in one of his _Tales_:--

This reasoning maid, above her sex's dread
Had dared to read, and dared to say she read,
Not the last novel, not the new born play,
Not the mere trash and scandal of the day;
But (though her young companions felt the shock)
She studied Berkeley, Bacon, Hobbes and Locke.

The one who perhaps made herself most notorious was Harriet Martineau,
and in spite of her disagreeable egotism it is still a pleasure to read
some of her less controversial writings. Her _Feats on the Fiord_, for
example, is really a classic. But I can never quite forgive Harriet
Martineau in that she spoke contemptuously of East Anglian scenery,
scenery which in its way has charms as great as any part of Europe can
offer. No, in this roll of famous women, the two I am most inclined to
praise are Sarah Austin and Fanny Burney. Mrs. Austin was, you will
remember, one of the Taylors of Norwich, married to John Austin, the
famous jurist. She was one of the first to demonstrate that her sex
might have other gifts than a gift for writing fiction, and that it was
possible to be a good, quiet, domestic woman, and at the same time an
exceedingly learned one. Even before Carlyle she gave a vogue to the
study of German literature in this country; she wrote many books, many
articles, and made some translations, notably what is still the best
translation of von Ranke's _History of the Popes_. In the muster-roll of
East Anglian worthies let us never forget this singularly good woman,
this correspondent of all the most famous men of her day, of Guizot, of
Grote, of Gladstone, and one who also, as a letter-writer, showed that
she possessed the faculty that seems, as I have said, to be peculiar to
the soil of East Anglia. Still less must we forget Fanny Burney, who,
born in King's Lynn, lived to delight her own generation by _Evelina_ and
by the fascinating _Diary_ that gives so pleasant a picture of Dr.
Johnson and many another of her contemporaries. _Evelina_ and the
_Diary_ are two of my favourite books, but I practise self-restraint and
will say no more of them here.

I now come to my ninth, and last, name among those East Anglian worthies
whom I feel that we have a particular right to canonize--George
Crabbe--"though Nature's sternest painter yet the best," as Byron
described him. Now it may be frankly admitted that few of us read Crabbe
to-day. He has an acknowledged place in the history of literature, b