Introduction xvii 



In the same interview, she seems to have more than 

 reached her points in philosophy, with the unstinted 

 homage of Dr. Charlton: for " she swore if the schools 

 did not banish Aristotle," and read her instead, " they 

 did her wrong." This for a woman of wit was a 

 parlous self-delusion. But indeed if humour is wit 

 lifted into an atmosphere, one is obliged to confess that 

 with all her wit Margaret Newcastle had small humour 

 to spare for her own foibles. Everything that could be 

 got by the most intrepid mental g5rmnastics was hers; 

 and if the act of writing were a sure sign of the abstruse 

 business of thinking, she might have become the philo- 

 sopher she believed herself to be, but assuredly was not. 



Wit as it was then understood — something between 

 wit, the play of fancy, and the real " intellects," ^ as Dr. 

 Johnson defined it — ^was her test of both the affections 

 of the mind and the ailments of the body. Writing 

 " Of Apoplexies, and the like," she says, " when the 

 head, which is the chimney-top of the body, is set on 

 fire by the fever, the brain becomes idle and f ran tick. 

 But the vapour that ascends to the head is either a 

 great friend or enemy to the wit; for a gross vapour 

 chokes the wit, while a thin sharp vapour quickens it." 



Her theory of the kind of fluid intelligence, of which a 

 brain may become the vehicle, appears in her curious 

 account of the reason why musicians are so often mad. 

 This is not due to the "pride bred by the conceit of their 

 rare art and skill. ' ' No, it is really caused ' ' by the motion 

 of the musick," which being swifter than the ordinary 

 motion of the brain, distempers that organ by quicken- 

 ing its pace to the motion of the fiddle; this puts the 

 brain so out of tune that it is very seldom tunable again, 

 and " as a ship is swallowed by a whirlpit in the sea, so 

 is reason drown'd in the whirlpit of the brain." 



This is well put if extravagant, and even sounds 

 original; but though the Duchess is very anxious to 

 protest that she is indebted to nobody for her ideas in 

 science and philosophy — ^when we turn to the pages of 

 some of her contemporaries, we come upon her sources 



^ " Will ever acts, and wit contemplates still." — Davies. 



