hority to do so; and to my ear the rather stately
procession of syllables is reminiscent of Fletcher. We shall never be
certain; and who would not swear that "Hear, ye ladies that are coy" was
by the same hand that wrote "Sigh no more, ladies," if we were not sure
of the contrary? But the most effective test, even in the case of
Fletcher, is to see whether the trill of song is, or is not, an inherent
portion of the dramatic structure of the play. This is the hall-mark of
Shakespeare, and perhaps of him alone.

CATHARINE TROTTER,

THE PRECURSOR OF THE BLUESTOCKINGS

The practically complete absence of the Woman of Letters from our
tropical and profuse literature of the early and middle seventeenth
century has often been observed with wonder. While France had her
Madeleine de Scudery and her Mlle. de Gournay and her Mere Angelique
Arnauld, Englishwomen of the Stuart age ventured upon no incursions into
philosophy, fiction, or theology. More and more eagerly, however, they
read books; and as a consequence of reading, they began at last to
write. The precious Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, hob-a-nobbed with
every Muse in her amazing divagations. But the earliest professional
woman of letters was Aphra Behn, the novelist and playwright, to whose
genius justice has only quite lately been done by Mr. Montague Summers.
Mrs. Behn died in 1689, and it seemed at first that she had left no
heritage to her sex. But there presently appeared a set of female
writers, who enlivened the last years of the century, but who were soon
eclipsed by the wits of the age of Anne, and who have been entirely
forgotten. It is to the most interesting of these "transient phantoms"
that I wish to draw attention.

The extreme precocity of Catharine Trotter makes her seem to belong to
the age of Dryden, but she was in reality younger than Addison and most
of the other contemporaries of Pope. She was born on August 16th, 1679,
the younger daughter of a naval officer, Captain David Trotter, R.N.;
her mother's maiden name had been Sarah Ballenden, probably of the
well-known Catholic family of that ilk. She "had the honour of being
nearly related to the illustrious families of Maitland, Duke of
Lauderdale and Drummond, Earl of Perth." The Jacobite fourth Earl of
Perth seems to have been the patron of Captain Trotter, of whom he wrote
in 1684 that he was "an ornament to his country." Apparently the gallant
captain was attached to Trinity House, w