[393] Thoresby: Diary, May 20, 1714.
[394] Ibid., April 15, 1723.
[395] Plumptre, Dean: Life of Bishop Ken.
[396] "Mrs. Scott described their life in her novel, Millennium Hall, by a Gentleman on his travels, 1762, as there was a popular prejudice then against a female author." Mrs. Sarah Scott (the widow of George Lewis Scott) wrote several novels, under the pseudonym "Henry Augustus Raymond," between 1750 and 1776. Millennium Hall reached a fourth edition by 1778.
[397] Birch, Una: Anna van Schurman: Artist; Scholar; Saint.
[398] Cut-paper work was an accomplishment in which ladies of various countries took pride. Deschamps in his account of painters mentions a Mrs. Block. He says she "excelled in cutting paper; whatever others produced in a print by a graver, she produced with a pair of scissors; she executed all kinds of subjects, as landscapes, sea-pieces, animals, flowers; and what is most astonishing, portraits, in which the resemblance was preserved in the highest degree. This new art of expressing representations of objects upon white paper became the object of universal curiosity, and the artist was encouraged by all the courts of Europe. The Elector Palatine offered her a thousand florins (equal to about a hundred guineas) for three little pieces, which she refused.... The works of this woman are in design and taste extremely correct, and may best be compared with the engravings of Mallon. When they are pasted upon black paper, the places where the white paper is cut away in strokes, represent those of a graver or pen, and are in the highest degree neat, true, bold, and distinct." (The Gentleman's Magazine, 1761, p. 338). The cut-work paper in England never equalled that of Mrs. Block until Mrs. Delany's herbarium in the late eighteenth century out-distanced all competitors. But Mrs. Delany's work was more like painting while Mrs. Block's was like engraving.
[399] Monroe, Paul: Cyclopædia of Education; Watson, Foster: "Mrs. Bathsua Makin and the Education of Gentlewomen," Atalanta, July, 1895; Granger: Biographical History (2d ed.), vol. II, p. 392; Ballard: Memoirs, Preface; Jesse: House of Stuart, vol. II, p. 250.
[400] Some light is thrown on the curious phrase "read, write, and in some measure understand," by William Greenhill's dedication of his Exposition of the first five chapters of Ezekiel to the Princess Mary in 1644-45. After mentioning other instances of feminine precocity he praises her for "writing out the Lord's Prayer in Greek and some texts of Scripture in Hebrew." It was calligraphy rather than language that was here in question.
[402] Probably daughters of Dr. Nicholas Love (d. 1630), Head-Master of Winchester College in 1601, and chaplain to James I. In 1673 the daughters of Christopher Love (1618-1651), Puritan minister from Cardiff, would be of too recent date to correspond to the description.