What Capacity the Women have for Sciences.
I cannot help being of the same mind with the Duke of Britany quoted by
Montagne in his essays, and every one in their right senses must think with
us,
that a woman is learned enough in conscience if she can distinguish
between
her husband's shirt and his breeches. A severer imprecation could scarce be
uttered against the lovely sex than to wish them science-mad. 'Tis their
pretty
fluency in nonsense, and their bewitching confidence in ignorance, which
give
their charms the power of pleasing us in the soft moments, when unbending
the
mind from study we seek in their native folly a respite from sense and
speculation.
But why should we put them to the pains of learning to entertain us with
that nonsense and ignorance in several languages? Why should they be
suffered to distract their poor tender brains with hard words and technical
terms:
is it not enough that they can clip and carve their own mother tongue into a
variety of dialects, without obliging them to confound others into a kind of
mixed jargon, as unintelligible as the conversation of negroes?
I don't however pretend to dispute their natural Genius for words. It is
undoubtedly to them we owe the preservation of that ancient and venerable
language, called gibberish, which had long since been utterly lost but for
their
care and assiduity in cultivating it. It would therefore be highly ungrateful
not
to give them the praise due to their excellent talents in this branch of
learning,
especially since we reap such important advantages from their excellence in
it.
Without the instructions of those pretty jabbering creatures, we should be
at a
loss to converse with our own infants. Our ignorance would run us into the
dilemma of either frighting them with plain English, or reducing them to the
necessity of learning it much sooner than the usual time, and even before
they
had gone through the politer language of the nursery.
How vulgar would it be to hear an infant say, "Pray mother give your little
boy a plum!" Is it not infinitely more elegant to say, Pay Mamma div eeky boy
a pum." And how should a child ever be able to learn the latter preferably to
the former, if the women were not more industrious in teaching them than
we are? Besides, we
are such natural dunces when put out of the road of sense, that we should
never
succeed in making children reach the eloquent unintelligible so soon as
they do
under their present teachers.
For my own part I have been often in a nursery of young children, and,
though ever so attentive to their conversation with one another, could
understand no more of their meaning than if they had been so many
Hottentots. Though every woman who came in, I found, was perfectly versed
in their language. Well for me and them they were so, or I am afraid I should
often have done mischief, but particularly once. Being where two or three
children were at play, on a sudden I heard one of them cry, and more good
natured than wise was offering to pacify it with these barbarous words,
Pretty thing, what do you cry for?
But the children were terribly frightened, and for aught I know had all fallen
into fits at the cannibal sound, if a learned woman in the room had not
interpreted my meaning in familiar gibberish, which it seems runs thus:
Peety sing! did um ky, did um vets it, sall um beat paw paw man, div me a
bow den, dare, doe paw man doe. These mellifluous sounds quite
tranquillized the little peevish gentry, and finished to convince me of how
great importance it is to mankind that this feminine science should be kept
up.
So far then from thinking the Ladies incapable of teaching at least this
branch of
knowledge, I am for moving the legislature for the establishment of a female
university for that purpose. And if I were not afraid of offending my fair
antagonist's great modesty, I would, with all due submission to higher
powers,
propose her for Chancellor. One of the professors I have already in my eye;
'tis
a Lady who keeps a female academy in Blackfriars. I was agreeably surprized,
some time ago, to find her excellent talents, for such a purpose, displayed on
the
very board over her door.
Where was written in golden capitals these elegant words, Yong Laydis taut
to spill and imbrawther. Which by the nicest of critics is translated thus,
"Young Ladies taught to spell and embroider." But I have since had the
satisfaction to hear that this piece of antique learning has brought her such
a number of scholars, that she thinks it now beneath her to keep out a
board, convinced of the old proverb, that Good wine needs no bush.
Nevertheless I would not have gibberish the sole affair of this university. No, I
would have some taught to lisp a little English, and write it, however askew
and
unintelligibly. If I am not misinformed there is a Lady now at work upon a new
English grammar for the use of the fair sex; which in all probability will take
very much, as her chief view has been to save unnecessary trouble, by
reducing
the work to a very concise compass. Still she has spared no pains to make it
of
universal use to the women, and by the strength of her Genius, and
continued
application, she has abridged the whole art of grammar to four parts of
speech,
lisping, mispelling, noise, and nonsense.
If my scheme should take effect, what a considerable figure would not this
Lady make in an university chair?
I can by no means however consent to the women's losing any time in the
study
of the law. To complete a man a knave, it is absolutely necessary to make a
lawyer of him. But every woman from her cradle is by nature a lawyer in this
sense. They have all such finished talents for lying, dissembling, cajoling,
undermining, equivocating and barefacedly cheating, that there is no law
profane or sacred which they cannot argue away or brazen out. 'Tis rather
than
a woeful shame their knowledge of this kind has no bridle put to it, than any
ways likely they should improve us or themselves by any farther advances.
What a disgrace to her sex, and what a bane to ours, is Lolia, with all her
jurisprudence.
There is no tricking attorney she has not out-tricked, no sharping counsellor
she has not bit, and no both-sided sergeant she has not outwitted.
There's not a court in England but she is versed in the practice of, and not a
quirk in it but she has made use of. She has cozened a bribe-worthy Judge
into
open perversion of the law, and bilked him after all of the premium of his
iniquity. She has forged away an eminent knave's ears without risking her
own,
and married away the estate of an honest dupe of rank from his lawful issue,
to
squander it away upon her own lawless mongrel. Her greatest praise is the
having utterly ruined many, and greatly injured all she ever had to do with.
The never having built upon one honest plea the numberless suits she has
had upon her hands; and the having gained many causes without using any
honest means; though she never lost a single one for want of any knavish
artifice in her power.
To sum up the litigious merit of this Machiavelian Lady in few words; without
ever poring over Littleton or Coke, there is no law so plain which could any
ways concern her, but what she has baffled by the sanction of the laws
themselves. So idle and needless is it for that sex to study the chicaneries of
the
law; so easy is it for them without study to be perfect in the practice, and so
pernicious is this perfection in them to all who have any concerns with
them? I
would therefore, for Lolia's sake, have all matters of law banished the female
province under pain of death.
Indeed they may, if they think proper, erect a faculty of their own to give a
grace to the mischief they do with their nostrums. To qualify them for
physicians there is nothing wanting but a little solemnity of phiz, the use of
spectacles, and a profuseness of unintelligible jargon; though the latter, thanks
to their propitious stars, their natural glibness of tongue, and fondness for hard
words, gives them an admirable disposition for.
For history I think they have an uncommon capacity: at least one of the most
noted productions in that kind is thought to be the work of a female Genius.
For though a Reverend Bishop, in compliance with the modesty of its real
author, was so kind to lend his name to the celebrated history of his own times,
it is believed by many that this Chaplains old grandmother had the chief hand in
it. In politics and novels too they are remarkable for excelling: their propensity
to intriguing qualifies them for the latter, and the former they are assisted in by
curiosity and the gift of tattle.
Novilia is an excellent newspaper, which neither tires your eyes, nor sounds
your purse: your ears are at all the expense of your information. There is not a
thing happens or can happen but she knows or invents, unless there be too much
probability in it. She can fettle the affairs of all Europe with as great facility as
the grounds in her coffee-pot; can carry on war with equal resolution; and has
actually taken more ships from Spain since the rupture, than Admiral Haddock
had time to take; nay than that nation has to lose.
I was informed of the convention by her two hours before I read it in a Hague
letter; and had from her some months ago the joyful news of Cuba being taken by
Admiral Vernon; which if it was not true, was very near being so; but luckily for the
Spaniards the Admiral had not yet quitted the Downs. She has often
communicated to me the important conferences a certain great monarch had in
bed with his wife.
And if she is not always right in her accounts it is owing to the impolitic
proceedings of the ministers of state. For to give her her due, in telling you
what is done, she only means to acquaint you with what she thinks ought to be
done. I would by all means therefore have a chair erected in the female
university, for the instruction of such women as discover a Genius for politics:
but that they may be of some use to the public, I would humbly propose to the
Government to take off the duty from all other newspapers, and lay it upon
these living Gazettes.
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