[211] Mills’s explanation of the word was adopted (without acknowledgment) by Dr. Brewer in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and has therefore had considerable currency. It has been recently repeated, notably in the Quarterly Review for January 1903, in an article entitled ‘The Queen of the Bluestockings,’ by an anonymous writer, and in Mrs. Gaussen’s A Later Pepys.
[212] King Henry IV, Part I, Act 2, scene iv.
[213] Home’s Lady Louisa Stuart, p. 156; cf. the Diary of Madame D’Arblay 4. 65.
[214] The following quotation from Mrs. Montagu’s Letters (4. 117) has been cited (notably in the New English Dictionary and in Hill’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson) as showing that the term bluestocking was in use as early as March 8, 1757, on which day Mrs. Montagu writes: ‘I assure you our philosopher (Mr. Stillingfleet) is so much a man of pleasure, he has left off his old friends and his blue stockings, and is at operas and other gay assemblies every night.’ Personally I do not think that this can be regarded as an occurrence of the word bluestocking at all. I incline to think that Mrs. Montagu means no more than she literally says, that Mr. Stillingfleet has left off the homely garb for which he was noted. But, in any case, it is interesting as a reference to the fame of his stockings, and tends to support Boswell’s explanation of the term.
[215] Life 4. 108.
[216] 1. 210 n.; cf. a similar account by Pennington (who remembered the salons) in his Letters of Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Montagu.
[217] Memoirs of Dr. Burney 2. 262-63. No explanation of the term bluestocking is given in the Diary.
[218] Letters of Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Montagu 3. 202; 22 September 1783. The occurrence is referred to by Hannah More in the ‘Advertisement’ prefixed to Bas Bleu (1786). The story was apparently reported to the blues by Lady Dartrey. See Pepys’s letter to Hannah More, in A Later Pepys 2. 235; 13 August 1783.
[219] Gaussen’s A Later Pepys 1. 42.
[220] Those who care to study the playful development of the word may consult the sprightly article, ‘Bas bleu,’ in the earlier edition of Larousse’s Dictionary.