The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Learned Lady in England 1650-1760, by Myra Reynolds

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

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

[458] Letters of Lady Russell, vol. II, p. 2 n.

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

[460] Winchester: Life of Wesley, p. 179.

[461] Hearne's Collections, vol. IX, p. 185 (1914).

[462] Ibid., vol. IX, p. 277.

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

[464] Hearne's Collections, vol. IX, p. 282.

[465] Hearne's Collections, vol. IX, p. 304.

[466] Letters of Eminent Persons, vol. II, p. 118.

[467] Letters of Eminent Persons, vol. II, p. 147 n.

[468] Ibid., vol. II, p. 123.

[469] Ibid., vol. II, p. 147 n.

[470] Ibid., vol. II, p. 123 n.

[471] Letters of Eminent Persons, vol. II, p. 140.

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

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

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

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

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

[477] For further accounts of Thomas Amory see The Gentleman's Magazine, November, 1788 (vol. LVIII, p. 1062), where there is a protest from Robert Amory concerning erroneous statements about his father in the St. James's Chronicle of November 6 (cf. vol. LIX, pp. 107, 322, 372); General Biographical Dictionary (1798); Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary; Hazlitt's Round Table (1817); Retrospective Review (vol. VI, p. 100, 1st Series, 1822); edition of Amory's Works (1825); Notes and Queries, 1st Series, vol. XI, p. 58; Saturday Review, May 12, 1877. From these references it becomes apparent that Amory has attracted considerable attention, but that there is a wide divergence of opinion as to whether he was insane or a genius.

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

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

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

[481] Miles, Dudley: The Influence of Molière on Restoration Comedy, chap. III.

[482] Ibid., p. 62.

[483] Ibid., p. 68.

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

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

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

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

[491] Curll: No Fool like Wits, Prologue.

[492] Seigneur de Gomberville brought out his Polexandre in four volumes, quarto, in 1632. More famous were La Calprenède's romances, Cléopâtre, Cassandre, and Pharamond, and the works of the Scudéry brother and sister (the sister being the chief writer) who wrote Ibrahim, Artemène, Clélie, and Almahide. All of these except Polexandre were published and some of them republished in France between 1641 and 1661. Their interminable length may be illustrated by Artemène which was in ten volumes, a total of 6679 pages.

[493] Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, passim.

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

[495] The Ladies' Calling, part II, section II.

[496] Shadwell, Thomas: Bury-Fair, Act III, Sc. 1.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[503] The Adventures of Jack Smart and The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless are in Colman's list.

[504] The Reward of Constancy (possibly Shebeare's The Happy Pair; or, Virtue and Constancy rewarded, 1771); The Fatal Connexion, by Mrs. Fogarty (1773); The Mistakes of the Heart, by Treyssac de Vergy (1769); The Delicate Distress (1769) and The Gordian Knot (1769), by Mrs. Griffith; The Memoirs of Lady Woodford (1771); Peregrine Pickle, by Smollett (1751); Tears of Sensibility, translated from French by John Murdock (1773); Humphrey Clinker, by Smollett (1771); Sentimental Journey, by Sterne (1768); Roderick Random, by Smollett (1748; eighth ed. 1770); The Innocent Adultery (translation of Scarron's L'Adultère Innocente, in 1722-29 and with later editions); Lord Aimsworth (1773); The Man of Feeling, by Mackenzie (1771). For full comment on these books, and the others in Lydia's list see Major Dramas of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (edited by George Henry Nettleton), Introduction, pp. lxviii-lxxvii.

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

[509] Strickland, Agnes: Lives of the Queens of England, under "Anne of Denmark."