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Blue-Stocking Revels;
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Cantoiii.—The Supper
And Tighe , her own Psyche : and Elliott , sweet Jane , Who made the lone dairies mourn Flodden again ; And RadclifFe , fear-charm'd , ever breathlessly creeping Through castles and corridors , frightful to sleep in :
Then Barbauld , fine teacher , correcting impatience , Or mounting the stars in divine meditations ; Thrale , Brunton , Trefusis , her heart pit-a-pat ting , And Hemans , behind her grand organ-loft chatting ; With others I can ' t well remember at present , Except Hannah More , looking very unpleasant .
You'll fancy there could not have possibly been A sight now , which women would sooner have seen Than all this ; and in truth , when you mark , in a street , How they turn and inspect ev _' ry bonnet they meet , And how light , in comparison , seem to hold men , >( Tis a point I shall leave to some weightier pen . Only pray be assur'd , that whatever the case ,
It tells not a jot to our sex ' s disgrace , And for this simple reason , —that us they are sure of , But each other ' s claims are not quite so secure of . Thus much I can swear , —that what follow'd this show Was a sight made their cheeks with new gratitude glow , And that half the dear souls fell in love on the spot , And with p osthumous men too ! gallants living not ! Alas ! did I say so ? Oh impious misgiving !
Than Shakspeare and Petrarch pray who are more living ? Whose words more delight us ? whose touches more touch ? For these were the shapes that now pass'd us , —all such As the sex should most long to see , out of all story , — The men that have done them most honour and glory .
First , Homer Andromache brought , like his child ; And beside them was Helen , who far away smiled : — - Old trav'ller was he , and he walk'd with a sword . Then Antigone came with the Sarnian lord , Close-clinging , yet gentle . —Then Petrarch appear'd , Looking still on the face , by down-looking _endear'd ;
( 40 ) Jane Elliot , authoress of the exquisite lament for the battle of Flodden , called the * Flowers of the Forest , * which Sir Walter Scott had such difficulty in believing a modern production . It is like the sullen ness of a still morning in the country , before lain . ( 41 ) See , in Aikin ' s _< Miscellanies / her admirable essay upon ' Inconsistency in our Expectations ; ' and in Mr Dycc ' _s collection , * A Summer Evening ' s Meditation / containing , among other beauties , the following sublime passage ; " This dead of midnight is the noon of thought ; An < jl _ffisdom mounts her zenith with the stars . "
Blue-Stocking Revels;
Blue-Stocking Revels ;
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 1, 1837, page 52, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/mrp_01071837/page/50/
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