Laura Bassi was in constant correspondence with the most celebrated scholars of Europe, and more especially with those who had attained eminence in her special line of work. Among the letters received from her illustrious correspondents were two from Voltaire. They were written shortly after the author had been refused admittance into the French academy. He then bethought himself of securing membership in the Academy of Sciences of Bologna. This, he reasoned, would be a splendid tribute to the versatility of his genius and would, at the same time, be a biting satire on the demigods of French literature who had dared to exclude him from their society.
That he might not meet the same refusal on the part of the Academy of Bologna as he had experienced in Paris, Voltaire determined not to rely entirely on the good will of the male members of the Bolognese academy. He accordingly resolved to enlist the services of Laura Bassi, who was one of the leading members of this distinguished body, and trust to her influence in his behalf on the hearts of her colleagues.
The first letter, written in Italian, is so characteristic of the writer that it will bear reproduction.
"Most Illustrious Lady," he writes from Paris, the 23d of November, 1744, "I have been wishing to journey to Bologna in order to be able one day to tell my countrymen I have seen Signora Bassi; but, being deprived of this honor, let it at least be permitted me to place at your feet this philosophic homage and to salute the honor of her age and of women. There is not a Bassi in London, and I should be more happy to be a member of the Academy of Bologna than of that of the English, although it has produced a Newton. If your protection should obtain for me this title, of which I am so ambitious, the gratitude of my heart will be equal to my admiration for yourself. I beg you to excuse the style of a foreigner who presumes to write you in Italian, but who is as great an admirer of yours as if he were born in Bologna."
The second letter of Voltaire is in response to one received from Laura Bassi announcing that he had been elected to membership in the Bologna Academy. The first sentence of it suffices to indicate its tenor. "Nothing," he writes, "was ever more grateful to me than to receive from your hand the first advice that I had the honor, by means of your favor, of being united by this new link to one who had already bound me to her car by all the chains of esteem and admiration."[154]
Like so many of her gifted sisters of sunny Italy, Laura was in every way "a perfect woman nobly planned." Of a deeply religious nature, she was as pious as she was intelligent, and was throughout her life the devoted friend of the poor and the afflicted. The mother of twelve children, she never permitted her scientific and literary work to conflict with her domestic duties or to detract in the least from the singular affection which so closely united her to her husband and children. She was as much at home with the needle and the spindle as she was with her books and the apparatus of her laboratory. And she was equally admirable whether superintending her household, looking after her children, entertaining the great and the learned of the world, or in holding the rapt attention of her students in the lecture room. She was, indeed, a living proof that higher education is not incompatible with woman's natural avocations; and that cerebral development does not lead to race suicide and all the other dire results attributed to it by a certain class of our modern sociologists and anti-feminists.
Considering her manifold duties as a professor in the university and the mother of a large family, it was scarcely to be expected that Laura Bassi would have much time for writing for the press. She was, however, able to devote some of her leisure moments to the cultivation of the Muses, of whom, Fantuzzi informs us, she was a favorite. Her verses, as well as her contributions to the science of physics, are scattered through various publications, but they suffice to show that the accounts of her transmitted to us by her contemporaries were not exaggerated.[155]
A learned French traveler who visited Laura in Bologna describes her as having a face that was sweet, serious and modest. Her eyes were dark and sparkling, and she was blessed with a powerful memory, a solid judgment, and a ready imagination. "She conversed fluently with me in Latin for an hour with grace and precision. She is very proficient in metaphysics; but she prefers modern physics, particularly that of Newton."
How many of our college women of to-day could readily carry on a conversation in Latin, if this were the sole medium of communication, or discuss the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle in the tongue of Cicero, or give public lectures on the physico-mathematical discoveries of Descartes and Newton in what was the universal language of the learned world, even less than a century ago?