CHAPTER V

SATIRIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE LEARNED LADY IN COMEDY

The artificial comedy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in

England is of genuine significance as a social document. Its purpose

was to hold up to ridicule whatever in contemporary life, especially

the life of the every-day middle-class world, could be counted

foolish or absurd. In its pages nearly every phase of ordinary

human activity could look upon its more or less distorted image,

and the taste and temper of the times are pretty fairly measured

by the personages accepted by dramatists, actors, and audiences as

legitimate sources of comic appeal.

Literature offered a surprisingly rich field to the writers of

comedy. Tragedies and comedies, the new Italian opera, farces,

pantomimes, harlequinades, pastoral dramas, were parodied,

burlesqued, and criticized on the stage. Individual authors,

theater-managers, actors, and actresses, were ever-recurring figures

in the popular comedy. Quite a little library might, for instance, be

gathered of the satiric representations of Colley Cibber, Theophilus

Cibber, and Susanna Maria Cibber.

Other popular comic types were heroes and heroines marked by national

characteristics. An illuminating social study might be made of the

Irishman in comedy, the many ancestors of Sheridan's "Sir Lucius

O'Trigger," as "Sir Teague O'Divelly," "Sir Calligan O'Bralligan,"

"Mr. O'Connor MacCormack," "Major O'Flaherty," and the rest of the

truculent, honey-tongued, generous, blundering tribe. There are stage

Scotchmen and Welshmen represented by "Sir Pertinax MacSycophant,"

"Mr. Apreece," and their congeners. The Frenchman as valet,

music-master, dancing-master, and villain-in-ordinary to the heroes

is ubiquitous.

Or we might study the professions. Physicians line up on the stage

as quacks, charlatans, conscious impostors. Lawyers are pictured as

men whose sole purpose is to hide ignorance and knavery in a cloud

of words, and to empty the pockets of their clients in a trumped-up

pursuit of justice.

The Church does not escape. The Puritan who in Restoration drama

was represented as a psalm-singing, whining, long-faced hypocrite,

concealing a vicious life under a pretense of rigid sanctity, was

replaced as a comic type in the early eighteenth century by the

non-juror, and when later Wesley's tabernacle and Foote's play-house

were competing for popular favor, it was the Methodist who obtained

the bright reversion, there being ascribed to him all the cant and

hypocrisy of his forbears.

Society is likewise represented in all its follies and vices. Of

genuine social importance is a study of the long line of "fops,"

"coxcombs," "pretty fellows," "beaux," "macaronies," "dudes," as they

were variously called, from "Sir Solomon, the Cautious Coxcomb," in

1669, through "Sir Fopling Flutter," "Sir Courtly Nice," "Sir Novelty

Fashion," "Lord Foppington," "Sir William Mode," "Mr. Apeall," "Sir

Brilliant Fashion," "Lord Trinket," "Brisk," "Flutter," "Sparkish,"

and the rest of the inane tribe, with their laces and frills, their

powdered wigs, their enameled snuff-boxes, their ivory combs and

pocket-mirrors, their muffs and canes, their inordinate vanity,

affectation, and empty-headedness.

Learning, too, found its place on the stage. From the establishment

of the Royal Society in 1662, the work of the Gresham professors was

the theme of unbridled ridicule. The virtuoso who spent his whole

time with a telescope investigating the geography of the moon or

with a microscope determining the nature of the bloom on a plum; the

anatomist, the geologist, the antiquarian, were counted fair game for

the satirist.

I. THE LEARNED LADY AS A COMIC TYPE

In this multifarious activity of the comic spirit it would be strange

if any pretense to learning on the part of women should escape.

And we are, in fact, presented with a motley procession of mock

Minervas. Even as early as Jonson there was some recognition of the

comic potentialities of the learned lady as a type. In _Epicœne_

(1609) Morose is warned against matrimony by Truewit who recounts

the ways in which a learned wife could shatter his peace. Proud to

show her Latin and Greek, she might talk all day like a parrot; or,

cunning in controversy, she might attack the very knots of divinity;

or, considering herself a critic, she might "censure _poets_, and

authors, and stiles, and compare 'hem, DANIEL with SPENSER, IONSON

with tother youth, and so foorth."[478] But this summary seems to be

less a reflection of contemporary life than an echo from Juvenal's

Sixth Satire.[479] More bitterly satirical is Jonson's representation

of the "Collegiate Ladies," "an order between courtiers and

country madams, that live from their husbands." But these ladies

make no pretense to learning. Lady Haughty and her coadjutors are

frivolous, affected, profligate women whose "college-grammar" and

"college-honours"[480] have no significance beyond the amorous

intrigue for which their order was founded. The play reads as if

there had been some contemporary organization at which Jonson's

satire was directed, but no record of such an organization is extant.

At any rate, the satire was against women who considered themselves

emancipated from conjugal life, rather than against learned women

as such. In _The Devil is an Ass_ (1616) Jonson brings into some

prominence "a Lady Projectress" who is said to deserve the gratitude

of the commonwealth of ladies for her great undertakings in their

behalf. But her solid service is in the realm of Spanish fashions and

new cosmetics.

Jasper Mayne, in _The City Match_ (1639), has a fling at the "new

foundation" and "the philosophical Madams" in a manner even more

contemptuous than that of Jonson. He also presents a Mrs. Scruple,

a Puritan school-mistress learned in religious lore, who can

expound the Scriptures, who "works Hebrew samplers and teaches to

knit in Chaldee." Her pupil Dorcas makes "religious petticoats,"

substituting church histories for flowers, and sanctifying cushionets

and smock-sleeves with holy embroideries. But it seems to be the

religious zeal that is here satirized, with only an incidental

reflection on the learning implied in a knowledge of Hebrew and

Chaldee.

These remote hints did not result in the establishment of a stage

type. It was through Molière that the learned lady took her place

in English comedy. The immediate object of Molière's attack was the

coterie of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, a salon established about 1615.

The avowed purposes of this exclusive literary circle were to rid

the French tongue of impurities, to cultivate _le beau_ and _le vrai

bel amour_ and _bel conversation_. They had a vocabulary peculiar to

themselves, and they devulgarized French by calling common things by

uncommon names. They improvised stories and rhymes, played literary

games, called themselves by _noms de Parnasse_, and held exalted

views on friendship, love, and marriage, which they endlessly

discussed. In the time of its greatest power some of the most noted

men and women of France belonged to this salon, but gradually

pedantry and affectation had crept in, and the extravagances of the

later _Précieux_ and _Précieuses_ in thought, speech, and manners

awakened the ridicule of Molière. In his Preface to _Les Précieuses_

(1659) he protested that the true _Précieuses_ could not rightly be

vexed at a satire meant only for those absurd people who wretchedly

imitated them. But it is nevertheless apparent that his play was an

attack on the whole assembly of learned or pseudo-learned ladies and

gentlemen who made up the salon, with particular attention to the

ladies. In this play he satirized especially _bel amour_, poetic

improvisation, and fine language.

Thirteen years later he returned to the general subject in a

more elaborate play, _Les Femmes Savantes_ (1672), where, in the

characters of Armande, Bélise, and Philaminte, he represented the

false delicacy of the learned ladies, the absurdities of their

struggle for pure diction, their puerile literary enthusiasms, their

affected interest in science and philosophy, their neglect of all

the ordinary duties of life, and the essential hypocrisy of their

professedly platonic attitude towards husbands and lovers.

Molière's plays were well known to the earliest English playwrights

of the Restoration.[481] Etherege had seen _Les Précieuses_[482]

on the French stage, and the impression it had made upon him was

evidenced by his Sir Fopling Flutter, a brilliant English version

of Molière's Mascarille, but Etherege nowhere takes up the ideas

represented by Madelon and Cathos. Wycherley had personally known

the circle of the Hôtel de Rambouillet during his stay in France

from 1655 to 1660,[483] and he could not have failed to know of

the sensation created by Molière's attack on the noted salon. And

throughout his work he was profoundly influenced by Molière in his

general conception of true comic material and methods. But apparently

the learned-lady theme did not appeal to him as especially suitable

for English treatment. Or possibly the very fact of his close

association with some of the most brilliant members of the salon made

him averse to a satiric representation even of their absurdities.

The first comedy to show any direct influence of Madelon and Cathos

is Dryden's _Mock Astrologer_ (1668).[484] Donna Aurelia is like

her ancestors in _Les Précieuses_ in her attempts at fine language.

She is unable "to speak ten words without some affected phrase that

is in fashion." In direct imitation of the French damsels she calls

her looking-glass "the counsellor of the graces," and urges upon her

maid fashionable language and pronunciation. In her effort to secure

striking phraseology she does not rise above the constant use of

"furious." She has a "furious inclination" for the occult sciences,

a "furious tender" for Don Melchor, and a ghost is a "furiously

furious" appearance. Her indigence of epithets puts her far behind

Molière's nimble-tongued young ladies, but she certainly strives to

be in the same class.

The influence of Molière became more apparent after the presentation

of _Les Femmes Savantes_ in 1672. In Dryden's _Marriage à la Mode_

(1672) is a really vital and entertaining picture of a lady with a

literary fad. Melantha is one of the sprightliest and most convincing

of the comedy heroines before Congreve's Millamant. Melantha is a

Sicilian town lady, young, fair, and rich; a finished coquette,

an inveterate news-monger, a hanger-on of the court. She would,

she says, rather be "_mal traitée_ at court than deified in the

town." She accordingly overdoes what she considers to be court

characteristics. Especially does she ape the French. French dances

and clothes, French plays and ballets, French words, all that's

writ in France, fill her with rapture. Her lover does not win her

by his face or fortune, but by his rapid fire of French terms.

Melantha belongs to the cult of the _précieuses_ in her joy over fine

language. An Indian gown, a gimp petticoat, a new point gorget, are

tossed to her maid Philatio as a reward for any new words she may

bring in. Melantha counts it an ignominy to use vulgar, threadbare

words that are fit for nothing but to be thrown to peasants. She

practices her vocabulary with her glances at the mirror, and makes

up effective sentences into which she may run new acquisitions such

as _naïveté_, _sottises_, _embarrass_, and is most unhappy when they

prove recalcitrant and are lost in the rapid interplay of talk.

Melantha is an admirable example of social satire, a delightfully

audacious representation of a contemporary folly. France was

the recognized home of culture and good-breeding. No courtier

or fashionable lady could be counted as having the last word in

refinement who had not spent some time on French soil, and the

French language was one of the most important studies of the higher

classes in England. What was taken for granted in court circles

became, of course, the _ne plus ultra_ of the ambitious town lady.

But her hastily acquired and imperfect knowledge would lead to

mistakes and over-emphasis, the result being a character of genuinely

comic import. For the stage interpretation of Melantha actresses

doubtless had many a social model among the town ladies with violent

court aspirations. Cibber says that Melantha was "as finish'd an

Impertinent as ever flutter'd in a Drawing-Room," and that she

contained "the most compleat System of Female Foppery that could

possibly be crowded into the tortured Form of a Fine Lady." And chief

among her fopperies was her preciosity, a characteristic marked in

most of the learned ladies represented in seventeenth and eighteenth

century comedy.

Mrs. Behn's _Sir Patient Fancy_ came out late in 1678 and was based

for its chief intrigue on Molière's _Le Malade Imaginaire_ which had

appeared in 1673. But the character of Lady Knowell, "an affected

learned woman," reverted to _Les Femmes Savantes_. She is the young

stepmother of Lord Knowell's marriageable son and daughter and is

of considerable importance in the general movement of the play, but

her real function is to present a caricature of a learned lady. She

understands Greek, Latin, and Italian. She cannot endure "divine

Homer" in a translation: "_Ton d'apamibominous prosiphe podas ochus

Achilleus!_ Ah how it sounds! which English't dwindles into the most

grating stuff:--Then the swift-footed _Achilles_ made reply." As

she looks upon the frivolous young girls of the play she exclaims:

"I'm for the substantial pleasure of an Author. _Philosophemur!_ is

my Motto.... Oh the delight of Books! When I was their age I always

employed my looser Hours in reading--if serious, 't was _Tacitus_,

_Seneca_, _Plutarch's Morals_, or some such useful Author; or in an

Humour gay, I was for Poetry, _Virgil_, _Homer_, or _Tasso_."

To this emphasis on the classics is added a preciosity which consists

of misdirected attempts to use impressive language. Lady Knowell is

an early and not very amusing Mrs. Malaprop. Her "hard words" are

sometimes legitimate words to which she attaches a wrong meaning,

as in the sentence, "There is much Volubility in Human Affairs,"

when she means "variability." But most of her words are compounded

of portions of others each one of which contains some shade of

her meaning; as, "Were I querimonious [querulous, acrimonious] I

should resent the affront"; "Notwithstanding your Exprobations

[expostulations, disapprobations]"; and "I saw your Reclination

[revolt, declination] from my Addresses." These bungling attempts to

play with language are too far-sought, too puzzling, to bring instant

laughter, but they suffice to establish Lady Knowell as at least a

would-be precursor of Mrs. Malaprop a century later.

The young ladies make sport of Lady Knowell. Lucretia does not

approve of her learning. "Methinks," she says, "to be read in the

Arts, as they call 'em, is the peculiar Province of the other Sex."

Isabella is of much the same opinion, yet she feels that women might

easily surpass most University men: "Indeed the Men ... boast their

Learning and Languages; but if they can find any one of our Sex

fuller of Words, and to so little Purpose as some of their Gownmen,

I'll be content to change my Petticoats for Pantaloons and go to a

Grammar-school."

In Shadwell's _Sullen Lovers_ (1669) is a Lady Vaine who calls

herself a "Virtuosa" and is learned in medicaments. She boasts of

her serviceableness with her "_Flos Unguentorum, Paracelsian_, and

_Green-salve_," and praises the _Album Grecum_ as a salve of her own

concoction.

Of much more interest is Shadwell's _Bury-Fair_ (1689). The chief

characters are Lady Fantast, Mrs. Fantast, and Lady Fantast's

stepdaughter, Gertrude Oldwit, and their attendant cavaliers. The

central action, the joke played on the Fantast ladies in imposing

on them a barber dressed up to impersonate a French count, is taken

from _Les Précieuses_. But Lady Fantast and her daughter have their

direct ancestry in Philaminte and Armande in _Les Femmes Savantes_.

Wildish who had at first loved Mrs. Fantast, but, on finding her a

_précieuse_, had transferred his affections to Gertrude, is Molière's

Clitandre, while Gertrude herself and Mr. Oldwit are the Henriette

and Chrysale of the French play. The common sense of the play is

embodied in Wildish, Gertrude, and Mr. Oldwit. Lady Fantast is not

herself especially learned, but all her ambitions in that line

have been concentrated on her daughter. "I have bred my daughter a

linguist," she proudly exclaims when the young lady quotes Latin. The

two ladies converse as follows:

_Mrs. Fan._ To all that, which the World calls Wit and Breeding,

I have always had a natural Tendency, a _penchen_, deriv'd, as

the Learned say, _Ex traduce_, from your Ladyship: Besides the

great Prevalence of your Ladyship's most shining Example has

perpetually Stimulated me, to the Sacrificing all my Endeavours

towards the attaining of those inestimable Jewels; than which,

nothing in the Universe can be so much a _mon gre_, as the

_French_ say. And for Beauty, Madam, the Stock I am enrich'd

with, comes by emanation from your Ladyship; who has been long

held a Paragon of Perfection; Most _Charmant_, most _Tuant_.

_L. Fan._ Ah, my dear Child: I! Alas, Alas! Time has been, and

yet I am not quite gone; but thou hast those Attractions, which I

bewail the want of: Poetry, Latin, and the French tongue.

_Mrs. Fan._ I must confess, I have ever had a Tendress for the

Muses, and have a due Reverence for _Helicon_, and _Parnassus_,

and the Graces: But Heroick Numbers upon Love and Honour are

most Ravissant, most Suprenant; and a Tragedy is so Touchant! I

dye at a Tragedy; I'll swear, I do.

Lady Fantast has an adoration of French equal to that of Melantha.

"No Conversation," she says, "can be refin'd and well-drest without

French to lard it." The false count wins his way with the ladies when

he professes to believe them French:

_Count._ Me vil gage a hundred Pistol, dat dat fine Ladeè and her

ver pretty Sister, are de French Ladeè.

_L. Fan._ We have often bewailed the not having had the honour to

be born French.

_Count._ Pardon me, is impossible.

_Mrs. Fan._ _Monfoy, je parle vray!_ we are meer English

_assurement_.

_Count._ _Mon foy, je parle vray!_ vat is dat Gibberish? Oh,

lettè me see; de Fader is de Lawyere, an she learne of him at de

Temple: is de Law French. I am amazè! French Lookè, French Ayre,

French Mien, French Movement of de Bodee! Morbleu. Monsieur, I

vil gage 4,500 Pistol, dat dese two Sister vere bred in _France_,

yes. Teste bleau, I can no be deceive.

_Mrs. Fan._ _Jee vous en prie_, do not; we never had the blessing

to be in _France_; you do us too much Honour. Alas, we are forc'd

to be content with plain _English_ Breeding: you will bring all

my blood into a blush. I had indeed a _penchen_ always to French.

The barber-count makes fun of the French of the ladies Fantast, but

in one of the conversations the joke is turned the other way, for

Mrs. Fantast's learning very nearly proves fatal to the count:

_Mrs. Fan._ You know very well what the Poet says:

_Res est Solliciti plena timoris amor._

_Count._ Ver well, Madam, you be de most profound Ladee, and de

great Scholar.--[_Aside._] Morbleu, she vill findé me out! Begar,

I can no read.

_Mrs. Fan._ No, no assurement, pretty well read in the Classic

Authors. Or so. Monsieur _Scudery_ says very well:

_L'amour est une grande chose._

_Count._ Hee bee ver pretty Poet too.--Begar she will puzzle me.

_Mrs. Fan._ Poet, Monsieur! he writ Romances.

_Count._ Ah, Madam, in France we callè de Romance, de Posie.

_Mrs. Fan._ And as Monsieur _Balzac_ says, _Songez un peu_.

_Count._ Dat _Balzac_ write de very good Romance.

_Mrs. Fan._ Indeed! I never heard that.

_Count._ Je vous assure.--A pox on her reading!

Gertrude is the foil to Mrs. Fantast and she sees no necessity for

the punctilious breeding of the ladies Fantast. "Breeding! I know

no Breeding necessary, but Discretion to distinguish Company and

Occasions; and Common Sense, to entertain Persons according to their

Ranks; besides making a Curt'sie not awkwardly, and walking with

one's Toes out."

To so low-bred a view of manners Mrs. Fantast can only exclaim, "_Ars

non habet Inimicum præter Ignorantem_"; but Gertrude responds: "A

Lady may look after the Affairs of a Family, the Demeanor of her

Servants, take care of her Nursery, take all her Accounts every Week,

obey her husband, and discharge all the Offices of a good Wife, with

her Native Tongue; and this is all I desire to arrive at."

The two ladies are especially obnoxious to Mr. Oldwit, who exhausts a

Billingsgate vocabulary in his irritation at their follies. He sums

up his misery in the exclamation, "He that would have the Devil more

damn'd, let him get him to marry a She-Wit!"

Mr. Thomas Wright's _The Female Vertuosos_ (1693) is confessedly

drawn from "the great Original of French Comedy." Ten of the

characters and most of the situations are plainly modeled on _Les

Femmes Savantes_, but the name of the play and the idea of ridiculing

the new science may have been suggested by Shadwell's _The Vertuoso_,

a popular attack on the Royal Society. Wright gains a trace of

originality by transferring his chief learned ladies from the realm

of word-mongery to that of pseudo-science. The tone of the play is

indicated by the prefixed quotation from Dryden's translation of

Juvenal's Sixth Satire:[485]

Oh what a Midnight Curse has he, whose Side

Is pester'd with a Mood and Figure Bride!

Let mine, ye Gods! if such must be my Fate,

No Logic learn, nor History translate,

But rather be a quiet, humble Fool:

I hate a Wife to whom I go to School.

The three "Vertuosos" are Lady Meanwell, Mrs. Lovewit, and Catchat.

Mrs. Lovewit has been making laboratory experiments in behalf of the

_literati_. She has collected all the plays that ever came out and is

planning to put them in a limbeck and extract all the quintessence

of wit that is in them to sell by drops to the poets of the age.

Mrs. Meanwell has just made the great discovery that rain comes from

clouds. With a housewifely objection to the wet streets of London

and a corresponding sense of civic responsibility, she has invented

a way of keeping the streets as dry and clean as a drawing-room

the year round. She has just been to the Lord Mayor to propose her

scheme, which is to erect a series of posts similar to the lamp-posts

newly set up in London, equip them with great bellows, and have city

watchmen to blow the clouds away. Catchat is interested in astronomy.

Through a telescope she has seen men in the moon and been almost

embarrassed by the loving looks cast upon her by the amorous sparks

of that shining world.

While science is the main interest in this play, the other accepted

traits of the learned woman are not neglected. Catchat, for instance,

has been nurtured on the _Grand Cyrus_ and theoretically accepts

its cold guidance in matters of love. But her platonic ideals

fade before her desires, and she becomes the most impassioned

husband-hunter of the throng. Literary criticism is not omitted. Mr.

Maggot Jingle's poem "To the Countess of _Squeezingham_ upon her

AGUE" gains rapturous praise from the ladies. The maid Lucy is about

to be discharged for having committed "the horrid, scandalous, and

exorbitant Offence" of saying that "Cowley, the wretched Cowley, was

as good a poet as the incomparable Sir Maggot Jingle."

The domestic infelicity of Lord and Lady Meanwell is described as a

result of the lady's learning. Lord Meanwell says of her, "My wife

is a terrible Dragon when she is out of Humour; she makes indeed a

High Boast of her Philosophy but she is not a bit the less Cholerick

for it, and her Morals that teach her to look upon all Things with an

indifferent Eye have not the least Influence on her Passions." Lady

Meanwell is a virago before whose hard words her husband shrinks into

cowed submission.

As an outcome of their combined wits these ladies are about to open

an "Academy of _Beaux Esprits_," where they may communicate to

each other such discoveries as they make, and which shall serve as

an "Apollo's Levee" to the Sapphos of the Age, and as a Sovereign

Tribunal for all new books.

Congreve's contribution to the learned lady in comedy comes in _The

Double Dealer_ (1694), in the admirable figure of Lady Froth, "a

coquet pretender to poetry, wit, and learning." Her pet affectation

is that of an extravagant passion for her husband, Lord Froth, the

solemn coxcomb of the play, and her affections have been bound up

with her literary aspirations even from the days of their courtship.

She had known love and sleepless nights and whimsies and vapors, but

she had also known how to give them vent.

_Cynthia._ How pray, Madam?

_Lady Froth._ O I writ, writ abundantly;--do you never write?

_Cynthia._ Write what?

_Lady Froth._ Songs, elegies, satires, encomiums, panegyrics,

lampoons, plays, or heroic poems.

By virtue of her learning and her lord's title Lady Froth assumes

superiority over Cynthia, the modest, sensible heroine.

_Lady Froth._ My Lord Froth is as fine a gentleman and as much

a man of quality! Ah, nothing at all of the common air!... I

think I may say he wants nothing but a blue ribbon and a star to

make him shine, the very phosphorus of our hemisphere. Do you

understand those two hard words?... Being derived from the Greek

I thought you might have escaped the etymology.

Her ladyship is also an author and has written an heroic poem on her

connubial bliss. She communicates this fact to Brisk, the foolish

critic.

_Lady Froth._ Did my lord tell you? yes, I vow, and the subject

is my lord's love to me. And what do you think I call it? I dare

swear you won't guess--'The Syllabub'; ha! ha! ha!

_Brisk._ Because my lord's title's Froth, egad; ha! ha! ha! deuce

take me, very _à propos_ and surprising, ha! ha! ha!

_Lady Froth._ He! ay, is not it?--And then I call my lord

Spumoso, and myself--what d' ye think I call myself?

_Brisk._ Lactilla, maybe;--'gad I can not tell.

_Lady Froth._ Biddy, that's all, just my own name.

Lady Froth was certainly not without a competent critical apparatus

for writing poetry since she declares herself familiar with Bossu,

Rapin, Dacier upon Aristotle, and Horace. The wittiest portion of the

play is based on Molière's scene where the lady critics praise the

foolish poet. In Congreve the foolish poet is a woman and the critic

a man, but the comic situation is essentially the same.

_Lady Froth._ Then you think that episode between Susan, the

dairy-maid, and our coachman, is not amiss; you know I may

suppose the dairy in town as well as in the country.

_Brisk._ Incomparable, let me perish!--But then being an heroic

poem, had not you better call him a charioteer? charioteer sounds

great; besides, your ladyship's coachman having a red face, and

you comparing him to the sun; and you know the sun is called

Heaven's charioteer.

_Lady Froth._ Oh, infinitely better! I am extremely beholden to

you for the hint; stay, we'll read over those half a score lines

again. (_Pulls out a paper._) Let me see here, you know what goes

before,--the comparison, you know. (_Reads._)

For as the sun shines every day.

So, of our coachman I may say--

_Brisk._ I'm afraid that simile won't do in wet weather; because

you say the sun shines every day.

_Lady Froth._ No, for the sun it won't, but it will do for the

coachman; for you know there's most occasion for a coach in wet

weather.

_Brisk._ Right, right, that saves all.

_Lady Froth._ Then, I don't say the sun shines all the day, but

that he peeps now and then; yet he does shine all the day too,

you know, though we don't see him.

_Brisk._ Right, but the vulgar will never comprehend that.

_Lady Froth._ Well, you shall hear--Let me see. (_Reads._)

For as the sun shines every day,

So, of our coachman I may say,

He shows his drunken fiery face,

Just as the sun does more or less.

_Brisk._ That's right, all's well, all's well--"More or less."

_Lady Froth._ (_Reads._)

And when at night his labour's done,

Then too, like Heaven's charioteer the sun.

Ay, charioteer does better.

Into the dairy he descends,

And there his whipping and his driving ends;

There he's secure from danger of a bilk,

His fare is paid him, and he sets in milk.

For Susan, you know, is Thetis, and so--

_Brisk._ Incomparably well and proper, egad!--But I have one

exception to make;--don't you think bilk (I know it's good

rhyme), but don't you think "bilk" and "fare" too like a

hackney-coachman?

_Lady Froth._ I swear and vow, I am afraid so--And yet our Jehu

was a hackney-coachman when my lord took him.

_Brisk._ Was he? I'm answered, if Jehu was a

hackney-coachman.--You may put that in the marginal notes

though, to prevent criticism, and say, "Jehu was formerly a

hackney-coachman."

_Lady Froth._ I will; you'd oblige me extremely to write notes on

the whole poem.

In 1697 there appeared a play by "W. M." entitled _Female Wits_. Up

to this time the character of the learned lady had been general in

type and based pretty closely on Molière, but with _Female Wits_ the

satire became personal. The point of the play was that the three

"wits" should be recognized as representing specific ladies. Calista

was Catherine Cockburn, a beautiful young girl who at seventeen had

had the misfortune to have a tragedy brought out at the Theater

Royal.[486] She was treated rather gently, being merely bantered

for pretending to understand Latin and Greek. On being asked if she

had read Cicero's _Oration_ she answered, "I know it so well as to

have turned it into Latin." Marsilia was Mrs. Manley, two of whose

tragedies, _The Royal Mischief_ and _The Lost Lover_, had appeared

the preceding year.[487] She is represented as having a play in

rehearsal. In the meantime she has a new project on the stocks. She

is going to show the superiority of the moderns to the ancients by a

revision of "Catiline's Conspiracy." The first speech is to remain

as it is in the original, while the others, re-written with all the

ornaments of modern rhetoric, will show up, by contrast, the poverty

of the Latin style. The sample she gives of her new version was

undoubtedly a fling at heroic tragedy. Her address to Rome begins:

"Thy fated Stones, and thy cemented Walls, this Arm shall scatter

into Atoms. Then on thy Ruins will I mount! Mount, my aspiring

Spirit, mount! Hit yon azure Roof and justle Gods!" Mrs. Wellfed, "a

fat female author," was at once known to stand for Mrs. Pix,[488]

a writer of intolerable tragedies and poor comedies, and noted for

her love of good living. Except for the personal reference this play

offers little that can be of interest.

Vanbrugh's _Æsop_ (1699) is a play adapted from Boursault. Æsop is

the sage to whom successive people bring their problems. To each

one he gives a solution in a verse fable. Hortensia, the heroine of

one of these episodes, is described by her maid as "the wise Lady,

the great scholar, that nobody can understand." She loves "Words of

Erudition," and waxes eloquent on philosophical abstractions. There

is something in her nature that soars too high for the vulgar, but

she hopes to find in Æsop a kindred soul because, as she says, "His

Intellects are categorical." But Æsop scorns her fine language. "Now

by my Faith, Lady," he answers, "I don't know what _Intellect_ is;

and methinks _categorical_ sounds as if you call'd me Names. Pray

speak that you may be understood; Language was designed for it,

indeed it was."

When Hortensia's lover asks Æsop's advice as to the best way to

manage a "Philosopheress," the wise man advises retreat while there

is yet time. The little apologue of "The Linnet and the Nightingale"

embodies his views and is the most trenchant expression so far come

upon of the supposed permanent opposition between learning and the

eternal feminine:

Once on a time, a Nightingale

To Changes prone;

Unconstant, fickle, whimsical,

(A Female one)

Who sung like others of her kind,

Hearing a well-taught Linnet's Airs,

Had other matters in her mind,

To imitate him she prepares.

Her Fancy strait was on the Wing:

I fly, quoth she,

As well as he;

I don't know why

I should not try

As well as he to sing.

From that day forth she chang'd her Throat:

She did, as learned Women do,

Till every thing

That heard her sing

Wou'd run away from her--as I from you.

In Charles Gildon's _Comparison between the Two Stages_ (1702) we

have a discussion by two gentlemen, Rambler and Sullen, and a critic,

Chagrin, as to the comparative merits of Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn

Fields. The most important reference to women playwrights is in the

following passage:

_Rambler._ Proceed to the next.

_Sullen._ "The Lost Lover, or, The Jealous Husband."

_Rambler._ I never heard of that.

_Sullen._ Oh this is a Lady's!

_Crit._ How's that?--Audetg; viris contendere virgo?

_Rambler._ See how Critick starts at the naming a lady.

_Crit._ What occasion had you to name a Lady in the confounded

work you're about?

_Sullen._ Here's a Play of hers.

_Crit._ The Devil there is. I wonder in my heart we are so lost

to all Sense and reason: What a Pox have the Women to do with

the Muses? I grant you the Poets call the Nine Muses by the names

of Women, but why so? not because the Sex had anything to do with

Poetry, but because in that Sex they're fitter for Prostitution.

_Rambler._ Abusive, now you're abusive Mr. Critick.

_Crit._ Sir I tell you we are abus'd: I hate these

Petticoat-Authors; 't is false Grammar, there's no Feminine for

the Latin word, 't is entirely of the Masculine Gender, and the

Language won't bear such a thing as a she-Author.

_Sullen._ Come, come, you forget your self; you know 't was a

Lady carry'd the Prize of Poetry in France t'other day; and I

assure you, if the Account were fairly stated, there have been in

England some of that Sex who have done admirably.

_Crit._ I'le hear no more on 't: Come Sir, drink about.

_Rambler._ To the Fair Author of The Fatal Friendship.

_Crit._ Ay, come; away with it, anything that the Glass may go

round....

In Farquhar's _The Inconstant_ (1703) one lady, named "Bisarre"

because of her odd, capricious ways, illustrates Pope's "Most women

have no character at all," so briskly does she change from "a

starch'd piece of Austerity" to a pert madcap. As a prude she takes

rank among the learned ladies. She has a grave, reverend air, and is

dubbed "a Plato in Petticoats." She wins the affections of Captain

Duretete--a man socially hampered by a University education--when

she talks to him in his own language. "The Forms that Logicians

introduce," she begins in pedantic tone, "and which proceed from

simple Enumeration, are dubitable." Duretete interrupts in an

ecstasy, "She's mine, Man; she's mine: My own Talent to a T. I'll

match her in Dialectics, faith. I was seven Years at the University,

Man, nurs'd up with _Barbara_, _Celarunt_, _Darii_, _Ferio_,

_Baralipton_. Did you know that 't was Metaphysics made me an Ass?"

Bisarre is the only heroine whose learning wins her a husband.

In Mrs. Centlivre's _The Basset Table_ (1705) the charming young

Valeria has a lover whom she intends to marry, but she is too much

occupied with scientific research to have any time for darts and

flames and lover's sighs. Fortunately Ensign cares so much for

Valeria and her ducats that he is able to endure the tediousness of

courtship in which laboratory experiments supersede passion.

_Ensign._ 'T is true, that little She Philosopher has made me

do Penance more heartily than ever my Sins did; I deserve her

by mere dint of Patience. I have stood whole Hours to hear her

assert, that Fire cannot burn, nor Water drown, nor Pain afflict,

and Forty ridiculous Systems....

_Sir Jam._ And all her Experiments on Frogs, Fish, and Flies, ha,

ha, without the least contradiction.

_Ensign._ Contradiction, no, no, I allow'd all she said, with,

undoubtedly, Madam,--I am of your Mind, Madam, it must be

so--Natural Causes, &c.

_Sir Jam._ Ha, ha, ha, I think it is a supernatural Cause, which

enables thee to go thro' this Fatigue; if it were not to raise

thy Fortune, I should think thee mad to pursue her.

He cannot edge in a word of love so absorbed does she declare herself

to be in observing the circulation of blood in a fish's tail. Valeria

is quite ahead of her time in her passion for dissection. She has

devoted her pretty dove to the cause of research, and offers her

jewels in return for her cousin's fine Italian greyhound, likewise

to be used in her pursuit of anatomical secrets. When accused of

cruelty she exclaims in quite a modern tone, "Can Animals, Insects,

or Reptiles be put to a nobler use than to increase our Knowledge?"

She loses her sailor lover by breaking in upon his sea lingo with a

request that he should speak, "properly, positively, laconically,

and naturally" and by deluging him with questions about mermaids and

the inhabitants of the stars. He quickly determines that he doesn't

regard a "Philosophical Gimcrack the value of a cockle-shell," and

considers the lovely young Valeria as "fitter for Moorfields than

Matrimony." She turns away from him with a sigh at the time wasted on

a being so irrational as a suitor, and devotes herself again to the

"immense Pleasures of dear, dear Philosophy."

Lady Reveller and her woman, Alphiew, sharply criticize Valeria for

her unfeminine occupations.

_Lady._ Will you ever be weary of these Whimsies?

_Val._ Whimsies! Natural Philosophy a Whimsy! Oh! the unlearned

World.

_Lady._ Ridiculous Learning!

_Alp._ Ridiculous, indeed, for Women; Philosophy suits our Sex as

Jack Boots would do.

_Val._ Custom would bring them as much in Fashion as Furbeloes,

and Practice would make us as valiant as e'er a Hero of them all;

the Resolution is in the Mind--Nothing can enslave that.

_Lady._ My Stars! this Girl will be mad, that's certain.

_Val._ Mad! so Nero banish'd Philosophers from Rome, and the

first Discoverer of the Antipodes was condemn'd for a Heretic.

_Lady._ In my Conscience, Alphiew, this pretty Creature's

spoil'd. Well, Cousin, might I advise, you should bestow your

Fortune in founding a College for the Study of philosophy, where

none but Women should be admitted; and to immortalize your Name,

they should be called Valerians, ha, ha, ha.

_Val._ What you make a jest of, I'd execute were Fortune in my

Power.

The heroine of Charles Johnson's _The Generous Husband_ (1711),

Florida, is described as a "Pretender to Learning, a Philosophress."

She is young, beautiful and with a tolerable dower. But she is

invincibly opposed to marriage. She gives caustic analyses of the

lawyer, the courtier, the soldier, the country squire, proposed by

her father with matrimonial intent. "I'll not be married," she says,

"I'll not submit myself to the uneven Temper of a Humourist; I'll

neither be a Prop to a Fool's Fortune, nor a Bar to a Libertine's

Pleasure." "I hate Men, I hate the Cumber of a Family, everything

concurs to discourage me, to make me fear it, to make it my Aversion.

Study has nothing in it but what is serene and calm." When her father

urges the loss of her inheritance if she does not marry, her unmoved

answer is, "I shall have still a good Book--which I am persuaded

I shall love much better than a bad Husband--I'll tell you, Sir,

for these three Years that I have been acquainted with Aristotle,

we have not had the least difference together." Various lovers

present themselves. One of them says he trembles whenever he visits

her because she puts him so in mind of his schoolmaster, but he

determines to stand "a little Ear-bating before Marriage"--encouraged

thereto by the lady's money--with the hope of devising effective

restraints after marriage. Another bold lover ventures upon her

in her study where she sits surrounded by books and mathematical

instruments. He is disguised as a traveling _Japanese_ philosopher,

and she enters upon the conversation with a learned salutation--_Vir

Colendissime si tu illorum Eruditorum_, but he begs her in the name

of Dr. Bentley not to repudiate her "vernacular Idiom," and the

interview proceeds in the English tongue. All goes prosperously until

the pseudo-philosopher speaks of love. She dismisses him with "What a

terrible Solecism in good Manners has this Fellow committed--_Nunquam

minus solus quam cum solus_; excellent _Scipio_--I admire that

thought." She yields to love only when the learned Mr. Dypthong, who

has "corrected every Nod in Homer," appears as a suitor. He has just

escaped from the "_Gothic_ Persecution of a sort of _Animalcula_

call'd Punsters" and comes to her as an Oracle of Reason. This is the

right approach and his victory is assured when he praises her noble

easy _Odes_ that Horace would not blush to own, her immortal Sonnet

on _Cato_, her mastery of "both the Ethos and the Pathos." She pays

him in kind with honeyed compliments from the Muses and the Graces.

They discuss the Cartesian system, and the Epicurean, the Peripatetic

and the Platonic Schools of Thought. The inhabitants of the moon come

in for passing notice. The soul and the mind receive analysis. This

sort of courtship suits her. 'T is thus a "Philosophress" should

be wooed. She balks a little at the marriage articles, praying Mr.

Grub to alter the savage style of them into something more genteel,

at least in so far as to let the dates be "Calendar and Ides"; the

pounds and pence, "Sesterces and Talents." But she yields the point

on making the unhappy discovery that to be learned and polite in

dower articles would be illegal, that the law demands tautology,

verbiage, an impertinent jargon. It is only when Mr. Dypthong is

unmasked a villain that Florida becomes "sick of Letters," lays

aside the "Severity of Thought" along with her big folios, and

accepts the paternal choice in the way of a husband. Her father,

whose slightest remarks have received pitiless logical analysis

from his daughter, who is urged to maintain silence or to speak

"positively--laconically--naturally," whose arguments are met with

classic quotations that are but as gibberish to his uninstructed ear,

hands her over to a husband with a sigh of relief. His conclusion is,

"Wit in a Woman is like Mettle in a blind Mare." The lover agrees

that "a She-Understanding shou'd always be passive." Learning, he

says, may give a woman more Sail, but she's sure to lack Ballast!

In January, 1717, there appeared a farce at Drury Lane entitled

_Three Hours after Marriage_. It was the joint work of Gay, Pope, and

Arbuthnot, but the character of the learned lady, Phœbe Clinket,[489]

was by Pope. Phœbe is not an important person in the plot. She was

evidently drawn merely to caricature a learned lady, in this case an

authoress. She comes upon the stage in an ink-stained dress with pens

stuck in her hair. Her maid carries strapped to her back a desk on

which Phœbe writes:

_Maid._ I had as good carry a raree-show about the street. Oh!

how my back akes!

_Clink._ What are the labors of the back to those of the brain?

Thou scandal to the muses, I have now lost a thought worth a

folio, by thy impertinence.[490]

_Maid._ Have I not got a crick in my back already, that will make

me good for nothing, with lifting your great books?

_Clink._ Folio's, call them, and not great books, thou monster

of impropriety. But have patience, and I will remember the three

gallery-tickets I promis'd thee at my new Tragedy.

_Maid._ I shall never get my head-cloathes clear-starch'd at

this rate.

_Clink._ Thou destroyer of learning, thou worse than a book-worm!

Thou hast put me beyond all patience. Remember how my lyric ode

bound about a tallow-candle; thy wrapping up snuff in an epigram;

nay, the unworthy usage of my Hymn to _Apollo_, filthy creature!

read me the last lines I wrote upon the _Deluge_, and take care

to pronounce them as I taught you.

_Maid._ (_Reads with an affected tone._)

Swell'd with a dropsy, sickly Nature lies,

And melting in a diabetes, dies.

_Clink._ Still without Cadence!

_Maid._

Swell'd with a dropsy--

_Clink._ Hold. I conceive ...

The roaring seas o'er the tall woods have broke,

And whales now perch upon the sturdy oak.

Roaring? Stay. Rumbling, roaring, rustling. No; raging seas.

(_Writing._)

The raging seas o'er the tall woods have broke,

Now perch, thou whale, upon the sturdy oak.

Sturdy oak? No; steady, strong, strapping, stiff. Stiff? No;

stiff is too short.

What feast for fish! Oh too luxurious treat!

When hungry dolphins feed on butchers meat.

_Foss._ Niece, why, niece, niece! Oh, _Melpomene_, thou goddess

of tragedy, suspend thy influence for a moment, and suffer my

niece to give me a rational answer.

The main portion of the first act is devoted to a development of the

satiric representation of an authoress, and the character is given

special point by the fact that it was intended for Lady Winchilsea.

Probably no woman of the time was more cruelly pilloried. Exactly

why Pope chose to give so disagreeable a picture of her it would

be difficult to say, but fortunately one is not obliged to give a

reasonable basis for Pope's satirical sketches. For the occasion

it is sufficient to say that her dramatic attempts were not to his

taste, and that some obscure personal irritation led him to take the

opportunity of this play to speak his mind.

In minor points the character might be counted fairly applicable to

Lady Winchilsea. Her learning, her devotion to literary pursuits, her

fecundity in verse, her opposition to amatory themes, her detestation

of the modern stage, are all characteristics that tally with the

burlesque portrait. Lady Winchilsea was also very religious, and

though herself maid of honor to Mary of Modena and so necessarily

much in the corrupt Restoration court, was even unnecessarily strict

and severe on the subject of morals and manners. This prudishness was

satirized by Phœbe Clinket's boast that she is "unwilling to stand

even on the brink of an indecorum," as a result of which delicacy she

has never allowed in her plays "the libertinism of lip-embraces," and

this in spite of the fact that Aristotle never actually prohibited

kissing on the stage. But in the main points of Phœbe Clinket's

self-confidence and her determination to push her play at all hazards

to the point of public presentation, there is no hint of a likeness

to Lady Winchilsea, who was exceedingly modest and deprecatory

about her work. She never willingly allowed her dramatic writings

to pass beyond a small domestic and literary circle, nor out of her

voluminous verse did any but a very small portion reach publication

with her permission. Furthermore, the tragedy of _The Universal

Deluge_ attributed to Phœbe Clinket bears no resemblance to any

extant work by Lady Winchilsea.

Taken as a whole, quite apart from any personal application, Phœbe

Clinket is the most detestable picture of a learned lady in any

of the comedies. She is vain, boastful, and superficial; she is a

pedant, a prude, and a hypocrite; and there are no mitigating traits.

Colley Cibber put on his play _The Refusal_ at Covent Garden in 1721

and published it the same year. It is a close version of _Les Femmes

Savantes_, the rich, middle-class family of Sir Gilbert Wrangle in

Cibber's play being the counterpart of the wealthy bourgeois family

of Chrysal in Molière. The action follows that of Molière's play,

and Molière gives the model for many of the important situations

and conversations. Curll called _The Refusal_ merely "a Sampler,

whereon Monsieur Molière's Stitching may easily be perceived from

Mr. Cibber's canvas."[491] But Cibber's play is a success in that it

is a brilliant English adaptation of the French original. The two

characters that represent learned ladies are Lady Wrangle and her

daughter Sophronia.

Sir Gilbert thus describes his wife to Mr. Frankly: "She's a great

plague to me. Not but my lord bishop, her uncle, was a mighty good

man; she lived all along with him; I took her upon his word; 't was

he made her a scholar; I thought her a miracle; before I had her I

used to go and hear her talk Latin with him an hour together; and

there I--I--I played the fool." Throughout the play Sir Gilbert is

very evidently a member of "the hen-pecked fraternity." Lady Wrangle

has an important place in but two scenes and in both of these she

endeavors to domineer over her husband. In the scene with the maid he

is completely cowed, and in the scene of the wedding contract he is

triumphant only because of abundant friendly backing. Lady Wrangle's

quarrelsome, jealous disposition is perhaps more in evidence than

her learning, but she has learning too. She quotes Latin whenever

possible and is herself an authoress.

The famous scene in Molière where the maid Martine is to be dismissed

for her indifference to Vaugelas and the laws of grammar, becomes in

Cibber a similar hurly-burly against the maid and the cook for having

used a sheet of one of Lady Wrangle's productions in which to wrap

the roast. The maid--"a brainless ideat," "a dunce," "an illiterate

monster," "an eleventh plague of Egypt," according to the energetic

vituperation of her mistress--seeing the leaf to be blotted and

blurred took it for waste paper.

Blurred! you driveller! Was ever any piece perfect, that had not

corrections, erasures, interlineations, and improvements! Does

not the very original show, that when the mind is warmest, it is

never satisfied with its words:

_Incipit et dubitat; scribit, damnatque tabellas,_

_Et notat, et delet; mutat, culpatque probatque._

The leaf in question is a part of Lady Wrangle's translation of the

passion of Byblis. Her husband calls it the passion of Bibble-Babble,

and says, "If a line on't happens to be mislaid, she's as mad as a

blind mare that has lost her foal; she'll run her head against a

stone-wall to recover it. All the use I find of her learning is, that

it furnishes her more words to scold with."

Lady Wrangle's creed as expressed to Charlotte is, "Refine your soul;

give your happier hours up to science, arts, and letters; enjoy

the raptures of philosophy, subdue your passions, and renounce the

sensual commerce of mankind." She, however, claims Frankly as her

lover, a virtuous and platonic one, to be sure, but so irrevocably

hers as to preclude significant attentions to others. When she learns

of his open love to Charlotte--she exclaims, "I thought virtue,

letters, and philosophy had only charms for him: I have known his

soul all rapture in their praises." And her indignation that he

should "contaminate his intellects with such a chit of an animal"

changes her platonic love into the most jealous hate. Her philosophy

as to the proper conduct of the passions has no influence on her

actions.

Sophronia is unlike her prototype Armande, in that Cibber converts

her some time before the end of the play and she takes a husband

with a delight equal to that of Charlotte herself. Sophronia was,

on her father's second marriage, when he was foolishly enamoured

of Lady Wrangle's Latin, put into the hands of the Bishop to be

made by him into a second prodigy of learning. She had also the

advantage of being instructed by her stepmother in the doctrines of

platonic love. Her learning, her doctrine of the union of souls, her

enthusiasm for poetry, all give an effect of genuineness. Her lover

Granger understands her well. He grants her "half mad with learning

and philosophy," but still "a fool of parts and capable of thinking

right." Frankly had formerly made love to her in conventional

fashion, but to him she had shown herself a marble-hearted lady, a

proud and haughty prude. But Granger knows how to approach her. He

humors all her romantic notions, chimes in with all her raptures

in the air, scouts all love that is but an affair of the veins and

the arteries, exalts only the sexless union of harmonious minds and

souls, quotes Latin, declaims blank verse, makes slow and delicate

and utterly submissive and reluctant approaches to so mundane a

thought as marriage, and finally she falls a victim to blandishments

so adroitly mingled. Granger's words, like Hybla drops, distil

upon her sense; faint philosophy deserts her; and "like a wounded

dove" she "trembling hovers to her mate for succour" in the most

approved romantic style. When her stepmother says accusingly, "What

then becomes of your Platonic system?" she answers, "Dissolved,

evaporated, impracticable, and fallacious all: you'll own I have

labour'd in the experiment, but found at last, that to try gold in a

crucible of virgin-wax was a mere female folly." And she closes the

play with

In vain, against the force of nature's law,

Would rigid morals keep our hearts in awe;

All our lost labours of the brain but prove,

In life there's no philosophy like love.

The characters of Lady Wrangle and Sophronia with their affectations

and useless learning are emphasized by the natural, sensible

Charlotte who serves as a foil. She is a gay, laughing, wheedling,

fascinating little rogue with a quick wit, and a genius for common

sense. She cannot believe that a soul was crammed into a body just

to spoil sport and she gives her whole nature free play. She loves

Mr. Frankly and says so, and she avows her preference for marriage

as against philosophical mysteries. Her praises are recited by

Mr. Frankly in the words, "As she does not read Aristotle, Plato,

Plutarch, or Seneca, she is neither romantic nor vain of her

pedantry; and as her learning never went higher than Bickerstaff's

Letters, her manners are consequently natural, modest and agreeable."

In Bickerstaff's _Lionel and Clarissa_ (1768), Sir John Flowerdew

seems quite in advance of his age in securing a tutor for his

daughter and in considering "a little knowledge" necessary for

a woman. "I am far," he says, "from considering ignorance as a

desirable characteristic; when intelligence is not attended with

impertinent affectation, it teaches them [women] to judge with

precision, and gives them a degree of solidity necessary for the

companion of a sensible man." This, however, is a cool statement of

theory. When his daughter outwits him and marries the tutor, he has a

violent reaction in favor of the straitest training a maid can have:

Girls like squirrels oft appear,

In their cages, pleased with flav'ry,

But, in fact, 't is all but knav'ry;

Less thro' love than out of fear:

Only on their tricks relying,

Let them out, their hands untying,

And You'll see the matter plain.

Once there's naught their flight to hamper,

Presto--whisk-away they scamper;

Never to return again.

Wou'd you manage lasses rightly,

You must watch them daily, nightly,

Shut them close, and hold them tightly;

Never loose an inch of chain:

Freedom, run-aways will make 'em,

And the devil can't o'ertake 'em.

Except for _Lionel and Clarissa_ there were after Cibber's _Refusal_

few representations of the learned lady as a comic type, until after

the revival of the comedy of manners under Sheridan and Goldsmith.

The sentimental comedy was occupied in rescuing super-sensitive,

over-refined, delicate, tearful, and helpless heroines from the

plots of abnormally dark villains, and in bestowing the prizes thus

captured on the high-minded, self-conscious Sir Charles Grandisons

who posed as heroes of the play. Comic types fell by the way until

Goldsmith succeeded in his knight-errantry in behalf of the goddess

of fun, and routed sensibility, and sentimentality. And the learned

ladies in the comedy after 1770 represent a new kind of learning,

and the ladies themselves are in many respects unlike their sisters

of an earlier date.

II. THE NOVEL-READING GIRL AS A COMIC TYPE

The learned-lady theme had an interesting variant in the

novel-reading girl. This type, as it appeared in comedy and fiction,

is also of French origin. It finds its direct ancestry in Molière's

_Les Précieuses_ (1659), a satiric representation of the vogue of

the French romances, most of which appeared in the twenty-five years

before _Les Précieuses_.[492]

Along with the vogue of the romances came the critical comment.

Scarron's _Roman Comique_ (1651) burlesqued La Calprenède. Boileau's

_Héros de Romans_ (1664) and _L'Art Poétique_ (1674) satirized

especially the romances of Scudéry. The two satires that showed the

effect of the romances on the minds of young girls were Molière's

_Les Précieuses_ and later Furetière's _Roman Bourgeois_ (1666).

These romances and satires were almost as well known in the original

to cultivated Englishmen as they were to Frenchmen. There were

also numerous translations. Between 1647 and 1660 _Polexandre_,

_Cassandre_, _Ibrahim_, _Artemène_, _Clélie_, _Almahide_,

_Cléopâtre_, all appeared in English versions, and some of them

several times. And the satires were also promptly translated. There

is no better illustration of the general English familiarity with

those romances than that furnished by the letters Dorothy Osborne

wrote to Sir William Temple in 1652-54. The Hôtel de Rambouillet

coterie itself could hardly have been more nearly letter perfect in

the details than was this young English lady. Her reading becomes

so absorbing that her grave lover finds it necessary to caution her

against the "late hours" reported to him. She is penitent, but her

enthusiasm is unabated. Parts of _Cléopâtre_, she says, pleased her

more than anything she had ever read in her life. She confesses that

she cried an hour together over the sad story of Almanzor, and was so

angry with Alcidiana that she could never love her after. But she is

no uncritical admirer of the heroes and heroines. Her sense of humor

does not forsake her. She laughs at _L'Amant Jaloux_, in _Cyrus_, as

one who seeks his own vexation, and _L'Amant mon Aimé_ was "an ass."

Sir William's interest in the romances is hardly less than Dorothy's.

She sends him the separate volumes as she completes them, and there

is a lively interchange of impressions and comments on various

characters and situations.[493]

After the Restoration the fondness for romances may have been

somewhat lessened by the new passion for the theater. But

romance-readers were still numerous. Pepys tells us that his wife

sat up till twelve over the _Grand Cyrus_. Again he says, "I find

my wife troubled at my checking her last night in a coach in her

long stories out of the _Grand Cyrus_ which she would tell, though

nothing to the purpose, nor in any good manner." However, he must

have repented of his rigor, for we find him later calling at Martin's

his book-seller's, where he bought _Cassandre_ and some other French

books for his wife's closet. And Mr. Pepys himself confesses to at

least one Sunday devoted to French romances.[494]

That Mr. and Mrs. Pepys were not alone in their tastes is made

evident by contemporary arraignment of the romances as harmful

influences. Mr. Pepys records a conversation with a Mr. Wilson who

protested passionately against them as perverters of history. _The

Ladies' Calling_ (1673) brings the matter home to daily life:

There is another thing to which some devote a very considerable

part of their time, and that is the reading Romances, which seems

now to be thought the peculiar and only becoming study of young

ladies. I confess their youth may a little adapt it to them when

they were Children, and I wish they were always in their event

as harmless; but I fear they often leave ill impressions behind

them. Those amorous passions which 't is their design to paint

to the utmost life are apt to insinuate themselves into their

unwary Readers, and by an unhappy inversion a Copy shall produce

an Original. When a poor young Creature shall read there of some

triumphant Beauty, that has I know not how many captiv'd Knights

prostrate at her feet, she will probably be tempted to think it a

fine thing; and may reflect how much she loses time, that has not

yet subdued _one_ heart; and then her business will be to spread

her nets, lay her toils to catch somebody who will more fatally

ensnare her. And when she has once worried herself into an amour,

those authors are subtil Casuists for all difficult cases that

may occur in it, will instruct in the necessary artifices of

deluding parents and friends, and put her ruin perfectly in her

own power. And truly this seems to be so natural a consequent of

this sort of study, that of all the divertisements that look so

innocently, they can scarce fall upon any more hazardous. Indeed

't is very difficult to imagine what mischief is done to the

world by the false notions and images of things: particularly

of Love and Honour, those noblest concerns of human life,

represented in these mirrors.[495]

The popularity of the French romances and the protests they aroused

would naturally make the romance-loving girl a type of genuine social

interest, and it is surprising that this element of Molière's _Les

Précieuses_ was not sooner taken up in English comedy. There were, to

be sure, occasional references to romance-reading something in the

style of Molière. In Shadwell's _Bury-Fair_ (1689), for instance,

Gertrude is apparently familiar "with Romances and Love and Honour

Plays," and she complains that all the lovers talk so in the style

of the romances that a girl knows in advance just what compliments

she must listen to.[496] And in Wright's _Female Vertuosos_ (1693)

Sir Maurice says, "O' my Conscience, Women's Heads, now-a-days, are

so stuff't up with their Trash of Romances and Poetry, that there is

no Room left in 'em for Reason, or Common Sense." Later he bewails

his fate more bitterly: "This Plague of Wit has infected all my

Servants, even my little Boy, forsooth, can not turn the Spit now

without a _Pharamond_ or a _Cassandra_ in his hand." But it was not

till Steele's _Tender Husband_ in 1705 that the romance-reading girl

appeared in England as a developed type. Steele's Biddy Tipkin[497]

is nearly half a century later than Molière's Madelon and Cathos, but

they are her unquestioned ancestors.

In Molière's play the two country girls endeavor to apply to real

life the ideas they have gained from the romances. Gorgibus, the

father of Madelon and uncle of Cathos, is a worthy citizen whose

common-sense views of life subject him to the scornful raillery of

the young ladies. He endeavors to provide them with good husbands,

but his straightforward methods shock their romance-tutored minds.

To be greeted at the first interview with marriage proposals is a

crude and coarse proceeding. If Cyrus had married Mandane, and Clélie

had married Aronce at once, what would have become of Mademoiselle

de Scudéry's romances _Artemène_ and _Clélie_? The dull Gorgibus,

and the lovers he has brought are hopelessly ignorant of _le carte

de Tendre_, ignorant of the regions known as _Billets-doux_,

_Petits-soins_, _Billets-galants_, _Jolis-vers_, and the other

exactly marked stages of a well-wrought courtship. The young ladies

even doubt the reality of their relationship to Gorgibus, and they

reject the names Cathos and Madelon in favor of Polixène and Aminte.

Gorgibus attributes all their vagaries to the reading of romances,

and in the climax of his irritation exclaims to the stock of

offending volumes, "_Et vous, qui êtes cause de leur folie, sottes

billeveseés, pernicieux amusements des esprits oisifs, romans,

vers, chansons, sonnets et sonnettes, puissiez-vous être à tous les

diables!_"

The fundamental idea and many of the satiric details in the

presentation of Biddy Tipkin in Steele's _The Tender Husband_ exactly

follow the French model. Biddy's reading is identical with that of

Madelon and Cathos, but wider in scope. She refers familiarly to

passages or characters in _Cléopâtre_, _Cassandre_, _Pharamond_,

_Ibrahim_, _Artemène_, _Clélie_, and _Almahide_, showing that she

had practically covered the field of romance. She is an heiress under

the charge of her uncle, Hezekiah Tipkin, a banker of Lombard Street,

and his sister, "an antiquated virgin with a mighty affectation for

youth." Pounce, a lawyer on the lookout for a rich match for his

client, the impecunious Captain Cleremont, describes Biddy thus:

"Well then, since we may be free, you must understand, the young

lady, by being kept from the world, has made a world of her own.

She has spent all her solitude in reading romances, her head is

full of shepherds, knights, flowery meads, groves, and streams, so

that if you talk like a man of this world to her, you do nothing."

But Cleremont, quite equal to the situation, responds, "Oh, let

me alone--I have been a great traveller in fairy-land myself, I

know Oroondates; Cassandra, Astræa, and Clelia are my intimate

acquaintance." Pounce predicts success for the fluent Captain, but

there are other plans for Biddy. Her guardians wish her to marry her

cousin, Humphry Gubbin, a country lout, familiarly known as "Numps."

Her attitude towards him and towards her prosaic aunt appears in the

following conversation:

_Niece._ Was it not my gallant that whistled so charmingly in the

parlour before he went out this morning? He's a most accomplished

cavalier.

_Aunt._ Come, niece, come; you don't do well to make sport with

your relations, especially with a young gentleman that has so

much kindness for you.

_Niece._ Kindness for me! What a phrase is there to express the

darts and flames, the sighs and languishings, of an expecting

lover!

_Aunt._ Pray, niece, forbear this idle trash, and talk like other

people. Your cousin Humphry will be true and hearty in what he

says, and that's a great deal better than the talk and compliment

of romances.

_Niece._ Good madam, don't wound my ears with such expressions;

do you think I can ever love a man that's true and hearty? What a

peasant-like amour do these coarse words import! True and hearty!

Pray, aunt, endeavour a little at the embellishment of your style.

_Aunt._ Alack-a-day, cousin Biddy, these idle romances have quite

turned your head.

_Niece._ How often must I desire you, madam, to lay aside

that familiar name, cousin Biddy? I never hear it without

blushing--Did you ever meet with a heroine in those idle

romances, as you call 'em, that was termed Biddy?

_Aunt._ Ah! cousin, cousin, these are mere vapours, indeed;

nothing but vapours.

_Niece._ No, the heroine has always something soft and engaging

in her name; something that gives us a notion of the sweetness of

her beauty and behaviour; a name that glides through half-a-dozen

tender syllables, as Elismonda, Clidamira, Deidamia, that runs

upon vowels off the tongue; not hissing through one's teeth,

or breaking them with consonants. 'T is strange rudeness those

familiar names they give us, when there is Aurelia, Sacharissa,

Gloriana, for people of condition; and Celia, Chloris, Corinna,

Mopsa, for their maids and those of lower rank.

_Aunt._ Look ye, Biddy, this is not to be supported. I know not

where you learned this nicety; but I can tell you, forsooth, as

much as you despise it, your mother was a Bridget afore you, and

an excellent house-wife.

_Niece._ Good madam, don't upbraid me with my mother Bridget, and

an excellent house-wife.

_Aunt._ Yes, I say she was; and spent her time in better learning

than you ever did--not in reading of fights and battles of dwarfs

and giants, but in writing out receipts for broths, possets,

caudles, and surfeit-waters, as became a good country gentlewoman.

_Niece._ My mother, and a Bridget!

_Aunt._ Yes, niece, I say again, your mother, my sister, was a

Bridget! the daughter of her mother Margery, of her mother Sisly,

of her mother Alice.

_Niece._ Have you no mercy? Oh, the barbarous genealogy!

_Aunt._ Of her mother Winifred, of her mother Joan.

_Niece._ Since you will run on, then I must needs tell you I am

not satisfied in the point of my nativity. Many an infant has

been placed in a cottage with obscure parents, till by chance

some ancient servant of the family has known it by its marks.

_Aunt._ Ay, you had best be searched--That's like your calling

the winds the fanning gales, before I don't know how much

company; and the tree that was blown by it had, forsooth, a

spirit imprisoned in the trunk of it.

_Niece._ Ignorance!

_Aunt._ Then a cloud this morning had a flying dragon in it.

_Niece._ What eyes had you, that you could see nothing? For

my part I look upon it to be a prodigy, and expect something

extraordinary will happen to me before night.... But you have a

gross relish of things. What noble descriptions in romances had

been lost, if the writers had been persons of your gout?

_Aunt._ I wish the authors had been hanged, and their books

burnt, before you had seen 'em.

_Niece._ Simplicity!

_Aunt._ A parcel of improbable lies.

_Niece._ Indeed, madam, your raillery is coarse--

_Aunt._ Fit only to corrupt young girls, and fill their heads

with a thousand foolish dreams of I don't know what.

_Niece._ Nay, now, madam, you grow extravagant.

_Aunt._ What I say is not to vex, but advise you for your good.

_Niece._ What, to burn Philocles, Artaxeres, Oroondates, and the

rest of the heroic lovers, and take my country booby, cousin

Humphry, for a husband!

_Aunt._ Oh dear, oh dear, Biddy! Pray, good dear, learn to act

and speak like the rest of the world; come, come, you shall marry

your cousin and live comfortably.

_Niece._ Live comfortably! What kind of life is that? A great

heiress live comfortably! Pray, aunt, learn to raise your

ideas--What is, I wonder, to live comfortably?

_Aunt._ To live comfortably is to live with prudence and

frugality, as we do in Lombard Street.

By mere force of contrast the way is open for the smooth-tongued Mr.

Cleremont. He meets the ladies in the park with such phrases as "the

cool breath of the morning," "the season of pearly dews and gentle

zephyrs," and Biddy is enraptured. After the adroit withdrawal of the

aunt by Pounce, Cleremont well maintains with Biddy his reputation as

a traveler in fairy-land, and assumes likewise the military prowess

without which no romance hero was complete. He soon cleverly turns

the conversation to a proposal of marriage, but Biddy understands the

laws of romance too well to yield immediately. They part in the true

spirit of _Cassandre_.

_Cler._ We enjoy here, madam, all the pretty landscapes of the

country without the pains of going thither.

_Niece._ Art and nature are in a rivalry, or rather a

confederacy, to adorn this beauteous park with all the agreeable

variety of water, shade, walks, and air. What can be more

charming than these flowery lawns?

_Cler._ Or these gloomy shades--

_Niece._ Or these embroidered valleys--

_Cler._ Or that transparent stream--

_Niece._ Or these bowing branches on the banks of it, that seem

to admire their own beauty in the crystal mirror?

_Cler._ I am surprised, madam, at the delicacy of your phrase.

Can such expressions come from Lombard Street?

_Niece._ Alas, sir! what can be expected from an innocent virgin

that has been immured almost one-and-twenty years from the

conversation of mankind, under the care of an Urganda[498] of an

aunt?

_Cler._ Bless me, madam, how have you been abused! Many a lady

before your age has had an hundred lances broken in her service,

and as many dragons cut to pieces in honour of her.

_Niece._ Oh, the charming man! [_Aside._]

_Cler._ Do you believe Pamela was one-and-twenty before she knew

Musidorus?[499]

_Niece._ I could hear him ever. [_Aside._]

_Cler._ A lady of your wit and beauty might have given occasion

for a whole romance in folio before that age.

_Niece._ Oh, the powers! Who can he be?--Oh, youth unknown--But

let me, in the first place, know whom I talk to, for, sir, I am

wholly unacquainted both with your person and your history. You

seem, indeed, by your deportment, and the distinguishing mark of

your bravery which you bear, to have been in a conflict. May I

not know what cruel beauty obliged you to such adventures till

she pitied you?

_Cler._ Oh, the pretty coxcomb! [_Aside._]--Oh, Blenheim,

Blenheim! Oh, Cordelia, Cordelia!

_Niece._ You mention the place of battle. I would fain hear an

exact description of it. Our public papers are so defective;

they don't so much as tell us how the sun rose on that glorious

day--Were there not a great many flights of vultures before the

battle began?

_Cler._ Oh, madam, they have eaten up half my acquaintance.

_Niece._ Certainly never birds of prey were so feasted; by

report, they might have lived half-a-year on the very legs and

arms our troops left behind 'em.

_Cler._ Had we not fought near a wood we should never have got

legs enough to have come home upon. The joiner of the Foot Guards

has made his fortune by it.

_Niece._ I shall never forgive your General. He has put all my

ancient heroes out of countenance; he has pulled down Cyrus and

Alexander, as much as Louis-le-Grand--But your own part in that

action?

_Cler._ Only that slight hurt, for the astrologer said at my

nativity, nor fire, nor sword, nor pike, nor musket shall destroy

this child, let him but avoid fair eyes--But, madam, mayn't I

crave the name of her that has so captivated my heart?

_Niece._ I can't guess whom you mean by that description; but if

you ask my name, I must confess you put me upon revealing what I

always keep as the greatest secret I have--for would you believe

it, they have called me--I don't know how to own it, but they

have called me--Bridget.

_Cler._ Bridget?

_Niece._ Bridget.

_Cler._ Bridget?

_Niece._ Spare my confusion, I beseech you, sir; and if you have

occasion to mention me, let it be by Parthenissa,[500] for that's

the name I have assumed ever since I came to years of discretion.

_Cler._ The insupportable tyranny of parents, to fix names on

helpless infants which they must blush at all their lives after!

I don't think there's a surname in the world to match it.

_Niece._ No! What do you think of Tipkin?

_Cler._ Tipkin! Why, I think if I was a young lady that had it

I'd part with it immediately.

_Niece._ Pray, how would you get rid of it?

_Cler._ I'd change it for another. I could recommend to you three

very pretty syllables--What do you think of Cleremont?

_Niece._ Cleremont! Cleremont! Very well--but what right have I

to it?

_Cler._ If you will give me leave, I'll put you in possession

of it. By a very few words I can make it over to you, and your

children after you.

_Niece._ O fie! Whither are you running? You know a lover should

sigh in private, and languish whole years before he reveals his

passion; he should retire into some solitary grove, and make the

woods and wild beasts his confidants. You should have told it to

the echo half-a-year before you had discovered it, even to my

handmaid.

_Cler._ What can a lover do, madam, now the race of giants is

extinct? Had I lived in those days there had not been a mortal

six foot high, but should have owned Parthenissa for the paragon

of beauty, or measured his length on the ground--Parthenissa

should have been heard by the brooks and deserts at midnight, the

echo's burden and the river's murmur.

_Niece._ That had been a golden age, indeed! But see, my aunt has

left her grave companion and is coming toward us--I command you

to leave me.

_Cler._ Thus Oroondates, when Statira[501] dismissed him her

presence, threw himself at her feet, and implored permission but

to live. [_Offering to kneel._]

_Niece._ And thus Statira raised him from the earth, permitting

him to live and love.

But Biddy has not the cold constitution of the romance heroines

and she presently acknowledges that she finds in herself all the

symptoms of a raging amour. "I love solitude," she soliloquizes,

"I grow pale, I sigh frequently. I call upon the name of Cleremont

when I don't think of it--His person is ever in my eyes, and his

voice in my ears--Methinks I long to lose myself in some pensive

grove, or to hang over the head of some warbling fountain, with a

lute in my hand, softening the murmurs of the waters." And in spite

of her reluctance to abridge courtship and so shut off "all further

decoration of disguise, serenade and adventure," she finally consents

to an immediate elopement, declaring that if Oroondates had been as

pressing as Cleremont _Cassandra_ would have been but a pocket-book.

Biddy, her aunt, and her two suitors, form the most delightful group

of characters in the comedy of manners before Goldsmith and Sheridan.

And Biddy can hold her own against any of the heroines except

Congreve's Millamant. Nance Oldfield created the character in 1705

and it continued to be a favorite on the stage. The play was given

several times nearly every year to 1736 and occasionally afterwards,

so that the character of Biddy was one often before the public.

There are also other indications that the topic of romance-reading

was one of continued interest. In 1748 there appeared the second

edition of an anonymous work entitled _The Lady's Drawing-Room. Being

a Faithful Picture of the Great World._ One chapter entitled "The

Adventures of Marilla" presents a character following in the wake

of "Biddy Tipkin" and antedating the _Female Quixote_ by perhaps a

decade:

MARILLA was a young Lady, who, from her most early years,

discover'd an uncommon Capacity, and, as she grew up, made a

wonderful Progress, not only in those Accomplishments usually

allowed to her own Sex, but also in some of those which more

properly appertain to ours. While a Child herself, she despis'd

all childish Diversions, and, as she was not a Companion for

those of riper Years, instead of playing with those of her own,

she amus'd herself with Reading, in which she took such an

infinite Delight, that, for a Book she had never seen before, she

would forego any other Satisfaction could be offer'd her; and,

tho' any one who had been present when she was thus employ'd,

and saw with what Swiftness her Eye pass'd from the Top of

every Page to the Bottom, would have thought it impossible for

her to receive much Advantage from the Contents, yet was her

Apprehension so acute, and her Memory so retentive, that whatever

she look'd over in this Manner was as much her own, as if she

had been the author of it.--What could be more amazing than

to hear a Girl, of ten or eleven Years of Age, quote Passages

from Pliny, Livy, and Sallust, talk of the Policies of Princes,

compare their several Interests, and the Motives on which War

and Peace were made, and make such Observations on them as could

rarely be contradicted! What might not have been expected from

such a Genius when Time had ripen't it to Perfection?--She had

also strong Notions of Philosophy, Morality, and Divinity, and

had only such Books, as tended to the Improvement of her Mind,

been thrown in her Way, she had doubtless made one of the most

shining Characters that any Age or Nation has produced; but

unhappily, she was likewise too well acquainted with Cassandra,

Cleopatra, Grand Cyrus, Pharamond, and other fabulous Treatises,

which poison'd her Way of Thinking, and gave her a certain

Bent of Mind, to which she ow'd all the Misfortunes of her

future Life. Indeed, I think, there cannot be any Thing more

pernicious to Youth, than the suffering them to read those idle

and voluminous Adventures, which have no Foundation either in

Truth, or good Sense, and I heartily wish, for the Sake not

only of the young Lady I am speaking of, but of many others

whose Reason has been perverted by them, tho' perhaps not in an

equal Degree, that the Government would forbid all such Books

from being sold or printed.... Marilla was always obliging,

and affable to every Body, but those who, as I said before,

declared themselves her Lovers; now was this owing to either the

Insensibility of her Heart, or to an Imagination, that all who

address'd her were unworthy to do so, but to those romantick

Notions she had imbib'd, by reading in what Manner the fictitious

Ladies of Antiquity had behav'd. She has often, since Time and a

melancholy Experience of the World, has mortify'd this Foible,

confess'd, That at that Time, she thought it the most audacious

and presuming Thing in the World for a Man, to make any publick

Declaration of his Passion, 'till he had suffer'd the Pangs of

it, in secret, for three or four Years.--That, even then, he

ought not to do it, unless Fortune had presented him with the

Opportunity of ushering it in by some extraordinary Service, and

that, whenever he express'd himself on that Head, it should be in

such ambiguous Terms, and with so much Timidity, that it should

rather be from his alter'd Countenance, and despairing Air The

Object of his Affections should perceive he lov'd her, than by

any Words he could be able to speak.--Then, as to her own Part

in this Farce, it seem'd to her the utmost Indecency in a Woman

to listen to any amorous Proposals, 'till the Lover had griev'd

himself to a Skeleton, and was on the Point of falling on his own

Sword; nor, when he had arriv'd at that Pitch of Desperation,

was she to vouchsafe him any greater Favour than a Command

to live.--That, after seven Years, she might, tho' with an

infinite Shew of Reluctance, allow him to kiss her Hand, confess

she pity'd him, but no more;--And, if he persevered a second

Apprenticeship in the same Manner, perhaps, that is, if she found

none more worthy, reward his faithful Service, by giving herself

to him.

These, she acknowledged, were the Ideas she had of Love and

Courtship; but, none of her Admirers acting in any Degree

answerable to them, she look'd on all the Professions of Love

made to her, as so many Affronts, and return'd them only with

picquant Repartees, or sullen Silence.

In 1752 Mrs. Charlotte Lennox, in _The Female Quixote_, gave an

even more detailed picture of a girl obsessed by romances. Arabella

was left motherless when very young, and her father lived in

retirement with her on a vast estate in a remote province. She

was very beautiful, and she was trained under the best masters in

dancing, French, and Italian. But this excellent education had less

influence on Arabella than the great store of French romances left

by her mother who had bought them to relieve the tedium of life in

the lonely castle. Supposing these romances to be pictures of real

life, Arabella founded all her notions and expectations on them. She

was on the alert for love adventures, and she misinterpreted the

most ordinary actions or phrases into some romantic possibility.

Arabella had a good mind, lively wit, a sweet temper, a thousand

amiable qualities, but her romantic notions permeated her thoughts

and feelings till she became involved in constant absurdities.

Generosity, courage, virtue, love, were of value to her only as

interpreted by the romances. Her lover, a courteous, frank, handsome

man of the ordinary world, found all his attractions clouded over

when he unfortunately fell asleep over some chapters in the romances

especially selected for his admiration and imitation.

Mrs. Lennox's story satirizes nearly all the salient characteristics

of the French romances. She burlesques their length and the

ever-recurring histories, adventures, episodes. The romance

conception of courtship and marriage, the lady's power of life

and death over her lover, the exaggerated military prowess of the

lover, the emphasis on unknown but illustrious birth, the bombastic

language, the use of disguises, abductions, banishments, the long,

argumentative conversations, the odd romance letters with high-flown

superscriptions and signatures, and florid, stilted style, the

romantic falsification of history, are some of the many elements

clearly portrayed by Mrs. Lennox. But in spite of the minute accuracy

of her work, Mrs. Lennox's Arabella yields in definiteness of

impression as well as in veracity and charm to Biddy Tipkin.

Shortly after _The Female Quixote_ came a little poem by Mrs. Monk

entitled "On a Romantick Lady" in which a lover says to his mistress:

This poring over your _Grand Cyrus_

Must ruin you, and will quite tire us.

It makes you think, that an affront 't is,

Unless your lover 's an _Orontes_,

And courts you with a passion frantick,

In manner and in stile romantick.

Now tho' I count myself no Zero,

I don't pretend to be an hero.

Or a by-blow of him that thunders,

Nor are you one of the sev'n wonders.

But a young damser very pretty,

And your true name is Mistress _Betty_.

With Mrs. Lennox and Mrs. Monk we seem to come to the end of

the satire on the romance-reading girls. But in 1756 we find in

Murphy's _Apprentice_ a young man, a Mr. Gargle, an apothecary's

apprentice, whose wits have gone astray through reading romances.

"An absurd, ridiculous, a silly empty-headed coxcomb," exclaims his

exasperated father, "with his _Cassanders_ and his _Cloppatras_,

and his trumpery; with his Romances, and his damn'd plays and

his _Odyssey_ Popes, and a parcel of fellows not worth a groat!"

Charlotte, Mr. Gargle's innamorata, was "as innocent as water-gruel"

before he taught her to read play-books; but she was not permanently

injured by them, for before she had read far her father locked her

books away and confined her in her room. In the projected romantic

escape Charlotte is all practicality and good sense, but Mr. Gargle

demands rope-ladders, moonlight, emotions, attitudes, and poetical

quotations, and so spoils all.

But Mr. Gargle lags behind his generation. Romances were being

rapidly replaced by the novel. Between 1740 and 1753 _Pamela_,

_Joseph Andrews_, _Jonathan Wild_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, _Tom Jones_,

_Amelia_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_ had established the new

species. And the romance-reading girl speedily gives way to the

novel-reading girl.

The first representative of this type comes in 1760 in George

Colman's _Polly Honeycomb_, at the very end of the period we are

considering. In the Prologue Colman shows a clear recognition of the

change of type. He says:

Hither in days of yore, from Spain or France,

Came a dread sorceress, her name ROMANCE.

O'er Britain's isle her wayward spell she cast,

And common sense in magick chain bound fast.

In mad sublime did each fond lover wooe,

And in heroicks ran each _billet-doux_:

High deeds of chivalry their sole delight,

Each fair a maid distress'd, each swain a knight.

Then might _Statira Oroondates_ see,

At tilts and tournaments, arm'd cap-a-pie.

She too, on milk-white palfrey, lance in hand,

A dwarf to guard her, pranc'd about the land.

* * * * *

But now, the dear delight of later years,

The younger sister of ROMANCE appears:

Less solemn in her air, her drift the same,

And NOVEL her enchanting, charming, name.

ROMANCE might strike our grave forfathers' pomp,

But NOVEL for our buck and lively romp!

Cassandra's folios now no longer read,

See, two neat pocket-volumes in their stead!

And then so _sentimental_ is the stile.

So chaste, yet so bewitching all the while!

Plot, and elopement, passion, rape, and rapture,

The total sum of ev'ry dear--dear--Chapter.

'T is not alone the small-talk and the smart,

'T is NOVEL most beguiles the female heart.

Miss reads--she melts--she sighs--Love steals upon her--

And then--Alas, poor girl!--goodnight, poor honour!

When Colman published the play he prefixed a list of one hundred and

eighty-two novels which purports to be an "Extract from the catalogue

of one of our most popular circulating libraries; from which extract

the reader may, without any great degree of shrewdness, strain the

moral of this performance."[502] Of these books over one hundred

are in the form of "Lives," "Memoirs," or "Adventures." The list

contains the principal novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett,

but the majority of the books have passed into the limbo of the

forgotten, if, indeed, they ever existed. Polly gets her books from a

circulating library in London, or purchases them from the bookseller,

and she keeps up with the new books as they come out, but she does

not mention any of the books in Colman's list. _The History of Sir

George Truman and Emilia_, _The British Amazon_, _The Adventures of

Tom Ramble_, _The History of Dick Carless_, _History of Amelia_, are

the only novels she speaks of by the title. Her familiarity with

novels in general is such that she merely refers to the characters

in an offhand fashion. Nurse indicates the scope of Polly's reading

in "Yes, yes, you are always reading your simple story-books. The

_Ventures_ of Jack this, the history of Betsey t'other, and Sir

Humphreys, and women with hard Christian names."[503] But Polly

merely refers to Clarinda and to Julia, to Betsey Thompson, to Sally

Wilkins, as girls who eloped because they had obstinate, ill-natured

parents; to Bob Lovelace as a writer of charming letters; to poor

Clarissa and ugly Mr. Soames; to Nancy Howe and Mr. Hickman; to poor

Sophy Western as one locked up by an irate father; to Tom Jones, a

foundling and yet a gentleman's son. She means to marry Scribble,

though they "go through as many distresses as Booth and Amelia."

She belabors Mr. Ledger with "I hate you; you are as deceitful as

Blifil, as rude as the Harlowes, and as ugly as Dr. Slop." After she

has assailed this unwelcome suitor from Change-alley with "You are a

vile book of Arithmetick, a table of pounds, shillings, and pence;

you are uglier than a figure of eight, and more tiresome than the

multiplication-table," she rejoices over her successful vituperation.

"Ha, ha, ha! there he goes! ha, ha, ha! I have out-topped them all;

Miss Howe, Narcissa, Clarinda, Polly Barnes, Sophy Willis, and all of

them. None of them ever treated an odious fellow with so much spirit.

This would make an excellent chapter in a new Novel. But here comes

papa; in a violent passion, no doubt. No matter: It will only furnish

materials for the next chapter."

Though it is apparent that Polly was reading Richardson and Fielding,

yet the book that held temporary ascendancy over her imagination was

_Sir George Truman_. By a clever device she is introduced reading the

book and giving lively comments thereon:

_Polly._ Well said, Sir George! Oh, the dear man. But so--"With

these words the enraptur'd baronet [_reading_] concluded his

declaration of love."--So!--"But what heart can imagine,

[_reading_] What tongue describe, or what pen delineate, the

amiable confusion of Emilia?"--Well, now for it!--"Reader, if

thou art a courtly reader, thou hast seen, at polite tables, iced

cream crimsoned with raspberries; or, if thou art an uncourtly

reader, thou hast seen the rosy-finger'd morning dawning in the

golden East;" Dawning in the golden East! Very pretty.--"Thou

hast seen, perhaps, [_reading_] the artificial vermilion on

the cheeks of Cleora, or the vermilion of nature on those of

Sylvia; thou hast seen--in a word, the lovely face of Emilia was

overspread with blushes." This is a most beautiful passage, I

protest! Well, a Novel for my money!--[_reading_] "Sir George

touched at her confusion, gently seized her hand, and softly

pressing it to his bosom [_acting it as she reads_] where the

pulses of his heart beat quick, throbbing with tumultuous

passion, in a plaintive tone of voice, breathed out, 'Will you

not answer me, Emilia?'" Tender creature!--"She, half raising

[_reading and acting_] her downcast eyes, and half inclining

her averted head, said in faltering accents,--yes, Sir!" Well,

now!--"Then, gradually recovering, with ineffable sweetness she

prepared to address him: when Mrs. Jenkinson bounced into the

room, threw down a set of china in her hurry, and strewed the

floor with porcelain fragments: Then turning Emilia round and

round, whirled her out of the apartment in an instant, and struck

Sir George dumb with astonishment at her appearance. She raved;

but the baronet resuming his accustomed effrontery...." Novels,

Nursee, novels! [exclaims Polly.] A novel is the only thing to

teach a girl life, and the way of the world, and elegant fancies,

and love, to the end of the chapter!... Do you think, Nursee, I

should have had such a good notion of love so early, if I had not

read novels?... Oh, Nursee, a Novel is the only thing!... Lord,

Nursee, if it was not for novels and love-letters a girl would

have no use for her writing and reading.

It is from her precious novels that the energetic young Polly has

a head so full of intrigues and contrivances. Rope-ladders or tied

sheets and a feather-bed under the window, disguises, letters in

lemon-juice, ink concealed in a pin-cushion, and paper and pens in

a fan, all the devices of a thwarted amour, are as the alphabet

of intrigue to Polly. No wonder the cautious Mr. Ledger finally

withdraws his suit. "She'd make a terrible wife for a sober citizen.

Who can answer for her behaviour? I would not underwrite her for

ninety _per cent._" Mr. Honeycomb attributes all Polly's vagaries to

"these damn'd story-books," and concludes, "A man might as well turn

his daughter loose in Covent-Garden, as trust the cultivation of her

mind to A CIRCULATING LIBRARY."

Lydia Languish in Sheridan's _Rivals_ (1775) carries us beyond the

limits of this study, but Lydia must be mentioned here because she

brings this topic to a natural chronological close and because of her

relationship to the characters already noted. Judged from the point

of view of the books selected, Biddy, Marilla, and Arabella belong

to the romance-readers, as opposed to Polly Honeycomb and Lydia

Languish, the novel-readers. But the lists of Polly and Lydia are far

from identical. Lydia is, indeed, quite up to date in her novels.

Nine of the fifteen she mentions were first published between 1768

and 1773.[504] And her reading is much less sensational and trashy

than that of Polly. The bustling, executive Polly cannot for a moment

be considered the real ancestor of Lydia. It is on Biddy Tipkin that

Lydia is more nearly modeled. The points of similarity between _The

Tender Husband_ and _The Rivals_ have often been noted, and it is in

the Biddy and Lydia portion that this kinship is closest. Lydia with

her two suitors and her aunt make up a group fundamentally like the

one of which Biddy is the center, though, of course, Biddy's "Urganda

of an aunt" is infinitely less amusing than "the old weather-beaten

she-dragon," Mrs. Malaprop, and Numps and Captain Cleremont are but

faint forerunners of Bob Acres and Captain Absolute. But the original

conception, the general relationship of these characters, their

function in the play, are much the same. Biddy and Lydia are alike in

occasional details and almost identical as type characters. And Lydia

as a heroine given over to mischievous reading is like the other

heroines in arousing in the harassed guardian or parent numerous

protests against romances and novels. Mrs. Malaprop and Sir Anthony

Absolute sum up all that has been said in the earlier plays. Mrs.

Malaprop would not have young women become "progenies" of learning,

and her ideal maid who goes to school at nine to learn a "little

ingenuity and artifice," "a supercilious knowledge of accounts," with

a little geography and reading, pretty well represents the amount

of education the ordinary young girl was getting. And Sir Anthony

protests against the inevitable evils consequent on teaching girls to

read:

All this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read.

Had I a thousand daughters, by Heavens! I'd as soon have them

taught the black art as their alphabet!... Madam, a circulating

library in a town is, as an evergreen tree, of diabolical

knowledge ... it blossoms through the year!

SUMMARY

[Sidenote: Material not easily accessible]

In any attempt to trace a single line of thought or a social tendency

through a long and remote period the difficult accessibility of the

material must be premised. It is disheartening to note how many of

the desired facts lurk in corners and byways, and are come upon

almost by chance. A stray allusion followed up may lead to some

rich little pocket of information, while laboriously conducted

explorations prove futile. It is the discovery of these pockets

of ore that constitute the rewards of the adventure. But such

satisfaction is constantly clouded by a sense of the pockets that

have been missed. Whatever discoveries reward the investigator, there

is always a tantalizing sense of having hardly more than passed the

outlying boundaries of what might be found.

Along with sins of omission it is regrettably certain that there

must be sins of commission. In individual instances the discovery

of further material might result in a somewhat different evaluation

of the literary or historic significance of the person concerned.

And certain it is that fuller records would reveal force and charm

in many a woman presented now by but a meager array of unsuggestive

biographical facts.

A final difficulty results from a carelessness as to dates in

contemporary records of the period studied, especially with regard

to minor people, so that chronology is sometimes led into a dim and

confused region of conjecture and approximation.

[Sidenote: Women in literary biography]

Omission of important persons, mistakes in emphasis, an occasional

dubious chronology, are due in part to the general condition of

literary biography till long after the middle of the eighteenth

century. The details regarding men were often meager and inexact, but

much more so was this the case with regard to women. When Ballard

began the preliminary studies for his memoirs of learned ladies he

found the utmost difficulty in getting any reliable data. He refers

to Leland, Bale, Pits, and Tanner as men whose works he had studied

for general method. But from none of these could he get direct aid in

his own field of research. Various records of Oxford and Cambridge

could render but incidental service, Edward Philips's _Threatrum

Poetarum_ (1675); John Aubrey's _Brief Lives_ (known as early as

1680); William Winstanley's _Lives of the most famous English Poets_

(1687); Gildon's edition of Langbaine's _Dramatic Poets_, with a

second volume on Poets in 1688, were somewhat more helpful. But in

all these put together there were only a few pages devoted to women.

John Shirley's _Illustrious History of Women_ (1686) and Juncker's

_Catalogue of Learned Women_ (1692) have practically nothing to offer

towards a history of learned English women. John Evelyn's _Numismata_

(1697) gives a list of renowned persons "worthy the honour of

_Medal_," in the course of which he mentions some instances of the

"Learned, Virtuous and Fair Sex," beginning with Boadicea. Thirteen

Englishwomen are in the list, but with only the briefest notice.

Giles Jacob's _Poetical Register_ (1724) goes more into detail, but

in his two volumes there are only fifteen pages of female biography.

Mrs. Cooper includes no woman in her _Muse's Library_ (1737) and

Hayward in his _The British Muse_ (1738) makes but one quotation

from a woman. John Wilford's _Memorials and Characters_ (1741) was

compiled with the idea of presenting examples of piety and virtue.

Of the eighty-one women noted only a few come within the category

of learned women. Thomas Birch in his _Illustrious Persons of Great

Britain_ (1752) includes no women but Queens.

The meager gleanings from the best biographical records before 1752

put stronger emphasis on the importance of George Ballard's _Memoirs

of Several Ladies of Great Britain_ as a book of original research,

and as the first source of detailed and ordered, and, in general,

accurate information concerning the learned women of England.[505]

Of later sources the first is Theophilus Cibber's _Lives of the

Poets_ (1753). Rather full accounts of fourteen women are given

by Cibber, eight of them being names not included in Ballard's

book.[506] The _Eminent Ladies_ (1755) was but a weak compilation of

poems with brief and perfunctory comment. In the _New and General

Biographical Dictionary_, published in 1761, the most imposing

biographical work of the period, out of more than five thousand names

less than twenty English women of letters are listed.

The first book after Ballard to take up female biography exclusively

appeared in 1766 and is entitled: _Biographium Femineum. The Female

Worthies: or, Memoirs of the Most Illustrious Ladies of all Ages and

Nations, who have been Eminently distinguished for their Magnanimity,

Learning, Genius, Virtue, Piety, and other excellent Endowments,

conspicuous in all the various Stations and Relations of Life, public

and private. Containing (exclusive of Foreigners) The Lives of above

Fourscore British Ladies, who have shone with a peculiar Lustre, and

given the noblest proofs of the most exalted Genius, and Superior

Worth. Collected from History, and the most approved Biographers,

and brought down to the present Times_ (1766). This book is based

on Ballard, Cibber, and _Eminent Ladies_, but also, unfortunately,

accepts Amory as an authority.

In 1779 William Alexander published _The History of Women_, in two

volumes. Mr. Alexander has comparatively little to say about learned

women. He wrote, he said, to "amuse and instruct the Fair Sex,"

hoping thus to lure them from poring over novels and romances. He

avoided technical and foreign terms and all citation of authorities

as being "perplexing to the sex," and while his book professes to

be a sort of propagandist tract for female education, he so abhors

female pendantry and so laments fair eyes dimmed by severe and

intense study that his book is a distinct reaction from the dignified

earlier ideals. Dr. Johnson admits no women into the society of his

fifty-two _English Poets_ (1779-81). The _Biographia Britannica_

(1778-93) includes Mary Beale and ten literary women. All of these

except Mrs. Delany had appeared in Ballard or Cibber. Mary Hays's

_Female Biography_, published in England in 1803 and in America in

1807, in three volumes, includes celebrated women in "all Ages and

Countries." It is based on Ballard and the other authorities already

indicated. The uncritical character of the book is indicated by the

remark of Miss Hays, "My book is intended for women and not for

scholars." Robert Southey, in 1809, in his _Specimens of the Later

English Poets_, begins with the time of James II. Out of two hundred

and twenty-three poets represented, seventeen are women. In the

thirty-two volumes of Chalmers's _General Biographical Dictionary_

(1812) about thirty English learned ladies are briefly noted. In

Campbell's _British Poets_ (1819) there is but one woman, Katherine

Philips, among the one hundred and seventy names he gives. Alexander

Dyce, in _Specimens of British Poetesses_, in 1827, gives brief

extracts in chronological order from eighty-three authors, but with

only the slightest possible apparatus of notes and dates. The purpose

of Mr. Dyce was to exhibit the progress of English women in poetry,

and his book was planned and partly executed before he happened upon

the _Eminent Ladies_, a reprint of which appeared about 1780. On a

perusal of that book he found it so unimportant a precursor as not

to interfere with his plan. Over half of Mr. Dyce's work is given to

women after 1750. Of the forty-nine before that period, beginning

with Juliana Berners and ending with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, very

few are represented by more than two or three pages of quotation.

Lady Winchilsea, owing doubtless to Wordsworth's recent eulogy of

her, is given eleven pages. Mr. Dyce did considerable independent

research, for he quoted from a good many poems by women not mentioned

by previous authors. Wordsworth had planned a similar work and had

made extracts for it, "lucid crystals," he says, "culled from a

Parnassian Cave seldom trod."

About the middle of the nineteenth century various books, such as

Miss Costello's _Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen_ (1844), Mrs. Hale's

_Woman's Record_ (1853), Jane Williams's _Literary Women of England_

(1861), Julia Kavanagh's _English Women of Letters_ (1863), with

other compilations treating especially of late eighteenth-century

fiction but recognizing also the works of Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, and

Mrs. Haywood, seemed to indicate a recrudescence of interest in the

work of women. But in most of these books the treatment is so vague

and popular as to be of little use.

Of more value than formal condensed statements in biographical

compilations are autobiographies, letters, contemporary allusions,

works in prose and verse, prefaces, and early individual biographies.

Thanks to a steadily growing interest in the period 1660 to 1800,

there has been an accumulation during recent years of special

critical editions of early works, of manuscripts published after long

years of oblivion, and of reprints of valuable productions. It is in

particular to this class of material that the student must go in an

attempt to evolve personalities from scattered facts.

[Sidenote: The term "learned"]

The term "learned" as applied to women demands careful chronological

definition. It would be used to-day, without any strong bias of

approval or disapproval, to describe a woman who in some reputable

realm of learning has a competent apparatus of the facts involved,

and a mind trained to order and interpret these facts. Such

intellectual activity would be differentiated from creative work in

poetry, fiction, and drama. But the phrase "learned women" as used

in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had no such specialized

application. The contemporary defenders of "The Excellency of the

Female Sex" give the widest and loosest possible meaning to the term.

It sometimes stood for the most solid attainments, but it was also

made to cover very rudimentary intellectual strivings. An avowed

taste for reading, the faintest interest in physical phenomena, the

composition of slight little poems, the writing-out of prayers and

meditations, even the copying of extracts into a common-place book,

could, in applause or derision, be counted as learned occupations.

This wide inclusiveness results inevitably in the practical

breaking-down of any set of qualities as necessarily connoted by the

term "learned."

Equally undiscriminating was the use of examples whereby to establish

the possible mentality of women. History and tradition were of equal

authority, the Muses and Sibyls counting as much as the great names

of later days. The uncritical lists of learned ladies record as of

apparently equal importance the "physical fancies" of the Duchess of

Newcastle and the exact botanical knowledge of Elizabeth Blackwell;

the playful coquetting with foreign tongues by some society ladies

and the close linguistic attainments of Miss Elstob or Mrs. Collyer;

the wide sweep of general information of Mrs. Delany and the minute

investigation into the field of early English by Mrs. Cooper.

A similar ill-defined use of the term "learned" is inevitable in

the present attempt to estimate the intellectual tendencies of the

seventeenth and eighteenth century women. In the evaluation of the

work of individual women as their names arise critical standards

can be given due weight. But in general it is not the object of

this study to test the scholastic, scientific, or literary work of

the women of the period by modern academic ideas of excellence. The

purpose here is rather to show the number of women whose interests

were intellectual, whose chosen pursuits had to do with books

and things of the mind, and who were demanding a new freedom of

self-expression, new training, and new opportunities.

Still another preliminary statement seems necessary. The period from

1650 to 1760 is a rich and crowded one. Even when regarded from a

single comparatively barren point of view such as an account of

learned women, it offers too much material for a single volume. To

keep at all within limits it is necessary to hold the presentation

of each learned woman merely to those points in her life and work

that have to do with her as an exponent of new ideals for women, or

as marking by her own achievements new feminine possibilities in the

arts, in learning, or in letters. Complete presentation would involve

almost a separate volume for each important woman. Many of the women

here studied offer interesting subjects for further investigation. A

new insight into the religious, the social, and the domestic life of

the period would be given by full biographies of such women as Anne

Killigrew, Lady Winchilsea, Bathsua Makin, Mrs. Cooper, and indeed of

many others. Such studies would be invaluable as a contribution to

the history of the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: Periods in intellectual progress of women]

A retrospect of the progress of the intellectual freedom and the

systematic education of women in England does not reveal an orderly

acceleration from period to period. There are, instead, periods of

activity followed by periods of quiescence. Two such periods, one of

activity, one of quiescence, may be noted before the Restoration.

The reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth have been called the golden

age for learned women,[507] and even a cursory glance over these

years serves to justify that reputation. Theoretical statements by

distinguished foreigners such as that by Castiglione; the opinions

of such men as Vives and Hyrde, of Mulcaster, Ascham, Udall, and

Erasmus; the example of the royal family and many great nobles in

securing the most learned instruction for their daughters; the

influence of at least two learned queens, Catherine of Aragon and

Elizabeth; the actual scholarship of many distinguished women; the

warm praise of this scholarship by the most eminent men, made up

a general atmosphere strongly stimulating to learned attainment

by women. Individual opportunities of so high a character, and a

reception so genial and even eager towards the intellectual activity

of women did not again recur in England. But this golden age remains

as hardly more than a brilliant picture; it has practically no

important place in the progress of the education of women. The

advantages given to women were nullified, so far as initiating more

widespread activities is concerned, by two inherent defects. The

learning of women had no legitimate purpose or outcome beyond the

home. It was the object of adulation and flattery, but it seldom came

into competition with the work of men where it could be judged on its

merits. It had always a small audience favorably disposed in advance.

Learning was a kind of high-class individual accomplishment purely

for home consumption. A second defect was that learning belonged only

to the daughters of the nobility or of the very rich. Even within

these bounds it was sporadic, depending entirely on the opinion of

the head of the family.

A gradual decline of interest in scholarship as an appropriate

pursuit for damsels of high lineage was apparent even in Elizabethan

days, and the change from Tudor ideals became marked in the period

from the death of Elizabeth to the Restoration.[508] James looked

upon women with contempt. Queen Anne's mother, Sophia of Mecklenburg,

was a highly gifted woman who, after her retirement from public life,

devoted her leisure to astronomy, chemistry, and other sciences.

But Anne had none of her mother's intellectual interests. She cared

only for fine dresses and jewels, progresses and masks, and gay

frivolous entertainments.[509] So she brought no literary ideals or

ambitions to counteract the king's cold indifference to education in

general. Under Charles I and Henrietta Maria there might readily have

arisen in a new and lighter form some educational ideals or schemes

favorable to women, for the King loved music and painting and had

well-developed literary tastes, and the Queen had great respect for

the French salons of her day and was interested in the general ideas

of the _précieuses_. But the troubled times of the Civil War turned

the minds of both men and women to sterner tasks. And it is perhaps

not strange that this period proves the most barren one in English

history so far as the education of girls is concerned.

At the Restoration we enter upon a new era of feminine activity.

The beginnings of this era do not, however, coincide sharply with

1660, but belong at least a decade earlier. The chief women writing

and studying between 1650 and 1675,[510] the Duchess of Newcastle,

Mrs. Philips, Mary North, Dorothy Osborne, Margaret Blagge, Lady

Pakington, the Countess of Warwick, Mrs. Hutchinson, and Lady

Fanshawe, brilliantly ushered in this new period. With the coming

of peace and national security women were apparently conscious not

only of a new freedom, but of a new power and a new demand for some

form of personal expression. After the unusual services rendered by

them in war-times they could not settle down at once into the tame

concerns of peace. This does not refer particularly to the women

counted the heroines of the Civil War. It refers rather to the

general emotional excitement and freeing of the spirit consequent on

war activities. There was on the part of women a blind and unfocused

but persistent and stimulating sense that larger and more varied

opportunities were awaiting them. Latent powers had been stirred

into self-consciousness and could not again be lulled into the old

quiescence.

It was not only the inevitable burdens and responsibilities of war

that had stirred women to new life. They could not fail to share

in the new sense of personal importance and power that came to the

people as a whole in their victorious struggle with autocracy. But

it must be observed that along with this consciousness of national

and political self-realization there was, under the Puritans, stern

repression in matters of social and religious life. At the coming of

Charles, however, all this was changed. With disastrous suddenness

people found themselves free to follow with all gayety of spirit

wherever their pleasure-loving instincts led. That such breaking of

bonds resulted in an almost incredible outburst of immorality should

not be allowed to obscure the fact that there was also a remarkable

freeing of the mind from conventional standards. For good or for evil

the individual found himself free to give energetic expression to his

individual tendencies. By this freedom, by this license, women as

well as men were profoundly moved.

The new impulses thus brought into being did not, however, give

rise to anything like orderly and progressive activity on the part

of women. The century following 1660 is seen to be an inchoate

assemblage of beginnings. It is rich with a promise that comes to no

decisive result. The path, instead of leading to some well-marked

fortress or to some mount of vision, loses itself in unmeaning

meanders.

There is, indeed, after the middle of the eighteenth century, even

an appearance of retrogression in the attention devoted to learned

pursuits for women. It is not till the end of that century that

the movement acquires new momentum. Until we come to Catharine

Macaulay, the novelists in the last quarter of the century, and Mary

Wollstonecraft at its end, we have little that is new in theory or

striking in achievement. From 1760 to 1775 no new woman writer of

distinction appears. On ideals of education and conduct, Dr. James

Fordyce, Mrs. Barbauld, and Mrs. Chapone, the recognized arbiters,

are tame compilers of bromidic maxims with little of the dignity and

spirit of the best writers on feminism six or seven decades earlier.

The actual accomplishment of the period before 1760 was a destruction

of old placidities, a restlessness of discussion, rather than a

movement reaching definite achievement. But this discussion and the

many individual examples of literary or learned accomplishment on the

part of women were together slowly having their collective effect.

Finally salons came and gave social prestige to the women who could

think and talk brilliantly, and gave a tremendous impetus, if not

to actual learning, yet to the idea that a woman should have sense,

intelligence, a wide knowledge of books, and an understanding of

history and current affairs.

From Catharine Macaulay to about the time of Tennyson's _Princess_

is a period possessing considerable unity and one that would reward

minute study. Such an investigation would bring us close to the

establishment of great schools for the higher education of women and

their consequent entrance upon a new era, an era that should look

back with astonishment and respect to such ancestors as Anna van

Schurman, Bathsua Makin, Dr. Hickes, and Mary Astell.

[Sidenote: The learned woman and a public]

One of the most promising characteristics of the work of women is

the emergence of learning from the aristocratic seclusion of the

"golden age." In Tudor times it was in courtly circles only that

learning was counted appropriate for women. Elizabeth Lucar stands

as a solitary record of a lady from the wealthy middle class whose

accomplishments were similar to those in the palaces of the great.

But a significant change is to be noted in the century initiated

about 1660. Duchesses and countesses are listed with wives and

daughters of the clergy, of rich merchants, of needy tradesmen. From

the Duchess of Newcastle to Mary Leapor, the gardener's daughter, the

roll shows that aristocratic restrictions are no longer in full force

in the realm of letters. In intimate connection with this change is

the fact that authorship is no longer a private, home affair. The

days when Margaret Roper was praised because she found her father and

husband a sufficient audience had passed forever. The work of women

was no longer a carefully tended flower of the hot-house. It must

grow in the open. To be sure, women hesitated to publish. The Orindas

and Astræas and Philomelas and Ardelias, whom Richardson derides as

"the lovely dastards" of the sex, show how women sought protecting

pseudonyms. But publish they did. They craved readers. The applauding

males of their households were no longer adequate. Under the spell of

a thousand traditional timidities and reluctancies they yet desired

to see their words on the printed page, and they secretly coveted a

public.

Furthermore, women were thinking of authorship as a tool and as

a weapon, not merely as a private resource. Mrs. Behn, the first

English woman to write definitely for money, was but the precursor

of various women in succeeding years who came to regard the products

of their minds as of pecuniary significance. Especially is this true

towards the end of the period. When we find Mrs. Haywood and Mrs.

Manley writing fiction of a sort that will sell, Mrs. Blackwell

doing superb botanical work in order to pay the fine imposed on her

husband, or Mrs. Collyer writing that she may supplement a meager

income and educate her children, we may not have come upon great

art or literature, but we have come upon a new idea for women, the

possible economic value of their work. It was not an idea that

reached any but the most meager fruition, but at least the seed of a

new thought was sown.

A third change was a respect for literature as a weapon, sometimes

of offense, but mainly of defense and propaganda. The women who had

ideals to promulgate, causes to urge upon the indifferent, or evils

to be meliorated, found that talking at home was weak and futile.

They must secure a public, and so the pamphlets poured forth. In

fact, the fundamental difference between the golden age of the

Tudors and the much less agreeable period for learned women after

the Restoration was this matter of a public. Learning for home

consumption only and as an elegant resource was sterile. However

feeble intrinsically, learning and letters used for a purpose and

submitted to a public had within it the seeds of vitality and the

promise of a future.

[Sidenote: Large number of intellectual women]

Of greater significance still is the large number of women who

gave themselves to intellectual pursuits. From Mrs. Philips to

Mrs. Collyer the roll is impressively long. Macaulay's statement

concerning the illiteracy of the women of the period may have

some justification, but the exceptions are so numerous as almost

to disprove the rule. And all the way down the line there is the

suggestion that many other women of like tastes and attainments

have been lost in obscurity. Many extant productions have

been preserved only by chance. Dorothy Osborne's letters, the

biographies by Mrs. Hutchinson and Lady Fanshawe, Celia Fiennes's

travels, Lady Winchilsea's grand folio, to name but a few, escaped

destruction mainly through the undisturbed continuity of the family

life, and possibly the inertia, of their possessors. And where a

few manuscripts have been saved, many more have doubtless been

destroyed. The loss to learning and letters is probably slight.

But in estimating the strength of a tendency the numbers who were

affected by it count as important testimony. Every woman whose

mind was alert, demanding intellectual sustenance, and struggling

towards self-expression, adds a further fraction of proof as to the

vitality of the new impulse. And, while not susceptible of absolute

verification, the general tantalizing consciousness of many shadowy

presences of women whose ideas and efforts never reached the printed

page is a not unimportant factor in one's personal conviction as to

the very large number of women who were affected by the new unrest

and the new aspiration hidden away under the ordinary routine of

thought and work. But even without any such shadowy presences the

list is long enough to be convincing.

[Sidenote: Types of work but scantily represented]

In an attempt to tabulate the variety of ways in which women sought

self-expression, we note first those fields of endeavor in which

their work was but scantily represented. In some cases these areas of

restricted productivity are characteristic of the age in general, in

some cases, the outcome of limitations imposed on women in particular.

One type of the woman interested in letters becomes practically

non-existent in the period under discussion, and that is the

patroness whose rank and wealth and intellectual tastes summoned

about her a brilliant coterie of poets and men of science to whom

she extended substantial aid. The patroness plays no important part

in English life after Elizabethan times. Lady Bedford is the last

noted representative. Mary North's little circle of literary ladies,

and the Matchless Orinda's "Circle of Friendship" are coteries, but

without a Lady Bountiful as the center. Lady Pakington comes nearer

the type in her assemblage of Church of England divines. But on

the whole the patroness and salon are not revived till the time of

the _bas bleus_ in the mid-eighteenth century, and then only in a

modified form.

In the fine arts the attainments of women were slight and amateurish.

Mary Beale was the only portrait-painter of distinction, and in

landscape-painting no woman is represented by valuable canvases.

But the same state of affairs held true of English men. With the

solitary exception of Mr. Riley all of the noted portrait-painters

in England before 1760 were foreigners. The landscape artists, too,

were foreigners, or were mere copiers of the Italian or Flemish

masters. So the deficiency of women in the fine arts may justly be

counted but a part of the general national deficiency. The immediate

and permanent success of women on the stage has been sufficiently

emphasized. But it should also be noted that acting was a career

necessarily limited to a comparatively small number of women.

Many kinds of work more or less professional in character were but

slightly represented. Except for governesses in great families and

the mistresses of boarding-schools for girls there were no women

teachers, hence teaching as an ultimate goal was eliminated as a

determining factor in the kind of intellectual work pursued. Even the

governesses were not chosen for scholarship, but for character and

good-breeding. They had to do only with little children, and had no

need for learning. And the school-mistresses secured outside masters

for the various studies and accomplishments, confining their own work

to morals and general management.

Women had so long had home medicaments to make and administer, the

mistress of a great estate had so long been the sole resort in

matters concerning the health of her dependents, that we might

expect medicine to be one of the first important new fields conquered

by women, but such was not the case. The Duchess of Newcastle, to

be sure, gave her fancy free rein in the wide fields of anatomy and

physiology. But besides such young women as Elizabeth Bury, renowned

for her knowledge of simples and her skill in diagnosis, and Jane

Barker who followed her brother's lead in reading medical works,

there are no English women on record before 1760 as having given

themselves with any serious interest to the study of medicine. The

only possible exception would be in midwifery. In this department of

medical or surgical practice women had the matter almost in their own

hands. Mrs. Pilkington says that her father, Dr. Van Lewen, was the

first man midwife in England. There must, then, have been developed

among women considerable knowledge and practical skill. But their

work was in no sense of professional rank. There was no definite

training required, there was no way of applying standardized tests of

excellence, and there was no organization among the women themselves.

And almost no women attempted to put into book form the results of

their experience. Mrs. Jane Sharp's _The Midwives' Book_ (1671) is a

solitary exception. Mrs. Cellier's book advocating the maintenance

of a "Corporation of Skilful Midwives" is the only suggestion I have

found looking towards professional training and recognition such as

nurses now receive.

In housekeeping matters women were also in the main content to do the

work without any formal statements of the mysteries of their art.

There was much passing about of receipts for cookery, for toilet

preparations, for curative drinks and salves, but when these were

collected and published, it was usually the work of some enterprising

book-seller. Mrs. Hannah Woolley, Mrs. "A. M.," and Mrs. Hannah

Glasse, are the only women I have come upon who could even in the

faintest way foreshadow the great mass of present-day writing on

questions of domestic science.

Although the satire in some of the comedies would indicate that women

were manifesting some interest in the new discoveries through the

telescope and the microscope, and were sometimes giving themselves

to laboratory experiments in dissection, there is no serious record

of any real research in science by women. Even Mrs. Blackwell's

exquisite and accurate botanical work is an artistic rather than

a scientific achievement so far as she herself is concerned.

Her botanical facts were not entirely the result of personal

investigation.

To be "the breeders of children in their low age" had always been

so unquestionably the province of women that they would supposedly

be past-masters in that art, and it might be expected that they

would use the first freedom of their pen to write such things as

would suit the tastes and needs of children. Again, such is not the

case. But it must be recognized that there was nowhere any catering

to the literary needs of children. Bunyan's _Book for Boys and

Girls_ (1680), Mason's _Little Catechism_ (1693), Watts's _Divine

and Moral Songs for Children_ (1720) represent a few attempts to

render religious truth more palatable to the child's mind, but real

literature for children did not begin till 1744. Mr. Newberry's

_Little Pretty Pocket Book_ of that year initiated a kind of

literature the vast extent of which can now hardly be estimated. And

in the earliest period of literature for children Mrs. Collyer's

_Christmas Box_ and Miss Fielding's _Little Female Academy_, both in

1749, must take an honorable place.

One more kind of work for which women have manifested exceptional

ability in modern times is in the conduct of humanitarian

enterprises. Traditionally they were the loaf-givers. The new thing

was to organize generosity into permanent efficiency and to make it

operative beyond the limits of the family estate. Mrs. Bovey and

Lady Elizabeth Hastings are early instances of women devoting time,

mentality, and money to the development of systematic benevolence.

But there were few women whose economic independence and sense of

civic responsibility were so happily united.

Still another realm in which women to-day are finding large

opportunity was practically closed to the women of earlier times,

and that is public speaking. Except among the Quakers no woman spoke,

on any subject whatsoever, before an audience. She might sing or she

might act with applause. But talking was outside her bounds. Acting

was but repeating the words of others; singing was a gift of the

gods; but talking to an audience, whether to delight or instruct,

carried plain implications of self-conscious superiority in knowledge

or power. It was incredibly unfeminine and not to be endured. On this

topic the authority of St. Paul was still unquestioned.

If from the women who are to-day preparing for some sort of

professional work, we should exclude all who expect to teach, all

who are planning to enter upon some sort of scientific research,

all who are training themselves for public speaking, all who are

preparing for the effective management of large enterprises, all who

are writing on domestic or medical matters, the scope of feminine

activity would be almost unbelievably narrowed. These various kinds

of work are now recognized channels through which whatever ability

a woman may have may find expression. But in the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries if a woman had a good mind and felt impelled

to use it, none of these avenues were normally open to her. It is

difficult to imagine what the withdrawal of all these opportunities

would mean in the reduction of adequate stimuli to good work. Hence

the few women who did pioneer work in these various departments must

have been moved by some strong urgency of the spirit. They were

adventurers lured by the fascination of the new and the untried,

and their effort is significant even when the region they conquered

proved to be but the barren edge of a great continent.

It was in writing that women were least hampered, and, as has been

stated, it was in writing that we find their work most varied and

abundant.

[Sidenote: Women playwrights]

As playwrights they were especially successful in comedy. Mrs. Behn

and Mrs. Centlivre take a very creditable rank in the comedy of

lively intrigue and social satire. Tragedy appealed to more women

writers than did comedy, but they were less successful in that

realm. Tragedy was considered so inherently virtuous that the most

high-minded could find in it edification, and young girls who were

forbidden attendance on comedies were freely allowed to witness

tragedies. For this reason women writers with dramatic aspirations,

but to whom the license of the comedy was distasteful, applied

themselves to tragedy. That Catherine Cockburn's _Fatal Friendship_

should be counted the best of these tragedies is perhaps a sufficient

condemnation of the entire series. But it must be again remembered

that it was not an age in which any writers excelled in tragedy. The

heroic plays of Dryden, the domestic tragedy of Otway, and here and

there a play of some contemporary vogue, such as Ambrose Philips's

_Distressed Mother_ and Addison's _Cato_, practically make up the

list. Of the tragedies recorded by Genest between 1660 and 1760

very few of those having any but the most ephemeral success are by

contemporary authors. Hence the failure of women in this realm is in

accordance with the trend of the times.

[Sidenote: Fiction]

Novels did not come into existence till so late in the period under

discussion that we have little chance to test women in this field

which later proved to be peculiarly their own. Mrs. Behn's romances,

with their realistic detail, their high-wrought emotions, scenic

setting, and didactic intent, gave early examples of what might be

done. But it is not till after Richardson that women had conspicuous

success in works of fiction. After Mrs. Behn and before 1760 we have

only the scandalous annals of Mrs. Manley and Mrs. Haywood, Miss

Barker's inchoate autobiographic tales, Mrs. Lennox's satiric novel,

and the didactic stories of Mrs. Collyer and Miss Fielding.

[Sidenote: Poetry]

In an age when facile versifying was counted a gentleman's

accomplishment, and when the heroic couplet offered a form in which

mechanical precision could be tested by the rule of the thumb, it

would be strange if women with some literary knack did not write

poetry. And it is true that nearly every woman who wielded a pen

trained it sometimes into the conventional pindarics or heroics. But

on the whole, with most women writers poetry was but an occasional

resource. It was not their chosen _métier_. There were, in fact, but

two women, Mrs. Philips and Lady Winchilsea, who took their stand on

poetry as their life's achievement. Orinda had grace, tenderness,

and fine feeling. Ardelia had subtlety of intuition, a delicate

independence of taste, and an occasional high excellence of form and

phrase. By these qualities these two women are marked off from the

poetasters of their day and have some permanent importance. But the

mass of verse by women was undistinguished. It offers, however, some

interesting general characteristics.

Compared to the total amount of verse by women, religious verse

takes an unexpectedly small place. In no case that I can recall

were a woman's religious poems her best work. The most popular as

well as the most turgid and commonplace sort of religious writing

was the Scripture paraphrase. Poems of pure devotion, of prayer

and of praise, are less often found. In such as do occur we might

expect the personal note, something winged and lyrical. But they

are disappointingly timid and imitative. We have various proofs

that there was no absolute lack of poignant spiritual conflict and

endeavor during this period, but religious emotion was apparently so

accustomed to decorous forms that it could not be driven into the

nakedness of soul consequent upon religious abasement or ecstasy.

The best religious verse of the period avoids strong emotions. It

consists of gentle moralizing touched by personal feeling. There is

a note of genuineness in the emphasis on fortitude, on self-control

and self-abnegation, and on melancholy endurance. But the most that

can be said for the religious poetry by women is that it was about

on a par with contemporary religious poetry by men. It was an age of

strong church affiliations and of theological discussion, but it was

not an age that invited the expression of fervent religious emotion.

There is also little genuine love poetry. There is much that is

friendly and affectionate, but almost nothing that is impassioned.

This, however, is a negation applicable to all verse of the period.

Few memorable love lyrics are to be found in English verse between

Waller's _Go, lovely rose_, and the songs of Robert Burns. But women

had been so long emancipated from reason and traditionally given

over to the feelings that love poetry, at least of the sentimental

variety, might have been thought their natural output. As a matter of

fact, the case was quite otherwise. The poetry by women had not, in

general, what would be termed a feminine tone. Women do not seem to

have given their instincts free play when they took up the poetical

quill. Poetry was either a trifling temporary resource or it was a

serious, even solemn affair, and must concern itself with weighty

matters of vice and virtue. The style in poetry is consequently much

less effective than in prose. There is almost nowhere through all the

mass of this verse any brightness of fancy, any playfulness of wit,

any mollifying sense of humor. There is little lightness of touch,

there are few felicities and unforgettable lines. And there is more

of scorn, indignation, and didacticism than of sweetness and light.

[Sidenote: Autobiography and letters]

In various departments of prose women writers reached an excellence

considerably above the general prose average of the time. This is

especially true in certain rather new branches of writing. The

fragments of autobiography that have come down to us are almost

without exception fresh, unpretentious, and delightful pieces

of work. The records given us by the Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs.

Hutchinson, Miss Barker, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth Elstob,

and others, simply whet the appetite for more. If Anne Killigrew and

Anne Kingsmill and Bathsua Pell and Lady Elizabeth Hastings, and

very many other ladies, had left similar records we should have a

legacy of simple, straightforward, and individual prose worth reams

of pindarics or theological discussions. The intimate personal appeal

of the subject-matter seemed to make for a picturesqueness and homely

vigor of style. The only women who wrote biography--the Duchess of

Newcastle, Lady Fanshawe, and Mrs. Hutchinson--wrote about their

husbands, so they were, in reality, carrying on the autobiographical

element. And their success is perhaps due to an intimate knowledge of

the facts, and a strong personal interest such as had animated the

sketches of their own childhood. At any rate, these three _Lives_

rank in interest with Evelyn's _Mrs. Godolphin_ and Roger North's

_Lives of the Norths_. Letters belong in the same general realm, and

offer some of the most entertaining writing of the period. There are

many reasons for thinking that letter-writing was a more general

feminine resource than existing records would indicate. Such letters

as are now extant have been preserved almost by accident. They were

not counted of contemporary importance and very few of them reached

publication before the nineteenth century. Yet the list is fairly

representative.

We have the letters of Margaret Blagge to Mr. Godolphin; those of

the Osborne ladies, Dorothy, Martha, and Sarah; Orinda's epistles to

Poliarchus; Mrs. Evelyn's letters to her son's tutor; Mrs. Rowe's

to the Duchess of Somerset; Mrs. Delany's to numerous friends; Miss

Talbot's to Miss Carter; Miss Carter's to a host of correspondents;

Mrs. Cockburn's to her lovers and to her niece; and Lady Mary Wortley

Montagu's records from many lands as well as her early letters to

Mr. Montagu. As a body of documentary material these letters are

invaluable. And they are interesting reading. The keen eye for dress

and customs would have qualified some of these ladies for the novel

of manners. There are pungent character sketches and witty comment on

social foibles. These letters show often a humor and gayety of spirit

such as find entrance into no other forms of feminine writing. And

the style is almost uniformly easy and natural. Dorothy Osborne's

objection to stilted and pedantic letters could have been applicable

to few women letter-writers. They had no thought of a public and so

escaped the snare of professionalism in tone. The letters contain

records of love and of grief, of moments of vivid emotion, of deep

spiritual experience, of friendships and of hatreds, of hopes and

despairs, and because all these came from the mind and the heart of

the writer they are told in a convincing manner.

[Sidenote: Travels]

Another similar realm is that of travels. When women went on tours

they saw everything that was to be seen. And they set down the

details with infinite patience. Celia Fiennes has no literary style

at all, but no other description of England between 1650 and 1760

contains so much detail worth remembering. She was the most spirited

and indefatigable of travelers, and this intensity of interest found

its way into her book and communicates itself to the reader. Had she

kept her diary with any remotest thought of publication she might

have been more lucid, but she might also have been less vigorous,

individual, and picturesque. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's _Turkish

Letters_ created a sensation, as well they might, for as a writer of

travels she out-distanced all competitors.

The kinds of prose writing so far indicated were all animated by

personal experience and interest. That is certainly one secret

of their charm. And it is to be observed that they are marked by

qualities of observation and analysis later proved natural to

women by their success in fiction. But there is another department

of writing less naturally associated with women in which they

were nevertheless conspicuous for merit, and that is some form of

controversial writing.

[Sidenote: Propaganda]

When women espoused and defended a cause, it was with a heat of

personal conviction that robbed them of self-consciousness and

contributed to vigor and animation of style. Even earlier women,

such as Anna van Schurman and Mrs. Makin, who felt that to be

convincing they must show their ability to argue with the most rigid

scholastic apparatus, now and then had passages of high-wrought

feeling or indignation that burst the trammels of their logical

form, and carry even to modern readers a sense of the intensity of

conviction that moved the writer. Bathsua Pell's _Essay_ in 1673 is

an admirable piece of propagandist writing. No defender of higher

education in the early days of women's colleges was more pungent

in attack, or tossed off the unmeaning arguments of opponents with

more contemptuous ease. In writing on the higher education of women

it is with the zeal of an enthusiast that Mary Astell marshals the

details of her new scheme. She had thought her plan through to the

end and she describes it with clearness and precision. Its noble

possibilities give rise to seriousness and dignity of style. And when

her mind is overborne by a recognition of the many foolish women

and the scornful men who would render her ideals abortive, she is

roused to passages of energetic satire. She is even acrimonious and

vituperative. There is nothing soft or appealing or feminine about

her work. If she convinces it will not be by the arts of her sex, but

by argument and caustic attack. She does not entreat, she commands

and instructs. The anonymous author of the _Defence_ describes, with

keen analysis, picturesque phrasing, and gay raillery, the beaux,

the clodpate squires, the pedants, and the virtuosi of her day. Few

contemporary satiric portraits are of more penetrating wit. "Sophia"

of pamphlet fame carries on the successful propagandist writing.

And Lady Winchilsea's one prose essay is indicative of her vigorous

possibilities in speech when her ideas and feelings were involved.

One point concerning the generally dignified tone of these essays

in defense of women should be noted, and that is that they were not

the outcome of personally bitter experiences or disappointments on

the part of the authors. The writing was informed rather by a sense

of high civic idealism and responsibility. Though the advancement of

women is presented as a matter of justice, and of importance to women

as individuals, the arguments always turn to a larger conception, and

that is the service rendered to Society and the Church by educated

women.

[Sidenote: Religious experience and controversy]

In religious controversy, also, women excelled. A practical or

personal cause was not imperative. They wrote with equal vehemence,

sincerity, and will to convince, when they were defending an abstract

principle as when they were protesting against injustice, or trying

to further some specific reform. Lady Masham, Susanna Hopton, Mary

Astell, and Mrs. Cockburn sufficiently illustrate the success of

women as disputants. The fact that nearly all the topics on which

these religious controversialists wrote are now dead issues, and that

the writing has inevitably passed into oblivion along with the ideas

it championed, should not be allowed to obscure the very evident

contemporary respect accorded women as redoubtable antagonists and

able advocates. There were also women who wrote little, such as Lady

Pakington and Lady Conway, to whom the best men of the day gave

high esteem for the soundness of their patristic and philosophical

learning, and for the acuteness of their thinking.

Writers on personal religious experience or on hortatory subjects

do not reach so high a grade of work. The prodigious industry of

various compilers, annotators, and note-takers--the true Church of

England "sermon-tasters"--such as Lady Brooke and Lady Halkett, is

less indicative of learning than of a pronounced religious bias. And

in prose, as in verse, the free and natural expression of spiritual

experience was not characteristic of the age.

That more of this controversial and religious writing was not

published can hardly be counted a loss to literature. Religious

meditations quicken the inner life, and the effort to put religious

emotions and beliefs into some literary form must contribute to

a more active mentality, but the resultant printed page is not

necessarily of permanent interest. The ardors and acrimonies, the

labyrinthine twisting of arguments, the niceties of interpretation,

the array of authorities, are all a leaden weight to the modern

reader. And most meditations on virtues and vices are hardly more

stimulating. But we cannot pass the great mass of these religious

writings without noting what a new impression they give us of social

England, especially in the second half of the seventeenth century.

A student of Restoration comedy sees the court of England in its

most frivolous and morally repellent aspect. But these women whose

minds were so set on religion were all members of the aristocracy.

Margaret Blagge, Anne Killigrew, and Anne Kingsmill, women of the

most sincere and ardent piety, were in intimate association with

the courts of Charles II and James II. Lady Pakington, Lady Brooke,

Lady Halkett, Lady Masham, Lady Russell, Mary Astell, Lady Elizabeth

Hastings, and, later, Lady Huntington, were all by rank or especial

opportunity in the highest and most exclusive social circles and so

in contact with the profligacy of the court. Their extreme assiduity

in all matters of religion, in church attendance, in private prayer,

in meditation, in self-examination, in their austere moral standards,

were a violent reaction from the evil life about them. In the homes

and small social circles where their influence could be felt was

being prepared a body of moral indignation, a desire for uprightness

and purity of life, that gave to Jeremy Collier's attack on the stage

in 1698 so overwhelming a response, and that was the sustaining force

back of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners in the late

seventeenth and early eighteenth century.

[Sidenote: Work of women compared with contemporary work by men]

The writing done by women between 1660 and 1760 is more impressive

from its amount and variety than from any high excellence of

its component parts. A mere calling of the great names of the

period--Milton, Bunyan, Dryden, Swift, Pope, Addison, and Steele--is

adequate to show that no woman of the time is comparable to these men

in mental stamina and energy, or in deft literary manipulation. The

dramatic work by women presents no such brilliant social satire as we

find in Etherege and Wycherley, no wit so penetrating and sparkling

as in Congreve's _Way of the World_, no humor so innocent and likable

as in Steele's _Tender Husband_. In poetry Orinda and Ardelia make

but a poor showing beside the giants of the day. There are no women

writers on literary criticism even approaching the mastery of Dryden.

There are no essayists with the light touch and social ease of

Addison and Steele. There are no novelists to be ranked with Defoe,

Richardson, and Fielding.