Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/66

 Ixii INTRODUCTION ���Ladies appeared in two parts in 1694 and 1697. In 1705 the third edition of her Reflections on Marriage was accom- panied by a new Preface, a plea for women not equaled before Mary Wolstoncraf t. Mary Astell's proposed " college for the education and improvement of the female sex" was for years a theme provocative of coarse raillery, and Mrs. Centlivre was not above throwing a stone or two at so well marked a target. Her Common Sense Lady says sarcastic- ally to Valeria: �Well, Cousin, might I advise, you should bestow your fortune on founding a College for the study of Philosophy where none but women should be admitted; and to immortalize your name they should be called Valerians, ha, ha, ha! �Charles Johnson's "female philosopher," Florida (Gen- erous Husband, 1711), Gibber's " female philosophic saint," Sophronia, and her young step-mother, the learned " trans- lator of the passion of Byblis" (The Refusal, 1721), have less direct personal reference ; though the education of Cibber's ladies, who ostentatiously read Latin and quote Latin and who can talk Latin by the hour with Lady Wrangle's uncle, the bishop, their instructor, doubtless refers to Mary Astell, who, as was well known, had been early inducted into the classics by her uncle, a clergyman. �In this comic procession of the seventeenth and eighteenth century Minervas Lady Winchilsea was given a bitter pre- Three Hours eminence by satirists so clever and unscrupu- after Marriage lous ag p ope and Q av Qn January 16, 1717, �there appeared on the stage of Drury Lane a farce entitled Three Hours after Marriage. It ran feebly seven nights and was then hissed off the stage. It was published under Gay's name, but was known to be the joint work of Pope, Arbuthnot, and Gay. The character of Phosbe Clinket is attributed to Gay by Mr. Austin Dobson in his article on Gay in the Dictionary of National Biography, and is there ��� �