[473] The ladies whose poems are included in these volumes are: Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Behn, Miss Carter, Lady Chudleigh, Mrs. Cockburn, Mrs. Grierson, Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Killigrew, Mrs. Leapor, Mrs. Madan, Mrs. Masters, Lady M. W. Montagu, Mrs. Monk, Duchess of Newcastle, Mrs. K. Philips, Mrs. Pilkington, Mrs. Rowe, Lady Winchilsea.
[474] Memoirs: Containing the Lives of Several Ladies of Great Britain. A History of Antiquities, Productions of Nature and Monuments of Art. Observations on the Christian Religion, as professed by the Established Church, and Dissenters of every Denomination. Remarks on the Writings of the greatest English Divines: with a Variety of Disquisitions and Opinions relative to Criticisms and Manners; and many extraordinary Actions.
[475] The Memoirs (vol. II, p. 87) say that Miss Harcourt "died suddenly, at her seat in Richmondshire, the first of December 1745, in the 39th year of her age, and not in the year thirty-seven, as the world was told in several advertisements in the London Evening Post of December 1739, by a gentleman who was imposed on in a false account he received of her death." I have been unable to examine the London Evening Post to see whether it contains any announcement correspondent to Amory's statement. (Rose says she was born in 1706 at Richmond in Yorkshire and that she died in 1745.)
[476] For Amory's exceptionally early and eager descriptions of the English Lake District see Reynolds, Myra: External Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth (2d ed.), p. 208. To this must now be added his distinction as one of the earliest Englishmen to be interested in the islands off the coast of Scotland.
[477] For further accounts of Thomas Amory see The Gentleman's Magazine, November, 1788 (vol. LVIII, p. 1062), where there is a protest from Robert Amory concerning erroneous statements about his father in the St. James's Chronicle of November 6 (cf. vol. LIX, pp. 107, 322, 372); General Biographical Dictionary (1798); Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary; Hazlitt's Round Table (1817); Retrospective Review (vol. VI, p. 100, 1st Series, 1822); edition of Amory's Works (1825); Notes and Queries, 1st Series, vol. XI, p. 58; Saturday Review, May 12, 1877. From these references it becomes apparent that Amory has attracted considerable attention, but that there is a wide divergence of opinion as to whether he was insane or a genius.
[478] Epicœne, or, The Silent Woman, Act II, Sc. 2, ll. 117-20.
[479] Juvenal: Satire VI, 434-40. "That woman is a worse nuisance than usual who, as soon as she reclines on her couch, praises Virgil; makes excuses for doomed Dido; pits bards against one another and compares them, and weighs Homer and Mars in the balance."
[480] The word "college" was loosely used in the seventeenth century as signifying any company or collective body. Burton, in Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), says, "They have whole colleges of Curtezans in their Towns and Cities." Randolph, in The Muse's Looking-Glass (1638), calls play-houses "colleges of transgression," and speaks of "Black-Friar's College." Jonson, in Staple of News, says "a canter's college is proposed." Dryden even speaks of a "college of bees" (Flower and Leaf), and Amory, in John Buncle, uses the same phrase more than half a century later. It becomes evident, then, that the words "college" and "collegiate" might be used without any thought of an organization founded for purposes of learning. (See Jonson: Epicœne, Ed. Henry, Aurelia, p. 138.)
[481] Miles, Dudley: The Influence of Molière on Restoration Comedy, chap. III.
[482] Ibid., p. 62.