GEORGE BALLARD (1706-1755)

The extreme wickedness of reviewers has been a conviction
with many authors--who have sometimes, it would seem,
succumbed to it themselves and retaliated in reviewing
others. The following letter to Dr. Lyttelton, Dean of
Exeter, is a very early (1753) and not unamusing example of
this conviction: and is given as such, though the writer has
no wide fame. His history is, however, interesting and
shows, among other things, how entirely erroneous is the
idea that till recently (and even now to some extent)
opportunities of showing themselves able to profit by
education were and are denied to the "lower classes" in
England. Ballard was apprenticed to a staymaker
("habit-maker" as others say) at Chipping-Campden, but
betook himself in his leisure hours to the study of
Anglo-Saxon. Hearing of which fact the gentlemen of the
local hunt (the boozy squire-tyrants of popular tradition)
subscribed for an annuity of L100 a year to him, but he
would only accept L60. With this he went up to Oxford to
enjoy the Bodleian, was made a "clerk" at Magdalen and later
an esquire-bedell to the University. He did much good work
of the antiquarian kind, and died a year or two after
writing this letter, having (one hopes) relieved himself by
his protest and been consoled by a kind answer from
Lyttelton.[106]

19. TO DR. LYTTELTON, DEAN OF EXETER

A DEFENCE OF THE HISTORY OF LEARNED LADIES

Revd. and Hond. Sir,

My best acknowledgments are due for the favour of two epistles; the
first of which I received a few minutes after my last set forward for
Exeter. I would have answered it immediately, but that I thought a
little respite might be agreeable, before I gave you the trouble of
another long letter.

The day before I received your first epistle, a Gent. of my acquaintance
brought me the _Monthly Review_ for February, that I might see what the
candid and genteel authors of that work had said of mine. They observe
to the publick, that _I have said_ C. Tishem was so skilled in the Greek
Tongue, that she could read Galen in its original, which very few
Physicians are able to do. Whether this was done maliciously, in order
to bring the wrath of the AEsculapians upon me, or inadvertently, I
cannot say: but I may justly affirm, that they have used me very ill in
that affair; since if th