xxxvi To His Grace the 



them in my name ; by which your Lordship was moved to 

 prefix an Epistle before one of them in my vindication, wherein 

 you assure the world upon your honour, that what was written 

 and printed in my name, was my own x ; and I have also 

 made known, that your Lordship was my only tutor, in 

 declaring to me what you had found and observed by your 

 own experience ; for I being young when your Lordship 

 married me, could not have much knowledge of the world : 

 but it pleased God to command His servant Nature to indue 

 me with a poetical and philosophical genius, even from my 

 birth ; for I did write some books in that kind, before I was 

 twelve years of age, which for want of good method and 

 order, I would never divulge. But though the world would 

 not believe that those conceptions and fancies which I writ 

 were my own, but transcended my capacity, yet they found 

 fault that they were defective for want of learning ; and on 

 the other side, they said I had plucked feathers out of the 

 universities ; which was a very preposterous judgment. Truly, 

 my Lord, I confess that for want of scholarship, I could not 

 express myself so well as otherwise I might have done, in 

 those philosophical writings I published first ; but after I 

 was returned with your Lordship into my native country, 

 and led a retired country life, I applied myself to the reading 

 of philosophical authors, of purpose to learn those names and 

 words of art that are used in schools ; which at first were so 

 hard to me, that I could not understand them, but was fain 

 to guess at the sense of them by the whole context, and so 

 write them down as I found them in those authors, at which 

 my readers did wonder and thought it impossible that a 

 woman could have so much learning and understanding in 

 terms of art, and scholastical expressions ; so that I and my 

 books are like the old apologue, mentioned in yEsop, of a 

 father, and his son, who rid on an ass through a town when 

 his father went on foot, at which sight the people shouted and 

 cried shame, that a young boy should ride, and let his father, 

 an old man, go on foot : whereupon the old man got upon 

 the ass, and let his son go by. But when they came to the 

 next town, the people exclaimed against the father, that he, 



1 An Epistle to justify the Lady Newcastle, and truth against falsehood, laying those 

 false and malicious aspersions of her, that she was not author of her books, prefixed, 

 to Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 1655. 



