The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760

FOOTNOTES:

Myra Reynolds

[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 Phoebo" 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 1l. 9s., 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 5s. 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] Epicoene, 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: Epicoene, 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

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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