FOOTNOTES
[1] "The haughtiest."—Which, however, is very doubtful. Such, certainly, was the popular impression. But people who knew Mr. Pitt intimately have always ascribed to him a nature the most amiable and social, under an unfortunate reserve of manner. Whilst, on the contrary, Mr. Fox, ultra democratic in his principles and frank in his address, was repulsively aristocratic in his temper and sympathies.
[2] I have sometimes had occasion to remark, as a noticeable phenomenon of our present times, that the order of ladies called bluestockings, by way of reproach, has become totally extinct amongst us, except only here and there with superannuated clingers to obsolete remembrances. The reason of this change is interesting; and I do not scruple to call it honorable to our intellectual progress. In the last (but still more in the penultimate) generation, any tincture of literature, of liberal curiosity about science, or of ennobling interest in books, carried with it an air of something unsexual, mannish, and (as it was treated by the sycophantish satirists that for ever humor the prevailing folly) of something ludicrous. This mode of treatment was possible so long as the literary class of ladies formed a feeble minority. But now, when two vast peoples, English and American, counting between them forty-nine millions, when the leaders of transcendent civilization (to say nothing of Germany and France) behold their entire educated class, male and female alike, calling out, not for Panem et circenses, (Give us this day our daily bread and our games of the circus,) but for Panem et literas, (Give us this day our daily bread and literature,) the universality of the call has swept away the very name of bluestocking; the very possibility of the ridicule has been undermined by stern realities; and the verbal expression of the reproach is fast becoming, not simply obsolete, but even unintelligible to our juniors. By the way, the origin of this term bluestocking has never been satisfactorily accounted for, unless the reader should incline to think my account satisfactory. I incline to that opinion myself. Dr. Bisset (in his Life of Burke) traces it idly to a sobriquet imposed by Mrs. Montagu, and the literary ladies of her circle, upon a certain obscure Dr. Stillingfleet, who was the sole masculine assistant at their literary sittings in Portman Square, and chose, upon some inexplicable craze, to wear blue stockings. The translation, however, of this name from the doctor's legs to the ladies' legs is still unsolved. That great _hiatus _needs filling up. I, therefore, whether erroneously or not, in reviewing a German historical work of some pretensions, where this problem emerges, rejected the Portman Square doctor altogether, and traced the term to an old Oxford statute—one of the many which meddle with dress, and which charges it as a point of conscience upon loyal scholastic students that they shall wear cerulean socks. Such socks, therefore, indicated scholasticism: worn by females, they would indicate a self-dedication to what for them would be regarded as pedantic studies. But, says an objector, no rational female would wear cerulean socks. Perhaps not, female taste being too good. But as such socks would symbolize such a profession of pedantry, so, inversely, any profession of pedantry, by whatever signs expressed, would be symbolized reproachfully by the imputation of wearing cerulean socks. It classed a woman, in effect, as a scholastic pedant. Now, however, when the vast diffusion of literature as a sort of daily bread has made all ridicule of female literary culture not less ridiculous than would be the attempt to ridicule that same daily bread, the whole phenomenon, thing and word, substance and shadow, is melting away from amongst us. Something of the same kind has happened in the history of silver forks. Forks of any kind, as is well known, were first introduced into Italy; thence by a fantastic (but, in this instance, judicious) English traveller immediately (and not mediately through France) were introduced into England. This elegant revolution occurred about 240 years ago; and never since that day have there been wanting English protesters against the infamy of eating without forks; and for the last 160 years, at least, against the paganism of using _steel _forks; or, 2dly, two- pronged forks; or, 3dly, of putting the knife into the mouth. At least 120 years ago, the Duchess of Queensberry, (Gay's duchess,) that leonine woman, used to shriek out, on seeing a hyperborean squire conveying peas to his abominable mouth on the point of a knife. "O, stop him, stop him! that man's going to commit suicide." This anecdote argues silver forks as existing much more than a century back, else the squire had a good defence. Since then, in fact, about the time of the French revolution, silver forks have been recognized as not less indispensable appendages to any elegant dinner table than silver spoons; and, along with silver forks, came in the explosion of that anti-Queensberry brutalism which forks first superseded—viz., the fiendish practice of introducing the knife between the lips. But, in defiance of all these facts, certain select hacks of the daily press, who never had an opportunity of seeing a civilized dinner, and fancying that their own obscene modes of feeding prevailed every where, got up the name of the Silver-fork School, (which should have indicated the school of decency,) as representing some ideal school of fantastic or ultra refinement. At length, however, when cheap counterfeits of silver have made the decent four-pronged fork cheaper than the two-pronged steel barbarism, what has followed? Why, this—that the universality of the diffusion has made it hopeless any longer to banter it. There is, therefore, this strict analogy between "the silver fork" reproach and "the bluestocking" reproach—that in both cases alike a recognition, gradually becoming universal, of the thing itself, as a social necessity, has put down forever all idle attempts to throw ridicule upon it—upon literature, in the one case, as a most appropriate female ornament; and upon silver forks, on the other, as an element of social decorum.
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The author has exerted himself every where to keep the text accurate; and he is disposed to believe that his own care, combined with the general accuracy of the press, must have enabled him to succeed in that object. But if it should appear that any errors have after all escaped him, he must request his readers to excuse them, after explaining that he suffers under the oppression of a nervous distraction, which renders all labors exacting any energy of attention inexpressibly painful.
End of Project Gutenberg's Autobiographic Sketches, by Thomas de Quincey