oman in literature during the period of
which we are writing, it is well to keep in mind the words of Lady
Mary Wortley Montague: "We are permitted no books but such as tend to
the weakening and effeminating of our minds. We are taught to place
all our art in adorning our persons, while our minds are entirely
neglected." This opinion of woman has not yet become obsolete, so that
it is too much to expect to find, in the seventeenth century, women of
the highest literary attainments, and certainly one need not look for
women among the creators of literary style and founders of English
literature. A literary woman is to some masculine minds a matter of
everlasting scorn. Such minds will not be offended in the perusal of
the literature of the seventeenth century by finding women wielding
the pen for the instruction or the edification of elect circles
of superior intellects or to please the vulgar taste of the common
people. Excepting as writers of occasional verse or of memoirs, the
names of few female authors appear in the literary annals of the
period.

Amusement and not intellect was the contribution which women were
supposed to make to the times of Charles II., and, excepting in
matters reprehensible, there was often a degree of simplicity about
the amusements indulged in that makes one wonder if such ingenuous
entertainment does not bespeak less design and craftiness in the
natures of those women than is usual to associate with plotters and
intriguers. Lady Steuart, one of the most noted court beauties,
found her chief diversion in sitting upon the floor, with subservient
courtiers about her, building card houses. Lord Sunderland treated his
visitors to an exhibition of fire eating by the renowned Richardson,
who awakened the wonder of his beholders by his feats of devouring
brimstone on glowing coals, eating melted beer glasses, and roasting a
raw oyster upon a live coal held upon his tongue. Such mountebanks
and jugglers were the successors of similar characters who wandered
through the country from castle to castle during the Middle Ages, or
became attached to some great lord's following. Other forms of indoor
amusements, which would hardly comport with the gravity of the same
high circles of society in the nation in these latter times, may be
stated. Pepys speaks of one day going to the court, where he found the
Duke and Duchess of York, with all the great ladies, sitting upon a
carpet on the ground, playing: "I l