In the Welsh language, one word, cawr, expresses a great person, whether it be a giant in bodily size, according to the primary sense, or a hero, or a genius. This Ceridwen was a giantess, an eminent woman, and an enchantress of what has been termed the Neo-druidic period, A.D. 600-1200, when the old national mythology, which had vanished away long centuries before in the light of Christianity from the popular belief, was again evoked as a poetical theory by the bards: just as the theogony of Greece and Rome continued in more recent times to mystify the literature of modern Europe. Ceridwen was a type of inventive fertility; she was a Ceres, a Luna, and a Minerva in one. Her cauldron she medicated with herbs so efficacacious, that three drops of the contents, touching the lips of a bard, imparted the prophetic power of beholding all futurity.* Hence it may be inferred that the British bards of the period thought not less highly of the intellect of women than the ancient Greeks did; although the apparent compliment might perchance in both nations have consisted merely in the idea of maternal production.

The earliest female writer mentioned by Warton is Mary of France, who, in the thirteenth century, transfused and versified the old traditionary tales of Armorica into those Lays of the Romance language, of which the MS. still exists among the earliest specimens of Romantic fiction. She was born on the Continent, but wrote in England, and died about the year 1268. Her 'Poesies,' including her Lays, Fables, &c., were published by M. de Roquefort in 1820. Translations of the Lays may be found in Ellis's 'Early English Metrical Romances.'

Early in the fifteenth century Christina of Pisa flour

* See the Iolo MSS.

ished. She translated several works from the Latin into the French language. Her 'Moral Proverbs' were translated into English by Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, who lost his head with Vaughan and Grey at Pomfret Castle; they were printed by Caxton in 1477. Caxton likewise printed a translation of her Book of Feats of Arms and of Chivalry.' Warton quotes from those proverbs one quaint couplet :—

"Little valueth good example to see,

For him that will not the contrary flee."

The discouragement of the Anglo-Saxon literature under King Edward the Confessor, and the Norman and AngloNorman sovereigns, suppressed the literary spirit of the country, and produced an era of ignorance. From the reign of Edward the Confessor until the reign of the Plantagenet Edward III., French was the language of the English court and of the upper classes of English society. The most exact and most elliptical of historians states that 'English was seldom written, and hardly employed in prose, till after the middle of the fourteenth century.'

66

He mentions "an English letter from the lady of Sir John Pelham to her husband in 1399, which is probably one of the earliest instances of female penmanship;" satirically adding, "By the badness of the grammar, we may presume it to be her own.† In a note he gives a copy of it from Collins (who derived it from the archives of the Newcastle family), describing it as "the oldest private letter in the English language," and remarking that others of an earlier date will probably be found; "at least it cannot now be doubtful that some were written, since a lady is not likely to set the example." This acute inference is † Ibid., p. 51.

* Lit. Eur.,' vol. i., p. 49, ed. iv.

doubtless correct, and, so far from being a censure, may rather be deemed a commendation, for the characteristic of feminine talent has ever been rather to refine and to improve upon inventions than to originate them.

In another passage Mr. Hallam alludes to this letter as "ungrammatical and unintelligible." Allowing the truth of the first charge, it may be contended that the second rests not upon the diction, but upon our ignorance of the state of the people in the counties of "Sussex, Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent," at the period when Lady Pelham wrote to Sir John from his castle of Pevensey.

The daughters of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, were the first Englishwomen who knew how to write; and Johanna of Navarre, his daughter-in-law, widow of John, sixth Duke of Bretagne, and second wife of King Henry IV. of England, is the first English queen whose autograph signature is known to be extant: * A.D. 1415. Her "Jehane" shows the process by which the name of Johanna was softened down into "Jane."t

A letter from Constance Lady Husee to King Henry VI., A.D. 1441, is introduced by Mrs. Everett Green as "the earliest specimen which had fallen under her notice of an English epistle written by a lady.” ‡

According to Sir Henry Ellis, the correspondence of literate persons in England, previous to the reign of King Henry V., was usually carried on either in the Latin or French language. This fact might also be reasonably inferred from the predominance of the priests, and their

'Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies of Great Britain, from the commencement of the Twelfth Century to the close of the Reign of Queen Mary,' edited by Mary Anne Everett Wood. 3 vols. 8vo.

+ Ibid. See the facsimiles prefixed to the first vol.

Ibid., vol. i., p. 92.

Latin ministrations; and from the French habits and tendencies of the court and aristocracy.

There is no better test of mental culture, either in an individual or an age, than familiar letters afford. Of the four hundred and forty-three Paston Letters, in Knight's edition, belonging to the historical period 1440-84, nearly one-third are written by women or addressed to women. Several, upon urgent affairs, are directed either for "The Right Worshipful John Paston," or, in his absence, for "The Right Worshipful Mistress Paston," his wife. Then, as ever, sagacious minds and strong wills gained domestic ascendency, and Dame Agnes and Mistress Margaret influenced their husbands, controlled their children, governed their servants, retainers, and tenants; and, whenever occasion required, acted as able deputies or principals in the management of landed and personal property, and in the transaction of all sorts of business. Their letters, and

the letters of many other ladies and gentlewomen of the party, are not inferior in style, sense, or spirit to those of the greater number of their male correspondents.

The letter addressed to Sir John Paston by Elizabeth Duchess of Suffolk, sister of King Edward IV., written about the year 1461, is noticed by Mrs. Everett Green as "the earliest holograph of any royal lady of England of which we have any record." *

A note subjoined to this statement says that "In the Tower collection are several English letters written towards the close of the reign of Henry VI., but they are of no particular interest, and are from females of inferior station."

This information is important, as a proof that education at that period was not the exclusive privilege of women of

*Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol. i. p. 94.

high rank; but it may be safely asserted, until further evidence is produced, that no English females under the degree of gentlewomen, unless they were nuns, could at that period read and write.

In all ages and countries, there have been, are, and can be, only two sorts of epistolary missives-the formal and the spontaneous. Cultivation alters them, and their combinations produce innumerable varieties, but in these the original species can always be distinctly traced. The formal is known by its clinging, supporting, and shaping itself upon some rule, frame-work, or type. The earliest compositions of children, those of persons educated chiefly by the ear, those of crafty persons, and those of scholars whose learning oppresses their mental energy, are always more or less stiffly artificial and formal.

The letters of those persons who write as freely as they think and speak may properly be termed natural and 'spontaneous, whatever tincture they may show of their author's education or ignorance. Each several letter of the Paston collection exhibits a crude, unblended junction of artificially-formal beginnings and endings, with intervening passages of spontaneously-natural utterance: set phrases being constantly used, nevertheless, for the communication of certain kinds of information, such as tidings of mortal sickness or death.

Family interests, family acquisitions, worldly advancement, and personal convenience; the cares of lands and houses, goods and chattels, profits and losses, are the engrossing topics of all; with such narrations of the political troubles of the time as interfered with the private welfare of the writers. The wearing out of villenage, and the little injury inflicted upon the country by the civil war, may be inferred from this correspondence.