Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/62

attitude of Pope and Gay toward her as a female wit, and toward female wits in general, than does the gallant eulogy of Pope's Impromptu. And that their attitude is but the attitude of their age, may be indicated by a brief statement of the position accorded the learned lady by contemporary comedy.

Mrs. Behn's Sir Patient Fancy (1678) gives us in Lady Knowell one of the earliest examples in the restoration period of the English female pedant. The Learned Lady in ComedyLady Knowell is especially distinguished by her use of big words in the style of Mrs. Malaprop. "I have consented to marry him" she says, "in spite of your Exprobations;" "I saw your reclinations from my Addresses;" "There is much Volubility and Vicissitude in Mundane Affairs." Her devotion to the classics is of the most effusive sort. To Leander she exclaims,

Oh the delight of Books! When I was their age I always employed my looser hours in reading—if serious, 'twas Tacitus, Seneca, Plutarch's Morals, or some such useful Author; if in an Humour gay, I was for Poetry, Virgil, Homer, or Tasso.

Yet this classical lady is represented as rivaling her frivolous daughter in the pursuit of amorous adventure. Mrs. Behn doubtless took the suggestion for this character from Moliére's Femmes Savantes (1672), the acknowledged source of Wright's Female Virtuosos (1693). Wright's Lady Meanwell, Mrs. Lovewit, and Catchat, were meant to be English versions of the Philaminte, Armande and Bélise of the French comedy. But though Moliére's general plot structure is followed and the characters certainly find their originals in his play, yet the kind of learning the ladies have is based on Shadwell's Virtuoso (1676), rather than on the Femmes Savantes. They are scientific in their tastes. Lady Meanwell is also public-spirited, and she invents a "Mathematical Engin" to keep the streets of London dry and clean.