- from The Westminster Magazine (June 1776):
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OBSERVATIONS ON FEMALE LITERATURE
IN
GENERAL,
INCLUDING SOME PARTICULARS RELATING
TO
MRS.
MONTAGU AND MRS. BARBAULD.
[Embellished with an elegant
ENGRAVING of those LADIES.]
Happily we do not live in those days when prejudice
condemned our women to ignorance to be deplored. The
ridicule which Moliere [1] cast on Female Pedantry
brought all kinds of Knowledge into such disrepute
with the Women of France, that many of them
made a merit of murdering their
mother-tongue : there have been always,
however, some Fair-ones, who, detaching themselves
from the slavery of custom, have ventured to think,
to speak, and to write with propriety; and
there are many Ladies at this time in England who do
not blush--who have no reason to be ashamed to
discover that they are better instructed than the
majority of the smart fellows of the age.
The
ingenious Author of the
Feminead*[2], or Female Genius, opens
his Poem with the following lines, which must be read
by every Lady who thinks the "enlargement of
her mind, as well as the expansion of her
head," worth her attention, with particular
pleasure :
Shall lordly Man, the theme of every
lay,
Usurp the Muse's tributary bay;
In kingly state on Pindus' summit sit,
[3]
By Salic law the female right deny, [4]
And view their genius with regardless eye ?
Justice forbid ! ------ ------
Long o'er the world did Prejudice
maintain,
By sounds like these, her undisputed reign;
" Woman! (she cried) to thee indulgent Heav'n
Has all the charms of outward beauty
giv'n :
Be thine the boast, unrivall'd to enslave
The great, the wise, the witty, and the
brave :
Deck'd with the Paphian rose's damask glow,
[5]
And the vale-lily's vegetable snow;
Be thine, to move majestic in the dance,
To roll the eye, and aim the tender glance;
Or touch the strings, and breathe the melting
song,
Content to emulate that airy throng,
Who to the sun their painted plumes display,
And gaily glitter on the hawthorn spray;
Or wildly warble in the beachen grove,
Careless of aught but music, joy, and love."
Heavens! could such artful, slavish sounds
beguile
The free-born sons of Britain's polish'd isle
?
Could they, like fam'd Ulysses' d stand
crew,
Attentive listen, and enamoured view,
*The Rev. Mr.
Duncombe, of Canterbury
Page 284
Nor drive the Syren to that dreary
plain,
In loathsome pomp where Eastern tyrants reign;
Where each fair neck the yoke of slav'ry galls,
And in a proud seraglio's gloomy walls
Are taught, that, levell'd with the brutal
kind,
Nor sense nor souls to Women are assign'd !
Our British Nymphs with happier omens
rove
At Freedom's call, thro' Wisdom's Sacred grove;
And as with lavish hand each Sister Grace
Shapes the fair form, and regulates the face,
Each sister Muse, in blissful union join'd,
Adorns, improves, and beautifies the mind.
* * * * * * *
With various acts our rev'rence they engage,
Some turn the tuneful, some the moral page;
These, led by Contemplation, soar on high,
And range the heavens with philosophic eye;
While those surrounded by a vocal choir,
The canvass tinge, or touch the warbling
lyre.
In
the number of ingenious Female Writers who have
distinguished themselves in several branches of
polite literature, the two Ladies whom we have
selected for the embellishment of our present
Magazine make a very brilliant appearance. With
regard to these Ladies, indeed, the Author of this
sheet cannot, for obvious reasons, expatiate on their
respective merits in a manner agreeable to his
inclination; but he hopes that nothing which he
does say concerning them will give the least
offence. He is very sure, that he wishes to give them
rather pleasure than uneasiness, by his sketches of
their literary characters.
Mrs.
Montagu [6],
with a very pleasing person, a liberal mind, a
benevolent heart, and a large fortune, appears, in
consequences of her combined advantages, in a great
variety of attractive situations. In her life, as
well as in her writings, the solidity of her
understanding and the elegance of her taste are
equally conspicuous :
By Fortune follow'd, and by
Virtue led,
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Mrs. CARTER.[7]
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She is also
With wit well-natur'd, and
with books well bred.
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POPE.[8]
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With a mind richly cultivated and highly
polished, Mrs. Montagu has favoured the Public with
compositions which are truly classical, and which may
be frequently read with renewed satisfaction.--The
Three Dialogues of the Dead written by
her, and published by the late Lord Lyttelton
[9] at the end of
his own, abound with good sense, sprightly
sentiments, and sound morality. The first of these is
between Cadmus and Hercules, and is calculated to set
forth the use and excellence of learning. The next,
between Mercury and a modern fine Lady, is a pleasant
ridicule on the trifling, dissipated manner in which
our modish fair ones mispend their time. The last,
between Plutarch, Charon, and a modern Bookseller, is
a lively satire on the literary taste of the present
age, which, to the great disgrace of letters,
delights in fabulous, obscene, and immoral
romances.
These Dialogues certainly discover the fair Writer's
judgment and her taste; but they both appear dans
tout leur jour [10], in her " Essay on the Writings and
Genius of Shakespeare, compared with the
Greek and French Dramatic Poets; with
some Remarks upon the Misrepresentations of M. de
Voltaire."--The merits of the Essay are not,
however, confined to a mere defence of
Shakespeare [11], or to observations of
Voltaire's criticisms. It abounds with curious
disquisitions, and will undoubtedly hold a high rank
among the most classical pieces of the same nature in
the English language. The parallel drawn between the
conduct of the two Poets, in respect to the Ghost of
Darius, in the Perseus of Eschylus, and that of
Hamlet, as well as the comparisons made between
Shakespeare and the French Dramatic Writers, are
attended with a great number of the most judicious
and beautiful observations. The charge against
Voltaire of misrepresentations, of not understanding
the English language, and of his being guilty of the
greatest absurdities in his translation of the first
act of Shakespeare's Julius
Cæsar, are abundantly proved.
Mrs.
Barbauld, who, with the name of Aikin,
first darted into the poetical world a few years ago,
and charmed all those who have a true relish for the
effusions of a genius under the immediate inspiration
of the Muses, still shines with a lustre sufficient
to make the Mob of Gentlemen who write "about
it, Goddess, and about it," appear like "little stars
hiding their diminished rays" at the approach of the
sun in his rising splendor. This Lady is not only
poetically enchanting, but personally
attractive. With a countenance in which every thing
agreeable in a woman is strongly expressed, she
prepossesses you
Page 285
extremely in her favour at first sight; and you are
doubly pleased with the display of her intellectual
powers in conversation with her, as she seems not to
be conscious of an understanding superior to the
greatest part of ther sex. "Her eye speaks
sense distinct and clear," when she is silent, and
she never opens her lips to deliver her thoughts with
an oracular sententiousness; nor does she ever
converse with an oracular duplicity. She never
speaks as if she attempted to command admiration; but
she says nothing which does not deserve it. With her
lettered friends she opens her mental stores
with the least affectation to be imagined, and is
doubly cautious, before the illiterate, to shade her
talents with the veil of diffidence, that she may not
force them to feel their inferiority. There is,
indeed, a delicacy as well as propriety in her
deportment uncommonly pleasing; which, joined to the
mildness of her manners, and her affability to all
kinds of people, throw an inexpressible charm
over her whole person, and induce us to venerate the
beauties of her mind.
With
regard to Mrs. Barbauld's poetical
compositions, there is a masculine force in them,
which the most vigorous of our poets has not
excelled : there is nothing, indeed, feminine
belonging to them, but a certain gracefulness of
expression (in which dignity and beauty are both
included) that marks them for the productions of a
Female Hand. Her style is perfectly Horation
[12], elegantly
polished, and harmoniously easy. The curiosa
felicitas dicendi [13], which Genius alone and the ear that
Nature has harmonized can produce, is frequently to
be found in her beautiful Poems. She has also written
some pieces in prose, which, in point of
elegance, are as much superior to the laboured
Essays of our sturdy Moralist as the easy
motions of a fine Gentleman are, in point of
grace, to the stiff attitudes of a
Dancing-master.
Notes
1. The pen name of
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-73), playwright, actor,
and theatre manager known for his farces and comedies
of manners. His plays about art and nature, Les
Précieuses ridicules (1659) and especially
Les Femmes savantes (1672), might be in mind
here. It should be noted that the reviewer seems to
be giving a selective view of Molière's
attitudes; in other plays, in particular
L'École des femmes (1662), he satirizes
men who wish to keep women ignorant.
Return to text.
2. John Duncombe, a friend
of Elizabeth Carter, wrote The Feminead: or,
Female Genius, a Poem, which circulated in
manuscript before being published in 1754 (2nd ed.
1757). The poem is a celebration of virtuous learned
women and was meant to encourage women writers.
Return to text.
3. Pindus' Summit: A
mountain range in central and northwestern Greece
whose highest peak is 8,650 feet.
Return to text.
4. Salic Law: A law thought
to derive from the code of laws of the ancient Salic
Franks which prohibits a woman from succession to the
throne.
Return to text.
5. Paphian roses are related
to Paphos, a city near the southwest coast of Cyprus,
where Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was said to
have been born from the sea-foam. A temple to the
goddess was built at Paphos in the 12th century
B.C.
Return to text.
6. Elizabeth Montagu
(1720-1800) was an essayist, letter writer, patron,
and bluestocking hostess. Montagu was a friend of
Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Lord
Lyttleton, and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a patron to
James Beattie, Anna Barbauld, Frances Burney, and
Hannah More. She contributed three essays to
Lyttleton's Dialogues of the Dead (1760) and
published An Essay on the Writings and Genius of
Shakespeare in 1769. Her four volumes of letters
were published in 1809 and 1813. Source:
Schnorrenberg, Barbara Brandon. A Dictionary of
British and American Women Writers, 1660-1800.
Ed. Janet Todd. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield,
1987. 221-2.
Return to text.
7. "By fortune follow'd, and
by Virtue led," "To _____" (52) from Poems on
Several Occasions (1762), page 14.
Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), poet, essayist,
translator, and letter writer, was a close friend of
Catherine Talbot and Elizabeth Montagu. She wrote
Poems on Particular Occasions (1738), two
papers for the Rambler (Nos. 44 and 106) and
Poems on Several Occasions (1762). Her
best-known work was a translation of Epictetus
(1758). Her letters to Montagu were published in
three volumes (1817) and letters between Carter and
Talbot appeared in four volumes in 1809. Source:
Schnorrenberg, Barbara Brandon. A Dictionary of
British and American Women Writers, 1660-1800.
Ed. Janet Todd. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield,
1987. 75-6.
Return to text.
8. "Epistle to Miss Blount,
With the Works of Voiture" (1712), line 8.
Return to text.
9. George Lyttleton, first
baron Lyttleton (1709-73) was a patron of literature
and friend of Pope and Fielding and an opponent of
Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole. He is addressed by
Thomson in The Seasons. He published poems and
a history of Henry II (1767-71) and co-authored
Dialogues of the Dead (1760) with Elizabeth
Montagu who wrote three of the eighteen essays in the
collection. Source: The Oxford Companion to
English Literature. 5th ed. Ed. Margaret Drabble.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.
Return to text.
10. In their best light,
to advantage.
Return to text.
11. A refutation of
criticisms by Voltaire and published in 1769.
Return to text.
12. Characteristic of the
Latin poet Horace (65-8 B.C.) whose writing is known
for its formal rigor, succinctness, and
elegance.
Return to text.
13. Thoughtful felicity of
expression.
Return to text.
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