The Nine Muses Rhetorick) has not been identified; her initials are "Mrs. D. E." The Nine Muses The Nine Muses, Or, Poems Written by Nine severall Ladies Upon the death of the late Famous John Dryden, Esq. (London: Richard Basset, 1700) was an elegiac volume of poetry published pseudonymously. The contributors were English women writers, each of whom signed their poems with the names of Muses. The collection was edited by Delarivier Manley (who wrote as "Melpomene" and "Thalia") and includes pieces by Susanna Centlivre ("perhaps," according to Blain et al.), Sarah Fyge Egerton ("Erato", "Euterpe", and "Terpsichore"), Mary Pix ("Clio"), Catherine Trotter
Muses A famous Masonic lodge in pre-Revolutionary Paris was called Les Neuf Soeurs ("The Nine Sisters", that is, the Nine Muses); Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Danton, and other influential Enlightenment figures attended it. As a side-effect of this movement the word "museum" (originally, "cult place of the Muses") came to refer to a place for the public display of knowledge. The Muses are explicitly used in modern English to refer to an artistic inspiration, as when one cites one's own artistic muse, and also implicit in words and phrases such as "amuse", "museum" (Latinised from "mouseion"—a place where the Muses were worshipped),