THE
UNSEX'D FEMALES:
A
POEM,
ADDRESSED TO THE AUTHOR OF
THE PURSUITS OF LITERATURE.

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"Our unsex'd female writers now instruct, or confuse, us and
themselves, in the labyrinth of politics, or turn us wild with
Gallic frenzy." -- -- -- -Pursuits of Literature, Edit. 7. p. 238.
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LONDON:
PRINTED FOR CADELL AND DAVIES, IN THE STRAND.
-- -- -- -- -- -- -
1798.

   A prolific writer whose work is now largely forgotten, Richard Polwhele was the author of numerous religious tracts, political satires and essays, topographical and historical studies, poems, translations, and biographical and autobiographical sketches. He was born in Truro, Cornwall, on 6 January 1760 to common but well-to-do parents: his father, Thomas, maintained a small but ancient estate two miles outside of town, and his mother, Mary, kept the house a center of social activity. The poet and satirist John Wolcot (better known by his nom de plume, "Peter Pindar") was an instructor of Polwhele's at school, and a frequent guest at the Polwhele home. Wolcot took an active interest in young Richard's literary aspirations, reading his poems and praising them for their wit, but at the same time adjuring him to refrain from writing in "damned epithets." The two must have had a falling-out at some point; years later, Polwhele would spitefully attack his former mentor in A Sketch of Peter Pindar (1800) (See Appendix I). In addition to Wolcot, Mary Polwhele had other literary friends, two of whom Richard met on a visit to Bath and Bristol in 1777: the historian and radical political pamphleteer Catherine Macaulay, and the poet and playwright Hannah More. Macaulay, "the English Thucydides," was on this occasion being honored with a birthday celebration, featuring elaborate parties, poetry readings, and culminating with the presentation of a sculpture featuring Macaulay as the muse Clio. Richard Polwhele participated in the festivities by composing an ode for Macaulay, which was published along with five other poems in April, and which marked Polwhele's debut as a writer. Following the suggestions of several of his friends, Polwhele soon after published a volume of poetry entitled The Fate of Lewellyn, a work which did nothing to further his career, and which indeed gave him an early reputation as a callow and unpromising poet.

   In the spring of 1778 Polwhele entered Christ Church, Oxford, where he remained long enough to be admitted to the study of law, but not long enough to take his degree; instead he entered the church, and proceeded to take minor offices in various small parishes in Cornwall and Devonshire. His first long-term position was as curate of Kenton in Devonshire, a post he held from 1782 to 1793. Here Polwhele cultivated many friends, including several self-styled literary men who had formed a society for belle lettres in Exeter. Polwhele became an active member of this group, and served as both editor and major contributor to its first anthology, Poems, Chiefly by Gentlemen of Devonshire and Cornwall (1792). During his years at Kenton Polwhele also completed what was to become his most acclaimed and enduring work, his translation of the Greek pastoral poets Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus (1786) (these were reprinted countless times, and the translation of Theocritus remained the standard throughout most of the nineteenth century). In 1793 Polwhele published the first of his topographical "histories," Historical Views of Devonshire, and began publishing his second, more extensive study, The History of Devonshire (1793-1806). In the same year, Polwhele suffered the loss of his first wife, Loveday, and consequently took a brief sabbatical from his curacy; after a few months at home with his mother, Polwhele returned to Kenton with his three children, and was soon married again.

   Together with his new wife, Mary, Polwhele left Kenton in early 1794 and took an appointment at the parish of Manaccan, near Helston, Cornwall, where he resided until 1806. In contrast to Kenton, Manaccan was a poor parish, and Polwhele found that he had little income with which to support his ever-growing family, and few intellectual friends with whom to converse; most of the money Polwhele earned from his office he had to pour into repairs for the dilapidated cottage in which he lived, and most of his conversation took the form of epistles (among his chief correspondents were Samuel Badcock, Macaulay, William Cowper, Erasmus Darwin, and Anna Seward). Polwhele's relationship with the literary society at Exeter also took a bad turn; the anthology of Essays by a Society of Gentlemen at Exeter (1796), edited by Polwhele, became a source of heated controversy between members of the group, and resulted in Polwhele dissociating himself from the others. Despite these hardships, Polwhele continued to find both time and energy to write, and indeed composed and published a prodigious number of poems, essays, and histories during his tenure at Manaccan. His chief labor during this period was the massive three-volume History of Cornwall (1803), which included civil and military history, a description of the population, sketches of literary figures and literary productions, and a glossary of Cornish language. In addition to this work, Polwhele produced a number of essays and satires on religious matters, such as Anecdotes of Methodism and Sir Aaron, or The Flights of Fanaticism (both published in 1800), in which he sought to expose the "follies" of low-church sects; published several poems, including The Old English Gentleman (1797) and The Unsex'd Females (1798); and frequently contributed essays and poems to the Anti-Jacobin Review.

   Polwhele's literary production slowed significantly during the next thirty years, largely because he found himself greatly overworked in his clerical offices. To better support his family, Polwhele found it necessary to take and hold several positions simultaneously: although he left Manaccan in 1806, he continued to hold the curacy there as a nonresident until 1821; he undertook the vicarage of the parish of St. Anthony in Meneage in 1809, and held that position until 1828; from Manaccan he had gone back to Truro to become curate of Kenwyn, which he supplemented in 1821 with the vicarage of Newlyn East. During this time he published a few sermons, a few satiric essays and poems, compiled his Biographical Sketches in Cornwall (1831), and labored on an autobiography. His last years were spent on the family estate of Polwhele, where he died on 12 March 1838.

   Although the majority of reviewers found The Unsex'd Females a tedious, lifeless piece of writing (little was said of its politics), Polwhele's associates at the Anti-Jacobin Review were quick to call it to the attention of reactionary readers. "The...poem has much of a political cast, and, therefore, comes peculiarly within our region of reviewing," remarks the anonymous critic (27),

   "And we are happy to see one of the first poets of the day, one who ranks amongst the foremost for richness of language, vividness of fancy, and brilliance of imagery, employing his poetical talents, at this awful crisis of church and state, in vindication of all that is dear to us as Britons and as Christians (33)."

   The reviewer here acknowledges what he considers the "larger" purpose of The Unsex'd Females, beyond its concern with a particular group of women: the poem seeks to reaffirm

   "When I have read and thought deeply on the accumulated horrors, and all the gradations of wickedness and misery, through which the modern systematic philosophy of Europe has conducted her illuminated votaries, to the confines of political death and mental darkness, my mind for a space feels a convulsion, and suffers the nature of an insurrection. I look around me. I look to human actions, and to human principles. I consider again and again, what is the nature and effect of learning and of instruction: what is the doctrine of evidence, and the foundation of truth....I am told, that human reason is nearly advanced to full perfection; I am assured, that she is arrived at the haven, where she would be. I again look around me. I ask, where is that haven? Where is that steady gale which has conducted her? I listen, but it is to the tempest: I cast my view abroad, but the ocean is every where perturbed (xiv-xv)."

   According to Polwhele, Mathias's poem had served as a clarion call to those "whose politics and even religion have been long wavering" to examine their values and become "fixed in their principles" (3); The Pursuits was a sermon against the Revolution and those with revolutionary sympathies, and may indeed have been the text which most persuaded Polwhele to adopt the reactionary position. Polwhele's devotion to the project of The Pursuits of Literature continued even after Mathias disparaged him in a subsequent edition; although Polwhele could no longer muster up the same praise for the poem itself as he did before the attack (See Appendix I). In any case, The Unsex'd Females stands among the first in a line of reactionary works composed by Polwhele, most of the later ones appearing in the pages of the Anti-Jacobin Review.

   Of course The Unsex'd Females is much more than a poem against the French Revolution and against Reason: it is, first and foremost, a satiric critique of the feminist principles expounded by Mary Wollstonecraft and her followers. In A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), the first polemic (of many, from various sources) aimed at Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Wollstonecraft had set forth a radical critique of British society, which she regarded as particularly oppressive with regard to women. The views were more fully set forth in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792): English women, she argued, had been assigned straitened roles within society, had been trivialized as sentimental creatures, and had been denied access to higher education. Sentimentalist literature Wollstonecraft found particularly noxious, for it tended to portray women as essentially emotional beings, and consequently as inferior to men in their capacity for rational understanding. This rejection of the sentimental ideal of femininity is Polwhele's immediate concern in The Unsex'd Females, but throughout the poem he links Wollstonecraftian feminism with revolutionary politics and anti-Christian values.

   Polwhele's attacks on Wollstonecraft's immorality and irreligion take the form of sallies against her personal affairs. After Wollstonecraft's death in 1797, her husband, William Godwin, had put into publication his biographical account of her private life; Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published twice in 1798, and was apparently not only read by Polwhele, but also reviewed by him for the April 1798 issue of the European Magazine (the substantial and unmistakable similarities between the unsigned review and Polwhele's footnotes on the Memoirs in his poem are discussed in the notes to the present edition). From Godwin's biography Polwhele garnered the fodder he needed to take shots at Wollstonecraft's history of "licentious" love affairs, and particularly her relationships with the painter Henry Fuseli and the American revolutionary Gilbert Imlay. According to Polwhele, these liaisons were indicative of the poor moral character one could only expect to find in a "woman who has broken through all religious restraints" (28-29), who has rejected the laws of Nature and of Nature's God: "Nature is the grand basis of all laws human and divine: and the woman, who has no regard to nature, either in the decoration of her person, or the culture of her mind, will soon 'walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government"' (6). The despising of government both by man and by monarch, the rejection of God and Nature (i.e., the "natural" intellectual and qualitative differences between the genders) in favor of Reason and social refiguration, and the abandonment of domestic duty for the pleasures of sexual self-fulfillment are for Polwhele all symptoms of the same disease, the "Gallic frenzy" that has infected and unsexed the English woman.

   Curiously, however, of the eight women Polwhele names as "unsexed" (15-20), only two actually fit the Wollstonecraftian model: Mary Hays and Helen Maria Williams. Hays had been a close friend of Wollstonecraft (indeed, she had orchestrated her marriage to Godwin), and had established herself as an equally radical, equally controversial feminist theorist through the publication of such works as Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous (1793) (though this treatise, unlike Wollstonecraft's, emphasized Christian principles as the basis of its critique of gender/power relations). More infamous even than Wollstonecraft, Williams had gained notoriety in England for her Letters from France, 1792-96 (1796), a sympathetic account of the Jacobins' rise to power, and for her widely publicized liaison with fellow radical John Hurford Stone. But these two stand quite apart from the other women Polwhele calls into question. Charlotte Smith, who had indeed once been a French sympathizer, had by 1798 already become a leading voice among the reactionaries; in The Emigrants (1793), Smith had expressed her outrage at the massacre of the French aristocrats and her disillusionment with revolution. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, although the author of several liberal political works (such as the abolitionist satire Epistle to William Wilberforce [1791]), was hardly a revolutionary; furthermore, she had no sympathy whatsoever for Wollstonecraft's feminism, being herself a staunch believer in the propriety and priority of the male-dominated household, and an outspoken opponent of the "overeducation" of women. One wonders why Polwhele mentions her as first among Wollstonecraft's disciples. Mary Robinson's notoriety stemmed not from her political views (she was, compared to Wollstone-craft, only fashionally liberal) but from her affairs, particularly her early liaison with the Prince of Wales. As for the artists Emma Crewe and Angelica Kauffman, Polwhele can only accuse them of breaching decorum in their sensual

   Considering this catalog of the unsexed, one can only conclude that Polwhele attacks these women not for what they are, but for what they are not: they are unsexed, unfeminine, either because they are immodest, or unsentimental, or insubordinate. Women must do more than simply avoid setting a bad example: they must provide a positive model of chaste, sentimental, subordinate femininity. Polwhele therefore provides his reader with a list of women he deems exemplary among literary ladies. Prominent among them are the women of the Blue Stocking Circle, the literary society that met for much of the 1780s in the salons of Elizabeth Montagu. In addition to Montagu herself, the group consisted of Elizabeth Carter, Hester Chapone, Hester Thrale Piozzi, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Horace Walpole, Joshua Reynolds, and many other conservative notables, and held its meetings without the debaucheries of dancing, gambling, and alcohol. Polwhele also mentions favorably the sentimental novelist Fanny Burney, who in works such as Evelina (1778) and Camilla (1796) mixed "with sparkling humour chaste/ Delicious feelings and the purest taste" (34); the gothic author Ann Radcliffe, presumably for her stirring accounts of virtue in distress; the illustrator Diana Beauclerk; and the poet Anna Seward. This litany of saintly women is sung by "a voice seraphic" (28), calling the sex away from the perils of Wollstonecraft, and at its conclusion the reader learns that this has been the voice of Polwhele's "friend," Hannah More. Vehemently opposed to Wollstonecraftian feminism, More believed in a natural intellectual and psychological difference between genders, and Polwhele cites approvingly her opinion that "the mind, in each sex, has some natural kind of bias, which constitutes a distinction of character; and...the happiness of both depends, in a great measure, on the preservation and observance of this distinction" (36-37).

   Maintaining the distinction of gender roles is Polwhele's primary agenda in The Unsex'd Females, but this agenda is caught up with many others. In order to ensure that men and women behave differently, they must inhabit and operate in different spheres. If women were allowed to follow their own sexual desires and sleep with any man they wished, whither the domestic duties of hearth and home? If women were educated in the same way as men, and busied themselves with the hard affairs of government, what would become of the softer sex? And if women lost their femininity and abandoned their domestic obligations, what would the future hold for English society? The questions alone must have frightened Polwhele, but they were not questions he would have to answer; by the turn of the century Wollstonecraft and her followers had fallen so far into public disfavor that any fears of revolutionary feminism had been effectively quelled. But in the nineteenth century, women worked within the roles provided them -- as beings sentimental and religious, compassionate and "seraphic" -- to create another, more subversive, and ultimately more effective feminist program for the refiguration of society. Religious groups devoted to causes such as temperance and the abolition of slavery sprung up on both sides of the Atlantic, and provided women with opportunities to exert, through the exercise of their putative moral and spiritual superiority, a substantial amount of control over the destinies of men, and eventually over

   *Polwhele's note: In my opinion, the Author of "the Pursuits of Literature" has discovered, in his animated Satire, a true poetical genius. And (as a writer, who had very little pretensions to that character himself, observes) "a true poet is a public good." The satire in question, seems to have produced effects, resembling those which distinguished the poetry of Greece and Rome. For I can assert, on the best authorities, that many in this country, whose politics and even religion have been long wavering, are now fixed in their principles by "the Pursuits of Literature."

   *Polwhele's note: By the muse, I mean literature in general.

   *Polwhele's note: I agree with the Author of "the Pursuits," both in his praises and his censures of the writers of this country, with a few exceptions only. To his eulogia, indeed, I heartily assent: but, I think, his animadversions on Darwin and Hayley in particular, are unmerited. In composing his Botanic Garden, Dr. Darwin was aware, that though imagination refuse to enlist under the banner of science, yet science may sometimes be brought forward, not unhappily, under the conduct of imagination: and of the latter, if I am any way a judge, we are presented with a complete specimen in that admirable poem. With respect to the structure of the poem, we have been told, that it wants connexion -- that there is a reciprocal repulsion between the scientific and imaginative particles, and so little affinity even between the latter, that they cannot possibly cohere. But on this topic, let us hear the Author himself; who invites us to contemplate, in his poem, "a great variety of little pictures, connected only by a slight festoon of ribbons." And they are pictures glowing in the richest colors -- the most beautiful, in short, that were ever delineated by the poetic pencil. I defy any one of Dr. Darwin's censures, to point out a single picture, which is not finished with touches the most exquisite -- "with all the magic charms of light and shade." I had intended to examine the style, the versification, the poetry; but rather let me desire my Reader to open either of the volumes, at a venture, and take the first description that presents itself: and he will find painting sublime as Fuseli's, or beautiful as Emma Crewe's. It is easy to run over the changes of "artificial glitter" -- "glaring varnish" -- "deliciousness that

   *Polwhele's note: "Greatly think, or nobly die." Pope.

   *Polwhele's note: Nature is the grand basis of all laws human and divine: and the woman, who has no regard to nature, either in the decoration of her person, or the culture of her mind, will soon "walk after the flesh, in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government."

    *Polwhele's note:

    The Amazonian band -- the female Quixotes of the new philosophy, are, here, too justly characterised. nore could they read, I suspect, some passages in the sixth satire of Juvenal without an uneasy sensation:

    I have seen in MS. Mr. Gifford's masterly translation of this satire. Our expectations, I hope, will soon be gratified by his entire version of Juvenal.

   *Polwhele's note: To "sport a face," is a cant phrase in one of our Universities, by which is meant an impudent obtrusion of a man's person in company. It is not inapplicable, perhaps, to the open bosom -- a fashion which we have never invited or sanctioned.

   *Polwhele's note: The fashions of France, which have been always imitated by the English, were, heretofore, unexceptionable in a moral point of view; since, however ridiculous or absurd, they were innocent. But they have now their source among prostitutes -- among women of the most

   Robinson's Proofs of a Conspiracy, &c. &c. Edit. 2. p. 252.

   *Polwhele's note: Botany has lately become a fashionable amusement with the ladies. But how the study of the sexual system of plants can accord with female modesty, I am not able to comprehend. See note from Darwin's Botanic Garden, at p.

   I had, at first, written:

    I have, several times, seen boys and girls botanizing together.

   *Polwhele's note: Miss Wollstonecraft does not blush to say, in an introduction to a book designed for the use of young ladies, that, "in order to lay the axe at the root of corruption, it would be proper to familiarize the sexes to an unreserved discussion of these topics, which are generally avoided in conversation from a principle of false delicacy; and that it would be right to speak of the organs of generation as freely as we mention our eyes or our hands." To such language our botanizing girls are doubtless familiarized: and, they are in a fair way of becoming worthy disciples of Miss W. If they do not take heed to their ways, they will soon exchange the blush of modesty for the bronze of impudence.

   *Polwhele's note: "Each pungent grain of titillating dust." Pope.

   *Polwhele's note: "The prolific dust" -- of the botanist.

   *Polwhele's note:

   Except the non color unus, Virgil's Sibyll seems to be an exact portrait of a female fashionist, both in dress and philosophism.

   *Polwhele's note: The female advocates of Democracy in this country, though they have had no opportunity of imitating the French ladies, in their atro-

   *Polwhele's note: Philosophism, the false image of philosophy. See the psuedo Eneas of the Eneid, 10.b. imitated from the Iliad, 15.b.

   A true description of Philosophism; a phantom which heretofore appeared not in open day, though it now attempts the loftiest flights in the face of the sun. I trust, however, to English eyes, it is almost lost in the "black cloud" to which it owed its birth.

   *Polwhele's note: I admit that we are quickly reconciled to the fashion of the day, and often consider it as graceful, if it not offend against delicacy.

   *Polwhele's note:

   *Polwhele's note: A troubled stream only, can proceed from the vase of scepticism; if it be not "the broken cistern that will hold no water." --

   *Polwhele's note: "Raging waves, foaming out their own shame" -- St. Jude. Such were those infamous publications of Paine and others, which, like the torrents of December, threatened to sweep all before them -- to overwhelm the multitude.

   *Polwhele's note: Alluding to that beautiful passage: "Ere the day dawn, or the daystar arise in your hearts."

   *Polwhele's note:

   *Polwhele's note: That Miss Wollstonecraft was a sworn enemy to blushes, I need not remark. But many of my readers, perhaps, will be astonished to hear, that at several of our boarding-schools for young ladies, a blush incurs a penalty.

   *Polwhele's note: According to Rousseau, the empire of women is the empire of softness -- of address: their commands, are caresses; their menaces, are tears.

   *Polwhele's note: Her visual nerve was purged with euphrasy: she could see the illumination fast approaching, unperceived as it was by common mortals.

   *Polwhele's note: "Like monarchs, we have been flattered into imbecillity, by those who wish to take advantage of our weakness;" says Mary Hays (Essays and Letters, p. 92) But, whether flattered or not, women were always weak: and female weakness hath accomplished, what the forced of arms could not affect." Mulieres urbem quam

   *Polwhele's note: Miss Wollstonecraft seriously laments the neglect of all muscular exercises, at our female Boarding-schools.

   *Polwhele's note: Here, and at the conclusion of the Poem, I have formed a groupe of female Writers; whose productions have been apreciated by the

   *Polwhele's note: In Mrs. Robinson's Poetry, there is a peculiar delicacy: but her Novels, as literary compositions, have no great claim to approbation -- As containing the doctrines of Philosophism, they merit the severest censure. Would that, for the sake of herself and her beautiful daughter (whose personal charms are only equalled by the elegance of her mind) would, that, for the sake of public morality, Mrs. Robinson were persuaded to dismiss the gloomy phantom of annihilation; to think seriously of a future retribution; and to communicate to the world, a recantation of errors that originated in levity, and have been nursed by pleasure! I have seen her, "glittering like the morning-star, full of life,

   *Polwhele's note: The Sonnets of Charlotte Smith, have a pensiveness peculiarly their own: It is not the monotonous plaintiveness of Shenstone, the gloomy melancholy of Gray, or the meek subdued spirit of Collins. It is a strain of wild, yet softened sorrow, that breathes a romantic air, without losing, for a moment, its mellowness. Her images, often original, are drawn from nature: the most familiar, have a new and charming aspect. Sweetly picturesque, she creates with the pencil of a Gilpin, and infuses her own soul into the landscape. There is so uncommon a variety in her expression, that I could read a thousand of such Sonnets without lassitude. In general, a very few Sonnets fatigue attention, partly owing to the sameness of their construction. Petrarch, indeed, I can relish for a considerable time: but Spenser and Milton soon produce somnolence. As a Novel-writer, her Ethelinde and Emmeline place her above all her contemporaries, except Mrs. D'Arblay and Mrs. Radcliffe. But why does she suffer her mind to be infected with the Gallic mania? I hope, ere this, she is completely recovered from a disorder, of which, indeed, I observed only a few slight symptoms.

   *Polwhele's note: Miss Helen Williams is, doubtless, a true poet. But is it not extraordinary, that such a genius, a female and so young, should have become a politician -- that the fair Helen, whose notes of love have charmed the moonlight vallies, should stand forward, an intemperate advocate for Gallic licentiousness -- that such a woman should import with her, a blast more pestiliential than that of Avernus, though she has so often delighted us with melodies, soft as the sighs of the Zephyr, delicious as the airs of Paradise? -- (See her "Letters from France.")

   *Polwhele's note: Mrs. Yearseley's Poems, as the product of an untutored milk-woman, certainly entitled her to patronage: and patronage she received, from Miss H. moore, liberal beyond example. Yet, such is the depravity of the human heart, that this milk-woman had no sooner her hut cheered by the warmth of benevolence, than she spurned her benefactor from her door. Perhaps, she had read, when a poor labourer's child at a charity-school, the Fable of "the Adder and Traveller;" the moral application of which to herself, at this crisis of her life, might have done her more essential service, than all her poetical reveries. But she has since pursued her literary career, with an ardor by no means damped by the sense of ingratitude. Self-love, indeed, seems to have thrown over her conduct a delusive colouring. In the Preface to her romantic Novel, "the Royal Captives," Mrs. Y. has plainly an eye to her

   *Polwhele's note: Mary Hays, I believe, is little known: but from her "Letters and Essays," she is evidently a Wollstonecraftian. "I cannot mention

   *Polwhele's note: Angelica Kauffman's print, should accompany Miss Wollstonecraft's Instructions in Priapism, already noticed, by way of illustration. This, and a little plant-adultery, would go great lengths, in producing among girls, the consummation so devoutly wished.

   *Polwhele's note: There is a charming delicacy in most of the pictures of Miss Emma Crewe; though I think, in her "Flora at play with Cupid," (the frontispiece to the Second Part of the Botanic Garden) she has rather overstepped the modesty of nature, by giving the portrait an air of voluptuousness too luxuriously melting.

   *Polwhele's note: Our new philosophical system (particularly that part of it which confounds the distinction of the sexes) bears a strong resemblence to the

   *Polwhele's note: Miss Wollstonecraft "possessed a firmness of mind, an unconquerable greatness of soul; by which, after a short internal struggle, she was accustomed to rise above difficulties and sufferings."

   Godwin's Memoirs, p. 38.

   *Polwhele's note: Flammantia maenia mundi. -- I here allude, also, to the spiritus intus alit, and the mens agitat molem of the Platonists: for I conceive,

   *Polwhele's note:

   *Polwhele's note: "Miss Wollstonecraft used often to meet Mr. Fuseli at the house of a common friend, where she was so charmed with his talents, and the tout ensemble, that she suffered herself to fall in love with him, though a married man." See Godwin's Memoirs.

   *Polwhele's note: "The vegetable passion of love is agreeably seen in the flower of the Parnassia, in which the males alternately approach and recede

   Botanic Garden, Part the First, p. 197 -- 3d. Edit.

   *Polwhele's note: To smother in dissipation her passion for Fuseli, Miss W. had fled to France. There she met with a paramour responsive to her sighs, a Mr. Imlay: with him she formed a connexion, though not a matrimonial one; being always of opinion, with Eloisa, that

   *Polwhele's note: Imlay soon left his lady to her "own imaginations." Thus abandoned, she returned to London; and driven to desperation, attempted to put an end to her life, but was recovered. She soon, however, made a second effort to plunge into eternity. In a dark and tempestuous night, she repaired to Puney-bridge; where, determined to throw herself into the river, she walked up and down, for half an hour, through the rain, that her clothes, being thoroughly drenched and heavy, might facilitate her descent into the water. She then leaped from the top of the bridge; but finding still a difficulty in sinking, tried to press her clothes closely around her, and at last became insensible; but at this moment she was discovered, and brought back to life. See Godwin's Memoirs.

   *Polwhele's note:

   See Milton's Comus, l. 370, &c. &c.

   *Polwhele's note: I know nothing of Miss Wollstonecraft's character or conduct, but from the Memoirs of Godwin, with whom this lady was afterwards connected. "We did not marry," says Godwin: but during her preganancy by G. they married. She died in consequence of child- birth, in 1797. A woman who has broken through all religious

   *Polwhele's note: I need not remind my readers of Lucretia, Portia, Arria, Zenobia; or attempt to display the virtues of Cornelia, Aurelia or Attia, whose attention to the education of their children is particularly noticed by the author of the beautiful Dailogue on the Decline of Eloquence. Quintilian, indeed, tells us, that in the age immediately preceding his own, ladies of rank were accustomed to superintend the moral education both of their sons and daughters. That the ancients entertained notions of female delicacy not very dissimilar from our own, may be inferred from the sentiments of Pericles, who "advises the Athenian women to aspire only to those virtues that are peculiar to their sex, and to follow their natural modesty;" from Seneca's high opinion of the talents and virtues of women, and even from the imaginary portraits of a Panthea, a Penelope, an Andromache, a Lavinia -- though the last personage, indeed, is generally regarded, as no favorite of the poet. To digress a moment from the main subject, I would observe, that Virgil has given us, in a line which has been little understood, a delicate picture of Lavinia:

   Causa mali tanti, atque oculos dejecta decoros.

   Dryden, b. xi. v. 723.

   Pitt, v. 674.

   *Polwhele's note: After all, it is Christianity, which has given women their appropriate rank in society. See Robison's Proofs, &c. pp. 262-271. See also, p. 457.

   *Polwhele's note: It is no trivial praise to say, that Mrs. Montague is the best female critic, ever produced in any country. Mad. Dacier, compared with Mrs. M. is all affectation.

   *Polwhele's note: Though I have alluded to Carter's Epictetus, yet a prefer her poetry to her translation. Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Barbauld closely resemble each other, in their style of poetry. There is a calm equability in their numbers. Their diction is perspicuous and pure. But Mrs. B. is more correct. Nor is Mrs. Carter equal to her poetic sister, in descriptive powers. Warrington Academy is finely coloured: we meet with no such painting in Mrs. Carter. They both wrote Odes: but I

   *Polwhele's note: Chapone's Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, are incontestible proofs of her ingenuity, and the goodness of her heart. But Mrs. C. lately made an effort on the harp; an instrument, which (she ought to have considered) requires gracefulness and ease. She was deficient in both: and her notes were weak and harsh. I was sorry to see so excellent an instructor of youth, expose herself by an affectation of things beyond her reach. But I was more concerned to see her sanctioned by the example of Fordyce.

   *Polwhele's note: "Poetry (says an excellent writer) is passion." Miss Seward's Poems are "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn." And he, who hesitates to allow this lady the very first place among the female Poets of this country, must be grossly deficient in taste. Her "Cooke," her "Andre," her "Louisa," are, all, first-rate performances: either of these enchanting Poems would be sufficient to immortalise the name of Seward.

   *Polwhele's note: Mrs. Piozzi is distinguished by a lively imagination. Both in her Verse and Prose, we have numerous felicities of thought and expression.

   *Polwhele's note: The united merits of Evelina, Cecelia and Camilla, must place Mrs. D'Arblay, above all the Novel-writers that have existed, since the first invention of this delightful species of composition.

   *Polwhele's note: Her Muse (as Gray, after a Greek writer, said of Ossian's) is "the very demon of poetry." In her Mysteries of Udolpho, we have all that is wild, magnificent and beautiful, combined by the genius of Shakspeare, and the taste of Mason.

   *Polwhele's note: The Tale of Leonora, has been finely illustrated by the pencil of lady Diana Beauclerk.

   *Polwhele's note: The designs with which the princess Elizabeth furnished Sir James Bland Burgess, for "the Birth and Triumph of Love," are exquisitely beautiful. The princess Elizabeth, indeed, is eminently accomplished, as well as her Royal Sisters. Nor is it the voice of flattery which says, that the elegance of their persons, heightened by all the lustre of the fashionable acquirements, must yield to those mental graces which they could only have attained from a virtuous education. For such they are indebted to a mother who is thoroughly skilled in the cultivation of the heart; and whose high example must surely have a benignant influence on the British ladies; unless the example of the great hath ceased to attract imitation.

   *Polwhele's note: The Margravine of Anspach, lady Burrell, Mrs. Dobson, and many other ladies of high literary attainments, here occur -- though to notice every distinguished name, would not accord with my design.

   *Polwhele's note: Miss Hannah More may justly be esteemed, as a character, in all points, diametrically opposite to to Miss Wollstonecraft; excepting,

   I may add, that we have upon record, many literary female characters in ancient Greece and Rome, in Spain, in France, modern Italy, Germany, and England. But we meet with one or two philosophers only, among them all, and those of an amphibious nature -- such, for instance, as Laura Cereti, who taught philosophy at Brescia, at the age of eighteen. In this country, there are few ladies who have written history with a Macaulay, or composed treatises on astronomy, with a Bryan. I might point out numerous femalities, indeed, in Mrs. Macaulay's history; and in the "Compendious System of Astronomy," I am rather pleased with elegant illustration, than instructed by science.

   *Polwhele's note: That Mrs. Godwin herself, may be numbered among the penitent, and he, also, who "drew her frailties from their dread abode," is the sincere and fervent wish of a heart in charity with all men."

   The Unsex'd Females was "re-published" in an American edition by the firm of Wm. Cobbett, in New York, in 1800. How closely Polwhele was involved with the printing of the American edition is uncertain. On the one hand, the publishing house has taken pains to present an accurate biographical sketch in the preface, and add another piece by Polwhele, A Sketch of Peter Pindar. Most of the Sketch is taken directly from an article by Polwhele which appeared in The Anti-Jacobin, but it also contains some original prefatory remarks; it is at least possible that Polwhele prepared the text specifically for the American edition. On the other hand, one would think that had Polwhele worked closely with the Cobbett publishing house, he would have made sure that they spelled his name correctly; it is given as "Polewhele" throughout.

   A Sketch of Peter Pindar could not be presented in this edition, unfortunately; but it is of some interest and deserves a brief discussion. It is ostensibly a review of/attack on Pindar's Nil Admirari: Or a Smile at a Bishop (1799), which was itself an attack on Hannah More's Structures on the Modern System of Female Education (2 vols., 1799). Pindar, in addition to attacking More for lack of talent, a tin ear, and suchlike, also suggests repeatedly that More's treatise on education is nothing more than a borrowing of the ideas of Dr. Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London at that time (hence the title). In the battle between these two important figures of his youth, Polwhele comes down unequivocally on the side of More; his "sketch" would be better termed a "rendering" -- he metaphorically tears Pindar limb from limb. Polwhele speaks of the "prostituted muse of Peter Pindar, whose language and whose sentiments are those of the lowest street-walker in the purlieus of Pamassus" (57). His attack, however, is not confined to literary realms in the slightest; it is highly personal. Polwhele admits as much:

   "If in these remarks, our readers should descry something more than critical severity, let them be assured that we speak not without book, we know the man, we know him intus et in cute; we have long marked the malignant effects of his mind, have traced him through all his character, and have, in all alike, found him a fit subject of public execration (55-56)."

   In addition to his other sins, both major and minor (abandoning clerical orders, not paying for a portrait), Polwhele takes Pindar to task for libelling his neighbors in the country. One cannot help but wonder if Polwhele considered himself to be one of those so libelled.

   Polwhele's Sketch is also of interest for its discussion of The Pursuits of Literature. In Nil Admirari, Pindar had also attacked Mathias, by name, as author of The Pursuits; Polwhele's response is to profess confusion over this, since the name of the author is (officially) unknown. He therefore removes Mathias's name from the discussion, and adds this:

   "Of the Pursuits of Literature we have had occasion to speak, incidentally, more than once; we have declared our objections to particular parts of it, with freedom; and have censured a propensity to illiberal sarcasm, and indiscriminate abuse, which the author appeared to us to indulge in too frequently (61)."

   This is a stronger condemnation of the work than is in The Unsex'd Females, but the reasons behind this are made apparent immediately thereafter:

   "...we shall boldly declare that we consider the author, whoever he may be, as an able advocate for religion, morality and social order; and viewing him in this light, we are decidedly of opinion, that those writers who have had even just ground of complaint against him...would act more nobly, and we will add, more consistently with the principles which they support, if they were to overlook his defects, and sacrifice their private resentment to their zeal for promoting the public good...."

   "The writer of this article contributed materially to bring the Pursuits of Literature into notice, at a time when it was very little known; and from the period to which we allude, the author must be sensible of a most material alteration in the sale of the work. Yet was he spoken of, in a subsequent part, in a contemptuous manner, that might possibly have justified a display of resentment; but he was incapable of suffering any personal motives to bias his sense of public duty, or to make him attempt to check the circulation of a work, the general tendency of which appeared to him to be highly beneficial (61-62)."

   Polwhele's admiration of Mathias was evidently not reciprocated.

   The preface to the American edition is given here, its humorous misspelling intact; it serves as a reminder that Anti-Jacobinism was to be found on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition, a collation of the British and American editions is given; mostly consisting of punctuation and spelling errors, it nonetheless yields a few priceless gems, the most notable being the substitution of "political" for "poetical" in the footnote on Ann Yearsley.

   We seldom lay down a book, which had commanded our admiration, without wishing to know something more of the Author than is to be gathered from the work. This arises, frequently, from our desire to know whether his character corresponds with the sentiments he has expressed; whether he adds to his precepts the powerful force of example. It is to gratify so laudable a curiosity, that the Republisher of this work does himself the honour of prefixing to it a few sentences by way of preface.

   MR POLEWHELE was born, in 1760, at the patrimonial estate of the family, Polewhele, in the county of Cornwall. He was educated at the neighbouring grammar-school of Truro, became a member of Christ Church College, took orders, was for years Curate of Kenton, near Exeter, and is now Rector of Mannacan in Cornwall. He was an author at a very early age, and has, for some years past, stood high in the ranks of literature, whether considered as a Divine, an Historian, a Naturalist, or a Poet, in which last character he is surpassed by very few. His genius, however, bright as it is, merits not the applause which is due to his zeal and orthodoxy. In times like the present, these are the qualities that render a man valuable to his country, and in these Mr. Polewhele yields to no one: to inculcate loyalty and religion is the great object of all his productions.

   The little Poem, which is here submitted to the public, owed its origin, it seems, to a passage in the pursuits of Literature. The author of that celebrated Satire, took occasion to make some very severe, though very just animadversions on those literary ladies, in Great Britain, who had thrown aside that modesty, which is the best characteristic and the most brilliant ornament of their sex, and who, with unblushing front, had adopted the sentiments and the manners of the impious amazons of republican France; whence they were, by the Author of the Pursuits, denominated, "The Unsex'd Females."

   Mr. Polewhele improves upon the hint, and, with a voice at once awful and harmonious, endeavors to charm them back to the paths from which they have strayed. He calls to each and all of them, points out their deviations, warns them of the certain and fatal consequences, of which exhibits a fearful example in Mary Wollstonecraft, from the contemplation of whose disgraceful life and whose melancholy end he leads them to the chearing society of another group of Females, who are sufficiently characterised by placing at their head the incomparable Miss Hannah More.

   To the several parts of the Poem are subjoined Notes, explanatory and critical; and, it were sincerely to be wished, that fathers and mothers would take a caution from these notes, respecting the female productions, which they introduce into their families; for the approaches of vice are never so dangerous as when it is introduced by the pen of a sprightly and profligate woman.

   Variant quotation marks which are due to a difference in line breaks are not noted. Numbers refer to line number, footnote is abbreviated fn:

   The second half of the eighteenth century brought about a marked shift in the conception of literary address and literary audience; poets stopped addressing wealthy patrons, and, increasingly, began to address one another. "Circles" and "acquaintanceships" were the most common form of discourse; intertextuality -- dialogue -- was the order of the day. Never has there been a time when "literary society" has been so dominating a structure, perhaps because at this time both aspects of the term were at a peak. Prior to this time, the society to which so many Renaissance and Restoration poets belonged was not exclusively literary; after this time, the dawn of the mass audience, and the proliferation of writers in all social classes ended any sense of a close-knit society.

   Given all this, it is important to note that the dialogue between Polwhele and his adversaries, as well as that between Polwhele and his ostensible allies, was an extremely onesided one. His main adversary, Wollstonecraft, could not defend herself, of course; but of the myriad of other writers mentioned in The Unsex'd Females, the only direct respondent appears to have been Mathias, who evidently added a "contemptuous" mention of Polwhele to a subsequent edition of The Pursuits of Literature. The only other writer willing to enter any sort of dialogue with Polwhele is Anna Seward. Her "Sonnet," admittedly, is not a defense of The Unsex'd Females; it is a defense of The Influence of Local Attachment, a poem first published by Polwhele in 1796, with a second edition in 1798 and probably two more thereafter. The sonnet certainly appeared before 1799, when it was included in Seward's volume of Original Sonnets, but it is unclear whether it refers to the first or second edition. This is unfortunate, since it would helpful to know whether Seward's poem appeared before or after the composition of The Unsex'd Females. Still, the presence of this poem only underscores the overwhelming absence of others; it appears that Polwhele was considered a marginal writer by both those who shared his values and those who did not. In an era of circles, Polwhele appears to have been somewhat out of the loop. The text of the poem has been taken from The Poetical Works of Anna Seward, ed. Sir Walter Scott, (Edinburgh: Ballantyne, 1810). It should also be noted that Seward is evidently attempting an homage in style; this sonnet is the only one of Seward's poems in the Scott edition to have a footnote attached.

   That ingenious and learned gentleman had seen his charming Poem absurdly and arrogantly criticised by one of the periodical Censors. Amidst other utterly groundless objections, he accused the poet of unlicensed and affected verbalism, instancing particularly the words slumberous, and memorize. For both, Johnson shews the high authority of Shakespear, Milton, and Pope; and for the latter, a prose sentence of eminent beauty by Wotton, thus: -- "Let their lives, which were bravely lost, be memorized on the full tablets of time." After accusing Mr. Polwhele of affectation in using them, the critic proceeds to assert that such expressions have the effect of a November fog, in completely annihilating every thing like sense and beauty in a composition. Now, it is evident, that were they as unhappily, as, in fact, they are happily used, their mal-influence could extend only to the sentence in which they are found; and since he cannot deny that they are clearly intelligible, at least, it is impossible they can have the obscuring effect of a fog, even upon that single sentence. The critic who could use such an inapplicable metaphor in prose, is miserably incompetent to sit in judgment upon poetry, and under the proud name too of the BRITISH CRITIC. By the same decider was the author of these poems accused of rendering several of her passages nonsense by the use of the word thrill: The following were some of the lines instanced. Speaking of Roubilliac's glorious monument in Wrexham Church, she says,

   This critic must be poorly read in Milton, Pope, and Gray, and indeed, in all our best poets, since in them he might repeatedly find the word thrill used in the same sense. Johnson thus defines it as a verb active, "to thrill, to pass with a shuddering sensation. " Our hearts, or our memory may certainly be thrilled either by pleasure, pain, surprise, or terror, and so, in the language of poetry, may the tomb, the air, and other things, which are literally inanimate. -- Milton says, in his hymn on the nativity,