DURING the first half of the eighteenth century, English women had little education and still less intellectual status. It was considered "unbecoming" for them to know Greek or Latin, almost immodest for them to be authors, and certainly indiscreet to own the fact. Mrs. Barbauld was merely the echo of popular sentiment when she protested that women did not want colleges. "The best way for a woman to acquire knowledge," she wrote, "is from conversation with a father, or brother, or friend." It was not till the beginning of the next century after the pioneer work of the bluestockings, be it observed that Sydney Smith, aided, doubtless, by his extraordinary sense of humour, discovered the absurdity of the fact that a woman of forty should be more ignorant than a boy of twelve.
In society, at routs or assemblies, cards or dancing were the main diversions. Women were approached with flattering respect, with exaggerated compliment, but they were never accorded the greater compliment of being credited with sufficient intelligence to appreciate the subjects that interested men. What dean Swift wrote in 1734 to Mrs. Delany from Ireland applied equally well to general opinion in England: "A pernicious error prevails here among the men that it is the duty of your sex to be fools in every article except what is merely domestic."