Epistles on Women.

EPISTLES
ON THE
CHARACTER AND CONDITION OF WOMEN,
IN
VARIOUS AGES AND NATIONS.

EPISTLE I.

ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I.

Subject proposed­the fame of man extended over every period of life­that of woman transient as the beauty on which it is founded­Man renders her a trifler, then despises her, and makes war upon the sex with Juvenal and Pope. A more impartial view of the subject to be attempted. Weakness of woman, and her consequent subserviency. General view of various states of society undertaken. Birth of Eve­Angels prophesy the doom of the sex­description of Adam before he sees her­a joyless, hopeless, indolent creature. Meeting of Adam and Eve­Change produced in both­their mutual happiness and primary equality. Reflections. Conclusion.

EPISTLE I.

HEAR, O my friend, my Anna, nor disdain My sober lyre and moralizing strain! I sing the Fate of Woman:....Man to man Adds praise, and glory lights his mortal span; Creation's lord, he shines from youth to age,  Line 5 The blooming warrior or the bearded sage; But she, frail offspring of an April morn, Poor helpless passenger from love to scorn, While dimpled youth her sprightly cheek adorns Blooms a sweet rose, a rose amid the thorns;  

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A few short hours, with faded charms to earth She sinks, and leaves no vestige of her birth.

E'en while the youth, in love and rapture warm, Sighs as he hangs upon her beauteous form, Careless and cold he views the beauteous mind,  

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For virtue, bliss, eternity designed. "Banish, my fair," he cries, "those studious looks; Oh ! what should beauty learn from crabbed books? Sweetly to speak and sweetly smile be thine; Beware, nor change that dimple to a line !"  

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Well pleased she hears, vain triumph lights her eyes; Well pleased, in prattle and in smiles complies; But eyes, alas! grow dim, and roses fade, And man contemns the trifler he has made. The glass reversed by magic power of Spleen,  

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A wrinkled idiot now the fair is seen; Then with the sex his headlong rage must cope, And stab with Juvenal, or sting with Pope. Be mine, while Truth with calm and artless grace Lifts her clear mirror to the female face,  

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With steadier hand the pencil's task to guide, And win a blush from Man's relenting pride.

No Amazon, in frowns and terror drest, I poise the spear, or nod the threatening crest, Defy the law, arraign the social plan,  

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Throw down the gauntlet in the face of man, And, rashly bold, divided empire claim, Unborrowed honours, and an equal's name: No, Heaven forbid! I touch no sacred thing, But bow to Right Divine in man and king;  

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Nature endows him with superior force, Superior wisdom then I grant, of course; For who gainsays the despot in his might, Or when was ever weakness in the right ? With passive reverence too I hail the law,  

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Formed to secure the strong, the weak to awe,. Impartial guardian of unerring sway, Set up by man for woman to obey.

In vain we pout or argue, rail or chide, He mocks our idle wrath and checks our pride;  

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Resign we then the club and lion's skin, And be our sex content to knit and spin; To bow inglorious to a master's rule, And good and bad obey, and wise and fool; Here a meek drudge, a listless captive there,  

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For gold now bartered, now as cheap as air; Prize of the coward rich or lawless brave, Scorned and caressed, a plaything and a slave, Yet taught with spaniel soul to kiss the rod, And worship man as delegate of God.  

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Ah! what is human life? a narrow span Eked out with cares and pains to us and man; A bloody scroll that vice and folly stain, That blushing Nature blots with tears in vain, That frowning Wisdom reads with tone severe,  

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While Pity shudders with averted ear.

Yet will I dare its varying modes to trace Through many a distant tribe and vanisht race; The sketch perchance shall touch the ingenuous heart, And hint its moral with a pleasing art.  

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Aid me, Historic Muse! unfold thy store Of rich, of various, never-cloying lore; Thence Fancy flies with new-born visions fraught, There old Experience lends his hoards to Thought.

When slumbering Adam pressed the lonely earth,....  

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Unconscious parent of a wondrous birth,.... As forth to light the infant-woman sprung, By pitying angels thus her doom was sung: "Ah! fairest creature! born to changeful skies, To bliss and agony, to smiles and sighs:  

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Beauty's frail child, to thee, though doomed to bear By far the heavier half of human care, Deceitful Nature's stepdame-love assigned A form more fragile, and a tenderer mind;

More copious tears from Pity's briny springs,  

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And, trembling Sympathy! thy finest strings: While ruder man she prompts, in pride of power, To bruise, to slay, to ravage, to devour; On prostrate weakness turn his gory steel, And point the wounds not all thy tears can heal.  

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Poor victim! stern the mandate of thy birth, Ah dote not, smile not, on the things of earth! Subdue thyself; those rapturous flutterings still! Armed with meek courage and a patient will, With thoughtful eye pursue thy destined way,  

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Adore thy God, and hope a brighter day!" In solemn notes thus flowed the prescient strain,.... But flowed on Eve's unpractised ear in vain; In smiling wonder fixt, the new-born bride* 1.1 Drank the sweet gale, the glowing landscape eyed,  

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And murmured untried sounds, and gazed on every side. With look benign the boding angels view The fearless innocent, and wave adieu:

"Too well thy daughters shall our strain believe; Too short thy dream of bliss, ill-fated Eve."  

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Prophetic spirits! that with ken sublime Sweep the long windings of the flood of time, Joyless and stern, your deep-toned numbers dwell On rocks, on whirlpools, and the foaming swell, But pass unmarked the skiffs that gaily glide  

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With songs and streamers down the dimpling tide: Else rapturous notes had floated on the wind, And hailed the stranger born to bless her kind, To bear from heaven to earth the golden ties, Bind willing man, and draw him to the skies.  

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See where the world's new master roams along, Vainly intelligent and idly strong; Mark his long listless step and torpid air, His brow of densest gloom and fixt infantile stare!

Those sullen lips no mother's lips have prest,  

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Nor drawn, sweet labour! at her kindly breast; No mother's voice has touched that slumbering ear, Nor glistening eye beguiled him of a tear; Love nursed not him with sweet endearing wiles, Nor woman taught the sympathy of smiles;  

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Vacant and sad his rayless glances roll, Nor hope nor joy illumes his darkling soul; Ah! hapless world that such a wretch obeys! Ah! joyless Adam, though a world he sways!

But see!....they meet,....they gaze,....the new-born pair;....  

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Mark now the wakening youth, the wondering fair: Sure a new soul that moping idiot warms, Dilates his stature, and his mien informs! A brighter crimson tints his glowing cheek; His broad eye kindles, and his glances speak.  

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So roll the clouds from some vast mountain's head, Melt into mist, and down the valleys spread;

His crags and caves the bursting sunbeams light, And burn and blaze upon his topmost height; Broad in full day he lifts his towering crest,  

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And fire celestial sparkles from his breast. Eve too, how changed!....No more with baby grace The smile runs dimpling o'er her trackless face, As painted meads invite her roving glance, Or birds with liquid trill her ear intrance:  

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With downcast look she stands, abasht and meek, Now pale, now rosy red, her varying cheek; Now first her fluttering bosom heaves a sigh, Now first a tear stands trembling in her eye; For hark! the youth, as love and nature teach,  

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Breathes his full bosom, and breaks forth in speech; His quivering lips the winged accents part, And pierce, how swift! to Eve's unguarded heart.

Now rose complete the mighty Maker's plan, And Eden opened in the heart of Man;  

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Kindled by Hope, by gentle Love refined, Sweet converse cheered him, and a kindred mind; Nor deem that He, beneficent and just, In woman's hand who lodged this sacred trust, For man alone her conscious soul informed,  

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For man alone her tenderer bosom warmed; Denied to her the cup of joy to sip, But bade her raise it to his greedy lip, Poor instrument of bliss, and tool of ease, Born but to serve, existing but to please:....  

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No;....hand in hand the happy creatures trod, Alike the children of no partial God; Equal they trod till want and guilt arose, Till Savage blood was spilt, and man had foes: Ah! days of happiness,....with tearful eye  

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I see you gleam, and fade, and hurry by: Why should my strain the darkening theme pursue ? Be husht, my plaintive lyre! my listening friend, adieu!

EPISTLES
ON THE
CHARACTER AND CONDITION OF WOMEN,
IN
VARIOUS AGES AND NATIONS.

EPISTLE II.

ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE II.

The subject resumed. Sketch of savage life in general­The sex oppressed by slaves and barbarians, but held in honour by the good and the brave.­New Holland­brutality of the inhabitants­their courtship. North American Indians­one of their women describes her wretched condition and destroys her female infant. Hardening effect of want on the human mind. Transition to Otaheite­Licentious manners of those islanders­Infanticide. Address to maternal affection­exemplified in the hind­fawns destroyed by the stag. Coast of Guinea­a native sells his son for a slave­agony of the mother­her speech. Pastoral life­Chaldee astronomers­King David. Tartars­removal of a Tartar camp­their gaiety and happy mediocrity of condition relative to the gifts of nature­yet no refined affection between the sexes­female captives and women sent in tribute preferred to the natives­No perfect Arcadia to be found on earth­Caffres and Hottentots sprightly and harmless­but all pastoral and hunting tribes deficient in mental cultivation­hence the weaker sex held by all in some kind of subjection.

EPISTLE II.

ONCE more my Muse uplifts her drooping eye, Checks the weak murmur and restrains the sigh; Once more, my friend, incline thy candid ear, And grace my numbers with a smile and tear. Not mine the art in solemn garb to dress  

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The shadowy forms of delicate distress; With baleful charms to call from Fancy's bower Vain shapes of dread to haunt the lonely hour; In feverish dreams to feed the pampered thought With heavenly bliss....on earth how vainly sought!  

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Fan with rash breath the passions' smouldering fire, Whet the keen wish, the thrilling hope inspire,

Woo the young soul its blossoms to unfold, Then leave it chilled with more than wintry cold.

No;....rude of hand, with bolder lines I trace  

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The rugged features of a coarser race : Fierce on thy view the savage world shall glare, And all the ills of wretched woman there; Unknown to her fond love's romantic glow, The graceful throbs of sentimental woe,  

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The play of passions and the feelings' strife That weave the web of finely-chequered life. But thou possest, unspoiled by tyrant art, Of the large empire of a generous heart, Thou wilt not scorn plain nature's rudest strain,  

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Nor homely misery claim thy sighs in vain.

Come then, my friend; my devious way pursue; Pierce every clime, and search all ages through;

Stretch wide and wider yet thy liberal mind, And grasp the sisterhood of womankind:  

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With mingling anger mark, and conscious pride, The sex by whom exalted or decried; Crusht by the savage, fettered by the slave, But served, but honoured, by the good and brave.

With daring keel attend yon convict train  

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To new-found deserts of the Southern Main; Beasts of strange gait there roam the trackless earth, And monstrous compounds struggle into birth; A younger world it seems, abortive, crude, Where untaught Nature sports her fancies rude,  

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By slow gradations rears her infant plan, And shows, half-humanized, the monster-man. Mark the grim ruffian roll his crafty glance, And crouching, slow, his tiger-step advance, With brandisht club surprise his human prey,  

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And drag the bleeding victim bride away,

While shouts triumphant wake the orgies dire, And Rage and Terror trim the nuptial fire. 1

E'en such is Savage Man, of beasts the worst, In want, in guilt, in lawless rapine nurst.  

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To the dumb tribes that plod their even life Unbruised by tyranny, unvext by strife, Instincts and appetites kind Nature gave, These just supplying what the others crave; The human brute the headlong passions rule,  

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While infant Reason flies the moody fool, Hope, Fear, and Memory play their busy part And mingle all their chaos in his heart; Hence Vengeance fires, hence Envy's stings infest, Hence Superstition goads his timorous breast.  

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O! not for him life's healthful current flows; An equal stream that murmurs as it goes; As rage and torpor hold alternate rule, It roars a flood, or stagnates in a pool,

Whose sterile brink no buds of fragrance cheer  

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By love or pity nurtured with a tear.

What wonder then, the Western wilds among Where the red Indian's hunter-bow is strung, (Nature's tough son, whose adamantine frame No pleasures soften and no tortures tame)  

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If, fiercely pondering in her gloomy mind The desperate ills that scowl on womankind, The maddening mother gripes the infant slave, And forces back the worthless life she gave? 2

"Swift, swift," she cries, "receive thy last release;  

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Die, little wretch; die once and be at peace! Why shouldst thou live, in toil, and pain, and strife, To curse the names of mother and of wife? To see at large thy lordly master roam, The beasts his portion and the woods his home,  

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Whilst thou, infirm, the sheltering hut must seek, Poorly dependent, timorously weak, There hush thy babe, with patient love carest, And tearful clasp him to thy milkless breast Hungry and faint, while feasting on his way  

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Thy reckless hunter wastes the jocund day? Or, harder task, his rapid courses share, With patient back the galling burden bear, While he treads light, and smacks the knotted thong, And goads with taunts his staggering troop along?  

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Enough;....'tis love, dear babe, that stops thy breath; 'Tis mercy lulls thee to the sleep of death: Ah! would for me, by like indulgent doom, A mother's hand had raised the early tomb! O'er these poor bones the moons had rolled in vain,  

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And brought nor stripes nor famine, toil nor pain; I had not sought in agony the wild, Nor, wretched, frantic mother! killed my child."

Want hardens man; by fierce extremes the smart Inflames and chills and indurates his heart,  

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Arms his relentless hand with brutal force, And drives o'er female necks his furious course.

Not such his mind where Nature, partial queen, With lavish plenty heaps the bounteous scene; In laughing isles with broad bananas crowned,  

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Where tufted cocoas shade the flowery ground; Here, here at least, where dancing seasons shed Unfading garlands on his sleeping head, Love melts to love, and man's ingenuous mind Feels nature's kindness prompt him to be kind;  

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He acts no tyranny, he knows no strife, One harmless holiday his easy life. Ah cheated hopes!....see Lawless Love invade The withering scene, and poison every shade; Embruted nations couch beneath his yoke,  

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And infant gore on his dire altars smoke!

Lost Otaheite!....Breathe one parting sigh, Then swift, my friend, we turn the bashful eye. 3

Thrice holy Power, whose fostering, bland embrace Shields the frail scions of each transient race,  

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To whom fair Nature trusts the teeming birth That fills the air, that crowds the peopled earth, Maternal Love! thy watchful glances roll From zone to zone, from pole to distant pole; Cheer the long patience of the brooding hen,  

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Soothe the she-fox that trembles in her den, 'Mid Greenland ice-caves warm the female bear, And rouse the tigress from her sultry lair. At thy command, what zeal, what ardour, fires The softer sex! a mightier soul inspires:....  

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Lost to themselves, our melting eyes behold Prudent, the simple, and the timid, bold. All own thy sway, save where, on Simoom wing Triumphant sailing o'er the blasted spring,

(Whether in Otaheitan groves accurst,  

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Or Europe's polisht scenes the fiend be nurst) Unhallowed Love bids Nature's self depart, And makes a desert of the female heart. But O! how oft, their tender bosoms torn By countless shafts, thy noblest votaries mourn!  

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See the soft hind forsake the dewy lawns To shroud in thicket-shades her tender fawns; Fearless for them confront the growling foe, And aim with hoof and head the desperate blow Freely for them with new-born courage face  

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The howling horrors of the deathful chase: Ah! fond in vain, see fired by furious heat The jealous stag invade her soft retreat, Wanton in rage her pleading anguish scorn, And gore his offspring with relentless horn.  

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Hark to that shriek! from Afric's palmy shore The yell rolls mingling with the billows' roar:

Grovelling in dust the frantic mother lies;.... "My son, my son, O spare my son!" she cries: "Sell not thy child ! Yon dreary ocean crost,  

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To thee, to me, to all forever lost, The white man's slave, no swift-returning oar Shall homeward urge the wretched captive more, No tidings reach:....Who then with kindly care Shall tend our age, and leafy beds prepare?  

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Who climb for us the cocoa's scaly side, Or drain the juicy palm?....who skim the tide, Or bold in woods with pointed javelin roam, And bear to us the savoury booty home? Save thine own flesh!....we must not, will not part....  

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O save this bleeding, bursting, mother's heart!"

Ah fruitless agony! ah slighted prayer! That bids the husband and the father, spare! On to the mart the sable tyrant drives His flocks of children and his herds of wives:  

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For toys, for drams, their kindred blood is sold, And broken female hearts are paid with gold; Exulting Avarice gripes his struggling prize, The savage tenders, and the christian....buys. 4

Shrinkst thou, my startled friend, with feeling tear,  

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From tints too lively, numbers too sincere? Swift wouldst thou fly to some unspotted scene Where love and nature rule the blue serene? Hail, Pastoral Life; to thy calm scenes belong The lore of sages and the poet's song;  

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Nurse of rude man, in whose soft lap reclined,* 1.2 Art, science, dawn upon his wakening mind, And passion's tender strains, and sentiment refined!

Where cloudless heavens o'erarch Chaldea's plain, Stretched by his nightly flock, the vacant swain,  

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His upturned gaze as sportful fancy warmed, With ready crook the sand-drawn monsters formed;

Thence learn'd, Astronomy, thy studious eye, To track yon orbs, to sweep yon pathless sky. While still young David roamed the pastoral wild,  

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The harp, the song, his ardent soul beguiled, And now to heaven upsoared the ethereal flame, Now blazed some humble charmer's rustic fame. E'en now, by Freedom led, see gay Content Stoop from above, to shepherd-wanderers sent;  

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See o'er the green expanse of pathless plain The sunburnt Tartars urge the tented wain; How gay the living prospect! far and wide Spread flocks and herds, and shouting herdsmen ride; And hark! from youths and maids, a mingled throng,  

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How full, how joyous, bursts the choral song!

Free are these tribes and blest; a churlish soil They till not, bowed by tyranny and toil; Nor troll the deep for life's precarious stay; Nor, beastlike, roam the tangled woods for prey;  

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Their lot, with sober kindness, gives to share Labour with plenty, and with freedom, care: Yet seek not here the boon, all boons above, The generous intercourse of equal love; A homely drudge, the Tartar matron knows  

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No eye that kindles and no heart that glows; For foreign charms the faithless husband burns, And clasps in loathed embrace, which fear returns, The captive wife or tributary maid By conquest snatched, or lawless terror paid. 5   

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No!....vain the search,....of warm poetic birth, Arcadian blossoms scorn the fields of earth; No lovelorn swains, to tender griefs a prey, Sigh, sing, and languish through the livelong day; No rapturous husband and enamoured wife,  

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To live and love their only care in life, With crook and scrip on flowery banks reclined Breathe the warm heart and share the answering mind:

The sprightly Caffre o'er the moonlight meads In jovial dance his dusky partner leads,  

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And vacant Hottentots, short labour done, Toy, pipe, and carol, in the evening sun; But the high promptings of the conscious soul The weak that elevate, the strong control, Respect, decorum, friendship, ties that bind  

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To woman's form the homage of the mind, Heaven's nobler gifts, to riper ages lent, Disdain the hunter's cave, the shepherd's tent, And lawless man, or cold, or fierce, or rude, Proves every mode of female servitude.  

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EPISTLES
ON THE
CHARACTER AND CONDITION OF WOMEN,
IN
VARIOUS AGES AND NATIONS.

EPISTLE III.

ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE III.

Dawn of civilization, freedom, and the virtues. Troy taken­captives­Andromache. Spartans­character of their women­remarks. Athens­Phryne­Aspasia­degradation of the married women. Rome­present degraded state of both sexes­women in a condition approaching freedom, follow and imitate the course of the men with whom they are connected, as his shadow, the traveller. Ancient Rome­its female deities­Sabine women­mother and wife of Coriolanus. Cornelia. Portia. Arria. Corruption of manners in Rome­its conquest by the barbarians. Another scene of virtue and glory unfolded by the promulgation of christianity­its favourable effect on the condition of women­their zeal in its defence equal to that of men­Female martyrs. Marriage rendered indissoluble­belief of a reunion in a future state. Rise of superstition­monastic institutions. Convent. Saints Theresa, Clara, and Catharine of Siena. Conclusion.

EPISTLE III.

YE heaven-taught bards, who first for human woe Bade human tears to melting numbers flow; Ye godlike sages, who with plastic hand Moulded rude man, and arts and cities planned; Ye holy patriots, whose protecting name* 1.3  

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Still lives, and issuing from the trump of fame Fans sacred Freedom's everlasting flame, All hail!....by you sublimed, the expanding heart First learned the bliss its blessings to impart; The fierce barbarian checked his headlong course,  

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And bent to Wisdom's hand his yielded force; Each loftier Virtue bowed to meet the brave, And clasped, a freeman, whom she scorned, a slave;

And smiling round, the daughter, mother, wife, Fed the dear charities of social life.  

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Bright as the welcome orb that wakes to chase The polar Night from Earth's reviving face.... (Grim Power that shakes the meteor from his hair, While shaggy prowlers in the fitful glare Roam with rude yells along the mountains drear,  

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Ravening and yet undisciplined to fear) Behold, my friend, with pleased and anxious gaze Fair Reason's day-star light her gradual blaze; Pant up the steepness of her high career, And win by toil the empire of the sphere;  

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While with slow hand the ungenial shades withdrawn, Vapours and tempests struggle with the dawn.

Mark the last hour of Ilium,....work divine! Sunk her proud towers, and sunk each holy shrine:

Slaughter has done his work: the manly brave  

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Sighed as they fell, despairing of a grave. Yet, weep not them! behold yon captive train; Houseless and bound they strew the smoking plain; Matrons and maids, gray sires and babes are there, Shrill wails and frantic screams, deep groans and dumb despair.  

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Hark! 'tis the lost Andromache that shrieks, Her loose locks rent, and bruised her bleeding cheeks: Home the proud victor bears his beauteous prize; For death, for death she sues with fruitless cries. Ah ! might she wait that kind, that last release,  

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And drain the dregs of bitterness in peace! But no;....she bears the vengeful brand of strife, Fires the loose rover, stings the jealous wife What scorn, what rage, the wretched captive waits, Envied and hated for the love she hates!  

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The rest, a mingled, nameless, feeble throng, The savage squadrons drive with taunts along,

Destined to whirl with pain the slavish mill; Bear ponderous logs, and sparkling goblets fill To hostile Gods; explore the distant spring,  

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And faint with heat the cooling burthen bring; In housewife tasks the midnight hours employ, And lave those feet that spurned the dust of Troy. [*]

These were the days, while yet the scourge and chain Quivered and clanked in wild War's demon train,  

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When Honour first his calm firm phalanx ranged; Fury to Valour, men to heroes changed: And mark! emerging from the gulf of night, What towering phantom strikes our wondering sight? Fierce with strange joy she stands, the battle won,  

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Elate and tearless o'er her slaughtered son. "He died for Sparta, died unknown to fear, His wounds all honest, and his shield his bier; And shall I weep?" Stern daughters of the brave, Thus maids and matrons hailed the Spartan's grave;  

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By turns they caught, they lit, the hero-flame, And scorned the Woman's for the Patriot's name; Unmoved, unconquered, bowed to fate's decree, And taught in chains the lesson....to be free. 1 Souls of gigantic mould, they fill our gaze  

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With pigmy wonder and despairing praise:.... Thus when, 'mid western wilds, the delver's toil Reared the huge mammoth from the quaking soil, Columbia's swains in mute amazement eyed And heaved the monstrous frame from side to side;  

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Saw bones on bones in mouldering ruin lie, And owned the relics of a world gone by:.... Yet self-same clay our limbs of frailty formed, And hearts like ours those dreadless bosoms warmed; But war, and blood, and Danger's gorgon face,  

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Froze into stone the unconquerable race.

Graced by the sword, the chisel, and the pen, Athens! illustrious seat of far-famed men,

Receive my homage! Hark! what shouts arise As Phryne gilds the pomp of sacrifice!  

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To Beauty's Queen the graceful dance they twine, Trill the warm hymn, and dress the flowery shrine; Priestess of love she fills the eager gaze, And fires and shares the worship that she pays. Haste, sculptor, haste! that form, that heavenly face  

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Catch ere they fade, and fix the mortal grace; Phryne in gold shall deck the sacred fane, And Pallas' virgin image frown in vain. 2 Rise, bright Aspasia, too! thy tainted name Sails down secure through infamy to fame;  

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Statesmen and bards and heroes bend the knee, Nor blushes Socrates to learn of thee. Thy wives, proud Athens! fettered and debased, Listlessly duteous, negatively chaste, O vapid summary of a slavish lot!  

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They sew and spin, they die and are forgot.

Cease, headlong Muse! resign the dangerous theme, Perish the glory that defies esteem! Inspire thy trump at Virtue's call alone, And blush to blazon whom She scorns to own.  

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Mark where seven hills uprear yon stately scene, And reedy Tiber lingering winds between: Ah mournful view! ah check to human pride! There Glory's ghost and Empire's phantom glide: Shrunk art thou, mighty Rome; the ivy crawls,  

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The vineyard flaunts, within thy spacious walls; Still, still, Destruction plies his iron mace, And fanes and arches totter to their base: Thy sons....O traitors to their fathers' fame! O last of men, and Romans but in name!  

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See where they creep with still and listless tread, While cowls, not helmets, veil the inglorious head. If then, sad partner of her country's shame, To nobler promptings deaf, the Latian dame

Nor honour's law nor nuptial faith can bind,  

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Vagrant and light of eye, of air, of mind,.... Whom now a vile gallant's obsequious cares Engage, now mass, processions, penance, prayers,.... Think not 'twas always thus:.... what generous view, What noble aim that noble men pursue,  

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Has never woman shared? As o'er the plain The sun-drawn shadow tracks the wandering swain, Treads in his footsteps, counterfeits his gait, Erect or stooping, eager or sedate; Courses before, behind, in mimic race,  

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Turns as he turns, and hunts him pace by pace;.... Thus, to the sex when milder laws ordain A lighter fetter and a longer chain, Since freedom, fame, and lettered life began, Has faithful woman tracked the course of man.  

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Strains his firm step for Glory's dazzling height, Panting she follows with a proud delight;

Led by the sage, with pausing foot she roves By classic fountains and religious groves; In Pleasure's path if strays her treacherous guide,  

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By fate compelled, she deviates at his side,.... Yet seeks with tardier tread the downward way, Averted eyes, and timorous, faint delay. In mystic fable thus, together trod The dire Bellona and the Warrior God;  

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The golden Archer and chaste Huntress' queen With deaths alternate strewed the sickening scene; And Jove-born Pallas shared the Thunderer's state, The shield of horror and the nod of fate.

The indignant Muse from yon polluted ground  

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Shall chase the vampire forms that flit around; Restore the scene with one commanding glance; Awake old Rome, and bid her shades advance: A sad but glorious pageant!....First are borne Her sculptured deities, and seem to mourn;  

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Dian and Vesta, powers of awful mien, And in her purer garb the Paphian Queen; Here smiles the Appeaser of the angry spouse, 3 There distaffed Pallas knits her thoughtful brows; Imperial Juno rears her head on high,  

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Unspotted guardian of the nuptial tie. See then advance with wild disordered charms The matron Sabines....prize of lawless arms.... Such as they rushed athwart the clanging fight, Bold in their fears and strong in nature's right:  

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Each lifts her babe; the babe, 'mid vengeful strife, Lisps to his grandsire for his father's life; The vanquisht grandsire clasps the blooming boy; Rage sinks in tears, in smiles, in shouting joy; Peace joins their hands, Love mingles race with race,  

---

And Woman triumphs in the wide embrace.

I see her rise, the chaste polluted fair, And claim the death of honour in despair.

Rome's Saviour wakes 4 ...."By that ennobled shade, By this pure blood, and by this reeking blade,  

---

Vengeance I swear!"....Heaven blessed the generous rage That lit the splendours of a brightening age; The patriot spark from dying honour springs, And female virtue buys....the flight of Kings.

And who are they that lead yon suppliant train?  

---

Mother and wife, when Latium's fertile plain Fierce Volscians trod, the rebel's armed hate They soothed, and soothing saved the tottering state: Rome crowned the sex....a high and graceful meed.... And bade yon temple consecrate the deed. 5   

---

Hail! who thy sons to Glory's altar led, And boldly called her lightnings on their head: What though they fell? the pure ethereal flame. Touched but the life, and spared the nobler fame.

Lift thy proud head, and proudly tell their tale;  

---

Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, hail!

See there the ghost of noble Portia glide, Cato to lead, and Brutus at her side! Souls have no sex; sublimed by Virtue's lore Alike they scorn the earth and try to soar;  

---

Buoyant alike on daring wing they rise As Emulation nerves them for the skies. See Pætus' wife, by strong affection manned, Taste the sharp steel and give it to his hand: But what avails? On Rome's exhausted soil  

---

Nor patriots' fattening blood, nor heroes' toil, One plant, one stem, of generous growth may rear To grace the dark December of her year. Whelmed in the flood of vice, one putrid heap, Rank, sex, age, race, are hurried to the deep;  

---

Low-bending sycophant and upstart knave, Athlete and mime, loose dame and minion slave.

Wild in the frighted rear the crowds recoil, Urged by the barbarous brood of war and spoil; Nearer and nearer yet, with harpy rush  

---

They sweep; they pounce, they violate, they crush; Flap their triumphant wings o'er grovelling Rome, And roost in Glory's desolated home. Scared at the portent, see the phantom train Veil their wreathed brows; then, rising in disdain,  

---

With thunders borne upon the howling wind, Leave Rome and all her infamy behind.

Is frighted Virtue then for ever fled To veil in heaven her scorned and houseless head, While Vice and Misery lord it here below  

---

O'er God's waste scene of bliss and beauty? No! Virtue, pure essence mingled with the whole, Its subtle, viewless, all-inspiring soul,.... Virtue, the mental world's pervading fire, Unquenched remains, or nature must expire.  

---

Now fresh and strong in renovated rays She flings on eastern hills the glorious blaze; Now, wrapt in richer lustre, slopes her beams Tranquil and sweet along the western streams; Now, with faint twinkling of a single star,  

---

She greets the guideless pilgrim from afar; And red with anger now, a dreadful form, She glares in lightning through the howling storm.

From Juda's rocks the sacred light expands, And beams and broadens into distant lands;  

---

Heaven's thunder speaks, the mighty bolt is hurled; Pride, bite the dust! and quake, thou guilty world! But, O ye weak, beneath a master's rod Trembling and prostrate, own a helping God! Ardent in faith, through bonds and toil and loss  

---

Bear the glad tidings, triumph in the cross! Away with woman's fears! proud man shall own As proud a mate on Virtue's loftiest throne;

On to the death in joy....for Jesus' sake Writhed on the rack, or blackening at the stake,  

---

Scorn the vain splendours of the world below, And soar to bliss that only martyrs know! 6

Now comrades, equals, in the toilsome strife, Partners of glory and coheirs of life, See sex to sex with port sublimer turn,  

---

And steadier flames and holier ardours burn; At God's pure altar pledged, the nuptial band Turns to a lifelong vow, and dreads no severing hand; E'en death, they deem, (once sped the second blow That social lays the sad survivor low,  

---

Shrowds the dissolving forms in kindred gloom, Mingles in dust and marries in the tomb,) With stronger, purer, closer ties shall bind The blest communion of the immortal mind, Free the winged soul to larger bliss above,  

---

And ope the heaven of everlasting love.

O faith, O hope divine! ordained to flow A stream of comfort through the vales of woe! Rise, mystic dove! explore on venturous wing The wastes of winter and the wilds of spring;  

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Bear back thine olive from the emerging strand, Restore the virtues, and redeem the land: Rebel no more, again repentant man Shall own, shall bless, the mighty Maker's plan; Heaven's warmest beam salute his second birth,  

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And one wide Eden round the peopled earth. Vain hope! the wretch, or slave or tyrant born, Who looked with terror up, or down with scorn, Untaught to hope in that all-seeing mind Unbounded love with boundless power combined,  

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Self-judged, self-doomed, a timorous outcast trod, Nor dared to claim a father in his God: Hence, Superstition, spleenful, doting, blind, Thy mystic horrors shake his palsied mind;

Hence, as thy baleful spells in misty gloom  

---

Wrap the fair earth and dim her orient bloom, 'Wildered, the maniac eyes a fancied waste, And starves 'mid banquets that he dares not taste. The yawning cloister shows its living grave, Receives the trembler, and confirms him....slave.  

---

And thee, O woman, formed with smiling mien To temper man, and gild the social scene,.... Bid home-born blessings, home-born virtues rise, And light the sunbeam in a husband's eyes,.... Thy dearest bliss the sound of infant mirth,  

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His heart thy chief inheritance on earth,.... Thee too, as fades around heaven's blessed light, And age to age rolls on a darker night, With steely gripe the exulting hag invades, And drags relentless to her sullen shades:  

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O hear the sighs that break the sluggish air* 1.4 Mixt with the convent hymn, the convent prayer, The languid lip-devotion of despair!

But ne'er could cloister rule or midnight bell, Penance, or fast, in dank and lonesome cell,  

---

Break the mind's spring, or stupefy to rest The master-passion of an ardent breast. In that dim cell the rapt Theresa lies Ingulft and lost in speechless ecstasies; All-powerful Love has lit the holy flame,  

---

The fewel altered, but the fire the same. 7

Her fearful nuns see dark-browed Clara school, And tight and tighter strain her rigid rule: Claims not the Thirst of Sway his lion's part E'en in that pale ascetic's bloodless heart? 8   

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Hail, lofty Catharine, visionary maid ! Carest by princes, by a pope obeyed; Nor blush to own, though dead to all below, A brave ambition and a patriot glow. 9

But cease! of amorous worship, bigot pride,  

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Distorted virtue, talent misapplied, No more:....with anxious heart and straining mind Long have I scanned the annals of the kind; Here let me pause, o'erwearied and opprest; Thou, my calm friend, thou moralize the rest.  

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EPISTLES
ON THE
CHARACTER AND CONDITION OF WOMEN,
VARIOUS AGES AND NATIONS.

EPISTLE IV.

ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE IV.

Recurrence to the subject­many varieties of female condition still unnoticed­ancient German women­inhabitants of the Haram­Hindoo widow­fascinating French woman­English mother. Survey of a Turkish haram­mean and childish character of the women, haughty yet contemptible one of the men­fatal effects of polygamy­Man cannot degrade the female sex without degrading the whole race. Ancient Germans­their women free and honoured­hence the valour of the men, the virtue of both sexes, the success of their resistance to Rome. Chivalry personified and depicted­his valour­his devotion to the ladies, his pure and romantic love­his lady described as endowed with all virtues and graces, but found to be a visionary being, only existing in the Fairy land of Spenser­contrasted by the giddy and unprincipled women introduced into the French court by Francis I. Gallantry, the parasite and treacherous corruptor of the sex­Man always suffers by degrading woman­public freedom dependent on domestic virtue. Switzerland virtuous when first made free­virtuous still, though opprest by France­Swiss women died fighting for their country. France not pure enough for freedom, yet had some heroines­Cordé­Roland. Transition to England­address to the author's female companions­survey of its female characters from the earliest times. Boadicea­Ethelfleda. Revival of letters gives consequence to women­Sir Thomas More and his daughter­Lady Jane Grey­Queen Elizabeth­Mrs. Hutchinson­Lady Russell. Enumeration concluded­Exhortation to Englishmen to look with favour on the mental improvement of females­to English women to improve and principle their minds, and by their merit induce the men to treat them as friends. Valediction.

EPISTLE IV.

FAIN would I greet my gentle friend again; Yet how renew, or where conclude, the strain? Still as I gaze what mingled throngs appear! What varying accents rush upon my ear! Stern, awful, chaste, in savage freedom bred,  

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Here, German matrons shout o'er Varus dead; There, languid beauties, 'mid a haram's gloom, In jealous bickerings pine away their bloom; Here, well-dissembling, with a decent pride, The victim-widow laves in Ganges' tide,  

---

Clasps the loathed corse, invites the dreaded flame, And dies in anguish, not to live with shame.

I turn, and meet the animated glance Shot by the dames of gay seductive France; Then melting catch the gaze, so fond, so mild,  

---

Some English mother bends upon her child. A thought, a look, a line, the meanest ask To swell my growing tale, and lengthen out my task.

A glorious task! were mine the godlike power, By Genius snatched in some propitious hour,  

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To bid the fleeting airy forms be still, Or move, or change, obedient to my will; Then fix the groupe, and pour in living light Its vivid picture on the enraptured sight, And bid it speak, in forceful tones and clear,  

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To Truth and Feeling just, to Fancy dear. It may not be:....my fainter sketch shall glide Like dim reflections on an evening tide; My task like hers, the soft Corinthian maid, To trace a tintless shadow of a shade!  

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But to that shade fond fancy would supply The bloom, the grace, the all-expressive eye; Still would she gaze, till swam her cheated sight, And the true lover blessed her wild delight. Me such bright dreams delude not:....thoughtful, cold,  

---

The fading lines I languidly behold; But thou, my friend, assert the generous part, O praise, O foster, with a partial heart! So shall the power my happier pencil guide, And Friendship grant me what the Muse denied.

---

Come, pierce with me the Haram's jealous walls: I see, I see, the soul-degraded thralls! With childlike smile, one glittering dame surveys Her splendid caftan and her diamonds' blaze; One spreads the henna; one with sable dye  

---

Wakes the dim lustre of her languid eye; 1 Some seek the bath:.... O life, are these thy joys ? These all thy cares ? How the dull prospect cloys!

Yet turn not from the view; deign first to scan That lordly thing, the Asiatic Man.  

---

O speaking lesson! marked with grateful awe; Self is his God, his wildest will is law; Him Beauty serves, all emulous to bless; Yet where his envied, dear-bought happiness? 'Tis his,....each proud, each manly virtue wreckt,  

---

Truth, science, freedom lost in base neglect,.... A pampered slave, in lazy state to sit Shut from the sun of reason and of wit, By senses cloyed of sensual bliss bereft, And a dull drug his only refuge left.  

---

One equal sole companion, skilled to blend In one dear name the mistress and the friend, Was Nature's boon; but when insatiate Man Grasps wider joys, and scorns her sacred plan, Farewell life's loveliest charm, farewell the glow  

---

Affection casts upon the scene below;

Farewell each finer art, each softer grace, All that adorns and all that lifts the race! Woman no more, a deed-inspiring mate, Shall fan the kindling glories of the state;  

---

Suspicion's evil eye, with dire control, Blights all the fairest blossoms of her soul, And bids each rankling thorn, each poisonous weed, A hostile crop, by righteous doom succeed. Man, stamp the moral on thy haughty mind:  

---

Degrade the sex, and thou degrad'st the kind! 2

Mark the bold contrast! hail, my friend, with me The generous son of German liberty: Barbarian? Yes: To spread the winged sail Of venturous Commerce to the speeding gale,  

---

To urge his ploughshare o'er the conquered soil, And earn from Culture's hand the meed of toil, As yet he knew not; nurst amid alarms, His care was freedom, his rude trade was arms:

But this he knew; to woman's feeling heart  

---

Its best its dearest tribute to impart; Not the cheap falsehoods of a flattering strain, Not idle gauds, vain incense to the vain; But such high fellowship, such honoured life As throws a glory round the exulting wife,  

---

Seats her revered, sublime, on Virtue's throne, Judge of his honour, guardian of her own. 3 Dear was to him the birthright of the free; More welcome death than her captivity; And hence his valour's rude but vigorous stroke  

---

Stunned Rome, and snapped her vainly-fitted yoke; (So swells Araxes foaming in his pride, So wrecks the insulting Spanner of his tide;) 4 And still he lives along the warning page Of piercing Tacitus:... Prophetic Sage!  

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With awe, with envy, with a patriot dread, He saw the Western Genius lift his head;

Marked his large limbs to bracing hardship bared, His stubborn mind for worst extremes prepared; Marked the chaste virtues of his frugal home,  

---

And read the destinies of stooping Rome. 5

From Elbe and Weser, or some unknown North Derived, what bold yet courteous form rides forth To view? At all points armed, with lance in rest, Gilded his spurs, and plumed his haughty crest;  

---

One steel-clad arm uprears a silver shield, "Such is my faith!" upon its burnisht field The motto quaint; its fond device, a heart That burns and bleeds with Cupid's fiery dart. Claspt to his mailed breast he bears a glove,  

---

Dear parting token of his lady-love: At speed he comes; he 'lights, he bends the knee Proud where she sits....It is, 'tis Chivalry!...... Love's gallant martyr! Honour's generous child! Thy bright extravagance, thy darings wild,  

---

O who may think by pedant rules to try That owns a woman's heart, a poet's eye; An eye by Glory's dazzling glance controled, A coward heart that dotes upon the bold? How dear the contrast! he, whose haughty brow  

---

Scowls on the pride of man, nor deigns to bow; Stung by a look, who challenges the strife Where angry comrades stake the bauble, life; Humble and suppliant bows her scorn to meet, And soothes himself to meekness at her feet:  

---

Then, at a word, again her own true knight Tilts for her fame, or combats in her right.

Courts, tourneys, camps, high dames, a dazzling train, A masque of glory, danced before his brain; He lived in trance, and so the enchantment wrought  

---

That 'mid the high illusions of his thought Passion grew worship, and his heart a shrine Where Beauty reigned all awful and divine;

Where steadfast, pure, Love burned a sacred flame; Long years it burned, unquenchably the same,  

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Fed but on looks, and fanned with suppliant breath, To her whose smile was life, whose frown was death. But she, his Goddess; how may fancy trace Her bright perfections and amazing grace? Methinks I see a sweet and holy band,  

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A wreath of hovering Virtues, hand in hand The new Pandora bless, and on her head In one rich dower their mingled treasury shed. Majestic Honour, first, with matron care Forms her high gait, and dignifies her air;  

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But chasing Pride, sweet Modesty the while On her cheek blushes, Cheerfulness her smile Blends with the blush, and innocently free She learns the look, the tone, of Courtesy. A thousand Graces in harmonious play  

---

Throned in her eyes assert alternate sway;

With frank Benevolence they glance around, Or dewed by Pity bend upon the ground, Now seek the skies, by soaring Faith inspired, Now beam with pure Serenity retired.  

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But say, this paragon, this matchless fair, Trod she this care-crazed earth? No;....born of air, A flitting dream, a rainbow of the mind, The tempting glory leaves my grasp behind; Formed for no rugged clime, no barbarous age,  

---

She blooms in Fairy land the grace of Spenser's page. 6

Not such the dames with revelry and sport Who tripped the wanton maze of Gallia's court, By love and Francis lured in evil hour From hearths domestic and the sheltering bower.  

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New to the discipline of good and ill, Unformed of manners, impotent of will,

What thirst of empire seized the giddy train! Man bowed obsequious, and deferred the rein; (So Mars on Venus smiled in courts above,  

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So crouched in all the loyalty of love,) Ah! feigned humility to scorn allied, That stoops to conquer, flatters to deride! Learn, thoughtless woman, learn his arts to scan, And dread that fearful portent....kneeling Man!  

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Dread the gay form whom now, her favourite birth, Some smiling mischief trusts upon the earth Veiled in a scented cloud;....it melts, and see Come dancing forth the phantom Gallantry. His are the lowly bow, the adoring air,  

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The attentive eye that dwells upon the fair; His the soft tone to grace a tender tale, And his the flattering sighs that more prevail; His the whole art of love:... but all is art, For kindly Nature never warmed his heart;  

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No hardy knight with wrong-redressing brand He roams on Honour's pilgrimage the land; No awful champion vowed to Virtue's aid He flings his buckler o'er the trembling maid; No high enthusiast to his peerless love  

---

He plights pure vows and registered above;...... Canker of Innocence! he lives at ease, His only care his wanton self to please: Hymen's dear tie, for him a sordid league Knit by Ambition, Avarice, or Intrigue,  

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He scorns, he tramples, and insulting bears To other shrines his incense and his prayers; There, skilled in perfidy, he hangs to view A hundred fopperies Passion never knew.... Liveries that love by telegraph convey, 7   

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Lines traced in blood, and quaint acrostic lay.... Poor trifles all;... but trifles poor as these Cheat the cold heart, the vagrant fancy seize,

From sober love, from faithful duty wean, And sell to fear and sin the fancied queen.  

---

Thus woman sinks, withdrawn each thin pretence, The dupe of Vanity, the slave of Sense: The light seducer, with brief rapture fraught, Smiles on her prostrate dignity of thought, And boasts his deeper wiles, his keener art,  

---

Lord of the fond, confiding, female heart. Vain boast, as profligate! he too shall find, The sex dishonoured, Honour scorns the kind; For never yet with cap and oaken crown, Symbol of joy and charter of renown,  

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Has man-exalting Freedom deigned to grace* 1.5 A spurious rabble and adulterous race, Steept in corruption, destined to be base. Pure was the heart of Switzerland, when Tell Aimed the avenging shaft, and cried "Rebel!"  

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Pure was the self-devoted blood that dyed The mangled breast of her bold Winkelreid; Pure were the mountain homes whence foaming out The patriot-torrent rushed, and gave the rout, Where rose the pile of bones to tell mankind [8]   

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"This monument the Spoiler left behind." Nor Virtue yet had fled her rock-built bower When Gaul's intruding Demon, drunk with power, Burst on that paradise: appalled he found A Spartan fortitude embattled round;  

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Rapt by a fine despair, the maid, the wife, Charged by their heroes' side and fired the strife.... The strife victorious;....but opprest, betrayed, Fell the brave patriot few....no friend to aid. Then, spotless victims of a doom severe,  

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They died upon their murdered country's bier; Died not in vain,....to stamp on that proud name The weight of vengeance and the curse of shame. 9

Plant thy bright eagles o'er each prostrate realm, Audacious France! and headlong from his helm  

---

Each dozing steersman dash,....but hope not thou, Amid the plundered baubles of thy brow, To twine a wreath from Freedom's sacred tree: It blooms with virtue, but it dies with thee.

Once we had hope. When Tyranny and Wrong  

---

Had stung thy patient bosom deep and long, To vengeance roused, a generous short-lived red Flushed o'er thy cheek, and all the wanton fled: And failed thy daughters then? No, by thy hand, Devoted brave Cordé! No, pure Roland!  

---

No, by thy high "Appeal," thy parting breath, Thy sage's fortitude, thy patriot's death! 10

But blest the land where ages glide away, And not a single heroine starts to day:

'Tis angry skies must nurse that daring form,  

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As billows rock the Petrel of the Storm: Domestic virtue, femininely frail, Courts the pure azure and the summer gale, A brooding Halcyon, on her island-nest Lulled on old Neptune's pleased pacific breast.  

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Such lot is ours, So rests our rock-bound isle, A soft asylum reared in ocean's smile. Thither fond Fancy flies, with busy care Decks forth the scene, and paints it fresh and fair; Soft Memory comes, adds every touching grace,  

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The form familiar, and the well-known face; Quick beats my heart, mine eyes with rapture stream, And truth and daylight burst upon my dream.

Rapt while I stand, my weary wanderings past, Like some poor exile, welcomed home at last,  

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You, you I hail, dear playmates, who with me Led the blind game, or wove the dance of glee;

(Fond mothers now, who watch with tenderer joy Your tottering girl, or prompt your lisping boy;) And rapt, inspired, beyond the trick of art,  

---

Trace English manners with an English heart. But not alone one fleeting speck of time Shall flash in my contemporary rhyme; Our sex's honour, and our country's weal, Past or to come, this patriot breast must feel;  

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O'er the long lapse of years these eyes must roll, And all its mazes agitate my soul: For who that marks along the valley gleam The silver waves of some majestic stream, Served by a hundred rills, that winds along  

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Pride of the land and theme of poet's song, Burns not, enamoured of the scene, to climb Some airy mount, contemplative, sublime, Whence all its sweeps, its whole expanding course; Trackt from its small and weed-entangled source  

---

To that wide rush of waves that spreads the plain Where mists o'erhang its marriage with the main, With eagle-ken in fleet succession caught, May fill at once the hunger of his thought ?

Like Ceres maddening on her car-borne way,  

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Her virgin daughter snatcht in face of day, The fierce Bonduca, brave and injured queen, In fire and carnage wraps the blasted scene, And bids her barbarous wrongs, her vengeful rage, Tell the dark story of the Roman age. 11   

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Roused at her call, yon rude and frantic band Yell round their Mona's violated strand, Dire with funereal weeds and streaming hair, And lurid torches tost with angry glare: The chilled invader bows his pallid face, And deprecates the Furies of the place. 12   

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Hail, Ethelfleda! On his Alfred's child The parting Genius gazed, and fondly smiled; Wise in the council, dauntless in the fight, She streaks the gloom and sheds a troubled light,  

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A beacon fire, whose fitful gleams display The raging Dane, and England's evil day. 13 But few our Amazons. While Egypt bleeds, And Syrian echoes ring of Richard's deeds, Edwards and Henries with victorious lance  

---

Bear down the lily in the field of France, And York and Lancaster with rival hate Shake at the deep foundations of the state, (Bred of intestine fires, the earthquake's shock So strews the forest, splits the solid rock,)  

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Our timorous mothers, from invading strife Wrapt in a meek monotony of life, Humbly content to pace with duteous round Their little world,....the dear domestic ground,....

Wards of protecting Man, nor dared to claim,  

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Nor dared to wish, the dangerous meed of fame, Till, snatcht in triumph from his ancient tomb, The lamp of Learning blazed upon the gloom, And wide around to kindling hope revealed The bloodless contests of a nobler field,  

---

And courteous Wisdom to the bashful throng Waved his pure hand, and beckoned them along.

Thou gav'st the call, O England's martyred sage! O More! the grief and glory of thy age! Bounteous as Nature's self, thy heart assigned  

---

Its own large charter to a daughter's mind; Spread with adventurous hand its swelling sails Free to the breath of Greek and Roman gales, And heaped its freight with riches, dug or wrought In mines of science and in looms of thought.  

---

Splendid example! fame that shall not fade! Large debt, in gratitude how fondly paid !

She, she it was, when that stern tyrant's breath Doomed thy firm virtue to the axe of death, Burst the mute throng to snatch a last farewell,  

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And pale and shrieking on thy bosom fell; Weeping who clasped thy knees, and felt it sweet To kiss in dust thy consecrated feet; Called thy soul back, that winged her flight above, And drew thy latest looks of sorrowing love. 14   

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Rise, gentle Grey! forth from the sainted dead Lift the meek honours of thy victim-head! Mockt with no pageant-rule, no vain renown, Take thy due homage, take thy lasting crown! O ripe in suffering, fair in spotless truth!  

---

The fruits of Virtue with the flowers of Youth Shall wreath thy brow, and Learning to thy hand Yield his large scroll, thy sceptre of command, While Wisdom hears thy parting accents mild, And cries, "Behold me honoured in my child!" 15   

---

The dread Eliza bids. Wake, O my strain! Wake the long triumph of the Maiden Reign: Here Faction, vanquisht terror of the land, Suppliant to kiss the chastenings of her hand; (The fiend of Rome with imprecating eye  

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Fang-drawn and chained, and idly muttering by,) Reviving France with fixt and awful air Watching her glance, and grateful Henry there: Here refuged Belgia from the tyrant's frown Creeps to her knees, and lifts the proffered crown;  

---

There gloomy Philip eyes a hostile main, And o'er his foiled Armada mourns in vain. High o'er her head the golden censer swings That wafts all sweetness to the sense of kings; Her dulcet voice each hymning Muse applies,  

---

And the graced mortal half assumes the skies. But mark pale Mary's vengeful spectre gleam Clouding the pomp, and dash her glorious dream,

Brand her base envy, blaze each treacherous art, And bare the meanness of her selfish heart;  

---

Stung to the soul, her gallant Essex chide Her captious favour and exacting pride, Then bow his neck to death,....and seem to cry, "Relentless Mistress, see, despair, and die!" Yet, O Britannia! on thy glory's car  

---

The brightest gem shall flame that Maiden Star, Queen of the' ascendant, whose propitious ray Wisdom and wit, and arts and arms obey; Blest orb, that flashed on Spenser's dazzling sight Long meteor-streams and trails of fairy-light;  

---

Twinkled on Shakespeare's lowly lot, and shed A smile of love on Bacon's boyish head: Now gleams the lode-star of our northern skies, And points our galaxy to distant eyes.

But thou, pure partner of man's noblest cause,  

---

Take, generous Hutchinson, this heart's applause:

'Twas thine to stem a foul and angry tide, A high-souled helpmate at the patriot's side; Then cast, sad relict! on an angry shore, All wreckt, all lost, the gallant struggle o'er,  

---

Yet, greatly constant to a husband's trust, True to the joyful memory of the just, Chide back thy tears, uplift thy mourning head, And live, the high historian of the dead; Knock at thy children's breasts, and cry with pride,  

---

"Thus lived our patriot, thus our martyr died!" 16 So virtuous Russell burst the shades of life, And shone a heroine, for she loved, a wife. "Grant me but her! the noble culprit cried, "No friend, no advocate, I ask beside."  

---

Secure in conscious fortitude she rose, A present aid,....and checked her gushing woes And ruled her trembling hand,....while all around A thrill of anguish ran, and mingling cries resound.

Vain every hope; the murderous doom is sped,  

---

And Charles and vengeance claim his forfeit head. But not from life, from only life to part, Could wring a murmur from that patriot heart; One dear companion of the darksome way His eyes require, and mourn her lonely stay:  

---

"Farewell, farewell!" he cries, "I look my last, And now 'tis o'er;....death's bitterness is past! 17

Such were the dames who grace our storied page: Life's guiding lamp they hand from age to age * Assert their sex beyond the loftiest pen,  

---

And live on tongues and reign in hearts of men. Enough, indulgent Muse! evoke no more The blissful phantoms from their silent shore, Nor give again my curious eye to range O'er times, o'er realms, remote and rude and strange;  

---

Yet O be present still! but meek, subdued, In sober, wistful, contemplative mood: Her trusted stores while faithful Memory brings, And Judgement ponders o'er the sum of things, Aid my full heart, obtest the mingled throng,  

---

And point the varied moral of my song.

asterisk 1.6

Sons of fair Albion, tender, brave, sincere, (Be this the strain) an earnest suppliant hear! Feel that when heaven, evolved its perfect plan, Crowned with its last best gift transported Man,  

---

It formed no creature of ignoble strain, Of heart unteachable, obtuse of brain; (Such had not filled the solitary void, Nor such his soul's new sympathies employed,) But one all eloquent of eye, of mien;  

---

Intensely human; exquisitely keen To feel, to know: Be generous then, unbind Your barbarous shackles, loose the female mind;

Aid its new flights, instruct its wavering wing, And guide its thirst to Wisdom's purest spring:  

---

Sincere as generous, with fraternal heart Spurn the dark satirist's unmanly part; Scorn too the flatterer's, in the medium wise, Nor feed those follies that yourselves despise.

For you, bright daughters of a land renowned,  

---

By Genius blest, by glorious Freedom crowned; Safe in a polisht privacy, content To grace, not shun, the lot that Nature lent, Be yours the joys of home, affection's charms, And infants clinging with caressing arms:  

---

Yours too the boon, of Taste's whole garden free, To pluck at will her bright Hesperian tree, Uncheckt the wreath of each fair Muse assume, And fill your lap with amaranthine bloom. Press eager on; of this great art possest,  

---

To seize the good, to follow still the best,

Ply the pale lamp, explore the breathing page, And catch the soul of each immortal age. Strikes the pure bard his old romantic lyre? Let high Belphoebe warm, let Amoret sweet inspire: 18   

---

Does History speak? drink in her loftiest tone, And be Cornelia's virtues all your own. Thus self-endowed, thus armed for every state, Improve, excel, surmount, subdue, your fate! So shall at length enlightened Man efface  

---

That slavish stigma seared on half the race, His rude forefathers' shame; and pleased confess, 'Tis yours to elevate, 'tis yours to bless; Your interest one with his; your hopes the same;* 1.7 Fair peace in life, in death undying fame,  

---

And bliss in worlds beyond, the species' general aim. "Rise," shall he cry, "O Woman, rise! be free! My life's associate, now partake with me: Rouse thy keen energies, expand thy soul, And see, and feel, and comprehend the whole;  

---

My deepest thoughts, intelligent, divide; When right confirm me, and when erring guide; Soothe all my cares, in all my virtues blend, And be, my sister, be at length my friend."

Anna, farewell! O spirit richly fraught  

---

With all that feeds the noble growth of thought! (For not the Roman, not the Attic store, Nor poets' song, nor reverend sages' lore, To thee a Wakefield's liberal love denied, His child and friend, his pupil and his pride,)  

---

Whose life of female loveliness shall teach The finisht charm that precept fails to reach;.... Born to delight, instructed to excel, My judge, my sister, take this heart's farewell!

NOTES.

NOTES TO EPISTLE II.

NOTE 1, LINE 48.

"THE courtship" of the savages of New Holland "consists in watching the lady's retirement, and then knocking her down with repeated blows of a club or wooden sword; after which the truly matrimonial victim is led streaming with blood to her future husband's party, where a scene ensues too shocking to relate."

Collins's Hist. of the Colony in New Holland.

NOTE 2, LINE 74.

"In all unpolished nations, it is true, the functions in domestic economy which fall naturally to the share of the women, are so many, that they are subjected to hard labour, and must bear more than their full portion of the common burden. But in America their condition is so peculiarly grievous, and their depression so complete, that servitude is a name too

mild to describe their wretched state. A wife, amongst most tribes, is no better than a beast of burden, destined to every office of labour and fatigue. While the men loiter out the day in sloth or spend it in amusement, the women are condemned to incessant toil. Tasks are imposed upon them without pity, and services are received without complacency or gratitude.

"Every circumstance reminds the women of this mortifying inferiority. They must approach their lords with reverence, they must regard them as more exalted beings, and are not permitted to eat in their presence.

"There are many districts in America where this dominion is so grievous, and so sensibly felt, that some women, in a wild emotion of maternal tenderness, have destroyed their female children in their infancy, in order to deliver them from that intolerable bondage to which they knew they were doomed."Robertson's Hist. of America, vol. ii. p. 105.

Hearne describes the women of the Northern tribes which he visited, as wading through the snow encumbered with heavy burdens, while the men, themselves carrying nothing, urged them on with blows and threats. He mentions other particulars, also illustrative of the wretched condition of the American females, too numerous and too horrid for poetical narration.

Certainly Rousseau did not consult the interests of the weaker sex in his preference of savage life to civilized.

NOTE 3, LINE 118.

It is supposed that two thirds of the children born in Otaheite are

immediately murdered. For the particulars of that dreadful licentiousness which is the consequence of the complete indolence of these islanders, and the countless and nameless evils and enormities which are its consequence, see Transactions of the Missionary Society, vol. i.

NOTE 4, LINE 174.

These lines were written before the late glorious abolition: but there are still Christian nations to whom they apply with full force.

NOTE 5, LINE 215.

An annual tribute of women was exacted by the Tartars, or Huns, from the Chinese; and even the daughters, genuine or adopted, of the eastern emperors were claimed in marriage by the Tanjous as a bond of union between the nations.

"The situation of these unhappy victims is described," says Gibbon, "in the verses of a Chinese princess, who laments that she had been condemned by her parents to a distant exile, under a barbarian husband; who complains that sour milk was her only drink, raw flesh her only food, a tent her only palace; and who expresses, in a strain of pathetic simplicity, the natural wish that she were transformed into a bird, to fly back to her dear country, the object of her tender and perpetual regret."

Decline and Fall, vol. iv. p. 363, 8vo edition.

NOTES TO EPISTLE III.

NOTE, LINE 53.

One of the most pathetic passages of Homer thus paints the situation of a female captive:

"As when a woman weepsHer husband fall'n in battle for her sake,And for his children's sake, before the gateOf his own city; sinking to his sideShe close infolds him with a last embrace,And gazing on him as he pants and dies,Shrieks at the sight; meantime the ruthless foeSmiting her shoulders with the spear, to toilCommand her and to bondage far away,And her cheek fades with horror at the sound."

Odyss. viii. 523.­Cowper.

NOTE 1, LINE 69.

A captive Lacedæmonian woman, being asked by her master what she understood? replied, "How to be free." And on his afterwards requiring of her something unworthy, she put herself to death.Valerius Maximus.

NOTE 2, LINE 93.

A golden statue of Phryne the courtesan was placed by the Athenians in one of their temples amongst the images of their deities.

NOTE 3, LINE 158.

Whenever a disagreement arose between a husband and wife, they repaired to the shrine of the Goddess Viriplaca (the appeaser of husbands); and there, having alternately spoken what they thought proper, they laid aside their contention, and returned in peace.Val. Max.

NOTE 4, LINE 174.

"Brutus adest, tandemque animo sua nomina fallit:Fixaque semanimi corpore tela rapit.Stillantemque tenens generoso sanguine cultrum,Edidit impavidos ore minante sonos:Per tibi ego hunc juro fortem castumque cruorem,Perque tuos Manes, qui mihi numen erunt:Tarquinium poenas profuga cum stirpe daturum."

Ovid. Fast. NOTE 5, LINE 185.

The Roman Senate caused a temple to Female Fortune to be erected on the spot where the wife and mother of Coriolanus met him, and prevailed

upon him to return. Some new privileges were also granted to the women on that occasion.

NOTE 6, LINE 247.

"Viros cum Mucio, vel cum Aquilio, aut Regulo comparo ? Pueri et Mulierculæ nostræ cruces et tormenta, feras, et omnes suppliciorum terriculas inspiratâ patientiâ doloris illudunt."

Minucius Felix.Do I compare our men with Mucius or Aquilius, or Regulus? Even our Boys and Women, with an inspired patience of suffering, deride crosses and racks, wild beasts, and all the terrors of punishment.

NOTE 7, LINE 306.

Saint Theresa, born in Old Castile in 1515; a nun, and one of the most enthusiastic of devotees. She thus describes her feelings in a Life of herself:

"In this representation which I made to place myself near to Christ, there would come suddenly upon me, without either expectation or preparation on my part, such an evident feeling of the presence of God, as that I could by no means doubt, but that either he was within me, or else I all engulfed in him. This was not in the manner of a vision, but I think they call it Mystical Theology; and it suspends the soul in such sort, that she seems to be wholly out of herself. The will is in the act of loving, the memory seems to be in a manner lost, the understanding in my opinion discourses not; and although it be not lost, yet it works not, as I was saying, but remains as it were amazed to consider how much it understands."

NOTE 8, LINE 310.

Saint Clara, a celebrated abbess, born at Assisi in 1193. She put herself under the direction of St. Francis d'Assisi, and by his assistance founded a convent of which she became abbess. Her whole life appears to have been employed in the work of enforcing cloister discipline; but rigid as was the rule she imposed upon her nuns, Clara went far beyond it in the austerities she practised upon herself. Pope Innocent IV visited this abbess in her last moments, and soothed her departing spirit by the assurance that her rule should never in after times be mitigated.

NOTE 9, LINE 314.

"Saint Catharine of Sienna was born in the city whence she takes her name in 1347. She vowed virginity at eight years of age, and soon after assumed the Dominican habit. She became famous for her revelations; and being ingenious, a good writer for her age, and distinguished for piety and charity, her influence was considerable. She went to Avignon to procure a reconciliation between the Florentines and Pope Gregory XI, who had excommunicated them; and by her eloquence she persuaded that pontiff to restore the papal seat to Rome after it had been seventy years at Avignon. Gregory however lived to repent of the step, and on his deathbed exhorted all persons present not to credit visions of private persons, acknowledging that he himself had been deceived by an enthusiast, and foresaw that it would produce evil consequences to the church. In the schism that succeeded, Catharine adhered to Urban VI. She died in 1380, and was canonized by Pope Pius II in 1461. There is extant of hers a volume of "Italian letters," written to popes, princes, cardinals, &c., besides several devotional pieces."

General Biography.

NOTES TO EPISTLE IV.

NOTE 1, LINE 46.

THE caftan is an upper robe of rich materials worn by the Turkish ladies. Henna, or alkanet, is a drug employed by them to tinge red the ends of the fingers and the inside of the hand. They increase the apparent lustre of the eye by introducing, within the edge of the eyelid, crude antimony in powder.

NOTE 2, LINE 76.

The following passage is cited in confirmation of the sentiments here expressed, from Mr. Southey's noble and eloquent introduction to his translation of The Chronicle of the Cid.

"The continuance of polygamy was his (Mahommed's) great and ruinous error: where this pernicious custom is established, there will be neither connubial, nor paternal, nor brotherly affection; and hence the unnatural murders with which Asiatic history abounds. The Mahommedan imprisons his wives, and sometimes knows not the faces of his own children; he believes that despotism must be necessary in the state, because he knows it to be necessary at home: thus the domestic tyrant becomes the contented slave, and the atrocity of the ruler and the patience of the people proceed from the same cause. It is the inevitable tendency of polygamy to degrade both sexes: wherever it prevails, the intercourse be-

tween them is merely sexual. Women are only instructed in wantonness, sensuality becomes the characteristic of whole nations, and humanity is disgraced by crimes the most loathsome and detestable. This is the primary and general cause of that despotism and degradation which are universal throughout the East."

&c.

NOTE 3, LINE 92.

"These too (the women) are the most respected witnesses, the most liberal applauders of every man's conduct. The warriors come and show their wounds to their mothers and wives, who are not shocked at counting, and even requiring them."

Tacit. de Morib. vii. Aikin's translation.

NOTE 4, LINE 98.

"Tradition relates, that armies beginning to give way have been brought again to the charge by the females, through the earnestness of their supplications, the interposition of their bodies, and the pictures they have drawn of impending slavery,....a calamity which these people bear with more impatience for their women than for themselves; so that those states who have been obliged to give among their hostages the daughters of noble families, are most effectually bound to fidelity."

Ibid. viii.

NOTE 5, LINE 106.

"May the nations retain and perpetuate, if not an affection for us, at

least an animosity against each other! since, while the fate of the empire is thus urgent, fortune can bestow no higher benefit upon us than the discord of our enemies."

Ibid. xxxiii. et pass.

NOTE 6, LINE 165.

On the obscure and much controverted subject of chivalry, I find it necessary in this place to hazard a few observations. Several circumstances convince me, and especially some striking facts in the history of Alboin king of the Lombards, and in that of the northern pirates, that a truly chivalrous spirit of honour and generosity had been introduced into the commerce of warriors with each other, in all the relations of peace and war, long before the refinements of gallantry, or even a tolerable decency of behaviour towards the weaker sex, came to be considered as incumbent on the brave and the noble. I also find that even during those ages when the spirit of chivalry is supposed to have been at its height, and when a very romantic kind of gallantry did in fact prevail, in the times, for instance, commemorated by the narrative Froissart, when, for their ladies' love, a party of young knights took a solemn vow to keep one of their eyes blinded with a silken patch till they should have achieved some signal deed of arms,....manners were still gross, and morals extremely corrupt. In France, the nuptial tie, seldom cemented by mutual preference and inclination, has in no age been sufficient to restrain the wanderings of the imagination, or preserve the innocency of domestic life. In Spain, an absurd spirit of jealous rigour long fostered in both sexes the taste for clandestine amours; and the Spanish or Portuguese author of Amadis de Gaul, accounted the

most moral as well as popular work of its kind, has represented his adorable and peerless Oriana herself as more fortunate in the constancy of her lover, but not more discreet in her loves, than the hapless Dido of ancient story. In England and the northern parts of the continent, if morals were somewhat more pure during these ages than in the south, manners were still more coarse. I am compelled to infer, that it was not till knight errantry, ceasing to exist in reality, had become a frame for the poetic fictions of a dignified and learned age, that it assumed the pure and lofty character which delights us in the beautiful coinage of Spenser's brain, stamped with the impress of all the Virtues, and superscribed with the titles of a Maiden Queen.

NOTE 7, LINE 205.

The emblematical meaning given to different colours, once so familiar to the gallant and the fair, is here alluded to.

NOTE 8, LINE 230.

The pile of bones was at Morat, where the duke of Burgundy was defeated by the Swiss. It was at the battle of Sempach that Arnold Winkelreid, recommending his family to that country for which he devoted himself, rushed upon a wedge of Austrian spears, and, burying as many of them as he could grasp, in his own body, thereby made a passage for the Swiss, who could not before bring their shorter weapons to bear upon the enemy; through which they advanced and slaughtered the invaders.

NOTE 9, LINE 243.

After the last struggle of the democratic Cantons against the hordes of France, many females were found among the slain.

NOTE 10, LINE 257.

Madame Roland's "Appeal to impartial Posterity," containing memoirs of her own life, is here alluded to; and her apostrophe to the statue of Liberty, on passing it in her way to the guillotine,

"O Liberty, how many horrors are perpetrated in thy name!"

Her noble fortitude during her imprisonment was also conspicuous.

NOTE 11, LINE 305.

The outrages and insults inflicted upon Boadicia and her daughters by the Romans, and the sanguinary vengeance taken by her upon the Roman colonies, are sufficiently known to every reader of early British history.

NOTE 12, LINE 311.

When Suetonius Paulinus landed his army on the island of Mona,

"there stood along the beach," says Tacitus, "a thick and mingled crowd of men and arms; the women running up and down like Furies with funereal garb, dishevelled hair, uplifted torches; whilst the Druids around, hurling forth

dire imprecations, their hands raised to heaven, so affrighted the soldiers with the strangeness of their appearance, that they stood as if stupefied, affording a motionless body to the weapons of the enemy."

Annal. xiv. 30.

NOTE 13, LINE 317.

"In all these noble toils for the defence and security of his dominions, Edward (the elder) was greatly assisted by his sister Ethelfleda, widow of Ethered governor of Mercia. This heroic princess (who inherited more of the spirit of the great Alfred than any of his children), despising the humble cares and trifling amusements of her own sex, commanded armies, gained victories, built cities, and performed exploits which would have done honour to the greatest princes. Having governed Mercia eight years after the death of her husband, she died A.D. 920, and Edward took the government of that country into his own hand."

Henry's Hist. of Britain, vol. iii. p. 93.

NOTE 14, LINE 355.

Sir Thomas More is highly commended by Erasmus for making his daughters partakers in all the benefits of a learned education. His favourite daughter, Margaret, wife of William Roper, esq.

"became a mistress of the Greek and Latin languages, of arithmetic, and the sciences then generally taught, and of various musical instruments. She wrote with elegance both

in English and Latin. In the latter her style was so pure, that cardinal Pole could scarcely be brought to believe that her compositions were the work of a female."

"Her reverence and affection for her father were unbounded. After his head had been exposed during fourteen days upon London bridge, she found means to procure it, and, preserving it carefully in a leaden box, gave directions that it should be placed in her arms when she was buried; which was accordingly done."

The scene particularly referred to is thus related. After receiving sentence Sir Thomas More was conveyed to the Tower.

"At the Tower-wharf, his favourite daughter, Mrs. Roper, was waiting to take her last farewell of him. At his approach, she burst through the throng, fell on her knees before her father, and, closely embracing him, could only utter, 'My father, oh my father!' He tenderly returned her embrace, and, exhorting her to patience, parted from her. She soon in a passion of grief again burst through the crowd, and clung round his neck in speechless anguish. His firmness was now overcome; tears flowed plentifully down his cheeks, till with a final kiss she left him."

General Biography.

NOTE 15, LINE 365.

A more illustrious instance than that afforded by lady Jane Grey, of the power of learning and philosophy to fortify and tranquillize a youthful and feminine mind under the severest trials, is nowhere to be found. Her dying confession of her fault in not refusing with sufficient steadiness the crown that had been forced upon her, and the willingness she expressed to

expiate that fault by death, sufficiently evince her just and magnanimous way of thinking.

NOTE 16, LINE 411.

The admirable Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, by his widow, ought to be known to every reader capable of being warmed to a noble emulation. The work is inscribed to her children, and is introduced by a kind of dirge, in which after mentioning that some mourners, who have doted on "mortal excellencies," are only to be consoled by removing every thing that may

"with their remembrance renew their grief,"

she proceeds:

"But I that am under a command (of her husband at his death) not to grieve at the common rate of desolate woemen, while I am studying which way to moderate my woe, and if it were possible to augment my love, can for the present find out none more iust to your deare father nor consolatory to myselfe then the preservation of his memory, which I need not guild with such flattering commendations as the higher preachers doe equally give to the truly and titularly honourable; a naked undrest narrative, speaking the simple truth of him, will deck him with more substantiall glorie, than all the panegyricks the best pens could ever consecrate to the best men."

NOTE 17, LINE 427.

The history of lord William Russell and his lady,­her attendance upon him at his trials­his expression after parting with her,­and the other

traits illustrative of their heroic affection and excelling virtues, are too familiarly known to need repetition.

NOTE 18, LINE 475.

It ought always to be remembered for the honour of Spenser, that no poet has given such pure and perfect, such noble, lovely, and at the same time various drafts of female characters. His Belphoebe, his Amoret, his Canace, his Britomart and his Pastora, are a gallery of portraits, all beautiful, but each in a different style from all the rest.

NOTES.

NOTES TO EPISTLE II.

superscript 1 1.8 superscript 2 1.9 superscript 3 1.10 superscript 4 1.11 superscript 5 1.12

NOTES TO EPISTLE III.

none 1.13 superscript 1 1.14 superscript 2 1.15 superscript 3 1.16 superscript 4 1.17 superscript 5 1.18 superscript 6 1.19 superscript 7 1.20 superscript 8 1.21 superscript 9 1.22

NOTES TO EPISTLE IV.

superscript 1 1.23 superscript 2 1.24 superscript 3 1.25 superscript 4 1.26 superscript 5 1.27 superscript 6 1.28 superscript 7 1.29 superscript 8 1.30 superscript 9 1.31 superscript 10 1.32 superscript 11 1.33 superscript 12 1.34 superscript 13 1.35 superscript 14 1.36 superscript 15 1.37 superscript 16 1.38 superscript 17 1.39 superscript 18 1.40

Notes

• * 1.1

  [In original work, this and the following two lines connected by large right brace not represented here.]
• * 1.2

  [In original work, this and following two lines connected by large right brace not represented here.]
• * 1.3

  [In original work, this and following two lines connected by large right brace not represented here.]
• * 1.4

  [In original work, this and following two lines connected by large right brace not represented here.]
• * 1.5

  [In original work, this and following two lines connected by large right brace not represented here.]
• asterisk 1.6

  * Vitaï lampada tradunt." LUCRETIUS
• * 1.7

  [In original work, this and following two lines connected by large right brace not represented here.]
• superscript 1 1.8

  NOTE 1, LINE 48. "THE courtship" of the savages of New Holland "consists in watching the lady's retirement, and then knocking her down with repeated blows of a club or wooden sword; after which the truly matrimonial victim is led streaming with blood to her future husband's party, where a scene ensues too shocking to relate." Collins's Hist. of the Colony in New Holland.
• superscript 2 1.9

  NOTE 2, LINE 74."In all unpolished nations, it is true, the functions in domestic economy which fall naturally to the share of the women, are so many, that they are subjected to hard labour, and must bear more than their full portion of the common burden. But in America their condition is so peculiarly grievous, and their depression so complete, that servitude is a name too mild to describe their wretched state. A wife, amongst most tribes, is no better than a beast of burden, destined to every office of labour and fatigue. While the men loiter out the day in sloth or spend it in amusement, the women are condemned to incessant toil. Tasks are imposed upon them without pity, and services are received without complacency or gratitude. "Every circumstance reminds the women of this mortifying inferiority. They must approach their lords with reverence, they must regard them as more exalted beings, and are not permitted to eat in their presence." There are many districts in America where this dominion is so grievous, and so sensibly felt, that some women, in a wild emotion of maternal tenderness, have destroyed their female children in their infancy, in order to deliver them from that intolerable bondage to which they knew they were doomed."Robertson's Hist. of America, vol. ii. p. 105.Hearne describes the women of the Northern tribes which he visited, as wading through the snow encumbered with heavy burdens, while the men, themselves carrying nothing, urged them on with blows and threats. He mentions other particulars, also illustrative of the wretched condition of the American females, too numerous and too horrid for poetical narration. Certainly Rousseau did not consult the interests of the weaker sex in his preference of savage life to civilized.
• superscript 3 1.10

  NOTE 3, LINE 118.It is supposed that two thirds of the children born in Otaheite are immediately murdered. For the particulars of that dreadful licentiousness which is the consequence of the complete indolence of these islanders, and the countless and nameless evils and enormities which are its consequence, see Transactions of the Missionary Society, vol. i.
• superscript 4 1.11

  NOTE 4, LINE 174.These lines were written before the late glorious abolition: but there are still Christian nations to whom they apply with full force.
• superscript 5 1.12

  NOTE 5, LINE 215.An annual tribute of women was exacted by the Tartars, or Huns, from the Chinese; and even the daughters, genuine or adopted, of the eastern emperors were claimed in marriage by the Tanjous as a bond of union between the nations.

  "The situation of these unhappy victims is described," says Gibbon, "in the verses of a Chinese princess, who laments that she had been condemned by her parents to a distant exile, under a barbarian husband; who complains that sour milk was her only drink, raw flesh her only food, a tent her only palace; and who expresses, in a strain of pathetic simplicity, the natural wish that she were transformed into a bird, to fly back to her dear country, the object of her tender and perpetual regret."

  Decline and Fall, vol. iv. p. 363, 8vo edition.
• none 1.13

  NOTE, LINE 53.One of the most pathetic passages of Homer thus paints the situation of a female captive:

  "As when a woman weepsHer husband fall'n in battle for her sake,And for his children's sake, before the gateOf his own city; sinking to his sideShe close infolds him with a last embrace,And gazing on him as he pants and dies,Shrieks at the sight; meantime the ruthless foeSmiting her shoulders with the spear, to toilCommand her and to bondage far away,And her cheek fades with horror at the sound."

  Odyss. viii. 523.­Cowper.
• superscript 1 1.14

  NOTE 1, LINE 69.A captive Lacedæmonian woman, being asked by her master what she understood? replied, "How to be free." And on his afterwards requiring of her something unworthy, she put herself to death.Valerius Maximus.
• superscript 2 1.15

  NOTE 2, LINE 93.A golden statue of Phryne the courtesan was placed by the Athenians in one of their temples amongst the images of their deities.
• superscript 3 1.16

  NOTE 3, LINE 158.Whenever a disagreement arose between a husband and wife, they repaired to the shrine of the Goddess Viriplaca (the appeaser of husbands); and there, having alternately spoken what they thought proper, they laid aside their contention, and returned in peace.Val. Max.
• superscript 4 1.17

  NOTE 4, LINE 174.

  "Brutus adest, tandemque animo sua nomina fallit:Fixaque semanimi corpore tela rapit.Stillantemque tenens generoso sanguine cultrum,Edidit impavidos ore minante sonos:Per tibi ego hunc juro fortem castumque cruorem,Perque tuos Manes, qui mihi numen erunt:Tarquinium poenas profuga cum stirpe daturum."

  Ovid. Fast.
• superscript 5 1.18

  NOTE 5, LINE 185.The Roman Senate caused a temple to Female Fortune to be erected on the spot where the wife and mother of Coriolanus met him, and prevailed upon him to return. Some new privileges were also granted to the women on that occasion.
• superscript 6 1.19

  NOTE 6, LINE 247.

  "Viros cum Mucio, vel cum Aquilio, aut Regulo comparo ? Pueri et Mulierculæ nostræ cruces et tormenta, feras, et omnes suppliciorum terriculas inspiratâ patientiâ doloris illudunt."

  Minucius Felix.Do I compare our men with Mucius or Aquilius, or Regulus? Even our Boys and Women, with an inspired patience of suffering, deride crosses and racks, wild beasts, and all the terrors of punishment.
• superscript 7 1.20

  NOTE 7, LINE 306.Saint Theresa, born in Old Castile in 1515; a nun, and one of the most enthusiastic of devotees. She thus describes her feelings in a Life of herself:

  "In this representation which I made to place myself near to Christ, there would come suddenly upon me, without either expectation or preparation on my part, such an evident feeling of the presence of God, as that I could by no means doubt, but that either he was within me, or else I all engulfed in him. This was not in the manner of a vision, but I think they call it Mystical Theology; and it suspends the soul in such sort, that she seems to be wholly out of herself. The will is in the act of loving, the memory seems to be in a manner lost, the understanding in my opinion discourses not; and although it be not lost, yet it works not, as I was saying, but remains as it were amazed to consider how much it understands."
• superscript 8 1.21

  NOTE 8, LINE 310.Saint Clara, a celebrated abbess, born at Assisi in 1193. She put herself under the direction of St. Francis d'Assisi, and by his assistance founded a convent of which she became abbess. Her whole life appears to have been employed in the work of enforcing cloister discipline; but rigid as was the rule she imposed upon her nuns, Clara went far beyond it in the austerities she practised upon herself. Pope Innocent IV visited this abbess in her last moments, and soothed her departing spirit by the assurance that her rule should never in after times be mitigated.
• superscript 9 1.22

  NOTE 9, LINE 314.

  "Saint Catharine of Sienna was born in the city whence she takes her name in 1347. She vowed virginity at eight years of age, and soon after assumed the Dominican habit. She became famous for her revelations; and being ingenious, a good writer for her age, and distinguished for piety and charity, her influence was considerable. She went to Avignon to procure a reconciliation between the Florentines and Pope Gregory XI, who had excommunicated them; and by her eloquence she persuaded that pontiff to restore the papal seat to Rome after it had been seventy years at Avignon. Gregory however lived to repent of the step, and on his deathbed exhorted all persons present not to credit visions of private persons, acknowledging that he himself had been deceived by an enthusiast, and foresaw that it would produce evil consequences to the church. In the schism that succeeded, Catharine adhered to Urban VI. She died in 1380, and was canonized by Pope Pius II in 1461. There is extant of hers a volume of "Italian letters," written to popes, princes, cardinals, &c., besides several devotional pieces."

  General Biography.
• superscript 1 1.23

  NOTE 1, LINE 46.THE caftan is an upper robe of rich materials worn by the Turkish ladies. Henna, or alkanet, is a drug employed by them to tinge red the ends of the fingers and the inside of the hand. They increase the apparent lustre of the eye by introducing, within the edge of the eyelid, crude antimony in powder.
• superscript 2 1.24

  NOTE 2, LINE 76.The following passage is cited in confirmation of the sentiments here expressed, from Mr. Southey's noble and eloquent introduction to his translation of The Chronicle of the Cid.

  "The continuance of polygamy was his (Mahommed's) great and ruinous error: where this pernicious custom is established, there will be neither connubial, nor paternal, nor brotherly affection; and hence the unnatural murders with which Asiatic history abounds. The Mahommedan imprisons his wives, and sometimes knows not the faces of his own children; he believes that despotism must be necessary in the state, because he knows it to be necessary at home: thus the domestic tyrant becomes the contented slave, and the atrocity of the ruler and the patience of the people proceed from the same cause. It is the inevitable tendency of polygamy to degrade both sexes: wherever it prevails, the intercourse between them is merely sexual. Women are only instructed in wantonness, sensuality becomes the characteristic of whole nations, and humanity is disgraced by crimes the most loathsome and detestable. This is the primary and general cause of that despotism and degradation which are universal throughout the East."

  &c.
• superscript 3 1.25

  NOTE 3, LINE 92.

  "These too (the women) are the most respected witnesses, the most liberal applauders of every man's conduct. The warriors come and show their wounds to their mothers and wives, who are not shocked at counting, and even requiring them."

  Tacit. de Morib. vii. Aikin's translation.
• superscript 4 1.26

  NOTE 4, LINE 98.

  "Tradition relates, that armies beginning to give way have been brought again to the charge by the females, through the earnestness of their supplications, the interposition of their bodies, and the pictures they have drawn of impending slavery,....a calamity which these people bear with more impatience for their women than for themselves; so that those states who have been obliged to give among their hostages the daughters of noble families, are most effectually bound to fidelity."

  Ibid. viii.
• superscript 5 1.27

  NOTE 5, LINE 106.

  "May the nations retain and perpetuate, if not an affection for us, at least an animosity against each other! since, while the fate of the empire is thus urgent, fortune can bestow no higher benefit upon us than the discord of our enemies."

  Ibid. xxxiii. et pass.
• superscript 6 1.28

  NOTE 6, LINE 165.On the obscure and much controverted subject of chivalry, I find it necessary in this place to hazard a few observations. Several circumstances convince me, and especially some striking facts in the history of Alboin king of the Lombards, and in that of the northern pirates, that a truly chivalrous spirit of honour and generosity had been introduced into the commerce of warriors with each other, in all the relations of peace and war, long before the refinements of gallantry, or even a tolerable decency of behaviour towards the weaker sex, came to be considered as incumbent on the brave and the noble. I also find that even during those ages when the spirit of chivalry is supposed to have been at its height, and when a very romantic kind of gallantry did in fact prevail, in the times, for instance, commemorated by the narrative Froissart, when, for their ladies' love, a party of young knights took a solemn vow to keep one of their eyes blinded with a silken patch till they should have achieved some signal deed of arms,....manners were still gross, and morals extremely corrupt. In France, the nuptial tie, seldom cemented by mutual preference and inclination, has in no age been sufficient to restrain the wanderings of the imagination, or preserve the innocency of domestic life. In Spain, an absurd spirit of jealous rigour long fostered in both sexes the taste for clandestine amours; and the Spanish or Portuguese author of Amadis de Gaul, accounted the most moral as well as popular work of its kind, has represented his adorable and peerless Oriana herself as more fortunate in the constancy of her lover, but not more discreet in her loves, than the hapless Dido of ancient story. In England and the northern parts of the continent, if morals were somewhat more pure during these ages than in the south, manners were still more coarse. I am compelled to infer, that it was not till knight errantry, ceasing to exist in reality, had become a frame for the poetic fictions of a dignified and learned age, that it assumed the pure and lofty character which delights us in the beautiful coinage of Spenser's brain, stamped with the impress of all the Virtues, and superscribed with the titles of a Maiden Queen.
• superscript 7 1.29

  NOTE 7, LINE 205.The emblematical meaning given to different colours, once so familiar to the gallant and the fair, is here alluded to.
• superscript 8 1.30

  NOTE 8, LINE 230.The pile of bones was at Morat, where the duke of Burgundy was defeated by the Swiss. It was at the battle of Sempach that Arnold Winkelreid, recommending his family to that country for which he devoted himself, rushed upon a wedge of Austrian spears, and, burying as many of them as he could grasp, in his own body, thereby made a passage for the Swiss, who could not before bring their shorter weapons to bear upon the enemy; through which they advanced and slaughtered the invaders.
• superscript 9 1.31

  NOTE 9, LINE 243.After the last struggle of the democratic Cantons against the hordes of France, many females were found among the slain.
• superscript 10 1.32

  NOTE 10, LINE 257.Madame Roland's "Appeal to impartial Posterity," containing memoirs of her own life, is here alluded to; and her apostrophe to the statue of Liberty, on passing it in her way to the guillotine,

  "O Liberty, how many horrors are perpetrated in thy name!"

  Her noble fortitude during her imprisonment was also conspicuous.
• superscript 11 1.33

  NOTE 11, LINE 305.The outrages and insults inflicted upon Boadicia and her daughters by the Romans, and the sanguinary vengeance taken by her upon the Roman colonies, are sufficiently known to every reader of early British history.
• superscript 12 1.34

  NOTE 12, LINE 311.When Suetonius Paulinus landed his army on the island of Mona,

  "there stood along the beach," says Tacitus, "a thick and mingled crowd of men and arms; the women running up and down like Furies with funereal garb, dishevelled hair, uplifted torches; whilst the Druids around, hurling forth dire imprecations, their hands raised to heaven, so affrighted the soldiers with the strangeness of their appearance, that they stood as if stupefied, affording a motionless body to the weapons of the enemy."

  Annal. xiv. 30.
• superscript 13 1.35

  NOTE 13, LINE 317.

  "In all these noble toils for the defence and security of his dominions, Edward (the elder) was greatly assisted by his sister Ethelfleda, widow of Ethered governor of Mercia. This heroic princess (who inherited more of the spirit of the great Alfred than any of his children), despising the humble cares and trifling amusements of her own sex, commanded armies, gained victories, built cities, and performed exploits which would have done honour to the greatest princes. Having governed Mercia eight years after the death of her husband, she died A.D. 920, and Edward took the government of that country into his own hand."

  Henry's Hist. of Britain, vol. iii. p. 93.
• superscript 14 1.36

  NOTE 14, LINE 355.Sir Thomas More is highly commended by Erasmus for making his daughters partakers in all the benefits of a learned education. His favourite daughter, Margaret, wife of William Roper, esq.

  "became a mistress of the Greek and Latin languages, of arithmetic, and the sciences then generally taught, and of various musical instruments. She wrote with elegance both in English and Latin. In the latter her style was so pure, that cardinal Pole could scarcely be brought to believe that her compositions were the work of a female."
  "Her reverence and affection for her father were unbounded. After his head had been exposed during fourteen days upon London bridge, she found means to procure it, and, preserving it carefully in a leaden box, gave directions that it should be placed in her arms when she was buried; which was accordingly done."

  The scene particularly referred to is thus related. After receiving sentence Sir Thomas More was conveyed to the Tower.

  "At the Tower-wharf, his favourite daughter, Mrs. Roper, was waiting to take her last farewell of him. At his approach, she burst through the throng, fell on her knees before her father, and, closely embracing him, could only utter, 'My father, oh my father!' He tenderly returned her embrace, and, exhorting her to patience, parted from her. She soon in a passion of grief again burst through the crowd, and clung round his neck in speechless anguish. His firmness was now overcome; tears flowed plentifully down his cheeks, till with a final kiss she left him."

  General Biography.
• superscript 15 1.37

  NOTE 15, LINE 365.A more illustrious instance than that afforded by lady Jane Grey, of the power of learning and philosophy to fortify and tranquillize a youthful and feminine mind under the severest trials, is nowhere to be found. Her dying confession of her fault in not refusing with sufficient steadiness the crown that had been forced upon her, and the willingness she expressed to expiate that fault by death, sufficiently evince her just and magnanimous way of thinking.
• superscript 16 1.38

  NOTE 16, LINE 411.The admirable Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, by his widow, ought to be known to every reader capable of being warmed to a noble emulation. The work is inscribed to her children, and is introduced by a kind of dirge, in which after mentioning that some mourners, who have doted on "mortal excellencies," are only to be consoled by removing every thing that may

  "with their remembrance renew their grief,"

  she proceeds:

  "But I that am under a command (of her husband at his death) not to grieve at the common rate of desolate woemen, while I am studying which way to moderate my woe, and if it were possible to augment my love, can for the present find out none more iust to your deare father nor consolatory to myselfe then the preservation of his memory, which I need not guild with such flattering commendations as the higher preachers doe equally give to the truly and titularly honourable; a naked undrest narrative, speaking the simple truth of him, will deck him with more substantiall glorie, than all the panegyricks the best pens could ever consecrate to the best men."
• superscript 17 1.39

  NOTE 17, LINE 427.The history of lord William Russell and his lady,­her attendance upon him at his trials­his expression after parting with her,­and the other traits illustrative of their heroic affection and excelling virtues, are too familiarly known to need repetition.
• superscript 18 1.40

  NOTE 18, LINE 475.It ought always to be remembered for the honour of Spenser, that no poet has given such pure and perfect, such noble, lovely, and at the same time various drafts of female characters. His Belphoebe, his Amoret, his Canace, his Britomart and his Pastora, are a gallery of portraits, all beautiful, but each in a different style from all the rest.