"Of Essay Writing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

to subjection, I should resign into their fair hands the
sovereign authority over the republic of letters. As the case
stands, my commission extends no farther, than to desire a
league, offensive and defensive, against our common enemies,
against the enemies of reason and beauty, people of dull heads
and cold hearts. From this moment let us pursue them with the
severest vengeance: let no quarter be given, but to those of
sound understandings and delicate affections; and these
characters, 'tis to be presumed, we shall always find
inseparable.

To be serious, and to quit the allusion before it be worn
thread-bare, I am of opinion, that women, that is, women of
sense and education (for to such alone I address myself) are
much better judges of all polite writing than men of the same
degree of understanding; and that 'tis a vain pannic, if they
be so far terrified with the common ridicule that is levelled
against learned ladies, as utterly to abandon every kind of
books and study to our sex. Let the dread of that ridicule
have no other effect, than to make them conceal their
knowledge before fools, who are not worthy of it, nor of them.
Such will still presume upon the vain title of the male sex to
affect a superiority above them: but my fair readers may be
assured, that all men of sense, who know the world, have a
great deference for their judgment of such books as ly within
the compass of their knowledge, and repose more confidence in
the delicacy of their taste, though unguided by rules, than in
all the dull labours of pedants and commentators. In a
neighbouring nation, equally famous for good taste, and for
gallantry, the ladies are, in a manner, the sovereigns of the
learned world, as well as of the conversible; and no polite
writer pretends to venture upon the public, without the
approbation of some celebrated judges of that sex. Their
verdict is, indeed, sometimes complained of; and, in
particular, I find, that the admirers of Corneille, to save
that great poet's honour upon the ascendant that Racine began
to take over him, always said, that it was not to be expected,
that so old a man could dispute the prize, before such judges,
with so young a man as his rival. But this observation has
been found unjust, since posterity seems to have ratified the
verdict of that tribunal: and Racine, though dead, is still
the favourite of the fair sex, as well as of the best judges
among the men.

There is only one subject, on which I am apt to distrust the
judgment of females, and that is, concerning books of
gallantry and devotion, which they commonly affect as high
flown as possible; and most of them seem more delighted with
the warmth, than with the justness of the passion. I mention
gallantry and devotion as the same subject, because, in