“And there are plenty more such,” asserted Mrs. Duncombe, boldly (for these were asides). “It is only that one can’t recollect—and the men have suppressed them.”
“I think men praised them,” said Jenny, “and that we remember the praise, not the works. For instance, Roswitha, or Olympia Morata, or Vittoria Colonna. Vittoria’s sonnets are extant, but we only value them as being hers, more for what she was than for their intrinsic merit.”
“And,” added Eleonora, “men did not suppress Hannah More, or Joanna Baillie. You know Scott thought Miss Baillie’s dramas would rank with Shakespeare’s.”
Mrs. Tallboys was better read in logic and mathematics than in history, and did not follow Jenny, but she turned her adversary’s argument to her own advantage, by exclaiming, “Are the gentlemen present familiar with these bright lights?”
“I confess my ignorance of some of them,” said Julius.
“But my youngest brother knows all that,” said Rosamond at a brave venture.
“Macaulay’s school-boy,” murmured Lady Tyrrell, softly.
“Let us return to the main point,” said Mrs. Tallboys, a little annoyed. “It is of the present and future that I would speak, not of the past.”
“Does not the past give the only data on which to form a conclusion?” said Julius.
“Certainly not. The proposition is not what a woman or two in her down-trodden state may have exceptionally effected, but her natural equality, and in fact superiority, in all but the physical strength which has imposed an unjust bondage on the higher nature.”