THE

BRITISH REVIEW,

AND

LONDON CRITICAL JOURNAL.

DECEMBER, 1811.

ART. X. De l'Influence des Femmes sur la Litterature Française, comme Protectrices des Lettres et comme Auteurs; ou Précis de l'Histoire des Femmes Françaises les plus célèbres. Par Madame de Genlis. Paris, 1811, and Colburn, London. To stumble at the threshold has been considered an unlucky omen; we are, therefore, sorry to find any thing to blame in the title-page of a book. If a title to a literary work be wholly without utility or purpose, it would be better in all cases to omit it. But if there be a purpose intended by it, and that purpose be to make known the general design or subject of the work, unless the work is truly without scope or plan, we may reasonably expect to learn what it is from the title. Of the two parts of the title of the work before us, the first is descriptive of a specific topic of illustration, while the second confesses that if the purpose of the author be really not that which the first announces, it is at least her sincere intention to write a great deal on the subject of celebrated French females, learned, and unlearned.

The "réflexions préliminaires" contain some observations not unworthy of being studied and remembered; but the argument on the comparative strength of male and female capacities for literature and science, which was never edifying, useful, or liberal, is now by repetition become vapid and wearisome in the greatest degree.

Madame de Genlis has chosen to embark in this controversy, and she has adopted the childish mode in which the same is usually conducted, that is, by running a parallel between the celebrated individuals of the different sexes through an indefinite compass of history. By a sorted comparison made in this man

VOL. II. NO. IV.

ner, the male might easily be shewn to be the fairer and the female the robuster sex. Out of the millions which have come into the world, arrived at maturity, and departed, or that at present exist in it, the largest possible enumeration of particular instances can bear no proportion to the whole, so as to afford an average on which to ground a comparison of the sexes. No assignable number thus individually collected on either side, could afford a measure so large as not to be capable of being embraced within the scope of an exception to any general predication respecting the human condition, and therefore of course no possible extent of such an enumeration could be wide enough to establish a general rule. The thing is incapable of proof, and wants no illustration.

We shall not suffer ourselves to be drawn into this barren disputation; but we cannot refrain from remarking by the way, that whatever perversity or error in the arrangements of life, accident may be supposed to have produced, whatever usurpations upon the equal rights of the fair sex are imputable to the subtlety or force of ours, time, one would imagine, that usually developes dormant claims, and necessity that for the most part vindicates the appointments of the Creator, would long ago have brought things to their proper level; for nature and truth are not to be prescribed against. But still this unjust ascendancy continues; still the exigencies of life and the distribution of duties put the yoke of mediocrity upon feminine ambition, in all the severer exercises of mind and body, and give free scope only to those virtues and attainments which sweeten domestic intercourse, instruct the rising generation, promote the charities of the heart, and adorn the christian profession. Unluckily, too, the scripture does in more places than one afford a colour of authority to this artificial arrangement; and seems to suggest a path of duty to females, which, though important beyond all price to the happiness and improvement of the world, does not conduct to intellectual grandeur, or flatter with the hope of literary immortality.

Under these circumstances it seems to us much more rational and useful to inquire what cultivation of the female mind best fits it for the discharge of the duties which the state of society allots to it, than what are its possibilities of attainment under a culture which has abstractedly in view its intellectual advancement alone.

We presume therefore to think, that the education of females should be conducted so as to qualify them to fill with honour their proper places in society, rather than to excite the ardours of eccentric ambition. We would not have it thought, however,

that the British Reviewers are less favourable than their literary competitors to the advancement of the female mind. When we come to explain ourselves upon the subject, it will be seen that the cultivation considered by us as appropriate to our English ladies, though somewhat subtracting from the importance usually attached to some parts of their education, would put the capacities of females under a severer requisition than can be satisfied by the ordinary methods now taken to accomplish them.

If politics, metaphysics, mathematics, and the languages of Greece and Rome, are not among those objects of study which we consider as essential to female education, we are not there, fore to be supposed to regard women as a secondary sort of beings, and worthy only of being taught those things which administer to the pleasure or service of man. But we presume to think, that there are many duties, the effectual performance of which requires strength of fibre to be added to intellectual ability, and which are therefore eminently suited to the powers of man. There are also duties of equal importance, the proper discharge of which demands an union of tenderness with forbearance, of perseverance with softness, and for these the structure of woman is best adapted. Society requires both parts to be performed; nature divides them between the sexes; life is too short for each to perform both; and the distance between them is increased as perfection is approached in either. That choice of study is doubtless the most wise which is most in the line of our duty for accomplishments are not of absolute but relative estimation. All women, it is true, are not equally charged with the softer duties and cares of life: all are not born to become wives and mothers: still it will not be denied that such is the hopeful destination of the sex in general: and we are treating of generals-of the rule and not of the exceptions. Nor are we afraid to say, notwithstanding the ridicule with which the sentiment has of late been attacked*, that where women have no families of their own to attend to, the duty of taking upon themselves a portion of the cares with which others of their sex are overburthened, of solacing the sick, and instructing the forsaken, multiplies its claims in proportion to their leisure. Neither is this all. Propriety of character, consistency of deportment, the value of attainments, and the suitableness of occupations, are determined by reference not to the accidental situation of particular individuals, but to the moral destination of the sex in general.

:

All men are not designed for the profession of arms, but be

See Edinb. Review, No. 30. P. 306.

cause soldiers are always men, and cases may be easily imagined in which courage and personal exposure may become the duties of all men, the quality of bravery belongs generally to the male character. All women are not destined to act the part of mothers, but because only women can be such, tenderness for infancy, and a commiserating disposition of the heart, are associated with the character of women in general.

Though deeply impressed with these sentiments, we are still as anxious as Madame de Genlis herself for the culture of the female mind. Those who are charged with the earliest care of their species, whose high and delicate trust it is, to give the first bias to the heart, and first to stir the reasoning faculty, while both are to be insensibly engaged on the side of virtue, to act their parts well, should themselves be proficients in reason and virtue, and have learned, by engrafting reflection on reading, to anticipate in others the prejudices and difficulties which hinder the first steps of intellectual advancement.

To some persons this province of literature appears very contemptible, and particularly when under the management of those, who, in the old-fashioned stile of discipline, endeavour to lay the foundation of education in religion, and to give to God the first fruits of his gift of reason. To some men goodness is weakness, piety is parade, and devotion hypocrisy; and nothing is so ridiculous as a spectacled old lady teaching to the young the maxims of household morality according to the catechism of our church. Generous guardians of the rights of infants! with what happy auspices does your revolutionary career in the national education commence! Perish primers and horn-books, and all the lumber of the nursery! Behold a rising generation of unbreeched philosophers, and lisping free-thinkers; a golden period approaches in which every man is to be qualified to be his own instructor, and in which the religion of the poor is to become the fruit of their own meditations, the result of their own discriminating choice, unincumbered by creeds and vulgar catechisms. Liberal and manly times! when the nation's children are confided to those who dissent from its church, under the patronage of princes, nobles, statesmen, ecclesiastics, writers, and reviewers.

Do we dare, amidst these new lights, to avow our veneration for the memory of the “ feeble old lady *” of Brentford, whom the champions of the liberal plan of modern education for the poor, have classed with the writers of horn-books and nursery legends? Yet such is our infatuation, that when we think upon the labours of that good woman, who was most emphatically de

*See Edinb. Review, No. 17, Art. 12.

parting in peace, while her manly assailants were pursuing her to the grave, we are disposed to consider her utility to mankind as infinitely outweighing the whole aggregation of female worth collected in this French volume before us; and we found our admiration of her singly upon her wise and orthodox industry in disseminating religious knowledge among the poor, and her watchful jealousy of latitudinarian systems.

In a word, we are of opinion that such a cultivation of the female mind as has a tendency to dispose and qualify it for the care of the young, the friendless, and the forsaken, comprises objects and attainments of as much ornament as utility. In the due preparation for such a career of usefulness, the manners are polished in proportion as the heart is enlarged. Nor is this beneficent range of activity inconsistent with every reasonable attention to exterior accomplishments, in the ordinary sense of the term. Religious sobriety, concern for the interests of the soul, and feeling for human indigence, while they superadd a grace invincible to common accomplishments, correct the extravagant appreciation of them which gives to them so undue a hold upon the heart, and so exorbitant a claim upon the time of reasonable beings. But we are very far from denying that the diligent reading of our best authors, the talent of graceful, and in a good cause, of forcible writing, and the exercise of the understanding on subjects of practical theology and preceptive truths, are strictly within the compass of female pretensions. If objects and employments like these should steal something from the laborious impertinence of fashionable life, we should be glad to be accomplices in the theft. In such a crime we will to the utmost, in our character of reviewers, act the part of aiders and abettors, whatever hue and cry may be raised against us by that numerous party in the country, who, as patrons or writers, with a liberalizing and levelling rage, are for demolishing the prescriptive barriers of national religion, and all thorough-bred English morality.

From contemplating the sickly cast of female literature, principles, and manners, which this volume of petticoated French worthies presents to us, it is impossible not to turn for refreshment to the estimable character of a genuine English lady, literate without pedantry, elegant without affectation, dignified without constraint, cheerful at home and circumspect abroad, gentle, humane, devout. We should greatly prefer the domestic circle of such a person, to what are called the "good societies" of Paris. A Mrs. Elizabeth Carter is more to our taste than a Madame du Deffand, a Miss Talbot than a Mademoiselle de L'Espinasse, and a Mrs. Hannah More than even a Madame de