The World's Best Essays, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806) [iss Elizabeth Carter, described in the footnotes to the early reprints of the Rambler as Mrs. Carter of Deal was one of the celebrated bluestockings of the eighteenth century. She translated Epictetus and, besides her Greek and Latin, knew Hebrew, French, German, and most of the European languages. Doctor Johnson admired her greatly for her ability and the use she made of it, and it was to him that she owed the publication of several of her essays in the Rambler. She was born at Deal, December 6th, 1717. Her father was a clergyman, who educated his girls as thoroughly as he did his boys. In her anxiety to learn, Elizabeth took snuff and learned to chew green tea to keep awake at night. Her health was thus impaired and she never married, but in spite of the damage to her nerves from snuff, green tea, and education, she lived until 1806, and for the last twelve years of her father's life gave him a home in a house she had bought with her own earnings. A RAMBLER ESSAY Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico Tangit, et admissus circum pracordia ludit. ? Persius. Horace, with sly, insinuating grace, Laugh'd at his friend, and look'd him in the face; Would raise a blush where secret vice he found, And tickle while he gently probed the wound. With seeming innocence the crowd beguiled; But made the desperate passes when he smiled. ?Dry den. To the Rambler: Sir: ? As Very many well-disposed persons, by the unavoidable necessity of their affairs, are so unfortunate as to be totally buried in the country, where they labor under the most deplorable ignorance of what is transacting among the polite part of mankind, I cannot help thinking that, as a public writer, you should take the case of these truly compassionable objec...