(_Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 493.) Mr. Wanley said that he wrote out
the letters in the most exact and able manner that he could "But it
signified little; for when the alphabet came into the hands of the
workman (who was but a blunderer) he could not imitate the fine and
regular stroke of the pen; so that the letters are not only clumsy,
but unlike those that I drew. This appears by _Mrs. Elstob's Saxon
Grammar_ being the book mentioned by Mr. Nelson." (_Ibid._, p. 498.)

[249] Nichols: _Illustrations of Literary History_, vol. I, p. 804.

[250] _Ibid._, vol. IV, pp. 211-12.

[251] Nichols: _Illustrations of Literary History_, vol. IV, p. 213.

[252] Nichols: _Ibid._, vol. I, p. 804.

[253] Dr. Hickes also wrote strongly in favor of Miss Elstob's
work in his manuscript Preface to _Orosius_. (Nichols: _Literary
Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 132.)

[254] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. IV, p. 87.

[255] _Ibid._, vol. IV, p. 93.

[256] Nichols: _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 48.

[257] Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, pp. 125-27.

[258] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. V, p. 271.

[259] _Ibid._, vol. V, p. 337.

[260] _Ibid_., vol. V, p. 358.

[261] The folio manuscripts of Miss Elstob's _Homilies_ are now
preserved among the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum. See
_Bibliothecæ Lansdownianæ_, nos. 370-74, and _Bibliothecæ Harleiana_,
vol. I, p. 323, no. *27.

[262] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. VI, p. 255. Mr. Rowe Mores said
that Miss Elstob had once had a genteel fortune, but that she had
"pursued too much the drug called learning, and in that pursuit
failed of being careful of any one thing necessary."

[263] "The learned Saxonist, Mrs. Elstob, was one, among many others,
who about this period [1714] experienced the new Bishop's bounty."
(Nichols: _Illustrations of Literary History_, vol. III, p. 227.) Mr.
Thomas Seward, Bishop of Lichfield, knew Miss Elstob and was one of
the contributors to her support. (Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol.
IV, p. 135.)

[264] Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 137.

[265] _Letters of Mrs. Delany_, 1st Series, vol. I, p. 263. Mrs.
Chapone was evidently a gifted letter-writer and it is with a sense
of great loss that we read of the accidental burning of many of her
letters in 1860. (_Letters of Mrs. Delaney_, 1st Series, vol. I, p.
263 n.)

[266] _Letters of Mrs. Delany_, 1st Series, vol. II, p. 31.

[267] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 14.

[268] _Letters of Mrs. Delany_, 1st Series, vol. II, p. 18.

[269] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 56

[270] A full _Life_ of Miss Elstob is much to be desired. In
Ballard's _Letters_, in the Letters of many contemporary antiquaries
and Saxon scholars, especially Dr. George Hickes, and in manuscripts
at Bulstrode, there must be many further sources of interesting
information concerning her life and work. Especially would Mrs.
Chapone's letter be a valuable contribution.

[271] Allibone's _Dictionary of Authors_.

[272] Bruce, James: _Lives of Eminent Men of Aberdeen_; _Chalmer's
Dictionary_; _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. XVII; _Anecdotes of
Bowyer_, p. 556.

[273] Footnote 1: _Notes and Queries_, 2d Series, vol. XI, p. 101.

[274] Baker: _Biographia Dramatica_, vol. IV, p. 212.

[275] Gnest: _Some Account of the English Stage_, vol. III, p. 461.

[276] _The Gentleman's Magazine_, March, 1735.

[277] Lowndes: _Bibliographical Manual_.

[278] _Notes and Queries_, 2d Series, vol. XI, pp. 101-02.

[279] Lounsbury: _Studies in Chaucer_, vol. III, p. 242.

[280] The statutes of this Society were dated May 27, 1736. In
December Mr. Alex. Gordon wrote, "We are every day increasing both
in number and in members either conspicuous for their quality or
station, or learning and ingenuity." But constant difficulties
arose between the Society and book-sellers. No plan tried proved
satisfactory to both parties. By 1765 the finances of the Society
were practically exhausted, and in April, 1746, the Society came to
an abrupt close, after a starving and not very productive ten years.
(Nichols: _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, pp. 134-38.)

[281] Miss Emily M. Symonds says of the author of the _Anecdotes_:
"Lady Louisa Stuart inherited her grandmother's tastes for literary
pursuits. That this taste was discouraged by her family is a real
calamity, as all will agree who are familiar with the _Selections
from her Manuscripts (Essays and Verses)_, and the _Letters to Miss
Clinton_. Her sketch of the family of John, Duke of Argyll, is a
biographical gem, and her youthful letters read as if they had been
written by one of Jane Austen's most charming heroines. Her satire
is so sweet-tempered that it is evident she likes her victims none
the less for her laughter, while her common-sense philosophy, with
its sub-acid flavour of gentle cynicism may be studied with advantage
even in these enlightened days. A glimpse of Lady Mary's daughter and
granddaughter may be obtained from the _Diary_ of Miss Burney, who
met the two ladies at Mrs. Delany's in 1787. Lady Bute, she records,
with an exterior the most forbidding to strangers, has powers of
conversation the most entertaining and lively where she is intimate.
She is full of anecdote, delights in strokes of general satire, yet
with mere love of comic, not insidious ridicule. She spares not for
giving her opinions, and laughs at fools as well as follies, with the
shrewdest derision. Lady Louisa Stuart, her youngest daughter, has
parts equal to those of her mother, with a deportment and appearance
infinitely more pleasing; yet she is far from handsome, but proves
how well beauty may be occasionally missed, when understanding and
vivacity unite to fill up her place.... They seem both to inherit
an ample portion of the wit of their mother and grandmother, Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, though I believe them both to have escaped
all inheritance of her faults. On the occasion of another and later
meeting Miss Burney writes: 'Lady Bute and Lady Louisa were both in
such high spirits themselves, that they kept up all the conversation
between them with such a vivacity, an acuteness, and an observation
on men and manners so clear and so sagacious, that it would be
difficult to pass an evening of greater entertainment.'" (Symonds,
Emily Morse: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times_, p. 537.)

[282] Symonds, Emily Morse: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her
Times_, p. 4.

[283] _The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu_ (Bell,
1887), vol. II, p. 240.

[284] _Ibid._, LXXVI. Lady Louisa gives the later history of these
ponderous black books saying that they survived the wear and tear
of a century through the protection of an excellent person who had
been Lady Bute's attendant before her marriage, and a part of the
family ever after. "Her spectacles were always to be found in Clelia
and Cassandra, which she studied unceasingly six days of the week,
prizing them next to the Bible and Tillotson's Sermons; because, to
give her own words, they were all about good and virtuous people,
not like the wicked trash she now saw young people get from the
circulating libraries."

[285] Symonds: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times_, p. 7.

[286] _Spence's Anecdotes_, by Singer (Ed. 1820), p. 232.

[287] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. I, p. 40.

[288] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 403.

[289] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 5.

[290] Symonds, Emily Morse: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her
Times_, p. 201.

[291] _Ibid._, p. 169.

[292] _Letters and Works_, vol. II, p. 41. The debate referred to
was on the conduct of the Spanish government, and took place on
Thursday, March 1, 1739. Mrs. Pendarves, afterwards Mrs. Delany,
gives the following slightly different account of the matter: "Lady
Westmoreland ... and the Duchess of Queensberry, Mrs. Fortescue
and myself, set forward for Westminster, and got up to the gallery
door without any difficulty. There were thirteen ladies more that
came with the same intention. To tell you all the particulars of
our provocations, the insults of the doorkeepers and our unshaken
intrepidity, would flourish out more paper than a single frank
would contain; but we bore the buffets of a stinking crowd from
half an hour after ten till five in the afternoon without moving an
inch from our places, only see-sawing about as the motion of the
multitude forced us. At last, our committee resolved to adjourn to
the coffeehouse of the Court of Request, where debates began how we
were to proceed? It was agreed amongst us to address Sir Charles
Dalton (gentleman usher of the Black Rod) for admittance. The address
was presented, and an answer returned that whilst one lady remained
in the passage to the gallery, the door should not be opened for
the members of the House of Commons, so we generously gave them the
liberty of taking their places. As soon as the door was opened, they
all rushed in, and we followed."

It is of interest to compare the events of this attack on the House
of Lords with two similar attempts to affect legislative action
in the seventeenth century. In 1643, when some peace propositions
had been under consideration in the House of Commons, but had been
finally abandoned, the women of London, with white silk ribbons
in their hats, went in great numbers to the House bearing a peace
petition. The House sent out a deputation of three or four members to
meet them, mollify them, and induce them to return home. Rushworth
recounts the further progress of the affair:

"But the women, not satisfied, remain'd thereabouts, and by noon
were encreased to five thousand at the least; and some men of the
rabble in women's cloaths mixt themselves amongst them and instigated
them to go to the Commons door and cry 'Peace, Peace,' which they
did accordingly, thrusting to the door of the House at the upper
stairs head; and as soon as they were pass'd a part of the Trained
Band (that usually stood sentinal there) thrust the soldiers down
and would suffer none to come in or go out of the House for near two
hours. The Trained Band advised them to come down, and first pulled
them; and, afterwards to fright them shot powder. But they cry'd
out 'Nothing but powder,' and having brickbats in the yard threw
them apace at the Trained Band, who then shot bullets, and killed
a ballad-singer with one arm that was heartening on the women, and
another poor man that came accidentally. Yet the women not daunted,
cry'd out the louder at the door of the House of Commons, 'Give
us these traitors that are against peace that we may tear them to
pieces, give us that dog Pym.'"

This "Female Riot" had a disastrous end. When Waller's troopers
went by with his colors in their hats, the women snatched some of
the ribbons, calling the men Waller's dogs. The troopers defended
themselves, at first with swords "flatways," but later cutting so
furiously over hands and faces that most of the women fled. The few
who remained were later dispersed by a troop of horses.

[293] On her return she brought nineteen volumes of this journal
which she entrusted to her daughter. Lady Bute kept them under lock
and key, occasionally reading passages from them, and once allowing
her daughter, Lady Louisa, to read the first portions. Before Lady
Bute's death the manuscript was solemnly burned as a sacred duty to
her mother's memory.

[294] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 211 n.

[295] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 314.

[296] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. cxxvii.

[297] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 236.

[298] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 239.

[299] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 252.

[300] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. IV, pp. 4-22.

[301] Reprinted in 1725 as _A Stage Coach Journey to Exeter_.

[302] Vol. I, pp. 205-13.

[303] Vol. IV, pp. 302-07. (Conversation between Steele as "Don
Phœbo" and Mrs. Tofts.)

[304] _The Tatler_ (ed. Aitkin), vol. IV, p. 242 n.

[305] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. IV, pp. 146-63.

[306] Whicher, George Frisbie: _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza
Haywood_ (Columbia, 1915), p. 2.

[307] "Whereas Elizabeth Haywood, Wife of the Reverend Mr. Valentine
Haywood, eloped from him her Husband on Saturday the 26th. of
November last past, and went away without his Knowledge and Consent:
This is to give Notice to all persons in general, That if any one
shall trust her either with Money or Goods, or if she shall contract
Debts of any kind whatsoever, the said Mr. Haywood will not pay the
same." (_Post Boy_, January 7, 1721. Quoted by Mr. Whicher, p. 3.)

[308] In 1723, at Drury Lane, she played "Mrs. Graspall" in her own
comedy, _A Wife to be Lett_. In 1715, six years before she left her
husband, she had appeared as "Chloe" in Shadwell's adaptation of
_Timon of Athens_.

[309] A complete bibliography of Mrs. Haywood's works is given by Mr.
Whicher in his _Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood_, pp. 126-204.

[310] Gosse, Edmund: _Gossip in a Library_; "What Ann Lang Read," pp.
161-69.

[311] Whicher: _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood_, p. 13.

[312] See section on "Novel-Reading Girl."

[313] Whicher, G. F.: _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood_,
chap. V, "The Heroine of _The Dunciad_."

[314] Whicher, G. P.: _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood_,
p. 22.

It may be noticed that late in the century several women were
successful printers and publishers. "Mrs. Munelly was a printer in
White Fryars; and publisher of _The St. James's Evening Post_, a
very old newspaper, the precursor of _The St. James's Chronicle_"
(Nichols's _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. III, p. 467.) "In April, 1775,
Mrs. Baskerville, who had carried on the printing business of her
husband, announced that business for sale, but she continued the
business of letter founding in all its parts." (_Ibid._, vol. III,
p. 459.) "William Caslon, whose foundry was of great repute, died
in 1778, leaving the business to his widow. Her merit and ability
in conducting a capital business during the life of her husband,
and afterwards till her son was capable of managing it, can only be
known to those who had dealings with that manufacturer. In quickness
of understanding, and activity of execution, she has left few equals
among her sex." (_Ibid._, vol. III, p. 357.)

[315] _Ibid._, chap. 7, "The Domestic Novel."

[316] Pope, Alexander: _Works_ (Elwin and Courthope), vol. VII, p.
177.

[317] Pope, Alexander: _Works_ (Elwin and Courthope), vol. VII, p.
191; vol. III, p. 243.

[318] Swift, Jonathan: _Works_ (ed. Scott), vol. XVII, p. 359.

[319] Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), vol. XVII, p. 367. Letter to
Countess of Suffolk, p. 371.

[320] _Ibid._, vol. XVII, p. 306.

[321] _Ibid._, vol. XVII, p. 342.

[322] _Ibid._, vol. XVII, p. 353.

[323] _Ibid._, vol. XVIII, p. 168.

[324] Swift: _Works_: (ed. Scott), vol. XVIII, p. 147.

[325] In 1754, at a sale of 150 pictures belonging to Dr. Mead, a
picture of "Mrs. Barber the poetess, in Water Colours," brought only
1_l._ 9_s._, the next lowest price paid for any picture. (_Notes and
Queries_, 5th Series, vol. II, p. 107.) Mrs. Barber suffered from
severe attacks of gout and she had been one of Dr. Mead's patients.

[326] Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), vol. XIX, pp. 5-9.

[327] "There being then but one Man-Midwife in the Kingdom my Father
made himself Master of That useful Art, and practised it with great
success, Reputation and Humanity." (Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol.
VII, p. 12.)

[328] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. I, pp. 27-29.

[329] _Brookiana_, vol. II, p. 123.

[330] Clarke, Adam: _A Bibliographical Dictionary_, vol. VI, p. 142.

[331] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. I, p. 46.

[332] Swift to Lord Bathurst, October, 1730: _Works_ (Elrington
Ball), vol. IV, p. 169, note.

[333] Craik, Henry: _Life of Swift_, vol. II, p. 189.

[334] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. I, p. 132. Swift: _Works_ (ed.
Scott), vol. XVIII, p. 171.

[335] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. I, p. 135.

[336] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. 119.

[337] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. 120.

[338] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 249.

[339] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. II, p. 249.

[340] _Ibid._, vol. II, pp. 84, 224, 231, 234.

[341] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 221.

[342] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 240. At the beginning of the eighteenth
century we not infrequently find notice of women book-sellers,
as Elizabeth Janeway of Chichester (1697); Eleanor Smith (1697);
Elizabeth Whitlocke (1697-99); Anne Speed at Three Crowns, Exchange
Alley (1705-09); Mrs. Billingsly under Royal Exchange (1707);
Margaret Coggan (1708-09); Mrs. Appleby of Gravesend (1711); Mrs.
Small of Deal (1711); etc. (_Term Catalogues_, _passim_.)

[343] _The Heart of John Wesley's Journal_, p. 182.

[344] Morgan, Charlotte E.: _The Rise of the Novel of Manners_, p. 70.

[345] Swift, Jonathan: _The Journal to Stella_, February 21, 1713.

[346] See an article entitled "An early Romantic Novel," by Miss
Helen Sard Hughes in the _Journal of English and Germanic Philology_,
vol. XV, pp. 564-97. In an unpublished manuscript Miss Hughes has
made an elaborate study of Mrs. Collyer in her relation to her times.
I am indebted to this study for many suggestions.

[347] See article by Mr. John Louis Haney on "German Literature in
England before 1790," in _Americana Germanica_, vol. IV, pp. 130-54;
and an article on "The Influence of Solomon Gesner upon English
Literature," by Miss Bertha Reed, in _German American Annals_, vol.
VII (1905), vol. VIII (1906).

[348] Article VI, vol. XI, p. 78.

[349] See article by F. J. Harvey Darton on children's books, in
_Cambridge History of Literature_, vol. XI, chap. XVI.

[350] Hughes, Helen Sard: _Mary Mitchell Collyer: A Romanticist of
the Mid-Century_, chap. III (unpublished manuscript).

[351] In my study, _Nature in English Poetry between Pope and
Wordsworth_, in a brief account of fiction from this point of view, I
gave _John Buncle_ as the earliest writer of fiction to make abundant
use of nature. It is interesting to find Mrs. Collyer, not only
antedating him, but excelling him in accuracy and fullness.

[352] Fielding, Henry: _Complete Works_ (edited by Thomas Roscoe), p.
630.

[353] _Familiar Letters between the Characters of David Simple._
(1747).

[354] Fielding, Henry: _Complete Works_ (ed. Roscoe), p. 632.

[355] _The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson_ (ed. Barbauld), vol.
II, pp. 101-05.

[356] _Die Begebenheiten David Simpels, oder Erzählung von dessen
Reisen durch die Städte London und Westminster, am einen wahrhaftigen
Freund zu suchen._ Geschrieben durch ein Frauenzimmer. Übersetzt
durch M. A. Wodarch. (Hamburg, in der Hertelischen Handlung im Dom.
1746.)

[357] _Le véritable Ami, ou la Vie de David Simple._ Traduit de
l'Anglois. (Amsterdam, 1755.)

[358] _Geschichte der Gräfin von Dellwyn_; von Fielding's Schwester,
der Verfasserin des _David Simple_. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt.
(Leipzig, in der Weidmannschen Handling. 1761.)

[359] Plügge, Georg: _Miss Sarah Fielding als Romanschriftstellerin_
(Inaugural-Dissertation, Leipzig).

[360] Hawkins, Sir John: _Life of Samuel Johnson_, p. 286.

[361] _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. XXII, p. 146.

[362] Vol. II, p. 251. This chapter was reprinted entire in _The
Gentleman's Magazine_, January, 1841, p. 44. It was Miss Mitford
who pointed out Johnson's authorship of this chapter. See Nichols:
_Literary Anecdotes_, vol. VII, p. 161.

[363] Johnson, Samuel: _Works_ (ed. Murphy), vol. II, p. 58.

[364] Genest: _Some Account of the English Stage_, vol. V, p. 241.

[365] Reprinted in 1778 and 1810. A new edition in four volumes in
1856 by Bohn announced that the text had been collated with the
French "and with such corrections as the ingenious Translator herself
would have made on a careful revision of her translation." Johnson
reviewed this work favorably in _The Literary Magazine_ for 1756.

[366] Johnson, Samuel: _Works_ (ed. Murphy), vol. II, p. 1.

[367] Nichols: _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 248.

[368] _The Works of the Late Miss Catharine Talbot_, vol. I, p. 98.

[369] See _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. XLIV (1774), p. 376.
_Ibid._ (1772), vol. XLII, pp. 135, 257. (Her character by Mrs.
Duncomb.) Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IX, pp. 766-69.
(Quotations from the Reverend Weeden Butler's _Memoirs of Bishop
Hildesley_, Letter by Dr. Rundle, Letter by Duchess of Somerset.)

[370] In 1748, in accordance with her dying request, her poems were
published by subscription for her father's benefit, under the title
_Poems on Several Occasions, by the late_ Mrs. Leapor _of_ Brackley
_in_ Northamptonshire. Published for the Benefit of the Author's
Father. 800. Price 5_s._ _Vol. 2d and last_ appeared later at the
same price.

[371] See _Familiar Letters_, p. 52.

[372] "Maria" has made some mistakes in names, but her general
accuracy is attested by a reference to Mozans: _Woman in Science_.
The eighteenth century was a period of great triumph for learned
Italian women. Of the four chief women, Laura Bassi, Anna Manzolini,
Maria Agnesi, Clotilda Tambroni, the first three had attained to
fame before 1755 when Miss Masters's book appeared. Maria Agnesi
(1718-1808) was a European celebrity by the time she was twenty.
"M. Charles de Brosses, in his _Lettres Familières écrites de
l'Italie en 1739 et 1740_, speaks of Agnesi in terms that recall
the marvellous stories which are related of Admirable Crichton and
Cico della Mirandola. 'She appeared to me,' he tells us, 'something
more stupendous--_una cosa piu stupenda_--than the Duomo of Milan.'
Having been invited to a _conversazione_ for the purpose of meeting
this wonderful woman, the learned Frenchman found her to be 'a young
lady about eighteen or twenty.' She was surrounded by 'about thirty
people--many of them from different parts of Europe.' The discussion
turned on various questions of mathematics and natural philosophy."
The astonishment excited by her knowledge of these abstruse subjects
was increased by her command of classical Latin which she spoke with
purity, care, and accuracy. When the conversation became general she
spoke to each person in the language of his own country. At about
thirty Maria Agnesi brought out her great work, a treatise in two
large volumes on the differential and integral calculus. "It would
be impossible to describe the sensation it produced in the learned
world. Everybody talked about it; everybody admired the profound
learning of the author, and acclaimed her: 'Il portento del sesso,
unico al Mondo'--the portent of her sex, unique in the world."
(Mozans: _Woman in Science_, pp. 143-53.)

Laura Caterina Bassi (1711-78) would take rank with learned women
of any age or nation. At twenty-one she took part in a public
disputation on philosophy with some of the most distinguished
scholars of the time as her opponents. The brilliancy of her success
on this occasion led to a request that she should present herself
as candidate for the doctorate in philosophy. This was a still
more imposing ceremony. It was held in the Communal Palace which
was magnificently decorated for the splendid function. After a
discourse in Latin to which she responded in the same tongue, she
was crowned with a laurel wreath exquisitely wrought in silver, and
had thrown round her the _vajo_, or university gown, both symbols
of the doctorate. Her next triumph was when she passed the public
examinations and was appointed by acclamation to the chair of physics
in the University of Bologna, an office which she held many years,
and always with increasing fame. (Mozans: _Woman in Science_, pp.
202-09.)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was much impressed by the fame of Laura
Bassi and wrote to England about her, and Lady Pomfret, on her visit
to Italy, made a point of seeing the famous lady professor; but in
general the Englishwomen seem to have been quite ignorant of the
status of learned women in Italy.

Anna Manzolini (1716-1774) held the chair of anatomy in Bologna for
many years and is famous for her wax models of the organs of the
human body. (Mozans: _Woman in Science_, pp. 235-37.)

[373] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_. Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_,
vol. V, pp. 304-08.

[374] For a recent life see Gaussen: _Alice C. C.: A Woman of Wit and
Wisdom_.

[375] This translation from Crousaz was published anonymously and was
generally attributed to Dr. Johnson, but an article in Dr. Birch's
manuscripts in the British Museum attributes it decisively to her.
The note indicates also Dr. Birch's estimate of the translation:
"_ELISÆ CARTERÆ. S. P. D. Thomas BIRCH. Versionem tuam Examinis
Crousaziani jam perlegi. Summam styli et elegantiam, et in re
difficilimâ proprietatem, admiratus. (Dabam_) Novemb. 27 1738."
Boswell's _Life of Johnson_. (Everyman.) vol. I, p. 78.

[376] Her translation of Algarotti's _Newtonianismo per le dame_
appeared under the title, _Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy Explained
for the use of the Ladies. In Six Dialogues on Light and Colour._ Two
volumes. 1739.

[377] Davies, Randall: _The Greatest House at Chelsey_, p. 92.

[378] Ashton, John: _Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne_, p. 17.

[379] Ashton, John: _Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne_, p. 18.

[380] Published in vol. II of _Works_ of Dr. W. King in 1776. (_The
Tatler_, April 19, 1709, n.)

[381] _The Spectator_, No. 606 (Oct. 13, 1714).

[382] _Ibid._, No. 32 (Dec. 13, 1714).

[383] Dodsley's _Collection of Poems in Six Volumes by Several Hands_
(1758, fifth edition), vol. VI, pp. 161-62.

[384] _Ibid._, vol. III, p. 142.

[385] Johnson: _Works of the English Poets_, vol. VIII, p. 165.

[386] _Ibid._, vol. V, p. 62.

[387] _Ibid._, vol. XXXIX, pp. 233-42.

[388] Wheeler, Ethel Root: _Famous Blue Stockings_, pp. 78-82.

[389] _Memoirs of the Verney Family_, vol. IV, p. 220.

[390] Ashton, John: _Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne_, p. 19.

[391] Malcolm, Jas. P.: _Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of
London in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. I, p. 328.

[392] _Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. 24, p. 370.

[393] Thoresby: _Diary_, May 20, 1714.

[394] _Ibid._, April 15, 1723.

[395] Plumptre, Dean: _Life of Bishop Ken_.

[396] "Mrs. Scott described their life in her novel, _Millennium
Hall, by a Gentleman on his travels_, 1762, as there was a popular
prejudice then against a female author." Mrs. Sarah Scott (the widow
of George Lewis Scott) wrote several novels, under the pseudonym
"Henry Augustus Raymond," between 1750 and 1776. _Millennium Hall_
reached a fourth edition by 1778.

[397] Birch, Una: _Anna van Schurman: Artist; Scholar; Saint_.

[398] Cut-paper work was an accomplishment in which ladies of various
countries took pride. Deschamps in his account of painters mentions
a Mrs. Block. He says she "excelled in cutting paper; whatever
others produced in a print by a graver, she produced with a pair
of scissors; she executed all kinds of subjects, as landscapes,
sea-pieces, animals, flowers; and what is most astonishing,
portraits, in which the resemblance was preserved in the highest
degree. This new art of expressing representations of objects upon
white paper became the object of universal curiosity, and the artist
was encouraged by all the courts of _Europe_. The Elector _Palatine_
offered her a thousand florins (equal to about a hundred guineas) for
three little pieces, which she refused.... The works of this woman
are in design and taste extremely correct, and may best be compared
with the engravings of Mallon. When they are pasted upon black paper,
the places where the white paper is cut away in strokes, represent
those of a graver or pen, and are in the highest degree neat, true,
bold, and distinct." (_The Gentleman's Magazine_, 1761, p. 338). The
cut-work paper in England never equalled that of Mrs. Block until
Mrs. Delany's herbarium in the late eighteenth century out-distanced
all competitors. But Mrs. Delany's work was more like painting while
Mrs. Block's was like engraving.

[399] Monroe, Paul: _Cyclopædia of Education_; Watson, Foster: "Mrs.
Bathsua Makin and the Education of Gentlewomen," _Atalanta_, July,
1895; Granger: _Biographical History_ (2d ed.), vol. II, p. 392;
Ballard: _Memoirs_, Preface; Jesse: _House of Stuart_, vol. II, p.
250.

[400] Some light is thrown on the curious phrase "read, write, and in
some measure understand," by William Greenhill's dedication of his
_Exposition of the first five chapters of Ezekiel_ to the Princess
Mary in 1644-45. After mentioning other instances of feminine
precocity he praises her for "writing out the Lord's Prayer in Greek
and some texts of Scripture in Hebrew." It was calligraphy rather
than language that was here in question.

[401] See p. 37.

[402] Probably daughters of Dr. Nicholas Love (d. 1630), Head-Master
of Winchester College in 1601, and chaplain to James I. In 1673 the
daughters of Christopher Love (1618-1651), Puritan minister from
Cardiff, would be of too recent date to correspond to the description.

[403] This person was a Mr. M. Lewis whose _Grammar_ and whose _Rules
for Pointing and Reading Grammatically_ she used in her school.

[404] _The Woman as Good as the Man_, p. 6.

[405] _The Woman as Good as the Man_, p. 124.

[406] _Ibid._, p. 45.

[407] From _Instructions to a Young Princess_ on this point we read:
"I only desire you to believe, that true Wisdom consists in knowing
exactly your Duty; and whatsoever carries a Woman farther than that,
is generally either dangerous or unprofitable. For, to be plain, how
doth it concern you, to know, whether the Sun or the Earth move, or
after what manner Thunder and Tempest are form'd in the Skies, and a
Hundred other Things as little necessary as these?"

[408] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_. First full presentation of the
life and works of Mary Astell.

[409] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 99.

[410] _Reflections on Marriage_, p. 29. Quoted in Miss Smith's _Mary
Astell_, p. 89.

[411] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 22.

[412] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 70.

[413] Evelyn, John: _Numismata_.

[414] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 73.

[415] _Ibid._, p. 76.

[416] See article by A. H. Upham in _Journal of English and German
Philology_, vol. XII, No. 2, pp. 262-76; Smith, Florence: _Mary
Astell_, Appendix II.

[417] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 180.

[418] _Westminster Review_, vol. CLXIX, p. 444, April, 1898.

[419] _Notes and Queries_, 8th Series, vol. XI, p. 348.

[420] _Journal of Sacred Literature_ (1864), pp. 433-35. Ballard
gives the arguments in favor of Lady Pakington's authorship.

[421] See _Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of
Halifax_.

[422] Walsh, William: _A Dialogue concerning Women_, p. 31.

[423] Walsh, William: _A Dialogue concerning Women_, p. 86.

[424] _Ibid._, p. 92.

[425] _Ibid._, p. 93.

[426] _Ibid._, p. 101.

[427] "Mr. Graves said that Mr. Beaton's Map of Warwickshire will now
come out in a little time. He commends it mightily as a most accurate
Thing. This Beaton writes _The Lady's Diary_, an _Almanack_, that
comes out every Year. This Beaton hath a Mathematical Head. It seems
he condemns all the Mapps that ever were done of all or any Parts of
England, as full of Faults. I guess him from hence to be a conceited
vain Man." (Hearne's _Collections_, vol. IX, p. 106.)

[428] _The Guardian_, Sept. 18 and 19, 1713.

[429] "_Leonora_ has been identified as Mrs. Perry, sister of Miss
Shepheard, the 'Parthenia' of No. 140 and 'Leonora' of No. 113. Both
were kinswomen of Sir Fleetwood Shepheard." (_The Spectator_, vol.
II, p. 326.)

[430] Aitkin, George: _The Life of Richard Steele_, vol. II, p. 397.

[431] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 39.

[432] _The Gentleman Instructed in the Conduct of a Virtuous and
Happy Life. In Three Parts. Written for the Instruction of a Young
Nobleman. To which is added, A Word to the Ladies, by way of
Supplement to the First Part._ (William Darrell.) Eighth edition.
London, 1723, p. 127.

[433] _Ibid._, p. 155.

[434] _The Gentleman Instructed in the Conduct of a Virtuous and
Happy Life. In Three Parts. Written for the Instruction of a Young
Nobleman. To which is added, A Word to the Ladies, by way of
Supplement to the First Part._ (William Darrell.) Eighth edition.
London, 1723, p. 151.

[435] _Ibid._, p. 165.

[436] _Ibid._, p. 173.

[437] Chalmers: _English Poets_, vol. XIV.

[438] "The elder Miss Collier," mentioned in a previous letter.

[439] _Correspondence of Richardson_ (ed. Barbauld): "Correspondence
between Miss M. Collier, Miss Fielding, and Mr. Richardson." Vol. II,
pp. 59-112.

[440] See p. 235.

[441] Coventry: _Pompey the Little_, book I, chap. VII.

[442] Swift, Jonathan: _Works_ (ed. Sir Walter Scott), vol. IX, pp.
260-64.

[443] "Mrs. Pilkington pretends that this letter was written on Lady
Betty Moore's Marriage with Mr. George Rochfort. But Mr. Faulkner,
who is the more sound authority, supposed it addressed to Mrs. John
Rochford, daughter of Dr. Staunton." (Swift: _Works_, ed. Scott, vol.
IX, p. 203 n.)

[444] Swift: _Works_, ed. Scott, vol. IX, p. 209. De Quincey has an
interesting comment on this passage: "Often, indeed, I had occasion
to remember the cynical remark of Swift that, after all, as respects
mere learning, the most accomplished woman is hardly on a level
with a schoolboy. In quoting this saying, I have restricted it so
as to offer no offence to the female sex intellectually considered.
Swift probably meant to undervalue women generally. Now, I am well
aware that they have their peculiar province. But that province
does not extend to _learning_, technically so called. No woman ever
was or will be a _polyhistor_, like Salmasius, for example; nor a
philosopher; nor, in fact anything whatsoever, called by what name
you like, which demands either of these two combinations which
follow:--1, great powers of combination, that is, of massing or
grouping under large comprehensive principles; or, 2, severe logic."
(_Works_, ed. Masson, vol. XIV, p. 125.)

[445] _Ibid._, vol. IX, p. 227.

[446] Swift: _Works_, ed. Scott, vol. IX, p. 217.

[447] See p. 303.

[448] _Ibid._, vol. IX, p. 208.

[449] Craik, Henry: _Life of Jonathan Swift_, vol. II, Appendix XI.

[450] _On the Picture of Lady M. Wortley Montagu by Kneller._

[451] _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, ll. 368-69 and note.

[452] _The Rape of the Lock_, canto IV, ll. 59-62.

[453] See _Three Hours after Marriage_, p. 393.

[454] _Epistle II._ _To a Lady._ _Of the Characters of Women._

[455] _Ibid._

[456] T. E. S. Clarke and H. C. Foxcroft: _Life of Bishop Burnet_, p.
436.

[457] Foxcroft, H. C.: _Supplement to Burnet's History of My Own
Times_, p. 85.

[458] _Letters of Lady Russell_, vol. II, p. 2 n.

[459] _A Paraphrase on the 53d Chapter of Isaiah in imitation of Mrs.
Anne Wharton._

[460] Winchester: _Life of Wesley_, p. 179.

[461] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. IX, p. 185 (1914).

[462] _Ibid._, vol. IX, p. 277.

[463] Cf. p. 354, where the sister is said to be "about fourteen."

[464] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. IX, p. 282.

[465] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. IX, p. 304.

[466] _Letters of Eminent Persons_, vol. II, p. 118.

[467] _Letters of Eminent Persons_, vol. II, p. 147 n.

[468] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 123.

[469] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 147 n.

[470] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 123 n.

[471] _Letters of Eminent Persons_, vol. II, p. 140.

[472] There was at first considerable doubt about the subscriptions.
Mrs. Delany wrote in February, 1752: "I can give you no encouragement
about Mr. Ballard's getting the Princess of Wales among his
subscribers. I don't think the Maid of Honour a proper person to
apply to; if he would only leave out his dedication to me _I could_
solicit for him, but _as it is_, it has even stopped my applying to
get subscriptions." (_Mrs. Delany's Letters._ First Series, vol. III,
p. 186.) In December she wrote: "I am afraid Mr. Ballard has not a
large subscription; it vexes me that he should prevent my being of
use to him, but if we are successful in our affairs I shall hope to
_make it up to him_." (_Ibid._)

[473] The ladies whose poems are included in these volumes are: Mrs.
Barber, Mrs. Behn, Miss Carter, Lady Chudleigh, Mrs. Cockburn, Mrs.
Grierson, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Killigrew, Mrs. Leapor, Mrs. Madan, Mrs.
Masters, Lady M. W. Montagu, Mrs. Monk, Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. K.
Philips, Mrs. Pilkington, Mrs. Rowe, Lady Winchilsea.

[474] _Memoirs: Containing the Lives of Several Ladies of Great
Britain. A History of Antiquities, Productions of Nature and
Monuments of Art. Observations on the Christian Religion, as
professed by the Established Church, and Dissenters of every
Denomination. Remarks on the Writings of the greatest English
Divines: with a Variety of Disquisitions and Opinions relative to
Criticisms and Manners; and many extraordinary Actions._

[475] The _Memoirs_ (vol. II, p. 87) say that Miss Harcourt "died
suddenly, at her seat in Richmondshire, the first of December 1745,
in the 39th year of her age, and not in the year thirty-seven, as
the world was told in several advertisements in the London Evening
Post of December 1739, by a gentleman who was imposed on in a false
account he received of her death." I have been unable to examine the
_London Evening Post_ to see whether it contains any announcement
correspondent to Amory's statement. (Rose says she was born in 1706
at Richmond in Yorkshire and that she died in 1745.)

[476] For Amory's exceptionally early and eager descriptions of the
English Lake District see Reynolds, Myra: _External Nature in English
Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth_ (2d ed.), p. 208. To this must
now be added his distinction as one of the earliest Englishmen to be
interested in the islands off the coast of Scotland.

[477] For further accounts of Thomas Amory see _The Gentleman's
Magazine_, November, 1788 (vol. LVIII, p. 1062), where there is a
protest from Robert Amory concerning erroneous statements about
his father in the _St. James's Chronicle_ of November 6 (cf. vol.
LIX, pp. 107, 322, 372); _General Biographical Dictionary_ (1798);
Chalmers' _Biographical Dictionary_; Hazlitt's _Round Table_ (1817);
_Retrospective Review_ (vol. VI, p. 100, 1st Series, 1822); edition
of Amory's _Works_ (1825); _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. XI,
p. 58; _Saturday Review_, May 12, 1877. From these references it
becomes apparent that Amory has attracted considerable attention,
but that there is a wide divergence of opinion as to whether he was
insane or a genius.

[478] _Epicœne, or, The Silent Woman_, Act II, Sc. 2, ll. 117-20.

[479] Juvenal: Satire VI, 434-40. "That woman is a worse nuisance
than usual who, as soon as she reclines on her couch, praises Virgil;
makes excuses for doomed Dido; pits bards against one another and
compares them, and weighs Homer and Mars in the balance."

[480] The word "college" was loosely used in the seventeenth century
as signifying any company or collective body. Burton, in _Anatomy
of Melancholy_ (1621), says, "They have whole colleges of Curtezans
in their Towns and Cities." Randolph, in _The Muse's Looking-Glass_
(1638), calls play-houses "colleges of transgression," and speaks
of "Black-Friar's College." Jonson, in _Staple of News_, says "a
canter's college is proposed." Dryden even speaks of a "college of
bees" (_Flower and Leaf_), and Amory, in _John Buncle_, uses the same
phrase more than half a century later. It becomes evident, then,
that the words "college" and "collegiate" might be used without any
thought of an organization founded for purposes of learning. (See
Jonson: _Epicœne_, Ed. Henry, Aurelia, p. 138.)

[481] Miles, Dudley: _The Influence of Molière on Restoration
Comedy_, chap. III.

[482] _Ibid._, p. 62.

[483] _Ibid._, p. 68.

[484] There are two other indications of the early influence of _Les
Précieuses_. Flecknoe published in 1667 an unacted play entitled
_Damoiselles à la mode_, a sort of mosaic made up from four plays
of which _Les Précieuses_ was one. September 15, 1668, Pepys wrote:
"To the King's play-house, to see a new play, acted but yesterday, a
translation out of French by Dryden, called 'The Lady's à la Mode':
so mean a thing as when they came to say it would be acted again
to-morrow, both he that said it, Beeson, and the pit fell a-laughing,
there being this day not a quarter of the pit full." Pepys is the
only authority for attributing the piece to Dryden.

[485] It is interesting to note that the dedication is to Charles,
Earl of Winchilsea, whose aunt, Mrs. Finch, one of the _literati_,
was at that time living with the young Earl, at Eastwell, and had
even then a vast folio of verse and prose with which the family
circle was occasionally regaled. She would hardly enjoy this choice
of her nephew as public patron of Wright's caricature of female wits.

[486] See p. 106.

[487] See p. 208.

[488] See p. 132.

[489] See Winchilsea, Lady: _Works_ (edited by Myra Reynolds),
Introduction, pp. lxii-lxx, for full account of this character.

[490] This scene may refer both to Lady Winchilsea and the Duchess
of Newcastle. Cibber, in his _Lives of the Poets_, vol. II, p. 164,
says: "The Duchess kept a great many young ladies about her person,
who occasionally wrote what she dictated. Some of them slept in a
room contiguous to that in which her Grace lay, and ever ready, at
the call of her bell to rise any hour of the night, to write down her
conceptions, lest they should escape her memory."

[491] Curll: _No Fool like Wits_, Prologue.

[492] Seigneur de Gomberville brought out his _Polexandre_ in four
volumes, quarto, in 1632. More famous were La Calprenède's romances,
_Cléopâtre_, _Cassandre_, and _Pharamond_, and the works of the
Scudéry brother and sister (the sister being the chief writer) who
wrote _Ibrahim_, _Artemène_, _Clélie_, and _Almahide_. All of these
except _Polexandre_ were published and some of them republished
in France between 1641 and 1661. Their interminable length may be
illustrated by _Artemène_ which was in ten volumes, a total of 6679
pages.

[493] _Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple_, _passim_.

[494] Pepys: _Diary_, Dec. 7, 1660; Feb. 10, 1661; May 12, 1666; Nov.
16, 1668; May 5, 1669.

[495] _The Ladies' Calling_, part II, section II.

[496] Shadwell, Thomas: _Bury-Fair_, Act III, Sc. 1.

[497] Steele, Richard: _The Tender Husband; or, The Accomplished
Fools_ (1705).

[498] Urganda was an enchantress in the Amadis and Palmerin romances.

[499] Musidorus, in Sir P. Sidney's _Arcadia_, is the Prince of
Thessaly, and in love with Pamela.

[500] Parthenissa was the heroine of a romance of that name by Roger
Boyle, Earl of Orrery, the first two parts of which appeared in 1651.

[501] Statira, in _Cassandra_, was the widow of Alexander the Great,
and the daughter of Darius. She married Oroondates after many
difficulties had been overcome.

[502] Chambers, in _Traditions of Edinburgh_ (1869), says that Allan
Ramsay in 1725 set up "a circulating library, whence he diffused
plays and other books of fiction among the people of Edinburgh. It
appears from some private notes of the historian Wodrow that, in
1728, the magistrates, moved by some meddling spirits, took alarm at
the effect of this kind of reading on the minds of youth, and made an
attempt to put it down, but without effect."

The editor of _Notes and Queries_ (4th Series, vol. IX, p. 443) says,
"We are inclined to think the first circulating library in Scotland
was in Dunfermline in 1711."

Scotland was ahead of England in the matter of circulating libraries.
So far as I can discover, Newcastle-on-Tyne has the honor of starting
the first circulating library in England. One Joseph Barber had "lent
books on the High Bridge, at the other end of the Flesh Market,
in 1746, and now, in 1757, at Amen Corner, near St. Nicholas's
Churchyard, he had 1257 volumes on loan. His was the 'old original'
library of circulation." In 1757 a rival appeared in the person of
William Charnley who placed two thousand volumes at the command of
subscribers at twelve shillings a year. (_Notes and Queries_, 5th
Series, vol. VIII, p. 155.)

In 1751 a circulating library was opened in Birmingham by the famous
William Hutton, who wrote in his _Autobiography_, "I was the first
who opened a circulating library in Birmingham, in 1751, since
which time many have entered the race." He also said, "As I hired
out books the fair sex did not neglect my shop." In 1750 there had
been opened at Birmingham a book-club for the circulation of books
among its members--"probably the oldest book-club in existence," and
still flourishing in 1877. The Manchester subscription library dates
from 1765, or earlier. (_Ibid._, 5th Series, vol. VII, p. 452.) The
circulating library of Liverpool was established May 1, 1758. The
first catalogue is dated November 1, 1758. There were 109 subscribers
at five shillings each, and 450 volumes. The centenary of this
library was celebrated May 13, 1858. (_Ibid._ 5th Series, vol. VII,
p. 354.) In January, 1761, Mr. Baker, book-seller of Tunbridge Wells,
lost his circulating library by fire. By 1770 there were circulating
libraries at Settle, Rochdale, Exeter, and doubtless other places.
In _The Annual Register_ (p. 207) for 1761 is an interesting note:
"The reading female hires her novels from some country circulating
library, which consists of about an hundred volumes," which might
very well apply to Polly Honeycomb. (_Ibid._ 7th Series, vol. XII, p.
66.)

When Franklin came to London in 1725 there was not a single
circulating library in the metropolis. See Franklin's _Autobiography_
(vol. I, p. 64), and in 1697 the only library in London which
approached the nature of a public library was that of Zion College,
belonging to the London clergy (Ellis's _Letters of Literary Men_,
p. 245). The exact date of the earliest London circulating library I
have not yet ascertained; but according to Southey (_The Doctor_, ed.
Warter, 1848, p. 271) the first set up in London was about the middle
of the eighteenth century by Samuel Fancourt. (Buckle: _History
of Civilization in England_, vol. I, p. 393.) Samuel Fancourt was
a dissenting minister who went to London about 1730. A library
conducted by him at a subscription of a guinea a year was dissolved,
Michaelmas, 1745. Between 1746 and 1748 he issued an alphabetical
catalogue of _Books and Pamphlets belonging to the Circulating
Library in Crane Court_, in two volumes. In this "Gentlemen and
Ladies' Growing and Circulating Library" the initial payment was a
guinea and four shillings a year. A subscriber could draw one book
and one pamphlet at a time. "He may keep them a reasonable time
according to their bigness." This library contained between two and
three thousand volumes, only about a tenth being light literature,
and nearly half the total contents being on theology. (_Dictionary of
National Biography_, under Fancourt.)

[503] _The Adventures of Jack Smart_ and _The History of Miss Betsey
Thoughtless_ are in Colman's list.

[504] _The Reward of Constancy_ (possibly Shebeare's _The Happy Pair;
or, Virtue and Constancy rewarded_, 1771); _The Fatal Connexion_,
by Mrs. Fogarty (1773); _The Mistakes of the Heart_, by Treyssac de
Vergy (1769); _The Delicate Distress_ (1769) and _The Gordian Knot_
(1769), by Mrs. Griffith; _The Memoirs of Lady Woodford_ (1771);
_Peregrine Pickle_, by Smollett (1751); _Tears of Sensibility_,
translated from French by John Murdock (1773); _Humphrey Clinker_, by
Smollett (1771); _Sentimental Journey_, by Sterne (1768); _Roderick
Random_, by Smollett (1748; eighth ed. 1770); _The Innocent Adultery_
(translation of Scarron's _L'Adultère Innocente_, in 1722-29 and with
later editions); _Lord Aimsworth_ (1773); _The Man of Feeling_, by
Mackenzie (1771). For full comment on these books, and the others in
Lydia's list see _Major Dramas of Richard Brinsley Sheridan_ (edited
by George Henry Nettleton), Introduction, pp. lxviii-lxxvii.

[505] Page 354.

[506] The new names are Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs.
Thomas, Mrs. Rowe, Mrs. Cockburn, Mrs. Pilkington, and Miss Chandler.
Ballard (p. vii) gives a list of the ladies who had a reputation for
learning, but concerning whom he could get no information. The list
is as follows: "Lady Mary Nevil, Lady Anne Southwell, Lady Honor
Hay, Lady Mary Wroath, Lady Armyn, Lady Ranelagh, Lady Anne Boynton
(famous for her skill in ancient coins, and noble collection of
them), Lady Levet, Lady Warner. Gentlewomen: Mrs. Mabilla Vaughan,
Mrs. Elizabeth Grimstone, Mrs. Jane Owen, Mrs. M. Croft, Mrs. Emilia
Lanyer, Mrs. Makins (who corresponded in the learned languages with
Mrs. Maria à Schurman), Mrs. Gertrude More, Mrs. Dorothy Leigh."
None of Cibber's additions appear in this list. Apparently Ballard's
omission of writers of comedy and fiction would indicate that he did
not count them among the learned. The omission of Mrs. Cockburn is
less explicable. The five _Lives_ given by both Ballard and Cibber
are of the Duchess of Newcastle, Anne Killigrew, Lady Chudleigh, Mrs.
Monk, Lady Winchilsea, and Mrs. Grierson.

[507] Pages 4-23.

[508] Pages 23-37.

[509] Strickland, Agnes: _Lives of the Queens of England_, under
"Anne of Denmark."

[510] Pages 46-81.




  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

  Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

  A superscript is denoted by ^; for example, w^{ch} or y^e.

  Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
  corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
  the text and consultation of external sources.

  Repeated headings were removed to avoid redundancy for the reader.

  Except for those changes noted below, all misspelling in the text,
  and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

  Pg 53. 'della Donne' replaced by 'delle Donne'.
  Pg 82 Footnote [140]. 'Lord Hallifax' replaced by 'Lord Halifax'.
  Pg 82 Footnote [140]. 'Lord Hallilfax' replaced by 'Lord Halifax'.
  Pg 91. 'were probaby' replaced by 'were probably'.
  Pg 126 Footnote [186]. 'Blæcus' replaced by 'Blæsus'.
  Pg 141. 'heighth' replaced by 'height'.
  Pg 167 Footnote [234]. '1667 and 1771' replaced by '1767 and 1771'.
  Pg 181. 'M^{rs}. Elstop' replaced by 'M^{rs}. Elstob'.
  Pg 255. 'into French in 1706' left unchanged, but probably should
           be 1786.
  Pg 329. 'Corpernican' replaced by 'Copernican'.
  Pg 335. 'Supplemant replaced by 'Supplement'.
  Pg 337. 'ahd sloth' replaced by 'and sloth'.
  Pg 366. 'cotemporary' replaced by 'contemporary'.
  Pg 414 Footnote [502]. 'under Faucourt' replaced by 'under Fancourt'.

  Biblio:
  Pg 462. 'La Proverbes' replaced by 'Les Proverbes'.
  Pg 465. 'Laeticia' replaced by 'Lætitia'.
  Pg 469. 'poëtes an' replaced by 'poètes au'.

  Index:
  Pg 480. 'Bovy' replaced by 'Bovey'.
  Pg 481. 'Demoiselles' replaced by 'Damoiselles', and moved.







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