P. 207. _Macaulay._--'Neither we nor divinity require much learning in
women; Francis, Duke of Brittany, son to John V, when he was spoke unto
for a marriage between him and Isabel, a daughter of Scotland, and some
told him she was meanly brought up, and without any instruction of
learning, answered he loved her the better for it, and that a woman was
wise enough if she could but make a difference between the shirt and
doublet of her husband's.'--MONTAIGNE.
P. 208. _Ruskin._--Compare Johnson's advice on page 181.
P. 209. _Addison._--Virgil _Aeneid_, vii. 805:
Unused to spinning, in the loom unskilled.--DRYDEN.
The _Virgil_ of Ogilby, or Ogilvy, originally a dancing-master, was
published in 1649, and was the first complete English translation
(Ogilby is mentioned by Pope, see page 313); _Cassandra_, _Cleopatra_,
_Astraea_, _The Grand Cyrus_ and _Clelia_ were French romances
translated into English. Sidney called his pastoral romance _The
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia_; Sherlock's _Discourse on Death_ passed
through forty editions; _The Fifteen Comforts_, a translation of a
French satirical work of the fifteenth century; Sir Richard Baker's
_Chronicle of the Kings of England from the time of the Romans'
Government unto the Death of King James_ (1641); Mrs. Manley was tried
for libelling the nobility in her _Secret Memoirs and Manners of several
Persons of Quality of both Sexes from the New Atlantis_ (1707); the
Fielding referred to is Beau Fielding, tried at the Old Bailey in 1706
for a bigamous marriage with the Duchess of Cleveland.
In Addison's time, Dr. Johnson wrote, 'in the female world, any
acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured.'
P. 211. _Addison._--Hor. 2 _Ep._ ii. 61:
What would you have me do,
When out of twenty I can please not two?--
One likes the pheasant's wing, and one the leg;
The vulgar boil, the learned roast an egg;
Hard task, to hit the palate of such guests.--POPE.
The _Vindication_ was the work of Charles Leslie, the non-juror;
_Pharamond_, a romance dealing with the Frankish empire, by La
Calprenède; _Cassandra_ is wrong--the French work, also by La
Calprenède, was _Cassandre_ (the son of Antipater); _All for Love_,
Dryden's play; _Sophonisba_, by Lee; _The Innocent Adultery_, the second
name of Sotherne's _The Fatal Marriage_; _Mithridates_ was by Lee, who
also wrote _The Rival Queens, or The Death of Alexander the Great_, and
_Theodosius_; _Aureng-Zebe_, Dryden's tragedy. (T. Arnold's _Addison_:
Clarendon Press).
P. 213. _Sheridan._--The first reference to a circulating library given
in the _Oxford English Dictionary_ is an advertisement, June 12,
1742--'Proposals for erecting a Public Circulating Library in London.'
Joseph Knight, in the Oxford edition of Sheridan's _Plays_, annotates
this passage fully. Dillingham, sending his Latin translation of
Herbert's _Porch_ to Sancroft, says: 'I know that if these should be
once published, it would be too late then to prevent, if not to correct
a fault; I therefore shall take it as a great kindness if you will
please to put on your critical naile, and to give your impartial censure
on these papers while they are yet in the tireing roome; and I shall
endeavour to amend them with one great or more lesser blotts.' Sancroft
replies: 'I greedily took your original in one hand, and your copy in
the other, of which I had suffered one nayl (though it pretends not to
be a critical one) to grow ever since you bespoke its service.'