Thus wretchedly destitute of all that Knowledge which they ought to have, are, generally speaking, our English gentlemen, and being so, what wonder can it be, if they like not that women should have knowledge; for this is a quality that will give some sort of superiority even to those who care not to have it?... But such men as these would assuredly find their account much better therein, if tenderness of that prerogative would teach them a more legitimate way of maintaining it, than such a one as is a very great impediment or discouragement at the least, to others in the doing what God requires of them. For it is an undesirable truth that a lady who is able to give an account of her faith, and to defend her religion against the attacks of the cavilling wits of the age, or the abuses of the obtruders of vain opinions: that is capable of instructing her children in the reasonableness of the christian religion, and of laying in them the foundations of a solid virtue: that a lady, I say, no more knowing than this does demand, can hardly escape being called learned by the men of our days, and in consequence thereof, becoming a subject of ridicule to one part of them, and of aversion to the other; with but a few exceptions of some virtuous and rational persons. And is not the incurring of general dislike one of the strongest discouragements we can have to any thing?[157] [Sidenote: Grace Norton, Lady Gethin (1676-1696)] There was published soon after Lady Gethin's death, from loose papers left by her, a work entitled _Reliquiæ Gethinianæ_. Congreve's poem, entitled _Verses to the Memory of Lady Grace Gethin, occasioned by reading her Book_, speaks in high praise of her. He says the book shows all that study or time could teach. But to what height must his amazement rise, When, having read the work, he turns his eyes Again to view the foremost opening page, And there the beauty, sex, and tender age, Of her beholds, in whose pure mind arose Th' ethereal source, from whence the current flows. Lady Gethin was counted a marvel of wisdom, but when we read her _Apothegms_ and _Essays_ and _Witty Sayings_ we are more impressed by her accurate memory of Bacon and other earlier essayists than by any profound knowledge of life on her own part. [Sidenote: Mrs. Eleanor James (fl. 1685-1715)]