I suppose it is a truism, that the higher position now taken by
English studies, is intimately interwoven with the advances which have
been made during the last quarter of a century in the higher education
of women, and that but for the movement to let women share in the
advantages of a university education, it is doubtful whether the
nineteenth century would have witnessed the establishment of a School
of English Language and Literature at Oxford. In connexion with this
it is a noteworthy fact, that the preparation of these early
seventeenth century English dictionaries was also largely due to a
consideration of the educational wants of women. The 'Table
Alphabeticall' of Robert Cawdrey, which was dedicated to five 'right
honourable, Worshipfull, vertuous, and godlie Ladies[9],' the sisters
of his former pupil, Sir James Harrington, Knight, bears on its
title-page that it is 'gathered for the benefit and help of Ladies,
Gentlewomen, or any other vnskilfull persons.' Bullokar's _Expositor_
was dedicated 'to the Right Honorable and Vertvovs his Singvlar Good
Ladie, the Ladie Jane Viscountesse Mountague,' under whose patronage
he hoped to see the work 'perhaps gracefully admitted among greatest
Ladies and studious Gentlewomen, to whose reading (I am made belieue)
it will not prooue altogether vngratefull.' In similar words, the
title-page of Cockeram's Dictionary proclaims its purpose of 'Enabling
as well Ladies and Gentlewomen ... as also Strangers of any Nation to
the vnderstanding of the more difficult Authors already printed in our
Language, and the more speedy attaining of an elegant perfection of
the English tongue, both in reading, speaking, and writing.' And
Thomas Blount, setting forth the purpose of his _Glossographia_, says,
in words of which one seems to have heard an echo in reference to an
English School in this University, 'It is chiefly intended for the
more-knowing Women, and less-knowing Men; or indeed for all such of