Men, as much from disdain as from a fancied superiority, have denied
us all learning; Mme. Dacier is an example proving that we are capable
of learning. She has associated erudition and good manners; for, at
present, modesty has been displaced; shame is no longer for vices,
and women blush over their learning only. She has freed the mind,
held captive under this prejudice, and she alone supports us in our
rights."

Tanneguy-Lefevre, the father of Mme. Dacier, was a savant and a type
of the scholars of the sixteenth century. He brought up his sons to be
like him--instructing them in Greek, Latin, and antiquities. The young
daughter, present at all the lessons given to her brothers, acquired,
unaided, a solid education; her father, amazed at her marvellous
faculty for comprehending and remembering, soon devoted most of his
energy to her. He was, at that time, professor at the College of
Saumur; and he was conspicuous not only for the liberty he exhibited
in his pedagogical duties, but for his general catholicity.

After the death of her father, the young daughter went to Paris where
her family friends, Chapelain and Huet, encouraged her in her studies,
the latter, who was assistant preceptor to the dauphin, even going so
far as to request her to assist him in preparing the Greek text for
the use of the dauphin. She soon eclipsed all scholars of the time by
her illuminating studies of Greek authors and of the quality of
the new editions which she prepared of their works, but she was
continually pestered on account of her erudition and her religion, the
Protestant faith, to which she clung while realizing that it had been
the cause of the failure of her father's advancement.

From that time appeared her famous series of translations of Terence
and Plautus, which were the delight of the women of the period and
which gave her the reputation of being the most intellectual woman of
the seventeenth century. In 1635, when nearly thirty years of age, she
married M. Dacier, the favorite pupil of her father, librarian to
the king and translator of Plutarch--a man of no means, but one who
thoroughly appreciated the worth of Mlle. Lefevre. This union was
spoken of by her contemporaries as "the marriage of Greek and Latin."

Two years after their marriage, after long and serious deliberation,
both abjured Protestantism, adopted the Catholic religion, and
succeeded in converting the whole town of Castres--an act which
gained them r