might have been anticipated: for that appetite, either of person or purse, which the Bridegroom too often dignifies with the name of love, disappears with enjoyment; while the Bride, whose affections were perhaps little interested at first, finds them imperceptibly kindled by a sense of duty, by the consciousness of her dependence, and the gratifications and novelty which her total change of life invariably presents at the outset. Awakening from this trance, she has leisure to discover that she has made over to her lord and master, strictly and truly so designated, not only all her present possessions, but all her future expectations-all that she may even earn by her talents :---she has not become his servant, for servants, if ill used, may depart, and try to better themselves elsewhere; but his serf, his slave, his white negro, whom, according to Judge Buller, (himself a married man,) he may correct with a stick of the same thickness as his thumb, whatever may be its dimensions. We hear of rosy fetters, the silken chains of love, the soft yoke of Hymen--but who is to bear the soul-grinding bondage of dislike, contempt, hatred? How is a woman to avoid these feelings if she be maltreated and insulted; and how is she to redress her wrongs? The laws, made by the men, and therefore flagrantly in their own favour, provide no remedy: if she use her sole weapon, the tongue, she is proclaimed a scold, a shrew, and reminded of the ducking-stool; if she make his own house uncomfortable to her husband, every body's else is open to him; he may violate his marriage-vow, and is still a marvellous proper gentleman; he may associate with profligates, and his friends exclaim"Poor man! he has been driven to this by a bad wife! If the deserted and injured woman meantime seek relief from her sorrows in the most innocent recreation, Spite, with its Argus eyes, keeps watch upon her door, and Calumny dogs her footsteps, hissing at her with its thousand tongues, and spitting out lies and poison from every one. Let no man choose me for umpire in a conjugal dispute. I need not ask who is the delinquent--my heart has decided against him by anticipation. Such, I shall be told, is the result of uncongenial unions; but it is a mistake to suppose that men seek congeniality in their wives. In friends, who are to share their sports and pursuits; to accompany them in shooting, hunting, fishing; to talk politics or religion over a bottle; they naturally select similarity of tastes: but women are to do nothing of all this; they are chosen for their domestic duties, and as these are perfectly distinct from the man's, he looks out for contrast rather than uniformity. Hence the male horror of Bluestockings, the sneer with which every blockhead exclaims" Our wives read Milton and our daughters plays!" the alacrity with which he assumes that such learned ladies must necessarily "make sloppy tea, and wear their shoes down at heel;" and the convincing self-applause with which he quotes the trite epigram 66 Though Artemisia talks by fits Of councils, fathers, classics, wits, Reads Malbranche, Boyle, and Locke," &c. 66 Let us imagine, not a patient stock-fish, like Griselda, but an accomplished woman, paired, not matched," with "a sullen silent sot, one who is ever musing but never thinks," an animal who, like London small-beer, gets sour if not soon drunk ;- -or united to a drone and a dunce, who lounges all day long before the fire, spitting into it like a great roasting apple ;or submitted to the caprices of a man who keeps his good temper for company and his bad for his wife; abroad as smiling and promising as a Siberian crab, while at home his heart's core is as sour;-or tormented with a profligate, who But I must have done, although I have not half finished, for I might stretch the line to the crack of doom. When I consider all the hardships and trials to which the fair sex are subject by those unjust institutions of society which exact the greatest strength from the weakest vessel, and reflect, moreover, that Nature has unkindly imposed upon it all the pains and penalties of continuing the race, I can only repeat once more, that I thank Heaven for not having made me a woman. ADVERTISEMENT FOR A DEDICATEE. "Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present time; and I feel now Macbeth. "I will contrive some way to make it known to futurity that had your Lordship for my patron.” SWIFT. I HAVE just completed an Epic Poem, in twentyfour cantos, constructed as Apelles painted his Venus, by combining all the most distinguishing beauties of my contemporaries, prosaic and poetical, in one elaborate and immortal work. It is in the octo-syllabic irregular metre: my hero is a sort of civilized savage, uniting all the bursts of passion and ferocious valour of a barbarian with the refined love and unalterable constancy of a preux chevalier; and after many melting, fierce, and tragical adventures with the heroine, who has a bluish bloom upon her glossy black hair, voluptuous lips, and eyes like the Gazelle, they both finally disappear in a mysterious and unexplained manner; making themselves air, like the witches in Macbeth or the spectral figures of a phantasmagoria. Then I have a supernatural nondescript, in the shape of a crazy beldame, who, however, occasionally assuines the semblance of a deformed imp, or dwarf, seemingly a cross breed between the Pythoness and the Gipsy, or Caliban and a witch, who reads and prophesies in the fustian style of Bobadil or Pistol, and though he, she, or it, have not wit enough to escape from hunger and rags, is yet gifted with real prescience, made the pivot of the whole plot, all the complications of which are forced to wind and evolve in subserviency to the delirious rhapsodies of this inspired hag, or urchin. The propriety of such a character, in a work professing to be a picture of real life, and founded upon authentic history, as mine is, will not, I think, be questioned by the most hypercritical reader. Moreover, I have a metaphysical muffin-man, who indulges in high and holy musings, philosophises the face of nature, disserts upon the mysteries of creation, delights in the most exalted and profound abstractions, and occasionally rings his bell and cries "Muffins!" with as simple, natural, and penny-beseeching a look, tempered, however, with dignity, as was ever assumed by Belisarius himself. I have also a ; but softly, let me not divulge too much; for in these times of literary competition, a rival author may first steal a hint, and by that means pick my pocket of my whole story, as has already been effected in numerous instances. One may submit to be pillaged by the dead, and in this way it is astonishing what a number of good things I myself have had stolen from me by Shakspeare and others; but this plagiarism by anticipation on the part of the living—this ante-natal robbery, sometimes extending to our very names and attributes, as in the instance of the unfortunate Peter Bell,-loudly calls for legislative interference, or we may all of us have our literary bantlings cut off before they are born, or see them ushered into the world as forgeries VOL. I. |