The next disagreeable thing to a lazy lady is a very busy one. A man of business in good company, who gives an account of his abilities and despatches, is hardly more insupportable than her they call a notable woman and a manager. Lady Goodday, where I visited the other day at a very polite circle, entertained a great lady with a recipe for a poultice, and gave us to understand, that she had done extraordinary cures since she was last in town. It seems a countryman had wounded himself with his scythe as he was mowing; and we were obliged to hear of her charity, her medicine, and her humility, in the harshest tone and coarsest language imaginable.
What I would request in all this prattle is, that our females would either let us have their persons or their minds in such perfection as nature designed them.
The way to this is, that those who are in the quality of gentlewomen should propose to themselves some suitable method of passing away their time. This would furnish them with reflections and sentiments proper for the companions of reasonable men, and prevent the unnatural marriages which happen every day between the most accomplished women and the veriest oafs, the worthiest men and the most insignificant females. Were the general turn of women's education of another kind than it is at present, we should want one another for more reasons than we do as the world now goes. The common design of parents is to get their girls off as well as they can, and make no conscience of putting into our hands a bargain for our whole life which will make our hearts ache every day of it.
I shall therefore take this matter into serious consideration, and will propose, for the better improvement of the fair sex, a female library.[180] This collection of books shall consist of such authors as do not corrupt while they divert, but shall tend more immediately to improve them, as they are women. They shall be such as shall not hurt a feature by the austerity of their reflections, nor cause one impertinent glance by the wantonness of them. They shall all tend to advance the value of their innocence as virgins, improve their understanding as wives, and regulate their tenderness as parents. It has been very often said in these Lucubrations, that the ideas which most frequently pass through our imaginations, leave traces of themselves in our countenances. There shall be a strict regard had to this in my female library, which shall be furnished with nothing that shall give supplies to ostentation or impertinence; but the whole shall be so digested for the use of my students, that they shall not go out of character in their inquiries, but their knowledge appear only a cultivated innocence.