Note 283 — No. 95.
Reading edition
Her doll. Cf. "Wentworth Papers," p. 451, where Lady Anne Wentworth, aged eight, writing to her father of a younger sister, says, "Lady Hariote desires you to bring her a baby." The best dolls were called "Bartholomew babies," says Professor Henry Morley ("Memoirs of Bartholomew Fair," 1859, p. 333).
A passage in Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" (Book III.) aptly illustrates this use of the word "baby": "We see young babes think babies of wonderful excellency, and yet the babies are but babies." From the private account-book of Isabella, Duchess of Grafton, who married, as her second husband, Sir T. Hanmer, it appears that in 1710 the Duchess gave £2, 3s. for a "baby" ("Correspondence of Sir T. Hanmer, Bart.," 1838, pp. 236 seq.).