abandon themselves to Ignorance, contenting themselves to sit down in darkness, as if they either had not Reason, or it were not capable, by being rightly cultivated, of bringing them into the Light. But these Persons have in themselves an answer to all their Cavils against Learning, and their Punishment: viz., the Punishment of their Ignorance."

Was the case for the higher education of women ever more vigorously or convincingly put?

Elizabeth Elstob abandoned the edition of the Psalms of which Thoresby wrote. Space forbids more than a passing reference to another essay in Anglo-Saxon scholarship, which was less abortive, but of which the success was quite incommensurate with the importance. This was an edition of those Homilies of Aelfric the Grammarian, which are one of the most noteworthy monuments of Old-English literature. They were to be treated as she had already treated the Homily of S. Gregory. We hear of the progress of the work from herself, from Thoresby, and from Hickes. Hickes had the highest opinion of her "incredible industry," and the value of her notes. In the early spring of 1713 she was at Oxford, and Hickes besought for her the help of Thomas Hearne, the SubLibrarian of the Bodleian. Hearne, in spite of the genuineness of his scholarship, was blinded by prejudice; he had already denounced the Homily of S. Gregory as "a Farrago of Vanity," and more than hinted that the authoress's name on the title-page summed up her share in the volume. When "Mrs. Elstob" came to Oxford he contented himself with coldly wishing her good success, and greater encouragement than he had met with. The difficulty was to get such a work published. Elizabeth showed no lack of energy. She wrote twice to Lord Oxford, the Prime Minister, asking for Royal help to

wards the undertaking; and in June, 1714, the help was granted. Printing was begun at the Oxford University Press. The work was to be a splendid folio, and five or more of the Homilies were actually printed off. But support proved inadequate, and the enterprise had to be given up. Only one or two copies of what was printed exist, of which one is fortunately in the British Museum.

One other work of distinct mark belonging to this strenuous period attained completion. In 1715 the last year, alas! of Elizabeth Elstob's happy sheltered life in London-there issued from the press a thin quarto volume, entitled: The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue, First given in English, with an Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities. Being very useful towards the understanding our ancient English Poets and other Writers. By Elizabeth Elstob. Our fair Saxon, then, has produced the first Anglo-Saxon grammar in English! Of its place in the temple of scholarship it is for scholars to speak; but any reader can feel the force, as undeniable as that of wind or hailstones, of the Apology by way of preface. In all that Elizabeth Elstob wrote, there is an evident selfrespect which obliges her to recognize the singularity of her intellectual position, but which never degenerates into conceited self-consciousness. The preface is in the form of a letter to Hickes. The authoress, in this undertaking, felt herself a champion, not, this time, of the right of woman to the higher learning, but of Anglo-Saxon as a noble and vital element of the English tongue. Her object was "to show the polite Men of our Age that the Language of their Forefathers is neither so barren nor barbarous as they affirm with equal Ignorance and Boldness." The more she thought of this ignorance and boldness, the fiercer and more forcible she became. "These Gentlemen's ill Treat

ment of our Mother Tongue has led me into a stile not so agreeable to the Mildness of our Sex, or the usual manner of my Behaviour." Love of Saxon and fidelity to it were for this scholar a phase of patriotism.

In

Nothing could be more vigorous than Elizabeth's attitude and controversial method. What she chiefly fights for is the virtue of monosyllables in English. They were a special bequest of the Anglo-Saxons; and it was the fashion for critics to despise the gift. With the ruck of the despisers of short words Elizabeth will have little to do. She leaves "these Pedagogues to huff and swagger in the height of all their Arrogance." But the fortunes of war had given her a great antagonist. May, 1712, Swift had published his Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue, one of the most interesting indications of the literary sensitiveness of the age. Swift found in the current style "a perpetual disposition to shorten words," which he regarded as "a tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from whom we are descended." He half seriously proposed that it should be counteracted by giving "the women" a kind of commission to refine and fix the language, it being, in his opinion, the tendency of feminine speech to suppress consonants, while it was from the suppression of vowels that the language was suffering. "More than once," Swift wrote, "when some of both sexes were in company, I have persuaded two or three of each .. to write down a number of letters joined together. and upon reading this gibberish we have found that which the men had wrote... to sound like high Dutch; and the other, by the women, like Italian, abounding in vowels and liquids." And he concluded:-"I cannot help thinking that since they (the ladies) have been left out of all meet

ings, except parties at play or where worse designs were carried on, our conversation has much degenerated."

Elizabeth Elstob liked neither Swift's theory nor his pleasantry; and she did not shirk an encounter with the great man in her preface. "I cannot but

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think it great Pity," she wrote, "that in our Considerations for Refinement of the English Tongue, so little regard is had to Antiquity. This indeed is allow'd by an ingenious Person, who hath lately made some Proposals. . . . I never could find myself shock'd with the Harshness of those Languages, which grates so much in the Ears of those that never heard them. I never perceiv'd in the Consonants any Hardness but such as was necessary to afford Strength, like the Bones in a human Body, which yield it Firmness and Support. So that the worst that can be said on this occasion of our Forefathers is, that they Spoke as they Fought, like Men. The Author of the Proposal may think this but an ill Return for the soft things he has said of the Ladies; but I think it Gratitude at least to make the Return, by doing justice to the Gentlemen. I will not contradict the Relation of the ingenious Experiment of his Vocal Ladies, tho' I could give him some Instances to the contrary. . . . Perhaps that Gentleman may be told that I have a Northern Correspondence and a Northern Ear, probably not so fine as he may think his own to be, yet a little musical."

For the moment, Swift had met his match. Turning from him the preface proceeds to offer a brilliant defence of the monosyllabic and Anglo-Saxon element in English poetry, showing wide reading, fine taste, and excellent dialectic skill.

The Grammar was dedicated to the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, the friend of learning and the learned. A personal introduction

took place about the same time; and Elizabeth Elstob, now thirty-two, might have seemed in a fair way to both fame and happiness. But now William Elstob died; and his death brought to his sister a lot of poverty, loneliness and struggle in uncongenial fields of labor, a lot which she had to endure for more than twenty years, until she was well on in her fifties, with old age close at hand.

Of those years there are few memorials, but such as exist are poignantly significant. There seems no reason to doubt that Elizabeth made her quarters in London for some years, though where, or in what surroundings, there is nothing to show. Abstruse scholarly enterprises were out of the question; for her daily bread she had, for a time at least, to depend on the kindness of another. The benefactor was Smalridge, Bishop of Bristol and Dean of Christ Church, whom Addison styled "the most candid and agreeable of all Bishops." Year after year the gifted woman, with all her capacities and potentialities, had to wait and hope for assistance and encouragement that never came, suffering, we may be sure, In addition to the stings of poverty, the painful glow of hurt pride. At last she made up her mind-what choice had she?-to keep some kind of school. She fixed upon Evesham as a promising field, and went thither accordingly. At this point an incident occurred which seemed to show that the Fates needed her no more. She put her manuscripts and books in the hands of a friend for greater safety. To her surprise and grief she heard soon after that the trustee of the precious property had gone to the West Indies; and neither of her nor of the manuscripts and books did Elizabeth Elstob ever hear again. Well might she write in 1748:-"It is at least thirty years since this happened to me. It has made me very unhappy ever

...

since, which, if my Friends were sensible of, I must believe they would avoid all occasions of bringing it to my remembrance."

After some further waiting and want, she set up a day school at Evesham. Each pupil at first paid her one groat a week; so we must hope that her pupils were many. For a long time she toiled on with this rate of emolument, "not without designs," as she afterwards wrote, which, however, were "unhappily hindered by a necessity of getting my bread, which, with much difficulty, labor and ill-health, I have endeavored to do for many years, with very indifferent success."

Early in the thirties things began to look a little better. A stickfast stone cannot help gathering moss; and Mistress Elstob began to make acquaintances and friends. Even in 1735 she was able to say that she had met with a great deal of friendship and generosity at Evesham. It was in some respects a lucky neighborhood for her. At Chipping Campden lived George Ballard, who, being the son of

a monthly nurse, and himself no higher in the social scale than the rank of a ladies' tailor, was yet an intellectual enthusiast and an Anglo-Saxon scholar, and who gravitated, at the mature age of forty-four, to Oxford, and a bedelship there. A rapprochement between Elizabeth Elstob and such a man was natural and easy. At first they exchanged letters, and then a meeting was negotiated with some difficulty. Ballard invited Mrs. Elstob to Campden. But she replied: "The confinement of a school is such that were I to be absent from it one week I should be as long getting a school again as I was before." It would be better for Ballard to come and see her. "You will see a poor little contemptible old maid, generally vapor'd up to the ears, but very chearfull when she meets with an agreeable conversation."

Again, at Stanton, in Gloucestershire, lived a schoolmaster of French extraction, named Capon or Chapone, whose wife, née Sarah Kirkham, was a woman of individuality and influence, so that to be a protégé of Mrs. Chapone's was no small matter. Not far off was the home of Bernard Granville, the brother of Lord Lansdowne, the father of the delightfully epistolary Mary Granville, who became first Mrs. Pendarves, and then Mrs. Patrick Delany. Mrs. Pendarves and Sarah Chapone ("Sally Kirkham") were great friends. These three, Ballard, Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs. Pendarves, laid their heads and hearts together to help the poor schoolmistress immured at Evesham. Various more or less promising things were tried without success. One thing was certain, namely, that Mrs. Elstob could undertake nothing additional to her school work. "I must acquaint you," she wrote to Ballard, "that I have no time to do anything till six at night, and am then frequently so fatigu'd that I am oblig'd to lye down for an hour or two to rest my self and recover my spirits." The headship of a Charity School was promising, but Mrs. Elstob lost it through delay in correspondence. With reference to this opening she wrote to Ballard on March 7th, 1736, a letter from which we must quote: "There are some things to be taught in such a School which I cannot pretend to; I mean the two Accomplishments of a good Housewife, Spinning and Knitting. Not that I wd be thought to be above doing any Commendable Work proper for my Sex, for I have continually in my thoughts the Glorious Character of a Virtuous Woman. 'She seeketh Wool and Flax and worketh willing with her hand.' And as an instance of the truth of this, the Gown I had on when you gave me the Favour of a Visit, was part of it my own spinning, and I wear no Stockings

but what I knitt myself. Yet I do not think myself proficient enough in these Arts to become a teacher of them." Ballard had objected to the humble station of a Charity School. "As to your objection on the Meanness of the Scholars, I assure you, Sr, I should think it as glorious an Employment to instruct those Poor Children as to teach the Children of the Greatest Monarch." She expected the negotiations to fall through. "I am so inur'd to disappointments that I expect nothing else, and I receive these with as much easiness as others do their greatest prosperity... I often compare myself to poor John Tucker, whose life I read when a girl in Winstanley's Lives of the Poets, which affected me so much that I cannot forget it yet. He is there describ'd to have been an Honest, Industrious poor Man, but notwithstanding his indefatigable industry, as the Author writes, no Butter would stick on his Bread."

Bad health was now added to poverty. Mrs. Elstob's eyesight was failing; her memory was bad; her handwriting became conspicuously tremulous. "I assure you, Sr," she wrote to her faithful correspondent at Campden, "these long winter Evenings to me are very melancholy ones, for when my School is done, my little ones leave me incapable of either reading, writing, or thinking, for their noise is not out of my head till I fall asleep, which is often too late." In 1737 she had "a Fever," which laid her aside from work for some time. In spite of everything she maintained a habit of steady cheerfulness.

At a date as to which the evidence is uncertain, Mrs. Chapone wrote a circular letter to her friends, calling attention to so "crying a need for help," and this letter was brought to the notice of Queen Caroline. The Queen was much touched, and at once gave substantial help, the exact amount of

which is doubtful.3

Whatever it may have been, the Queen's death in 1737 dried up this particular source of benefit.

Happily, another soon appeared. One of Mrs. Pendarves' greatest friends was Lady Margaret Harley, granddaughter of the first Earl of Oxford, who married the Second Duke of Portland in 1734. In 1738 the Portlands had three children. They divided their time between their London house in Whitehall and the Duke's country seat of Bulstrode, on the southeastern slope of the Chilterns, about three miles from Beaconsfield, in Bucks. Here wealth and the charm of the Duchess made a home as delightful as it was sumptuous; here, Mrs. Pendarves was a frequent inmate, and her many letters from Bulstrode, as well as those of Mrs. Montagu, give a charming picture of the country life of the English aristocracy in the eighteenth century.

Young as her children were, the Duchess of Portland was looking out for a governess for them; and Elizabeth Elstob's Gloucestershire wellwishers were doing all they could to get the post for her. There were soon busy negotiations between the Granvilles and the Portlands; even Lord Oxford, the grandfather of the children, was keenly scrutinizing the qualifications of the future governess. She was expected to teach the principles of religion and virtue, to speak, read and understand English well, to cultivate the minds of the children (the eldest was not yet four), to keep them company in the house, and, when her health would permit, to take the air with them.

By Christmas, 1738, all was settled. Mrs. Elstob was to have £30 a year, reckoned from Christmas Day, though

According to Mrs. Pendarves' version of the story, the Queen gave £100 to Mrs. Elstob, "and said she need never fear a neccessitous old age whilst she lived, and that when she wanted more to ask for it, and she should have it." AcLIVING AGE. VOL. XXII. 1141

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she was not to join the family until the following summer. As things turned out, she was not with them until the end of November, 1739, when she entered on her duties at Whitehall. At Christmas she wrote to Ann Granville, Mrs. Pendarves' sister, of her inexpressible pleasure and satisfaction. "Should I presume or pretend to enumerate all her Grace's perfections you . . . might with good reason think me extremely impertinent. I will, therefore, only tell you that I am every day more and more charmed with her. . . . The children, by their sweet endearing temper, plainly declaring whose offspring they are; they are very fond of me, and even the little Marquis" (by and by to be twice Prime Minister, once, as head of the Coalition Ministry in 1783, and again 1807-1809), "desires his nurse to bring him to "Tob,' as he calls me." A month later she writes in the same strain to Ballard:-"My charming little Ladies take up my time so entirely that I have not the least leisure to do anything; from the time they rise till they go to bed they are constantly with me, except when they are with her Grace, which is not long at a time. . . . I think myself the happiest creature in the World."

There is, no doubt, something ludicrous in the idea of a sedate lady, nearer sixty than fifty, and one of the most eminent scholars of her time, as playmate and companion of such infants. The children, indeed, seem to have been clever. "Lady Betty" (the eldest), she writes in 1740, ". . . loves her book and me entirely, nor is she ever more happy than when she is with me, and we study together, even by candlelight, like old folks." And we must think of Mrs. Elstob, from this time onward, less as the governess than as the friend cording to another account, the Queen first proposed to give an annuity of £20, and afterwards changed to a donation of £100, which she proposed to repeat at the end of every five years.