xxx Editor's Preface 



liberally supplied the public libraries of Oxford and Cambridge, 

 and those of many of their Colleges, with copies of her works, 

 and dedicated her Philosophical Opinions to the Universities 

 of England, and her Grounds of Natural Philosophy to the 

 Universities of Europe. 



Passing from the consideration of her works to the con- 

 sideration of the Duchess herself, the task of the critic is 

 more delicate and more difficult. She has been unduly praised 

 and unjustly depreciated. Clever people have sneered at 

 her as a pedant, and dull people still term her ' the mad 

 Duchess '. Her reputation has suffered something from the 

 pens of others, but more from her own. She wrote a number 

 of excellent things, but carefully buried them in a vast heap 

 of rubbish. No woman ever more frankly described herself 

 in her autobiography, or more carelessly displayed herself 

 in her writings. Even those who admire and love her most 

 must admit that some of her defects are too highly developed 

 for the character of a perfect heroine. Her love of singularity 

 amounted to a passion ; in her philosophy as in her clothes she 

 was determined above all things to be original. Her vanity 

 was enormous and insatiable. ' Vanity,' she says somewhere, 

 ' is so natural to our sex that it were unnatural not to be so ' ; 

 but her vanity was something superfeminine. 



Yet her weaknesses were very largely the results of the 

 circumstances in which she grew up, and the position in which 

 Fortune placed her. Her education was neglected, her youth 

 solitary and secluded. She associated only with the members 

 of her own family, and shunned the company of even near 

 connections. Her stay in the court of Henrietta Maria was 

 too brief to give her a taste for society, or to fit her for it. 

 After her marriage with the Marquis of Newcastle she continued 

 her secluded and contemplative way of Jiving, immuring her- 

 self in a little world of speculations and fancies, out of sight 

 and out of sound of the real world outside. She had no 

 children, and the management of an exile's household afforded 

 her little occupation ; writing became to her a resource, a 

 pleasure, and a necessity. ' Be not too severe in your cen- 

 sures ', she says in one of the prefaces to her first book, ' for 

 first, I have no children to employ my care and attendance 

 on. Next, my Lord's estate being taken away in those times 

 when I writ this book, I had nothing for huswifery or thrifty 



