Part 10 (1/2)

The knowledge of Greek, though once not very uncommon in a woman, had become prodigious in the days of Louis XIV.; and when this distinguished lady taught Homer and Sappho to speak French prose, she appeared a phoenix in the eyes of her countrymen. She was undoubtedly a person of very rare talents and estimable character; her translations are numerous, and reputed to be correct, though Niceron has observed that she did not raise Homer in the eyes of those who were not prejudiced in his favour. Her husband was a scholar of kindred mind and the same pursuits. Their union was facetiously called the wedding of Latin and Greek. But each of this learned couple was skilled in both languages.

Dacier was a great translator: his Horace is perhaps the best known of his versions; but the Poetics of Aristotle have done him most honour.

The Daciers had to fight the battle of antiquity against a generation both ignorant and vainglorious, yet keen-sighted in the detection of blemishes, and disposed to avenge the wrongs of their fathers, who had been trampled upon by pedants, with the help of a new pedantry, that of the court and the mode. With great learning, they had a competent share of good sense, but not, perhaps, a sufficiently discerning taste or liveliness enough of style to maintain a cause that had so many prejudices of the world now enlisted against it.

LADY MASHAM.

[1658.]

BALLARD.

Damaris, Lady Masham, the daughter of the famous Dr Cudworth, and second wife of Sir Thomas Masham of Oates, in Ess.e.x, was born in 1658. Her father, who soon perceived the bent of her genius, took particular care in her tuition, and she applied herself with great diligence to the study of divinity and philosophy, under the direction of the celebrated Mr Locke, who was a domestic in her family for many years, and at length died in her house at Oates.

Soon after she was married, the fame of her learning, piety, and ingenuity, induced the celebrated Mr Norris to address and inscribe to her, by way of letter, his ”Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life.”

This began a friends.h.i.+p between them, which, having its foundation in religion, seemed very likely to be firm and lasting; but it seems to have been in a great measure dissolved before it had been of any long continuance, occasioned by this lady's contracting an indissoluble friends.h.i.+p with Mr Locke, whose divinity and philosophy is well known to have differed from that of Mr Norris. Not long after, the latter, in certain published letters, maintained the proposition, that ”mankind are obliged strictly, as their duty, to love with desire nothing but G.o.d only;” and Lady Masham published, without her name, her ”Discourse concerning the Love of G.o.d,” wherein she applied herself to the examination of Mr Norris's scheme, which included the proposition, that every degree of love of any creature is sinful; a proposition defended by him on the ground (borrowed from Father Malebranche) that G.o.d, not the creature, is the efficient cause of our sensations. Mrs Masham examined this hypothesis with great accuracy and ingenuity, and represented in a strong light the evil consequences resulting from it.

About the year 1700, Lady Masham also wrote a treatise, ”Occasional Thoughts in reference to a Virtuous and Christian Life,” the princ.i.p.al design of which was to improve religion and virtue; and, indeed, it is so full of excellent instruction, that, if carefully perused by both s.e.xes, it could not fail of obtaining much of its desired end. She complains much of the too great neglect of religious duties, occasioned, as she believed, by the want of being better acquainted with the fundamentals of religion; and very justly reprehends and reproaches persons of quality for so scandalously permitting their daughters to pa.s.s that part of their youth, in which the mind is most ductile and susceptible of good impressions, in a ridiculous circle of diversions, which is generally thought the proper business of young ladies, and which so generally engrosses them that they can find no spare hours wherein to make any improvement in their understandings.

As Mrs Masham owed much to the care of Mr Locke for her acquired endowments and skill in arithmetic, geography, chronology, history, philosophy, and divinity, so, as he was a domestic in her family, she returned the obligation with singular benevolence and grat.i.tude, always treating him with the utmost generosity--her friends.h.i.+p for him being inviolable. It is recorded that, as she sat by Mr Locke's side the night before he died, he exhorted her to regard this world only as a state of preparation for a better; that she desired to sit up with him that night, but he would not permit her. The next day, as she was reading the Psalms in a low tone by him in his room, he desired her to read aloud.

She did so, and he appeared very attentive till the approach of death prevented him. He then desired her ladys.h.i.+p to break off, and in a few minutes afterwards expired. As a testimony of her grat.i.tude to Mr Locke's memory, she drew up that account of him which is printed in the great Historical Dictionary.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Drawn by J. Thurston. Engraved by F. Engleheart.

ANNE KILLEGREW.

From a Miniature by Sir Peter Lely in the possession of Mr.

Winstanley.]

ANNE KILLIGREW.

[BORN 1660. DIED 1685.]

BALLARD.

The daughter of Dr Henry Killigrew, prebendary of Westminster, became eminent in the arts of poetry and painting; and had it pleased Providence to protract her life, she might probably have excelled most of the professors in both. She was the Orinda of Mr Dryden, who seems quite lavish in her commendation; but as we are a.s.sured by a writer of great probity [Wood's ”Athenae”] that she was equal to, if not superior to that praise, let him be my voucher for her skill in poetry.

”Art she had none, yet wanted none, For Nature did that want supply; So rich in treasures of her own, She might our boasted stores defy; Such n.o.ble vigour did her verse adorn, That it seemed borrowed where 'twas only born.”

The great poet is pleased to attribute to her every excellence in that science; but if she has failed of some of its excellences, still should we have great reason to commend her for having avoided those faults by which some have derived a reflection on the science itself, as well as on themselves. Speaking of the purity and charity of her compositions, he bestows on them this commendation,--

”Her Arethusian stream remains unsoiled, Unmixed with foreign filth, and undefiled; Her wit was more than man, her innocence a child.”