[To THE EDITOR or TEE "SPECTATOR']
may or may not be "wise for Mrs. Beckham to bring the name of George Eliot into her challenge of Dr. Maephairs statements." There can be no doubt as to the wisdom of "H. F. 1C.'s " criticism. "It recalls to one's mind," he says, "that lady's epigram : 'There's nothing a woman does that a man can't do better, except bearing children, and that she does in a poor makeshift sob of perhaps the wittiest thing ever said by a woman." As a matter of fact, it was said by Mr. Massey, a professed misogy- nist, who had remarked just before: "If I'd known Vixen was a woman, I'd never have held the boys from drowning her," and who subsequently adds that women are "only the evils that belong to this state of probation which it's lawful
for a man to keep as clear of as he can in this life, hoping to get quit of 'em for ever in another." Somewhere, too, in
"Adam Bade" Mrs. Poyser observes (I quote from memory) : "I'm not denying that the women are foolish : God Almighty made them to match the men," which is far funnier.—I am
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