Note 609 — THE BLUES:[609] A LITERARY ECLOGUE.

{573}[Benjamin Stillingfleet is said to have attended evening parties at Mrs. Montague's in grey or blue worsted stockings, in lieu of full dress. The ladies who excused and tolerated this defiance of the conventions were nicknamed "blues," or "blue-stockings." Hannah More describes such a club or coterie in her Bas Bleu, which was circulated in MS. in 1784 (Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1848, p. 689). A farce by Moore, entitled The M. P., or The Blue-Stocking, was played for the first time at the Lyceum, September 30, 1811. The heroine, "Lady Bab Blue, is a pretender to poetry, chemistry, etc."—Genest's Hist. of the Stage, 1832, viii. 270.]