saint,"--for Doctors of Divinity have been all four,--but I declare
that I have told you all I have learned about him.

It is grievous to me, dear Bobus, a man of notorious gallantry, to find
that the ladies, after consenting to smirch their rosy fingers with
Erebean ink, are among the first who are discarded. If you will go into
the College Library, Mr. Sibley will show you a charming copy of the
works of Mrs. Behn, with a roguish, rakish, tempting little portrait of
the writer prefixed. Poor Mrs. Behn was a notability as well as a
notoriety in her day; and when I have great leisure for the work, I
mean to write her life and do her justice. The task would have been
worthy of De Foe; but, with a little help from you, I hope to do it
passably. Poor Aphra! poet, dramatist, intriguant strumpet! Worthy of
no better fate, take my benison of light laughter and of tears! Then
there is Mrs. Elizabeth Singer, who was living in 1723, who selected as
the subject of her work nothing less than the Creation, and who was a
woman of great religion. Her poem commences patronizingly thus:--

"Hail! mighty Maker of the Universe!
_My_ song shall still _thy_ glorious deeds rehearse.
_Thy_ praise, whatever subject others choose,
Shall be the lofty theme of _my_ aspiring Muse."

Elizabeth was a Somersetshire woman, a clothier's daughter; and if she
had thrown away her lyre and gone back to the distaff, I do not think
Parnassus would have broken its heart. Then there is our fair friend,
Mrs. Molesworth. Her father was a Right Honorable Irish peer of the
same name, who had some acquaintance, if not a friendlier connection,
with John Locke. Her Muse was rather high-skirted, as you may believe,
when you read this epitaph:--