Up to the time we have now reached, we have not had the opportunity of enrolling the name of a lady among our humorists.  Although in society so many of the fair sparkle and overflow with quick and graceful raillery, we find that when they come to impress their thoughts upon paper they are invariably sentimental.  Authors are often a contrast to their writings, but no doubt the female mind is generally of a poetical complexion.  Thus, in the early part of the last century we meet with only three lady humorists, Mrs. Manley, mostly noted for her scandalous stories:  Mrs. Behn, whose humour was crude, chiefly that of rough harlequinade and gross immorality, and Mrs. Centlivre.  Early opportunities of study were afforded to the last in a remarkable way.  When flying from the anger of her stepmother, she met Anthony Hammond, then at Cambridge, and went to live with him at the University, disguised in boy’s clothes.  Remarkable for her beauty, she married, when only fifteen, a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, and upon his death at sixteen, a Captain Carrol, who was killed in a duel.  It was then partly owing to pecuniary embarrassments that she went on the stage and wrote plays—­the first of her dramas appearing in her twentieth year.  So great was the prejudice then against lady writers, that at her publisher’s suggestion her first production was anonymous.  But those, who began by deriding her pretensions, ended by acknowledging her merit; she became a great favourite and constant writer for the stage, and an intimate friend of Farquhar and Steele.  There is an absence of indelicacy in her plays, but not a little farcical humour, especially in the character of “Marplot” in “The Busybody,” and of rich “Mrs. Dowdy” with her vulgarity and admirers in “The Platonic Lady.”  She often adopts the tone of the day in ridiculing learned ladies.  In one place she speaks as if even at that time the founding of a college for ladies was in contemplation—­

     Lady Reveller. Why in such haste, Cousin Valeria?

     Valeria. Oh! dear Cousin, don’t stop me; I shall lose the finest
     insect for dissection, a huge flesh fly, which Mr. Lovely sent me
     just now, and opening the box to try the experiment, away it flew.

     Lady. I am glad the poor fly escaped; will you never be weary of
     these whimsies?

     Val. Whimsies!  Natural Philosophy a whimsy!  Oh! the unlearned
     world!

     Lady. Ridiculous learning!

     Mrs. Alpiew. Ridiculous indeed for women.  Philosophy suits our sex
     as jack-boots would do.

     Val. Custom would bring them as much in fashion as furbelows, and
     practice would make us as valiant as e’er a hero of them all; the
     resolution is in the mind.  Nothing can enslave that.

     Lady. My stars!  This girl will be mad—­that’s certain.

     Val. Mad!  So Nero banished philosophers from Rome, and the
     first discoverer of the Antipodes was condemned for a heretic.