By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was possible to find introductory, digested accounts of more or less any area of intellectual life, including classical languages and literature—forms of knowledge once thought synonymous with being a formally educated gentleman. These introductory works give us some insight into the varied levels of classical literacy enjoyed by readers. In her influential Essay to Revive the Antient Education of Gentlewomen (1673), Bathsua Makin—herself an experienced teacher, former royal tutor, and prodigious polyglot—argued for women’s capacity to learn and offered commonsense advice on the kinds of books that might help young women learn grammar and classical languages. Her summary of the kind of syllabus she was advising—and in fact, that she offered to teach at her newly founded school in Tottenham High Cross—gives some sense of the limits of classical competency in an aspirant student of this kind.
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