Letter XIV. This letter also appeared in the Preface to her _Works

in 1768.

[110] Giffard, Lady: _Her Life and Letters_, p. 41.

[111] _The Lives of the Norths_, vol. III, p. 289.

[112] _Ibid._, Editor's Preface.

[113] Giffard, Lady Martha: _Her Life and Letters_, p. 27.

[114] Osborne, Dorothy: _Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple_. "Introduction."

[115] That the letters narrowly escaped destruction is indicated by the following letter written by Mrs. Sarah Osborne in 1770 to Sir George Osborne, Dorothy's great-nephew: "Mrs. Temple did lend me these letters to read with injunction not to shew them. I very much doubt if she would send them to London.... Most of these letters were in the tender stile with sensible sentiments, indeed I believe Mrs. Temple burnt them after I had read them, she said she would, as indeed I think she should, such letters can never be exposed to advantage, there were many wrote after her marriage, they soon grew tame and flat to what was before."

[116] Giffard, Lady: _Her Life and Letters_, pp. 38-39.

[117] _Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple_, p. 100.

[118] Ballard gives the arguments in favor of Lady Pakington.

[119] Johnstone, Grace: _Leading Women of the Restoration_, p. 101.

[120] _Percy Society Publications_, vol. XXII. See also biographies of the Countess of Warwick by C. Fell Smith (1901) and Mary Palgrave (1901).

[121] _Term Catalogues._

[122] _Autobiography_ (_Percy Society Publications_, vol. XXII, p. 21).

[123] Godfrey, Elizabeth: _Social Life under the Stuarts_, p. 138.

[124] Johnstone, Grace: _Leading Women of the Restoration_, pp. 107, 117.

[125] _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_ (Bohn ed.), Preface, p. ix.

[126] Hutchinson, Mrs. Lucy: _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_, p. 16.

[127] _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_, p. 14.

[128] _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_, pp. 56-62.

[129] _Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson_, p. 478.

[130] _Anglia_: vol. 36, "Lucy Hutchinson and the Duchess of Newcastle."

[131] _The Memoirs of Ann, Lady Fanshawe, 1600-1672_, p. 22.

[132] _Ibid._, p. 5.

[133] The use of "Miss" and "Mrs." between 1660 and 1750, and even later, is often confusing. The use of "Mrs." for all reputable persons of the female sex, even children, prevailed during the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century. On the tombstone of Milton's daughter, a child under six months we read, "1657. Mar. 20. Mrs. Kathern Milton." (_Notes and Queries_, 7th Series, vol. VII, p. 494.) _A Continuation of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Written by a Young Gentlewoman, Miss A. W._ (1651, 2d edition, 1690), is a striking exception. There was sometimes a distinction between the married and the unmarried in that the latter had the Christian name after the "Mrs." as when Evelyn speaks of "Mrs. Margaret Blagge," but this custom was by no means invariable. The prefix "Miss" began soon after the Restoration to be used as a term of reproach. January 9, 1662, Evelyn says of Roxalana, "She being taken to be ye Earl of Oxford's _Misse_ (as at this time they began to call lewd women)." In 1669 Flecknoe, in _Epigrams of All Sorts_, wrote a poem to Mary Davis, the King's mistress, under the title "To Miss Davis." In 1675 appeared "_The 'Miss' displayed; with all her Wheadling Arts and circumventions, By the Author of the First Part of the 'English Rogue.'_" In 1683, in Miss Barber's _Poems_, was a poem entitled "To the Town Miss," and in one of her novels (about 1715) she speaks of the "Town Miss" who pretends to modesty. In 1690 we find the _Dutch Whore, or, the Miss of Amsterdam_.

"Miss" in a reputable sense belonged to very young girls. In 1675 Lady Russell speaks of her daughter Rachel, who was then four years old, as "our Miss." When the little girl is thirteen her grandfather calls her "Mrs. Rachel." (_Lady Russell's Letters_, vol. I, pp. 14, 139.) In 1723, in _The Gentleman Instructed_, we read "As soon as Reason begins to sparkle, Miss is led to the drawing-room." The proper age for "Miss" seems a little advanced in two quotations made by Mr. Aitkin (_Life of Steele_, vol. I, p. 162) from _Lillie's Original and Genuine Letters sent to the Tatler and Spectator_. One young lady says: "Being arrived at sixteen I have left the boarding-school, and now having assumed the title of Madam instead of Miss am come home." A second quotation seems to indicate a still further extension of the proper age for Miss; "Let no woman after the known age of twenty-one presume to admit of her being called Miss unless she can fairly prove she is not out of her sampler."

Actresses were usually called "Mrs." in the bills. The first use of "Miss" that I can find is in 1685 in D'Urfey's _Commonwealth of Women_, where a part was played by "Miss Nanny" (Genest: _Some Account of the English Stage_, vol. I, p. 443). In D'Urfey's _Don Quixote_ Altesidora was played by "Miss Cross." Genest (vol. II, p. 70) says: "She was called _Miss_ because she was quite a girl ... she was afterwards called Mrs. Cross ... the case was the same with several other actresses--Cibber in _The Lady's Last Stake_ calls two of the female characters _Miss_ Notable and _Mrs._ Conquest, tho' they are both unmarried--but one is a girl and the other a woman." "Miss Cross" was "Mrs." on the bills within a year. "Miss Younger" came into the house at seven years old. Later she became "Mrs. Younger." So with Miss Mountfort, Miss Santlow, Miss Sherburn, Miss Booth, Miss Rogers, and other young actresses who entered the theatrical profession between 1700-1715.

By 1750 "Miss" for unmarried women is pretty well established. The list of subscribers to Ballard's _Memoirs_ (1752) contains many ladies called "Miss." _The Connoisseur_, November 25, 1754, said: "Every unmarried woman is now called 'Miss.'" But "Mrs." for reputable unmarried women beyond girlhood was occasionally used through the century. Elizabeth Carter was always "Mrs. Carter," while her friend Catharine Talbot, about the same age, was "Miss Talbot." In _Humphrey Clinker_ (1771) Tabitha Bramble, though a spinster, is "Mrs." Sir Walter Scott called Joanna Baillie "Mrs." in the beginning of the nineteenth century. _Notes and Queries_ (7th Series, vol. VII, pp. 104-256) calls attention to the fact that as late as 1889 "Mrs." was in many places considered the correct title for upper-class unmarried female servants.

[134] Evelyn, John: _Life of Mrs. Godolphin_ (ed. Edward William Harcourt of Nuneham Park), p. 10.

[135] _Ibid._, p. 24.

[136] Evelyn, John: _Life of Mrs. Godolphin_, p. 8.

[137] _Ibid._, p. 184.

[138] Evelyn, John: _Life of Mrs. Godolphin_, p. 215.

[139] Fitzgerald: _History of the English Stage_, vol. I, pp. 60-62.

[140] "Gildon, in the Comparison between the two stages, 1702, attacks Mrs. Bracegirdle's private character.

"'_Sullen._ But does that Romantick Virgin still keep up her reputation?'

"'_Critick._ D' ye mean her reputation for acting?'

"'_Sullen._ I do; but if I were to be saved for believing that single article, I could not do it: 't is all, all a juggle, 't is legerdemain; the best on 't is, she falls into good hands, and the secrecy of the intrigue secures her; but as to her innocence, I believe no more on 't than I believe of John Mandevil.'

"Tom Brown, in his description of the playhouse, is still more severe on Mrs. Bracegirdle.... Among Tom Brown's Letters from the Dead to the Living, there is one from Mrs. Behn to the famous Virgin Actress--and another from the Virgin to Mrs. Behn.

"Gildon and Tom Brown seem to have had no foundation for their ill nature, but the extreme difficulty with which an actress at this period of the stage must have preserved her chastity.

"Mrs. Bracegirdle was perhaps a woman of cold constitution.

"Anthony Aston says--'Mrs. Bracegirdle, that Diana of the stage, had many assailants on her virtue, as Lord Lovelace and Mr. Congreve, the last of which had her company most; but she ever resisted his vicious attacks, and, yet was always uneasy at his leaving her--she was very shy of Lord Lovelace's company, as being an engaging man, who drest well; and as, every day, his servant came to her, to ask her how she did, she always return'd her answer in the most obeisant words and behavior, that she was indifferent well, she humbly thanked his Lordship ... her virtue had its reward, both in applause and specie; for it happen'd, that as the Dukes of Dorset and Devonshire, Lord Halifax, and other Nobles, over a bottle, were extolling Mrs. Bracegirdle's virtuous behavior, "Come," says Lord Halifax--"You all commend her virtue, etc., but why do we not present this incomparable woman with something worthy her acceptance?"--his Lordship deposited 200 guineas, which the rest made up to 800, and sent to her with encomiums on her virtue.'" (Genest: _Some Account of the English Stage_, vol. II, pp. 376-78.)

[141] Walpole, Horace: _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. II, p. 381.

[142] Walpole, Horace: _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. II, 537-44; Pilkington: _Dictionary of Painters_, 1770; _Biographia Britannica_, vol. II, p. 30; Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. II.

[143] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. II, pp. 224 ff.

[144] At Admiral Killigrew's sale in 1727 were six of his niece's canvases. They were Venus and Adonis, A Satyr playing on a Pipe, Judith and Holofernes, A woman's head, Graces dressing Venus, and her own portrait.

[145] Pepys, _Diary_: May 7, June 30, July 26 and 29, Aug. 7, 21, 22, Sept. 3, 27, Oct. 10, 1665.

[146] For a list of the books for children published by Newbery and Carnan see the 1768 edition (a fifth edition) of _Goody Two Shoes_ (_Notes and Queries_, 4th Series, vol. VIII, p. 510). Cf. Mrs. Field's _The Child and His Book_ and Elizabeth Godfrey's _Home Life under the Stuarts_, chap. XIII.

[147] See pp. 233-39.

[148] _Term Catalogues_, Easter, 1671, Easter, 1690.

[149] _Lady Russell's Letters_, vol. I, p. 70 n.

[150] See _Pious Englishwomen of the Seventeenth Century_. Derby, 1845. The list of names given in this book is as follows: Lady Falkland, Lady Carberry, Lady Sunderland, Lady Capel, Mrs. Basire, Lady Mary Wharton, Margaret Lady Maynard, Anne Lady Halkett, Lady Jane Cheyne, Countess of Derby, Countess of Dorset; with notices of Sibylla Egerton, Lady Sophia Chaworth, Isabella Fotherby, Alice Duchess Dudley, Lady Grace Grenville, Mary Perry, Lady Mary Hastings, Lady Pakington, Lady Digby, Mary Evelyn, Elizabeth Lady Guildford, Lady Newland, Lady Cholmondely, Katharine Lady Neville, Barbara Lady Longueville, Mrs. Susannah Hopton, Anne Baynard, Catharine Bovey, Mrs. Mary Astell, Lady Elizabeth Hastings. (_Notes and Queries_, 6th Series, vol. VII, p. 355.)

[151] Hill, Georgiana: _Women in English Life_, vol. I, p. 191.

[152] Published Easter, 1671.

[153] Lady Russell's Letters, vol. II, pp. 72-85.

[154] Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 390.

[155] Florence Smith: _Mary Astell_, p. 109.

[156] Bourne, H.: _Life of Locke_, vol. II, p. 213.

[157] _Occasional Thoughts_, p. 169. See _The Lady's Magazine_, 1774, for an article on Lady Masham.

[158] Dunton: _Life and Errors_, p. 334; Nichols: _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 609; _Ibid._: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. I, p. 305; Dryden: _Works_ (ed. by Scott), vol. x, p. 110.

[159] Nichols: _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 612.

[160] Cockburn: _Works_, vol. I, p. vi.

[161] Mrs. Cockburn: _Works:_ Letters to G. Burnet, Dec. 9, 1701; Feb. 2, 1703-04, vol. II, pp. 153, 166. Also Letter from Mrs. Burnet, vol. I, p. xvii.

[162] Mrs. Cockburn: _Works_, vol. I, p. xx.

[163] _Ibid._ See Letters to Mr. Cockburn, June 23 to Sept. 21, 1707; Letters to Mr. Fenn, July 18 to Oct. 31, 1707.

[164] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. xii.

[165] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 171.

[166] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 174.

[167] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. xxv.

[168] Mrs. Cockburn: _Works_, vol. II, p. 206.

[169] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. xi.

[170] Hill, Georgiana: _Women in English Life_, vol. I, p. 248.

[171] Webb, Maria: _The Fells of Swarthmoor Hall_.

[172] Ward's _Life of Henry More_ (1710). _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 11th ed., under "More, Henry"; _Dictionary of National Biography_, under "Lady Conway"; Webb, Mrs. Maria: _The Penns and Penningtons of the Seventeenth Century_, pp. 297, 313.

[173] _British Quarterly Review_, July, 1873, pp. 181-87.

[174] Winchester: _Life of Wesley_, p. 1. Telford: _Life of Wesley_, p. 52.

[175] Winchester, _Life of Wesley_, p. 9.

[176] _Ibid._, p. 8.

[177] _Life of Wesley_, pp. 10-11.

[178] Manley, Mrs.: _The New Atalantis_, vol. III, p. 245; Ballard: _Memoirs_, p. 440; cf. _Notes and Queries_, 2d Series, vol. IX, pp. 221-22; Wills, Henry: ed. of _Sir Roger de Coverley_, pp. 170-74.

[179] _A History of the County of Yorkshire_, vol. I, p. 499.

[180] _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. 5, p. 778.

[181] _Ibid._, vol. 6, p. 42.

[182] _Ibid._, vol. 6, p. 99.

[183] _Ibid._, vol. 10, p. 36.

[184] _Lady Huntingdon and her Friends_. Compiled by Mrs. Helen C. Knight, p. 18.

[185] Coventry, Francis: _Pompey the Little_, bk. I, chap. XL.

[186] This conception of a divinely authorized aristocracy governed by a special set of laws tallies with the opinion formulated by Dr. George Hickes in a sermon preached before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London in 1684. Dr. Hickes justified the presence of the poor in the body politic, as necessary to the very existence of the State:

"But this Civil Equality is morally impossible, because no Commonweal, little or great, can subsist without Poor. They are necessary, for the establishment of Superiority, and Subjection in Humane Societies, where there must be Members of Dishonour, as well as Honour, and some to serve and obey, as well as others to command. The Poor are the Hands and Feet of the Body Politick, the _Gibeonites_ and _Nethinims_ in all Countries, who hew the Wood, and draw the Water of the Rich. They Plow our Lands, and dig our Quarries, and cleanse our Streets, nay, those, who fight our battels in the defence of their Country, are the _Poor Souldiers_, who, as the Legions of _Blæsus_ once complained in a Mutiny, sell their lives for seven pence a day. As there must be Rich to be, like the Centurian in the Gospel, in Authority: so there must be Poor, to whom they may say, _Go unto one, and he goeth, and to another come, and he cometh_; but were all equally rich, there could be no subordination, none to command, nor none to serve. But in such case, the Body Politick must dissolve, as the Natural body was like to do in the Fable of _Agrippa_, when the rest of the Members would work no longer for the Belly, which, they thought did nothing at all."

[187] In 1656 there appeared a book by Elizabeth Major entitled _Honey on the Rod, or a Comfortable Contemplation for one in Affliction, with Sundry Poems. By the Unworthiest of the Servants of the Lord Jesus Christ._ In 1652 had appeared anonymously _Eliza's Babes, or the Virgin's Offerings_. A detailed examination of the two books leads to a surmise that they are by the same author. What is probably a unique copy of _Eliza's Babes_ is in the British Museum. (_Notes and Queries_, 7th Series, vol. III, p. 502.)

[188] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. II, p. 168.

[189] Lady Winchilsea: _Circuit of Apollo_, note. (Ed. Reynolds, Myra.)

[190] Behn, Aphra: _Works_, 6 vols.; Cibber, _Lives of the Poets_, vol. III, pp. 17-23.

[191] _The Epistle to Augustus_, ll. 290-91.

[192] Kavanagh, Julia. _English Women of Letters_, vol. I, chap. II.

[193] See p. 386.

[194] See p. 388.

[195] Genest, _Some Account of the English Stage_, vol. II, p. 104.

[196] See pp. 104-09.

[197] Mrs. Inchbald: _The British Theatre_, vol. XI; Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. IV, pp. 58-61.

[198] Centlivre, Susanna: _Works_. "To the World."

[199] Hobohm: _Das Verhältniss von Sus. Centlivre's "Love at a Venture" zu Thomas Corneille's "Le Gallant Double."_ (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Wüllenweber: _Mrs. Centlivre's Lustspiel "Love's Contrivance" und seine Quellen_. (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Strube: _Sus. Centlivre's Lustspiel "The Stolen Heiress" und sein Verhältniss zu "The Heir" von Thomas May_. (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Grober: _Das Verhältniss von Sus. Centlivre's Lustspiel "The Gamester" zu Reynard's Lustspiel "Le Joneur."_ (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Weidler: _Das Verhältniss von Mrs. Centlivre's "The Busy Body" zu Molière's "L'Etourdi" und Ben Jonson's "The Divill is an Ass."_ (Hall. Diss. 1900.) Ohnsorg: _John Lacy's "Dumb Lady," Mrs. Centlivre's "Love's Contrivance" und Henry Fielding's "Mock Doctor" in ihrem Verhältniss zu einander und zu ihrer gemeinshaftlichen Quelle_. (Rostock. Diss. 1900.) Poelchau: _Susannah Centlivre's Tragödie "The Cruel Gift" in ihrem Verhältniss zur Quelle Boccaccio's Decameron IV_. (Hall. Diss. 1905.)

[200] See p. 85, 86.

[201] See mezzotint engraving by Becket in 1686 edition of her poems.

[202] See pp. 85-86.

[203] _The Lives of the Norths_, vol. I, p. 7; vol. III, pp. 262, 295.

[204] Verses by that "Excellent Poetess, Mrs. Wharton," with other poems to her, were published with "The Idea of Christian Love," by Mr. Edward Young of Salisbury. _Term Catalogues._ (Mich. 1688.)

[205] _A Sermon at the Funeral of the late learned and ingenuous Mrs. Ann Baynard, Daughter and only Child of Dr. Edward Baynard, Fellow of the College of Physitians. Together with some remarkable passages of her life, preached at the Parish Church of Barn(e)s in Surrey, June 6, 1697. By John Prude, A.M., Chaplain to his Grace the Duke of Norfolk; and Curate of St. Clement's Danes. Term Catalogues._ (Trin. 1697.)

[206] _Biog. Fem._, p. 42.

[207] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. III, pp. 177-86.

[208] Mr. Sprint's sermon was printed under the title _The Bride-Woman's Counsellor. Being a Sermon Preach'd at a Wedding, May the Eleventh, 1699 at Sherbourne in Dorsetshire._ It was from 1 Cor. VII, 34, "But she that is Married careth for the things of the World, how she may please her Husband." He explains that "Man was all Affibility and Sweetness of Temper" before the Fall, the chief responsibility for which was properly placed on Eve and her female descendants. God had also fully indicated her function when he deliberately created her for the Profit and Comfort of Man. "A good wife," continues Mr. Sprint, "should be like a Mirrour which hath no Image of its own, but receives its Stamp and Image from the Face that looks into it: So should a good Wife endeavour to frame her outward Deportment, and her inward Affections according to her Husband's." She must not only obey his commands but she must bring "under unto him the very Desires of the Heart to be regulated by him so far, that it should not be lawful for her to will or desire what she herself liked, but only what her husband should approve and allow." Mr. Sprint printed his sermon only because of attacks by some "ill-natur'd Females." He gets his revenge by saying that he has not met among all his accusers one woman "whose Husband is able to give her the Character of a dutiful and obedient Wife."

[209] Lady Chudleigh's summary of the arts of a successful wife is exemplified in a serious book published anonymously entitled _The Fair Counsellor, or, The Young Lady's Conduct after Marriage_. Charlotte is instructing Olivia in "The Art of Management." A woman must recognize that she is confined to her husband for life and hence she should make it her business to please. She should learn to reflect his moods as in a glass. To all wayward humors she should oppose passive obedience and non-resistance. If he should come home intoxicated she should "by all the little innocent Arts of Love and fond Endearments decoy him to his Bed." An illustrative example of what may be done by gentleness and submission is the experience of Sir Toby Testy and his wife. Sir Toby became so warm with anger one day as to cane my Lady. She retired in tears to her own room, explaining to him later that it seemed better to her to bemoan her fate in silence than to expose his unkindness to a censorious world. The outcome was that he clasped her in his arms with a thousand endearing protestations, and never disobliged her again to his dying day.

[210] Winchilsea, Lady: _Poems_ (ed. Reynolds, Myra); "A Fragment."

[211] That Lady Winchilsea's work was pretty well known before 1713 is evident from an interesting passage in Mrs. Manley's _The New Atalantis_ (1709). Some invisible spectators are being taken about under the guidance of "Intelligence." They are observing the daily parade of coaches on the "Prado" when Intelligence calls attention to a lady in one of the coaches. "The Lady," he says, "once belonged to the Court, but marrying into the Country, she made it her Business to devote herself to the Muses, and has writ a great many pretty Things: These Verses of the Progress of Life, have met with abundance of applause, and therefore I recommend them to your Excellency's Perusal." _The Progress of Life_ is then quoted entire and Astræa comments: "The Lady speaks very feelingly: We need look no further than this, to know that she's herself past that agreeable Age she so much regrets. However, I am very well pleas'd with the Thought that runs thro'; if she had contracted something of the second and third stanza, it had not been the Worse. I presume she's one of the Few that write out of Pleasure, and not Necessity. By that means its her own Fault, if she publish any Thing but what's Good; for it's next to impossible to write much and write well." (Vol. I, p. 186.) In the _Key_ the "Lady" thus spoken of is said to be "Col. Finch's Lady once a Maid of Honour." Mrs. Manley's version of _The Progress of Life_ shows several slight verbal variations from the form published in 1713. Two lines on Parnassus in the second stanza appeared in 1713 as more orthodox lines on Canaan. But when Miss Seward's mother taught her the poem in 1763, it was the old and not the 1713 version that she used. (Winchilsea, Lady: _Works_, ed. Reynolds, p. lxxiii.)

[212] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. III, pp. 201-03.

[213] Thoresby: _Diary_, May 13, 1709; May 1, 1713; April 22, 1716; Sept. 2, 1716.

[214] The most complete account of Miss Barker is in an inaugural dissertation by Karl Stanglmaier, Berlin, 1906, entitled _Mrs. Jane Barker. Ein Beitrag zur Englischen Literaturgeschichte_.

[215] "To Mrs. Jane Barker on her most Delightful and Excellent Romance of Scipina, now in the Press."

"To my Ingenius Friend Mrs. Jane Barker, on my Publishing her Romance of Scipina."

Both of these poems are in Part II of _Poetical Recreations_ (1688). The second one is by Benjamin Crayle.

[216] _Amours of Bosvil and Galesia_, pp. 3-4.

[217] In the second edition of the _Entertaining Novels_ (1719), in a dedication to the Countess of Exeter, Miss Barker says, "Was it not Burleigh House with its Park, &c., that formed in me the first idea of my Scipio's country retreat? Most sure it was, for when I composed my Romance I knew nothing further from home than Burleigh and Warthorp." These two seats of the Exeter family are about seven miles from Wilsthorp. (_Notes and Queries_, Series IX, no. 10, p. 171.) Miss Baker lived at Wilsthorp which is near Stamford and only about forty miles from Cambridge.

[218] Barker, Jane: _Poems, passim_.

[219] _Poems_: "To my Unkind Strephon."

[220] In _Amours of Bosvil and Galesia_ and _A Patch-Work Screen_.

[221] _Amours_, p. 11.

[222] Mr. Barker studied at both Universities.

[223] _Amours_, p. 13.

[224] _A Patch-Work Screen_, p. 10.

[225] _Ibid._, p. 56.

[226] _Poems_, "On the Apothecary's Filing my Bills amongst the Doctors."

[227] _Poems_: "A Farewell to Poetry with a Long Digression on Anatomy."

[228] _Poems_: "A Virgin Life."

[229] _Amours_, pp. 44-46.

[230] _Amours_, p. 47.

[231] Celia Fiennes: _Through England on a Side Saddle_, Introduction, pp. ix-xi.

[232] Celia Fiennes: _Through England on a Side Saddle_, p. 99.

[233] _Ibid._, p. 114.

[234] Between 1767 and 1771.

[235] Celia Fiennes: _Through England on a Side Saddle_, p. 163.

[236] _Ibid._, p. 165.

[237] In Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 139, is this statement: "From another of Miss Elstob's letters in the same collection [letters to Mr. Ballard] it appears that Dr. Hickes was her grandfather by the mother's side; a circumstance which may account for her proficiency, if not for the origin of her Saxon studies." I have not as yet found confirmation of this relationship. In the letters and dedications to him the brother and sister put forward no claim to relationship, and in the letter Dr. Hickes wrote in behalf of William Elstob and in those written in approbation of Miss Elstob's work, there is no indication that he was asking help for his grandchildren. The _Dictionary of National Biography_ says that Dr. Hickes "left no children," a statement slightly ambiguous, for while it conveys the impression that he had no children, it might be literally true even if Jane Elstob were his daughter, for she died about twenty-four years before he did. Nichols in _Literary Anecdotes_ speaks of an Elstob pedigree "accompanied by another pedigree of Mrs. Elstob's mother." These were on a single leaf fastened into Richard St. George's _Visitation of the County of Durham_ (1615), among the MSS. of the Harleian Collection.

[238] Walker, John: _Letters of Eminent Persons_, vol. I, pp. 243-40; Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, pp. 112-40, "The Elstobs."

[239] Preface to Miss Elstob's _Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory_.

[240] Nichols, _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 130. "Dissertation on Letter Founders," by Edward Rowe Mores.

[241] Mr. Rowe Mores, in _Dissertation on Letter Founders_, says of Miss Elstob: "In her latter years she was tutoress in the family of the Duke of _Portland_, where we have visited her in her sleeping-room at _Bulstrode_, surrounded with books and dirtiness, the usual appendages of the folks of learning. But if any one wishes to see her as she was when she was the favorite of Dr. _Hudson_ and the _Oxonians_, they may view her portraiture in the initial G of _The English Saxon homily on the birthday of St. Gregory_." This portrait is repeated in his _Grammar_.

[242] In the "G" of Gregorium is a portrait of Mr. Thwaites as St. Gregory. (Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 131.)

[243] _Letters of Eminent Men addressed to Ralph Thoresby, F. R. S._

[244] A new edition of this _Homily_ was brought out by William Pickering, Leicester, 1839.

[245] _Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory_, p. ii.

[246] This _Grammar_ is "remarkable for being the first effort to present the study of Old English through the medium of modern English." (Adams, Eleanor N.: _Old English Scholarship in England from 1566-1800_, p. 92.)

[247] July 31, 1715, Mr. Hearne wrote to Mr. Hickes thanking him for his "excellently learned _Thesaurus_," and for Mrs. Elstob's _Grammar_. He comments on her Preface as "judicious, learned, and elegant." He is particularly pleased with her remarks on the author of the "Dissertation on reading the Classicks, and forming a just stile." This gentleman was of St. Edmund's Hall and was always looked upon as a vain, flashy person. "I look'd upon him as the most unfit Person I knew of a Scholar to write upon this Subject.... His book hath been sufficiently ridiculed & condemned her by y^e best Judges." (_Hearne's Collections_, vol. IV, p. 83.)

[248] An interesting fact in connection with the publication of the _Grammar_ has to do with the type. Some years after the printing of the _Homily_ the house of the printer, Mr. Bowyer, was burned and all the Anglo-Saxon type was destroyed. They could not have printed the _Grammar_ had not Lord Chief Justice Parker provided the funds for cutting new type. In 1753 Mr. N. Bowyer, son of the printer of the _Grammar_, sent this type, as a curiosity, to Mr. Edward Rowe Mores with this letter: "I make bold to transmit to Oxford, through your hands, the Saxon punches and matrices, which you were pleased to intimate would not be unacceptable to that learned Body. It would be a great satisfaction to me if I could by this means perpetuate the munificence of the noble Donor, to whom I am originally indebted for them, the late Lord Chief Justice Parker, afterwards Earl of Macclesfield, who, among the numerous Benefactors which my father met with, after his house was burnt in 1712-13, was so good as to procure those types to be cut, to enable him to print Mrs. Elstob's Saxon Grammar. England had not then the advantage of such an Artist in Lettercutting as has since arisen: and that as my father received them from a great Patron of Learning, his son consigns them to the greatest Seminary of it." (Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. II, pp. 355-59.) In 1768 Mr. Edward Rowe Mores presented these punches and matrices to the Society of Antiquaries, and the Reverend Mr. Pegge at that time communicated to the Society some account of William and Elizabeth Elstob. (_Archæologia_, 1804, vol. I, p. xxv.) The difficulty in getting good type is shown by the following letters: May 19, 1713, Mr. Robert Nelson wrote to Mr. Wanley: "Pray do me the favor to write out the Saxon characters for Mr. Bowyer, as you have kindly promised; despatch in this affair is of great consequence because my Lord Chief Justice Parker does intend to assist towards repairing this misfortune by giving him a set of press letters, and is very uneasy that he is not ready to begin his friend's book which requires these characters to perfect it." (_Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 493.) Mr. Wanley said that he wrote out the letters in the most exact and able manner that he could "But it signified little; for when the alphabet came into the hands of the workman (who was but a blunderer) he could not imitate the fine and regular stroke of the pen; so that the letters are not only clumsy, but unlike those that I drew. This appears by _Mrs. Elstob's Saxon Grammar_ being the book mentioned by Mr. Nelson." (_Ibid._, p. 498.)

[249] Nichols: _Illustrations of Literary History_, vol. I, p. 804.

[250] _Ibid._, vol. IV, pp. 211-12.

[251] Nichols: _Illustrations of Literary History_, vol. IV, p. 213.

[252] Nichols: _Ibid._, vol. I, p. 804.

[253] Dr. Hickes also wrote strongly in favor of Miss Elstob's work in his manuscript Preface to _Orosius_. (Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 132.)

[254] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. IV, p. 87.

[255] _Ibid._, vol. IV, p. 93.

[256] Nichols: _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 48.

[257] Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, pp. 125-27.

[258] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. V, p. 271.

[259] _Ibid._, vol. V, p. 337.

[260] _Ibid_., vol. V, p. 358.

[261] The folio manuscripts of Miss Elstob's _Homilies_ are now preserved among the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum. See _Bibliothecæ Lansdownianæ_, nos. 370-74, and _Bibliothecæ Harleiana_, vol. I, p. 323, no. *27.

[262] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. VI, p. 255. Mr. Rowe Mores said that Miss Elstob had once had a genteel fortune, but that she had "pursued too much the drug called learning, and in that pursuit failed of being careful of any one thing necessary."

[263] "The learned Saxonist, Mrs. Elstob, was one, among many others, who about this period [1714] experienced the new Bishop's bounty." (Nichols: _Illustrations of Literary History_, vol. III, p. 227.) Mr. Thomas Seward, Bishop of Lichfield, knew Miss Elstob and was one of the contributors to her support. (Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 135.)

[264] Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IV, p. 137.

[265] _Letters of Mrs. Delany_, 1st Series, vol. I, p. 263. Mrs. Chapone was evidently a gifted letter-writer and it is with a sense of great loss that we read of the accidental burning of many of her letters in 1860. (_Letters of Mrs. Delaney_, 1st Series, vol. I, p. 263 n.)

[266] _Letters of Mrs. Delany_, 1st Series, vol. II, p. 31.

[267] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 14.

[268] _Letters of Mrs. Delany_, 1st Series, vol. II, p. 18.

[269] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 56

[270] A full _Life_ of Miss Elstob is much to be desired. In Ballard's _Letters_, in the Letters of many contemporary antiquaries and Saxon scholars, especially Dr. George Hickes, and in manuscripts at Bulstrode, there must be many further sources of interesting information concerning her life and work. Especially would Mrs. Chapone's letter be a valuable contribution.

[271] Allibone's _Dictionary of Authors_.

[272] Bruce, James: _Lives of Eminent Men of Aberdeen_; _Chalmer's Dictionary_; _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. XVII; _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 556.

[273] Footnote 1: _Notes and Queries_, 2d Series, vol. XI, p. 101.

[274] Baker: _Biographia Dramatica_, vol. IV, p. 212.

[275] Gnest: _Some Account of the English Stage_, vol. III, p. 461.

[276] _The Gentleman's Magazine_, March, 1735.

[277] Lowndes: _Bibliographical Manual_.

[278] _Notes and Queries_, 2d Series, vol. XI, pp. 101-02.

[279] Lounsbury: _Studies in Chaucer_, vol. III, p. 242.

[280] The statutes of this Society were dated May 27, 1736. In December Mr. Alex. Gordon wrote, "We are every day increasing both in number and in members either conspicuous for their quality or station, or learning and ingenuity." But constant difficulties arose between the Society and book-sellers. No plan tried proved satisfactory to both parties. By 1765 the finances of the Society were practically exhausted, and in April, 1746, the Society came to an abrupt close, after a starving and not very productive ten years. (Nichols: _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, pp. 134-38.)

[281] Miss Emily M. Symonds says of the author of the _Anecdotes_: "Lady Louisa Stuart inherited her grandmother's tastes for literary pursuits. That this taste was discouraged by her family is a real calamity, as all will agree who are familiar with the _Selections from her Manuscripts (Essays and Verses)_, and the _Letters to Miss Clinton_. Her sketch of the family of John, Duke of Argyll, is a biographical gem, and her youthful letters read as if they had been written by one of Jane Austen's most charming heroines. Her satire is so sweet-tempered that it is evident she likes her victims none the less for her laughter, while her common-sense philosophy, with its sub-acid flavour of gentle cynicism may be studied with advantage even in these enlightened days. A glimpse of Lady Mary's daughter and granddaughter may be obtained from the _Diary_ of Miss Burney, who met the two ladies at Mrs. Delany's in 1787. Lady Bute, she records, with an exterior the most forbidding to strangers, has powers of conversation the most entertaining and lively where she is intimate. She is full of anecdote, delights in strokes of general satire, yet with mere love of comic, not insidious ridicule. She spares not for giving her opinions, and laughs at fools as well as follies, with the shrewdest derision. Lady Louisa Stuart, her youngest daughter, has parts equal to those of her mother, with a deportment and appearance infinitely more pleasing; yet she is far from handsome, but proves how well beauty may be occasionally missed, when understanding and vivacity unite to fill up her place.... They seem both to inherit an ample portion of the wit of their mother and grandmother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, though I believe them both to have escaped all inheritance of her faults. On the occasion of another and later meeting Miss Burney writes: 'Lady Bute and Lady Louisa were both in such high spirits themselves, that they kept up all the conversation between them with such a vivacity, an acuteness, and an observation on men and manners so clear and so sagacious, that it would be difficult to pass an evening of greater entertainment.'" (Symonds, Emily Morse: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times_, p. 537.)

[282] Symonds, Emily Morse: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times_, p. 4.

[283] _The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu_ (Bell, 1887), vol. II, p. 240.

[284] _Ibid._, LXXVI. Lady Louisa gives the later history of these ponderous black books saying that they survived the wear and tear of a century through the protection of an excellent person who had been Lady Bute's attendant before her marriage, and a part of the family ever after. "Her spectacles were always to be found in Clelia and Cassandra, which she studied unceasingly six days of the week, prizing them next to the Bible and Tillotson's Sermons; because, to give her own words, they were all about good and virtuous people, not like the wicked trash she now saw young people get from the circulating libraries."

[285] Symonds: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times_, p. 7.

[286] _Spence's Anecdotes_, by Singer (Ed. 1820), p. 232.

[287] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. I, p. 40.

[288] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 403.

[289] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 5.

[290] Symonds, Emily Morse: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Her Times_, p. 201.

[291] _Ibid._, p. 169.

[292] _Letters and Works_, vol. II, p. 41. The debate referred to was on the conduct of the Spanish government, and took place on Thursday, March 1, 1739. Mrs. Pendarves, afterwards Mrs. Delany, gives the following slightly different account of the matter: "Lady Westmoreland ... and the Duchess of Queensberry, Mrs. Fortescue and myself, set forward for Westminster, and got up to the gallery door without any difficulty. There were thirteen ladies more that came with the same intention. To tell you all the particulars of our provocations, the insults of the doorkeepers and our unshaken intrepidity, would flourish out more paper than a single frank would contain; but we bore the buffets of a stinking crowd from half an hour after ten till five in the afternoon without moving an inch from our places, only see-sawing about as the motion of the multitude forced us. At last, our committee resolved to adjourn to the coffeehouse of the Court of Request, where debates began how we were to proceed? It was agreed amongst us to address Sir Charles Dalton (gentleman usher of the Black Rod) for admittance. The address was presented, and an answer returned that whilst one lady remained in the passage to the gallery, the door should not be opened for the members of the House of Commons, so we generously gave them the liberty of taking their places. As soon as the door was opened, they all rushed in, and we followed."

It is of interest to compare the events of this attack on the House of Lords with two similar attempts to affect legislative action in the seventeenth century. In 1643, when some peace propositions had been under consideration in the House of Commons, but had been finally abandoned, the women of London, with white silk ribbons in their hats, went in great numbers to the House bearing a peace petition. The House sent out a deputation of three or four members to meet them, mollify them, and induce them to return home. Rushworth recounts the further progress of the affair:

"But the women, not satisfied, remain'd thereabouts, and by noon were encreased to five thousand at the least; and some men of the rabble in women's cloaths mixt themselves amongst them and instigated them to go to the Commons door and cry 'Peace, Peace,' which they did accordingly, thrusting to the door of the House at the upper stairs head; and as soon as they were pass'd a part of the Trained Band (that usually stood sentinal there) thrust the soldiers down and would suffer none to come in or go out of the House for near two hours. The Trained Band advised them to come down, and first pulled them; and, afterwards to fright them shot powder. But they cry'd out 'Nothing but powder,' and having brickbats in the yard threw them apace at the Trained Band, who then shot bullets, and killed a ballad-singer with one arm that was heartening on the women, and another poor man that came accidentally. Yet the women not daunted, cry'd out the louder at the door of the House of Commons, 'Give us these traitors that are against peace that we may tear them to pieces, give us that dog Pym.'"

This "Female Riot" had a disastrous end. When Waller's troopers went by with his colors in their hats, the women snatched some of the ribbons, calling the men Waller's dogs. The troopers defended themselves, at first with swords "flatways," but later cutting so furiously over hands and faces that most of the women fled. The few who remained were later dispersed by a troop of horses.

[293] On her return she brought nineteen volumes of this journal which she entrusted to her daughter. Lady Bute kept them under lock and key, occasionally reading passages from them, and once allowing her daughter, Lady Louisa, to read the first portions. Before Lady Bute's death the manuscript was solemnly burned as a sacred duty to her mother's memory.

[294] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 211 n.

[295] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 314.

[296] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. cxxvii.

[297] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 236.

[298] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 239.

[299] Montagu, Lady Mary: _Works_, vol. II, p. 252.

[300] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. IV, pp. 4-22.

[301] Reprinted in 1725 as _A Stage Coach Journey to Exeter_.

[302] Vol. I, pp. 205-13.

[303] Vol. IV, pp. 302-07. (Conversation between Steele as "Don Phœbo" and Mrs. Tofts.)

[304] _The Tatler_ (ed. Aitkin), vol. IV, p. 242 n.

[305] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_, vol. IV, pp. 146-63.

[306] Whicher, George Frisbie: _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood_ (Columbia, 1915), p. 2.

[307] "Whereas Elizabeth Haywood, Wife of the Reverend Mr. Valentine Haywood, eloped from him her Husband on Saturday the 26th. of November last past, and went away without his Knowledge and Consent: This is to give Notice to all persons in general, That if any one shall trust her either with Money or Goods, or if she shall contract Debts of any kind whatsoever, the said Mr. Haywood will not pay the same." (_Post Boy_, January 7, 1721. Quoted by Mr. Whicher, p. 3.)

[308] In 1723, at Drury Lane, she played "Mrs. Graspall" in her own comedy, _A Wife to be Lett_. In 1715, six years before she left her husband, she had appeared as "Chloe" in Shadwell's adaptation of _Timon of Athens_.

[309] A complete bibliography of Mrs. Haywood's works is given by Mr. Whicher in his _Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood_, pp. 126-204.

[310] Gosse, Edmund: _Gossip in a Library_; "What Ann Lang Read," pp. 161-69.

[311] Whicher: _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood_, p. 13.

[312] See section on "Novel-Reading Girl."

[313] Whicher, G. F.: _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood_, chap. V, "The Heroine of _The Dunciad_."

[314] Whicher, G. P.: _The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood_, p. 22.

It may be noticed that late in the century several women were successful printers and publishers. "Mrs. Munelly was a printer in White Fryars; and publisher of _The St. James's Evening Post_, a very old newspaper, the precursor of _The St. James's Chronicle_" (Nichols's _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. III, p. 467.) "In April, 1775, Mrs. Baskerville, who had carried on the printing business of her husband, announced that business for sale, but she continued the business of letter founding in all its parts." (_Ibid._, vol. III, p. 459.) "William Caslon, whose foundry was of great repute, died in 1778, leaving the business to his widow. Her merit and ability in conducting a capital business during the life of her husband, and afterwards till her son was capable of managing it, can only be known to those who had dealings with that manufacturer. In quickness of understanding, and activity of execution, she has left few equals among her sex." (_Ibid._, vol. III, p. 357.)

[315] _Ibid._, chap. 7, "The Domestic Novel."

[316] Pope, Alexander: _Works_ (Elwin and Courthope), vol. VII, p. 177.

[317] Pope, Alexander: _Works_ (Elwin and Courthope), vol. VII, p. 191; vol. III, p. 243.

[318] Swift, Jonathan: _Works_ (ed. Scott), vol. XVII, p. 359.

[319] Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), vol. XVII, p. 367. Letter to Countess of Suffolk, p. 371.

[320] _Ibid._, vol. XVII, p. 306.

[321] _Ibid._, vol. XVII, p. 342.

[322] _Ibid._, vol. XVII, p. 353.

[323] _Ibid._, vol. XVIII, p. 168.

[324] Swift: _Works_: (ed. Scott), vol. XVIII, p. 147.

[325] In 1754, at a sale of 150 pictures belonging to Dr. Mead, a picture of "Mrs. Barber the poetess, in Water Colours," brought only 1_l._ 9_s._, the next lowest price paid for any picture. (_Notes and Queries_, 5th Series, vol. II, p. 107.) Mrs. Barber suffered from severe attacks of gout and she had been one of Dr. Mead's patients.

[326] Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), vol. XIX, pp. 5-9.

[327] "There being then but one Man-Midwife in the Kingdom my Father made himself Master of That useful Art, and practised it with great success, Reputation and Humanity." (Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. VII, p. 12.)

[328] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. I, pp. 27-29.

[329] _Brookiana_, vol. II, p. 123.

[330] Clarke, Adam: _A Bibliographical Dictionary_, vol. VI, p. 142.

[331] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. I, p. 46.

[332] Swift to Lord Bathurst, October, 1730: _Works_ (Elrington Ball), vol. IV, p. 169, note.

[333] Craik, Henry: _Life of Swift_, vol. II, p. 189.

[334] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. I, p. 132. Swift: _Works_ (ed. Scott), vol. XVIII, p. 171.

[335] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. I, p. 135.

[336] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. 119.

[337] _Ibid._, vol. I, p. 120.

[338] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 249.

[339] Mrs. Pilkington: _Memoirs_, vol. II, p. 249.

[340] _Ibid._, vol. II, pp. 84, 224, 231, 234.

[341] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 221.

[342] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 240. At the beginning of the eighteenth century we not infrequently find notice of women book-sellers, as Elizabeth Janeway of Chichester (1697); Eleanor Smith (1697); Elizabeth Whitlocke (1697-99); Anne Speed at Three Crowns, Exchange Alley (1705-09); Mrs. Billingsly under Royal Exchange (1707); Margaret Coggan (1708-09); Mrs. Appleby of Gravesend (1711); Mrs. Small of Deal (1711); etc. (_Term Catalogues_, _passim_.)

[343] _The Heart of John Wesley's Journal_, p. 182.

[344] Morgan, Charlotte E.: _The Rise of the Novel of Manners_, p. 70.

[345] Swift, Jonathan: _The Journal to Stella_, February 21, 1713.

[346] See an article entitled "An early Romantic Novel," by Miss Helen Sard Hughes in the _Journal of English and Germanic Philology_, vol. XV, pp. 564-97. In an unpublished manuscript Miss Hughes has made an elaborate study of Mrs. Collyer in her relation to her times. I am indebted to this study for many suggestions.

[347] See article by Mr. John Louis Haney on "German Literature in England before 1790," in _Americana Germanica_, vol. IV, pp. 130-54; and an article on "The Influence of Solomon Gesner upon English Literature," by Miss Bertha Reed, in _German American Annals_, vol. VII (1905), vol. VIII (1906).

[348] Article VI, vol. XI, p. 78.

[349] See article by F. J. Harvey Darton on children's books, in _Cambridge History of Literature_, vol. XI, chap. XVI.

[350] Hughes, Helen Sard: _Mary Mitchell Collyer: A Romanticist of the Mid-Century_, chap. III (unpublished manuscript).

[351] In my study, _Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth_, in a brief account of fiction from this point of view, I gave _John Buncle_ as the earliest writer of fiction to make abundant use of nature. It is interesting to find Mrs. Collyer, not only antedating him, but excelling him in accuracy and fullness.

[352] Fielding, Henry: _Complete Works_ (edited by Thomas Roscoe), p. 630.

[353] _Familiar Letters between the Characters of David Simple._ (1747).

[354] Fielding, Henry: _Complete Works_ (ed. Roscoe), p. 632.

[355] _The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson_ (ed. Barbauld), vol. II, pp. 101-05.

[356] _Die Begebenheiten David Simpels, oder Erzählung von dessen Reisen durch die Städte London und Westminster, am einen wahrhaftigen Freund zu suchen._ Geschrieben durch ein Frauenzimmer. Übersetzt durch M. A. Wodarch. (Hamburg, in der Hertelischen Handlung im Dom. 1746.)

[357] _Le véritable Ami, ou la Vie de David Simple._ Traduit de l'Anglois. (Amsterdam, 1755.)

[358] _Geschichte der Gräfin von Dellwyn_; von Fielding's Schwester, der Verfasserin des _David Simple_. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt. (Leipzig, in der Weidmannschen Handling. 1761.)

[359] Plügge, Georg: _Miss Sarah Fielding als Romanschriftstellerin_ (Inaugural-Dissertation, Leipzig).

[360] Hawkins, Sir John: _Life of Samuel Johnson_, p. 286.

[361] _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. XXII, p. 146.

[362] Vol. II, p. 251. This chapter was reprinted entire in _The Gentleman's Magazine_, January, 1841, p. 44. It was Miss Mitford who pointed out Johnson's authorship of this chapter. See Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. VII, p. 161.

[363] Johnson, Samuel: _Works_ (ed. Murphy), vol. II, p. 58.

[364] Genest: _Some Account of the English Stage_, vol. V, p. 241.

[365] Reprinted in 1778 and 1810. A new edition in four volumes in 1856 by Bohn announced that the text had been collated with the French "and with such corrections as the ingenious Translator herself would have made on a careful revision of her translation." Johnson reviewed this work favorably in _The Literary Magazine_ for 1756.

[366] Johnson, Samuel: _Works_ (ed. Murphy), vol. II, p. 1.

[367] Nichols: _Anecdotes of Bowyer_, p. 248.

[368] _The Works of the Late Miss Catharine Talbot_, vol. I, p. 98.

[369] See _The Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. XLIV (1774), p. 376. _Ibid._ (1772), vol. XLII, pp. 135, 257. (Her character by Mrs. Duncomb.) Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. IX, pp. 766-69. (Quotations from the Reverend Weeden Butler's _Memoirs of Bishop Hildesley_, Letter by Dr. Rundle, Letter by Duchess of Somerset.)

[370] In 1748, in accordance with her dying request, her poems were published by subscription for her father's benefit, under the title _Poems on Several Occasions, by the late_ Mrs. Leapor _of_ Brackley _in_ Northamptonshire. Published for the Benefit of the Author's Father. 800. Price 5_s._ _Vol. 2d and last_ appeared later at the same price.

[371] See _Familiar Letters_, p. 52.

[372] "Maria" has made some mistakes in names, but her general accuracy is attested by a reference to Mozans: _Woman in Science_. The eighteenth century was a period of great triumph for learned Italian women. Of the four chief women, Laura Bassi, Anna Manzolini, Maria Agnesi, Clotilda Tambroni, the first three had attained to fame before 1755 when Miss Masters's book appeared. Maria Agnesi (1718-1808) was a European celebrity by the time she was twenty. "M. Charles de Brosses, in his _Lettres Familières écrites de l'Italie en 1739 et 1740_, speaks of Agnesi in terms that recall the marvellous stories which are related of Admirable Crichton and Cico della Mirandola. 'She appeared to me,' he tells us, 'something more stupendous--_una cosa piu stupenda_--than the Duomo of Milan.' Having been invited to a _conversazione_ for the purpose of meeting this wonderful woman, the learned Frenchman found her to be 'a young lady about eighteen or twenty.' She was surrounded by 'about thirty people--many of them from different parts of Europe.' The discussion turned on various questions of mathematics and natural philosophy." The astonishment excited by her knowledge of these abstruse subjects was increased by her command of classical Latin which she spoke with purity, care, and accuracy. When the conversation became general she spoke to each person in the language of his own country. At about thirty Maria Agnesi brought out her great work, a treatise in two large volumes on the differential and integral calculus. "It would be impossible to describe the sensation it produced in the learned world. Everybody talked about it; everybody admired the profound learning of the author, and acclaimed her: 'Il portento del sesso, unico al Mondo'--the portent of her sex, unique in the world." (Mozans: _Woman in Science_, pp. 143-53.)

Laura Caterina Bassi (1711-78) would take rank with learned women of any age or nation. At twenty-one she took part in a public disputation on philosophy with some of the most distinguished scholars of the time as her opponents. The brilliancy of her success on this occasion led to a request that she should present herself as candidate for the doctorate in philosophy. This was a still more imposing ceremony. It was held in the Communal Palace which was magnificently decorated for the splendid function. After a discourse in Latin to which she responded in the same tongue, she was crowned with a laurel wreath exquisitely wrought in silver, and had thrown round her the _vajo_, or university gown, both symbols of the doctorate. Her next triumph was when she passed the public examinations and was appointed by acclamation to the chair of physics in the University of Bologna, an office which she held many years, and always with increasing fame. (Mozans: _Woman in Science_, pp. 202-09.)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was much impressed by the fame of Laura Bassi and wrote to England about her, and Lady Pomfret, on her visit to Italy, made a point of seeing the famous lady professor; but in general the Englishwomen seem to have been quite ignorant of the status of learned women in Italy.

Anna Manzolini (1716-1774) held the chair of anatomy in Bologna for many years and is famous for her wax models of the organs of the human body. (Mozans: _Woman in Science_, pp. 235-37.)

[373] Cibber: _Lives of the Poets_. Nichols: _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. V, pp. 304-08.

[374] For a recent life see Gaussen: _Alice C. C.: A Woman of Wit and Wisdom_.

[375] This translation from Crousaz was published anonymously and was generally attributed to Dr. Johnson, but an article in Dr. Birch's manuscripts in the British Museum attributes it decisively to her. The note indicates also Dr. Birch's estimate of the translation: "_ELISÆ CARTERÆ. S. P. D. Thomas BIRCH. Versionem tuam Examinis Crousaziani jam perlegi. Summam styli et elegantiam, et in re difficilimâ proprietatem, admiratus. (Dabam_) Novemb. 27 1738." Boswell's _Life of Johnson_. (Everyman.) vol. I, p. 78.

[376] Her translation of Algarotti's _Newtonianismo per le dame_ appeared under the title, _Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy Explained for the use of the Ladies. In Six Dialogues on Light and Colour._ Two volumes. 1739.

[377] Davies, Randall: _The Greatest House at Chelsey_, p. 92.

[378] Ashton, John: _Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne_, p. 17.

[379] Ashton, John: _Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne_, p. 18.

[380] Published in vol. II of _Works_ of Dr. W. King in 1776. (_The Tatler_, April 19, 1709, n.)

[381] _The Spectator_, No. 606 (Oct. 13, 1714).

[382] _Ibid._, No. 32 (Dec. 13, 1714).

[383] Dodsley's _Collection of Poems in Six Volumes by Several Hands_ (1758, fifth edition), vol. VI, pp. 161-62.

[384] _Ibid._, vol. III, p. 142.

[385] Johnson: _Works of the English Poets_, vol. VIII, p. 165.

[386] _Ibid._, vol. V, p. 62.

[387] _Ibid._, vol. XXXIX, pp. 233-42.

[388] Wheeler, Ethel Root: _Famous Blue Stockings_, pp. 78-82.

[389] _Memoirs of the Verney Family_, vol. IV, p. 220.

[390] Ashton, John: _Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne_, p. 19.

[391] Malcolm, Jas. P.: _Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London in the Eighteenth Century_, vol. I, p. 328.

[392] _Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. 24, p. 370.

[393] Thoresby: _Diary_, May 20, 1714.

[394] _Ibid._, April 15, 1723.

[395] Plumptre, Dean: _Life of Bishop Ken_.

[396] "Mrs. Scott described their life in her novel, _Millennium Hall, by a Gentleman on his travels_, 1762, as there was a popular prejudice then against a female author." Mrs. Sarah Scott (the widow of George Lewis Scott) wrote several novels, under the pseudonym "Henry Augustus Raymond," between 1750 and 1776. _Millennium Hall_ reached a fourth edition by 1778.

[397] Birch, Una: _Anna van Schurman: Artist; Scholar; Saint_.

[398] Cut-paper work was an accomplishment in which ladies of various countries took pride. Deschamps in his account of painters mentions a Mrs. Block. He says she "excelled in cutting paper; whatever others produced in a print by a graver, she produced with a pair of scissors; she executed all kinds of subjects, as landscapes, sea-pieces, animals, flowers; and what is most astonishing, portraits, in which the resemblance was preserved in the highest degree. This new art of expressing representations of objects upon white paper became the object of universal curiosity, and the artist was encouraged by all the courts of _Europe_. The Elector _Palatine_ offered her a thousand florins (equal to about a hundred guineas) for three little pieces, which she refused.... The works of this woman are in design and taste extremely correct, and may best be compared with the engravings of Mallon. When they are pasted upon black paper, the places where the white paper is cut away in strokes, represent those of a graver or pen, and are in the highest degree neat, true, bold, and distinct." (_The Gentleman's Magazine_, 1761, p. 338). The cut-work paper in England never equalled that of Mrs. Block until Mrs. Delany's herbarium in the late eighteenth century out-distanced all competitors. But Mrs. Delany's work was more like painting while Mrs. Block's was like engraving.

[399] Monroe, Paul: _Cyclopædia of Education_; Watson, Foster: "Mrs. Bathsua Makin and the Education of Gentlewomen," _Atalanta_, July, 1895; Granger: _Biographical History_ (2d ed.), vol. II, p. 392; Ballard: _Memoirs_, Preface; Jesse: _House of Stuart_, vol. II, p. 250.

[400] Some light is thrown on the curious phrase "read, write, and in some measure understand," by William Greenhill's dedication of his _Exposition of the first five chapters of Ezekiel_ to the Princess Mary in 1644-45. After mentioning other instances of feminine precocity he praises her for "writing out the Lord's Prayer in Greek and some texts of Scripture in Hebrew." It was calligraphy rather than language that was here in question.

[401] See p. 37.

[402] Probably daughters of Dr. Nicholas Love (d. 1630), Head-Master of Winchester College in 1601, and chaplain to James I. In 1673 the daughters of Christopher Love (1618-1651), Puritan minister from Cardiff, would be of too recent date to correspond to the description.

[403] This person was a Mr. M. Lewis whose _Grammar_ and whose _Rules for Pointing and Reading Grammatically_ she used in her school.

[404] _The Woman as Good as the Man_, p. 6.

[405] _The Woman as Good as the Man_, p. 124.

[406] _Ibid._, p. 45.

[407] From _Instructions to a Young Princess_ on this point we read: "I only desire you to believe, that true Wisdom consists in knowing exactly your Duty; and whatsoever carries a Woman farther than that, is generally either dangerous or unprofitable. For, to be plain, how doth it concern you, to know, whether the Sun or the Earth move, or after what manner Thunder and Tempest are form'd in the Skies, and a Hundred other Things as little necessary as these?"

[408] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_. First full presentation of the life and works of Mary Astell.

[409] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 99.

[410] _Reflections on Marriage_, p. 29. Quoted in Miss Smith's _Mary Astell_, p. 89.

[411] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 22.

[412] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 70.

[413] Evelyn, John: _Numismata_.

[414] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 73.

[415] _Ibid._, p. 76.

[416] See article by A. H. Upham in _Journal of English and German Philology_, vol. XII, No. 2, pp. 262-76; Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, Appendix II.

[417] Smith, Florence: _Mary Astell_, p. 180.

[418] _Westminster Review_, vol. CLXIX, p. 444, April, 1898.

[419] _Notes and Queries_, 8th Series, vol. XI, p. 348.

[420] _Journal of Sacred Literature_ (1864), pp. 433-35. Ballard gives the arguments in favor of Lady Pakington's authorship.

[421] See _Complete Works of George Savile, First Marquess of Halifax_.

[422] Walsh, William: _A Dialogue concerning Women_, p. 31.

[423] Walsh, William: _A Dialogue concerning Women_, p. 86.

[424] _Ibid._, p. 92.

[425] _Ibid._, p. 93.

[426] _Ibid._, p. 101.

[427] "Mr. Graves said that Mr. Beaton's Map of Warwickshire will now come out in a little time. He commends it mightily as a most accurate Thing. This Beaton writes _The Lady's Diary_, an _Almanack_, that comes out every Year. This Beaton hath a Mathematical Head. It seems he condemns all the Mapps that ever were done of all or any Parts of England, as full of Faults. I guess him from hence to be a conceited vain Man." (Hearne's _Collections_, vol. IX, p. 106.)

[428] _The Guardian_, Sept. 18 and 19, 1713.

[429] "_Leonora_ has been identified as Mrs. Perry, sister of Miss Shepheard, the 'Parthenia' of No. 140 and 'Leonora' of No. 113. Both were kinswomen of Sir Fleetwood Shepheard." (_The Spectator_, vol. II, p. 326.)

[430] Aitkin, George: _The Life of Richard Steele_, vol. II, p. 397.

[431] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 39.

[432] _The Gentleman Instructed in the Conduct of a Virtuous and Happy Life. In Three Parts. Written for the Instruction of a Young Nobleman. To which is added, A Word to the Ladies, by way of Supplement to the First Part._ (William Darrell.) Eighth edition. London, 1723, p. 127.

[433] _Ibid._, p. 155.

[434] _The Gentleman Instructed in the Conduct of a Virtuous and Happy Life. In Three Parts. Written for the Instruction of a Young Nobleman. To which is added, A Word to the Ladies, by way of Supplement to the First Part._ (William Darrell.) Eighth edition. London, 1723, p. 151.

[435] _Ibid._, p. 165.

[436] _Ibid._, p. 173.

[437] Chalmers: _English Poets_, vol. XIV.

[438] "The elder Miss Collier," mentioned in a previous letter.

[439] _Correspondence of Richardson_ (ed. Barbauld): "Correspondence between Miss M. Collier, Miss Fielding, and Mr. Richardson." Vol. II, pp. 59-112.

[440] See p. 235.

[441] Coventry: _Pompey the Little_, book I, chap. VII.

[442] Swift, Jonathan: _Works_ (ed. Sir Walter Scott), vol. IX, pp. 260-64.

[443] "Mrs. Pilkington pretends that this letter was written on Lady Betty Moore's Marriage with Mr. George Rochfort. But Mr. Faulkner, who is the more sound authority, supposed it addressed to Mrs. John Rochford, daughter of Dr. Staunton." (Swift: _Works_, ed. Scott, vol. IX, p. 203 n.)

[444] Swift: _Works_, ed. Scott, vol. IX, p. 209. De Quincey has an interesting comment on this passage: "Often, indeed, I had occasion to remember the cynical remark of Swift that, after all, as respects mere learning, the most accomplished woman is hardly on a level with a schoolboy. In quoting this saying, I have restricted it so as to offer no offence to the female sex intellectually considered. Swift probably meant to undervalue women generally. Now, I am well aware that they have their peculiar province. But that province does not extend to _learning_, technically so called. No woman ever was or will be a _polyhistor_, like Salmasius, for example; nor a philosopher; nor, in fact anything whatsoever, called by what name you like, which demands either of these two combinations which follow:--1, great powers of combination, that is, of massing or grouping under large comprehensive principles; or, 2, severe logic." (_Works_, ed. Masson, vol. XIV, p. 125.)

[445] _Ibid._, vol. IX, p. 227.

[446] Swift: _Works_, ed. Scott, vol. IX, p. 217.

[447] See p. 303.

[448] _Ibid._, vol. IX, p. 208.

[449] Craik, Henry: _Life of Jonathan Swift_, vol. II, Appendix XI.

[450] _On the Picture of Lady M. Wortley Montagu by Kneller._

[451] _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, ll. 368-69 and note.

[452] _The Rape of the Lock_, canto IV, ll. 59-62.

[453] See _Three Hours after Marriage_, p. 393.

[454] _Epistle II._ _To a Lady._ _Of the Characters of Women._

[455] _Ibid._

[456] T. E. S. Clarke and H. C. Foxcroft: _Life of Bishop Burnet_, p. 436.

[457] Foxcroft, H. C.: _Supplement to Burnet's History of My Own Times_, p. 85.

[458] _Letters of Lady Russell_, vol. II, p. 2 n.

[459] _A Paraphrase on the 53d Chapter of Isaiah in imitation of Mrs. Anne Wharton._

[460] Winchester: _Life of Wesley_, p. 179.

[461] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. IX, p. 185 (1914).

[462] _Ibid._, vol. IX, p. 277.

[463] Cf. p. 354, where the sister is said to be "about fourteen."

[464] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. IX, p. 282.

[465] _Hearne's Collections_, vol. IX, p. 304.

[466] _Letters of Eminent Persons_, vol. II, p. 118.

[467] _Letters of Eminent Persons_, vol. II, p. 147 n.

[468] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 123.

[469] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 147 n.

[470] _Ibid._, vol. II, p. 123 n.

[471] _Letters of Eminent Persons_, vol. II, p. 140.

[472] There was at first considerable doubt about the subscriptions. Mrs. Delany wrote in February, 1752: "I can give you no encouragement about Mr. Ballard's getting the Princess of Wales among his subscribers. I don't think the Maid of Honour a proper person to apply to; if he would only leave out his dedication to me _I could_ solicit for him, but _as it is_, it has even stopped my applying to get subscriptions." (_Mrs. Delany's Letters._ First Series, vol. III, p. 186.) In December she wrote: "I am afraid Mr. Ballard has not a large subscription; it vexes me that he should prevent my being of use to him, but if we are successful in our affairs I shall hope to _make it up to him_." (_Ibid._)

[473] The ladies whose poems are included in these volumes are: Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Behn, Miss Carter, Lady Chudleigh, Mrs. Cockburn, Mrs. Grierson, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Killigrew, Mrs. Leapor, Mrs. Madan, Mrs. Masters, Lady M. W. Montagu, Mrs. Monk, Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. K. Philips, Mrs. Pilkington, Mrs. Rowe, Lady Winchilsea.

[474] _Memoirs: Containing the Lives of Several Ladies of Great Britain. A History of Antiquities, Productions of Nature and Monuments of Art. Observations on the Christian Religion, as professed by the Established Church, and Dissenters of every Denomination. Remarks on the Writings of the greatest English Divines: with a Variety of Disquisitions and Opinions relative to Criticisms and Manners; and many extraordinary Actions._

[475] The _Memoirs_ (vol. II, p. 87) say that Miss Harcourt "died suddenly, at her seat in Richmondshire, the first of December 1745, in the 39th year of her age, and not in the year thirty-seven, as the world was told in several advertisements in the London Evening Post of December 1739, by a gentleman who was imposed on in a false account he received of her death." I have been unable to examine the _London Evening Post_ to see whether it contains any announcement correspondent to Amory's statement. (Rose says she was born in 1706 at Richmond in Yorkshire and that she died in 1745.)

[476] For Amory's exceptionally early and eager descriptions of the English Lake District see Reynolds, Myra: _External Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth_ (2d ed.), p. 208. To this must now be added his distinction as one of the earliest Englishmen to be interested in the islands off the coast of Scotland.

[477] For further accounts of Thomas Amory see _The Gentleman's Magazine_, November, 1788 (vol. LVIII, p. 1062), where there is a protest from Robert Amory concerning erroneous statements about his father in the _St. James's Chronicle_ of November 6 (cf. vol. LIX, pp. 107, 322, 372); _General Biographical Dictionary_ (1798); Chalmers' _Biographical Dictionary_; Hazlitt's _Round Table_ (1817); _Retrospective Review_ (vol. VI, p. 100, 1st Series, 1822); edition of Amory's _Works_ (1825); _Notes and Queries_, 1st Series, vol. XI, p. 58; _Saturday Review_, May 12, 1877. From these references it becomes apparent that Amory has attracted considerable attention, but that there is a wide divergence of opinion as to whether he was insane or a genius.

[478] _Epicœne, or, The Silent Woman_, Act II, Sc. 2, ll. 117-20.

[479] Juvenal: Satire VI, 434-40. "That woman is a worse nuisance than usual who, as soon as she reclines on her couch, praises Virgil; makes excuses for doomed Dido; pits bards against one another and compares them, and weighs Homer and Mars in the balance."

[480] The word "college" was loosely used in the seventeenth century as signifying any company or collective body. Burton, in _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1621), says, "They have whole colleges of Curtezans in their Towns and Cities." Randolph, in _The Muse's Looking-Glass_ (1638), calls play-houses "colleges of transgression," and speaks of "Black-Friar's College." Jonson, in _Staple of News_, says "a canter's college is proposed." Dryden even speaks of a "college of bees" (_Flower and Leaf_), and Amory, in _John Buncle_, uses the same phrase more than half a century later. It becomes evident, then, that the words "college" and "collegiate" might be used without any thought of an organization founded for purposes of learning. (See Jonson: _Epicœne_, Ed. Henry, Aurelia, p. 138.)

[481] Miles, Dudley: _The Influence of Molière on Restoration Comedy_, chap. III.

[482] _Ibid._, p. 62.

[483] _Ibid._, p. 68.

[484] There are two other indications of the early influence of _Les Précieuses_. Flecknoe published in 1667 an unacted play entitled _Damoiselles à la mode_, a sort of mosaic made up from four plays of which _Les Précieuses_ was one. September 15, 1668, Pepys wrote: "To the King's play-house, to see a new play, acted but yesterday, a translation out of French by Dryden, called 'The Lady's à la Mode': so mean a thing as when they came to say it would be acted again to-morrow, both he that said it, Beeson, and the pit fell a-laughing, there being this day not a quarter of the pit full." Pepys is the only authority for attributing the piece to Dryden.

[485] It is interesting to note that the dedication is to Charles, Earl of Winchilsea, whose aunt, Mrs. Finch, one of the _literati_, was at that time living with the young Earl, at Eastwell, and had even then a vast folio of verse and prose with which the family circle was occasionally regaled. She would hardly enjoy this choice of her nephew as public patron of Wright's caricature of female wits.

[486] See p. 106.

[487] See p. 208.

[488] See p. 132.

[489] See Winchilsea, Lady: _Works_ (edited by Myra Reynolds), Introduction, pp. lxii-lxx, for full account of this character.

[490] This scene may refer both to Lady Winchilsea and the Duchess of Newcastle. Cibber, in his _Lives of the Poets_, vol. II, p. 164, says: "The Duchess kept a great many young ladies about her person, who occasionally wrote what she dictated. Some of them slept in a room contiguous to that in which her Grace lay, and ever ready, at the call of her bell to rise any hour of the night, to write down her conceptions, lest they should escape her memory."

[491] Curll: _No Fool like Wits_, Prologue.

[492] Seigneur de Gomberville brought out his _Polexandre_ in four volumes, quarto, in 1632. More famous were La Calprenède's romances, _Cléopâtre_, _Cassandre_, and _Pharamond_, and the works of the Scudéry brother and sister (the sister being the chief writer) who wrote _Ibrahim_, _Artemène_, _Clélie_, and _Almahide_. All of these except _Polexandre_ were published and some of them republished in France between 1641 and 1661. Their interminable length may be illustrated by _Artemène_ which was in ten volumes, a total of 6679 pages.

[493] _Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple_, _passim_.

[494] Pepys: _Diary_, Dec. 7, 1660; Feb. 10, 1661; May 12, 1666; Nov. 16, 1668; May 5, 1669.

[495] _The Ladies' Calling_, part II, section II.

[496] Shadwell, Thomas: _Bury-Fair_, Act III, Sc. 1.

[497] Steele, Richard: _The Tender Husband; or, The Accomplished Fools_ (1705).

[498] Urganda was an enchantress in the Amadis and Palmerin romances.

[499] Musidorus, in Sir P. Sidney's _Arcadia_, is the Prince of Thessaly, and in love with Pamela.

[500] Parthenissa was the heroine of a romance of that name by Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, the first two parts of which appeared in 1651.

[501] Statira, in _Cassandra_, was the widow of Alexander the Great, and the daughter of Darius. She married Oroondates after many difficulties had been overcome.

[502] Chambers, in _Traditions of Edinburgh_ (1869), says that Allan Ramsay in 1725 set up "a circulating library, whence he diffused plays and other books of fiction among the people of Edinburgh. It appears from some private notes of the historian Wodrow that, in 1728, the magistrates, moved by some meddling spirits, took alarm at the effect of this kind of reading on the minds of youth, and made an attempt to put it down, but without effect."

The editor of _Notes and Queries_ (4th Series, vol. IX, p. 443) says, "We are inclined to think the first circulating library in Scotland was in Dunfermline in 1711."

Scotland was ahead of England in the matter of circulating libraries. So far as I can discover, Newcastle-on-Tyne has the honor of starting the first circulating library in England. One Joseph Barber had "lent books on the High Bridge, at the other end of the Flesh Market, in 1746, and now, in 1757, at Amen Corner, near St. Nicholas's Churchyard, he had 1257 volumes on loan. His was the 'old original' library of circulation." In 1757 a rival appeared in the person of William Charnley who placed two thousand volumes at the command of subscribers at twelve shillings a year. (_Notes and Queries_, 5th Series, vol. VIII, p. 155.)

In 1751 a circulating library was opened in Birmingham by the famous William Hutton, who wrote in his _Autobiography_, "I was the first who opened a circulating library in Birmingham, in 1751, since which time many have entered the race." He also said, "As I hired out books the fair sex did not neglect my shop." In 1750 there had been opened at Birmingham a book-club for the circulation of books among its members--"probably the oldest book-club in existence," and still flourishing in 1877. The Manchester subscription library dates from 1765, or earlier. (_Ibid._, 5th Series, vol. VII, p. 452.) The circulating library of Liverpool was established May 1, 1758. The first catalogue is dated November 1, 1758. There were 109 subscribers at five shillings each, and 450 volumes. The centenary of this library was celebrated May 13, 1858. (_Ibid._ 5th Series, vol. VII, p. 354.) In January, 1761, Mr. Baker, book-seller of Tunbridge Wells, lost his circulating library by fire. By 1770 there were circulating libraries at Settle, Rochdale, Exeter, and doubtless other places. In _The Annual Register_ (p. 207) for 1761 is an interesting note: "The reading female hires her novels from some country circulating library, which consists of about an hundred volumes," which might very well apply to Polly Honeycomb. (_Ibid._ 7th Series, vol. XII, p. 66.)

When Franklin came to London in 1725 there was not a single circulating library in the metropolis. See Franklin's _Autobiography_ (vol. I, p. 64), and in 1697 the only library in London which approached the nature of a public library was that of Zion College, belonging to the London clergy (Ellis's _Letters of Literary Men_, p. 245). The exact date of the earliest London circulating library I have not yet ascertained; but according to Southey (_The Doctor_, ed. Warter, 1848, p. 271) the first set up in London was about the middle of the eighteenth century by Samuel Fancourt. (Buckle: _History of Civilization in England_, vol. I, p. 393.) Samuel Fancourt was a dissenting minister who went to London about 1730. A library conducted by him at a subscription of a guinea a year was dissolved, Michaelmas, 1745. Between 1746 and 1748 he issued an alphabetical catalogue of _Books and Pamphlets belonging to the Circulating Library in Crane Court_, in two volumes. In this "Gentlemen and Ladies' Growing and Circulating Library" the initial payment was a guinea and four shillings a year. A subscriber could draw one book and one pamphlet at a time. "He may keep them a reasonable time according to their bigness." This library contained between two and three thousand volumes, only about a tenth being light literature, and nearly half the total contents being on theology. (_Dictionary of National Biography_, under Fancourt.)

[503] _The Adventures of Jack Smart_ and _The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless_ are in Colman's list.

[504] _The Reward of Constancy_ (possibly Shebeare's _The Happy Pair; or, Virtue and Constancy rewarded_, 1771); _The Fatal Connexion_, by Mrs. Fogarty (1773); _The Mistakes of the Heart_, by Treyssac de Vergy (1769); _The Delicate Distress_ (1769) and _The Gordian Knot_ (1769), by Mrs. Griffith; _The Memoirs of Lady Woodford_ (1771); _Peregrine Pickle_, by Smollett (1751); _Tears of Sensibility_, translated from French by John Murdock (1773); _Humphrey Clinker_, by Smollett (1771); _Sentimental Journey_, by Sterne (1768); _Roderick Random_, by Smollett (1748; eighth ed. 1770); _The Innocent Adultery_ (translation of Scarron's _L'Adultère Innocente_, in 1722-29 and with later editions); _Lord Aimsworth_ (1773); _The Man of Feeling_, by Mackenzie (1771). For full comment on these books, and the others in Lydia's list see _Major Dramas of Richard Brinsley Sheridan_ (edited by George Henry Nettleton), Introduction, pp. lxviii-lxxvii.

[505] Page 354.

[506] The new names are Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Rowe, Mrs. Cockburn, Mrs. Pilkington, and Miss Chandler. Ballard (p. vii) gives a list of the ladies who had a reputation for learning, but concerning whom he could get no information. The list is as follows: "Lady Mary Nevil, Lady Anne Southwell, Lady Honor Hay, Lady Mary Wroath, Lady Armyn, Lady Ranelagh, Lady Anne Boynton (famous for her skill in ancient coins, and noble collection of them), Lady Levet, Lady Warner. Gentlewomen: Mrs. Mabilla Vaughan, Mrs. Elizabeth Grimstone, Mrs. Jane Owen, Mrs. M. Croft, Mrs. Emilia Lanyer, Mrs. Makins (who corresponded in the learned languages with Mrs. Maria à Schurman), Mrs. Gertrude More, Mrs. Dorothy Leigh." None of Cibber's additions appear in this list. Apparently Ballard's omission of writers of comedy and fiction would indicate that he did not count them among the learned. The omission of Mrs. Cockburn is less explicable. The five _Lives_ given by both Ballard and Cibber are of the Duchess of Newcastle, Anne Killigrew, Lady Chudleigh, Mrs. Monk, Lady Winchilsea, and Mrs. Grierson.

[507] Pages 4-23.

[508] Pages 23-37.

[509] Strickland, Agnes: _Lives of the Queens of England_, under "Anne of Denmark."

[510] Pages 46-81.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

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

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Repeated headings were removed to avoid redundancy for the reader.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspelling in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 53. 'della Donne' replaced by 'delle Donne'. Pg 82 Footnote [140]. 'Lord Hallifax' replaced by 'Lord Halifax'. Pg 82 Footnote [140]. 'Lord Hallilfax' replaced by 'Lord Halifax'. Pg 91. 'were probaby' replaced by 'were probably'. Pg 126 Footnote [186]. 'Blæcus' replaced by 'Blæsus'. Pg 141. 'heighth' replaced by 'height'. Pg 167 Footnote [234]. '1667 and 1771' replaced by '1767 and 1771'. Pg 181. 'M^{rs}. Elstop' replaced by 'M^{rs}. Elstob'. Pg 255. 'into French in 1706' left unchanged, but probably should be 1786. Pg 329. 'Corpernican' replaced by 'Copernican'. Pg 335. 'Supplemant replaced by 'Supplement'. Pg 337. 'ahd sloth' replaced by 'and sloth'. Pg 366. 'cotemporary' replaced by 'contemporary'. Pg 414 Footnote [502]. 'under Faucourt' replaced by 'under Fancourt'.

Biblio: Pg 462. 'La Proverbes' replaced by 'Les Proverbes'. Pg 465. 'Laeticia' replaced by 'Lætitia'. Pg 469. 'poëtes an' replaced by 'poètes au'.

Index: Pg 480. 'Bovy' replaced by 'Bovey'. Pg 481. 'Demoiselles' replaced by 'Damoiselles', and moved.