During her life, in fact in the year 1667, the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge, addressed her in the language of fulsome flattery quoted at the opening of the first chapter of the present volume. But all the critics of her own day were not of their opinion and M. Emile Montégut, in his excellent essay on the Newcastles, writes:[179] “this very high and mighty lady” was “very maliciously ridiculed by her contemporaries and scornfully neglected by the succeeding generations”.
On the other hand, the Vice-Chancellor and the Senate of the University of Cambridge, fairly excelled the Master and Fellows of St. John’s College in flattery, and Ananias in mendacity, when they exclaimed:—[180]
“Most excellent Princess, you have unspeakably obliged us all; but not in one respect alone, for whensoever we find ourselves nonplus’d in our studies, we repair to you as to our oracle: if we be to speak, you dictate to us: if we knock at Apollo’s door, you alone open to us: if we compose an History, you are the remembrancer: if we be confounded and puzzled among the philosophers, you disentangle us and assoil our difficulties”.
[179] P. 189.
[180] Biog. Brit., ed. Kippis.
Grainger says that “these monstrous strains of panegyrics relate chiefly to that wild philosophy which would have puzzled the whole Royal Society”.
Pearson, Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge (“Pearson On The Creed”), afterwards Bishop of Chester, could lie so grossly as to exclaim to the Duchess:[181] “What shall we think of your Excellency, who are both a Minerva and an Athens in yourself, the Muses as well as an Helicon, Aristotle as well as his Lycaeum?”
[181] Biog. Brit., ed. Kippis.
Another Bishop, Bishop Wilkins, was more honest. He had been talking to the Duchess about his book on the possibility of a journey to the moon. “Doctor,” she said, “where am I to find a place for waiting in the way up to that Planet?” “Madam,” he replied, “of all people in the world, I never expected that question from you, who have built so many castles in the air, that you may be every night at one of your own.” [182]