In the Chair, for the Education of such as have a peculiar talent for novels, I
would have the works of the learned authors Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Manly read
as the standard of that Science; and as impiety and smut are considerable
branches of it, I would have those passages, which are the most remarkable for
either, particularly enforced to the fair students. I know no one more happy for
a communicative faculty, in that part of literature, and therefore none likely to
make a more able Professor of it, than the witty Saphira, that surprising Genius
the first essay of whose incomparable pen was closed in the sprightly
parentheses of bawdy and blasphemy.
The Lady, you must know, is a freethinker by profession; but most firmly believes
there is a God, because folks will have it there is none: though she can with a
becoming ease talk of him in as careless a manner as she does of the Devil,
whom she looks upon as a mere fiction, and wishes she had nothing to trouble
her more than the Fears of Hell.
For she is very sure God is too good to make such a troublesome being, or such
a dismal place. As she has, besides these accomplishments, a tolerable taste for
poetry she may give her pretty scholars a little tincture of it by reading to them
Mrs. Barber's "Family Poems", unless she should think it more instructive to
paraphrase Mrs. Behn's piece upon Enjoyment.
If I mistake not, Sophia disclaims, in the name of her whole sex, the privilege of
interfering in matters of Divinity: though she still contends hard for their natural
aptness for it. What commission she may have from her pretty clients to give
up so considerable a claim I know not. However, I am absolutely of opinion,
that it becomes them full as well to hold forth on the subject of religion in a
Church as in their drawing-rooms; in a pulpit as at a tea-board; and both are as
graceful in them as riding astride would be. What schism ever rended the
Church, which they have not had a principal hand in?
What error ever crept in among Christians which they have not been industrious
to forward? What point too abstruse in religion which they are not for deciding? If
they must be Chamber-Divines, why do they not even go farther and seize the
Church and pulpit too? Why do they not copy after that female pattern of
consistency, Dromonia? This fleshly Tabernacle of Spirit hath wisely thrown off all
idle forms, to preach the outward man into the arms of the inward one.
Convinced of the Light within her, she hath not buried it under a bushel; at her
levee, but has placed it on a candlestick in the House of the Lord, that it may give
Light unto all that are in it. And the Lord in return hath so replenished her with the
Light of his Knowledge, that she expoundeth the Scriptures without ceasing,
and bursteth not, albeit she knoweth not how to read them. He hath made her a
picklock of Wisdom, and given unto her a key to open the greatest mysteries of
the revelations, and show that there is no mystery in them; to unfold the
prophets as she unfoldeth her apron; and to expose the evangelists as she
exposeth herself.
Nay he hath given her a two-edged tongue for a snare, two rolling eyes for a bait;
he hath added claws unto her fingers, and behold she goeth forth like unto a
fisher of men, and spreadeth her snowy arms like unto a net. But the Spirit
bloweth where it lifteth; and the Sons of Flesh will not bite at the bait, nor be
caught in the net.
However unsuccessful the industry of this female Divine is, I think she is a
living proof of the ability of that sex for the study of Theology. And therefore I
am not against their erecting a Chair to teach, and appointing her the Professor.
But I can by no means give into their puzzling their little delicate heads with the
more intricate study of philosophy of any sort. Every branch of that is built
upon reason, and reason they have nothing to do with.
However as they have some faint glimmerings of it, I don't pretend to say there will
be any harm in their gaining a little superficial smatch of some trifles dependent
on philosophy:
such as a few mysterious terms, a small number of detached sentences, and here
and there a trite experiment. These will suffice to make any woman as learned
as she need be, and these any woman may pick up without much cost.
I was lately, entertained by one of your very learned Ladies in her study, where
I had the opportunity, during a short space she left me alone there, to take a
survey of her library, and the choice collection which had contributed to make
her such a scholar. As I found it very curious I was at the pains of writing a
catalogue, which I shall here transcribe for the benefit of all the fair lovers of
polite learning. So far am I from envying them any opportunity of improving
their talents:
Her books then stood in the following order.
"The Atalantis", "A Common-prayer-book", "Rochester's Poems", "Preparation
for Communion", "Love's Last Shift", "Meditations of Death", "A Patch Box",
"Paradise Lost", "The Art of being Easy at all Times", "Behn's Novels",
"Whitefield's Sermons", "Ovid's Art of Love", "Advice of a Mother to her Son
and Daughter", "Petronius in English", A Bible, "A Paper of Pins", "A Theeand-
Thou Almanack", "The Moral Philosopher", "The Pilgrim's Progress",
"Geography of Children", "The Tatlers", "A Pocket Looking Glass", "Dacier's
Homer", "Persian Tales", "The Merry Jester", "Essay on Midwifery" . . . in a
vacancy lay Swift's "Dressing-Room", with a housewife upon it stuffed with
silks, and a paper of Spanish wool, "The Plain-Dealer", "Law's Serious Call to a
devout Life", "Tale of a Tub", "Dyche's Spelling-Book", "The Whole Duty of
Man", "The Art of getting Beautiful Children" . . .
After having given an account of her library, it is fit I should give some idea of
its fair owner. She has read a great deal, and has a very good memory; can talk
incoherently in five several languages; has translated and even composed; is a
critic in prose and an author in verse. But with all this deal of learning and
memory, she neither knows how to set her cap straight, nor can remember to
buckle her shoes. . . . It must be owned, that if this Lady is a scholar she is a
very sluttish one; and the much she reads is to little purpose, since it can make
nothing better than a bookish slattern. . . . For my part, after seeing such an
instance of the ill consequence of literature in women, I cannot but be of
Juvenel's mind, as Mr. Dryden translates him,
That of all plagues, the greatest is untold;
The book-learned wife in Greek and Latin bold.
The Critic-Dame, who at her table sits;
Homer and Virgil quotes, and weighs their wits;
And pities Dido's agonizing fits.
She has so far the ascendant of the board,
The prating pedant puts not in one word:
The man of law is nonplussed, in his suit;
Nay every other female tongue is mute.
Hammers and beating anvils, you would swear,
And vulcan with his whole militia there.
Tabors and trumpets cease;
for she alone Is able to redeem the labouring moon.
Even wit's a burden, where it talks too long:
But she, who has no continence of tongue,
Should walk in breeches, and should wear a beard;
And mix among the philosophic herd.
O what midnight curse has he,
whose side Is pestered 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,
Who climbs the grammar tree, distinctly knows
Where noun, and verb, and participle grows;
Corrects her country neighbour; and a-bed
For breaking priscian's breaks her husband's head.
Neither Juvenal nor I deny that women may acquire some superficial learning:
all we contend for is that it is ever ill bestowed upon them, inasmuch as it
renders them useless to their own sex, and a nuisance to ours. Of which the
Lady whose portraiture I have just given is a signal proof. If Sophia should
bring me a few instances out of the common rule, what will she get by it? I
grant that Greece has shown its Sappho; Rome her Cornelia; France has
produced Dacier; Holland has brought forth a Schurman; Italy a Doctress; and,
more blessed than all, England now boasts an Eliza and a Sophia: what then?
Are seventy instances, though seventy times seven times doubled, in upwards of
five thousand seven years, sufficient to prove a general capacity in women for
knowledge and learning? Would my fair antagonist think horses a fit party for
her at quadrille, if I should instance some of that species which have been dabs
at put? Or would she like to be confined to the conversation of parrots because
many of them can talk a great deal? No: neither can we deem the women fit
associates for us in the study of sciences, because a few have had a tolerable
smattering of them. But let us proceed to view them in another light in the
following question.
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