Do you not think Learning and Politics become a Woman as ill as riding astride? [he asks]. Do you not, in answer to these, fetch me a _Sappho_ out of Greece; a _Cornelia_, the Mother of the _Gracchi_, out of Rome; an _Anna Maria Schurman_ out of Holland; and think that in shewing me three Learned Women in three thousand years, you have gain'd your point? Philogynes answers that he shall continue in his opinion that learning is suitable for women 'till you have answer'd _Anna Maria Shurman's_ Arguments in their behalf, and 'till you have taken away her self, who is one of the best Arguments.[423] 'T is possible everybody does not know, that she was very well skill'd in the _Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabick, Turkish, Greek, Latin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Flemish_ Languages; that she had a very good faculty at Poetry and Painting, that she was a perfect Mistress of all the Philosophies, that the greatest Divines of her time were proud of her judgment in their own profession, and that when we had this character of her she was not above Thirty years of Age.[424] Or shall I refer you to Mademoiselle _Gournay_ among the _French_, or _Lucretia Marinella_ among the _Italians_, who have both writ in defence of their Sex, and who are both Arguments themselves of the Excellency of it?[425] Consider what Time and Charge is spent to make Men fit for somewhat; Eight or Nine Years at School; Six or Seven Years at the University; Four or Five Years in Travel; and after all this, are they not almost all Fops, Clowns, Dunces, or Pedants? I know not what you think of the Women; but if they are Fools they are Fools with less pains, and less expence than we are.[426] [Sidenote: Gildon's Letters (1694)]