The Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760

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Houghton Mifflin, 1920 - 489 pages
 

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Page 205 - Learning, if she has a real taste for it, will not only make her contented, but happy in it. No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
Page 311 - I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves.
Page 153 - Alas! a woman that attempts the pen. Such an intruder on the rights of men. Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem'd, The fault, can by no vertue be redeem'd.
Page 173 - An English-Saxon Homily on the Birth-day of St. Gregory, anciently used in the English-Saxon Church, giving an account of the Conversion of the English from Paganism to Christianity; translated into modern English, with Notes, &c.
Page 126 - I thank your ladyship for the information concerning the Methodist preachers ; their doctrines are most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with impertinence and disrespect towards their superiors in perpetually endeavouring to level all ranks and do away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told that you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. This is highly offensive and insulting, and I cannot but wonder that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much...
Page 348 - She had a true taste of wit and good sense, both in poetry and prose, and was a perfect good critic of style : neither was it easy to find a more proper or impartial judge, whose advice an author might better rely on...
Page 45 - Calvinism, it can easily be demonstrated that during the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century...
Page 330 - ... that most of them had been got together, either because she had heard them praised, or because she had seen the authors of them. Among several that I examined, I very well remember these that follow : Ogleby's Virgil. Dryden's JuvenaL Cassandra. Cleopatra. Astraea. Sir Isaac Newton's Works. The Grand Cyrus ; with a pin stuck in one of the middle leaves.
Page 71 - Ruthin being prisoners in the Tower, and addicting themselves to chemistry, she suffered them to make their rare experiments at her cost, partly to comfort and divert the poor prisoners, and partly to gain the knowledge of their experiments, and the medicines to help such poor people as were not able to seek physicians. By these means she acquired a great deal of skill, which was very profitable to many all her life.
Page 128 - the most ridiculous thing that ever was wrote, but yet she and her Lord mightily pleased with it ; and she, at the end, made her respects to the players from her box, and did give them thanks. There is as much expectation of her coming to Court, that so people may come to see her, as if it were the Queen of Sheba : l but I lost my labour, for she did not come this night.

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