III.

THE LADIES' LIBRARY.

THAT admirable manual of "les petites morales," and even of higher matters occasionally, the Spectator, contains a paper which we hesitate not to accept as a just specimen of cotemporary satire on female education; we refer to the catalogue of a Ladies' Library. This heterogeneous collection embraces heroical romances and romancing histories, the ranting tragedies of the day, with the libertine comedies of the same period. In a word, it leads us to infer pretty plainly the insignificant pretensions the gentlewoman of Queen Anne's day could lay to anything like refinement of education, or even a correct propriety in dress and demeanor. Tell me your company, and I will disclose your own character; speak that I may know you, are trite maxims; but give me a list of your favorite authors is by no means so common, though at least as true, a test. The literary and indirectly the moral depravity of taste exhibited by the women of that age, is easily accounted for, when we once learn the fashionable authors and the indifferent countenance given to any authors but those of the most frivolous description. The queen herself was an illiterate woman, and we are told never once had the curiosity to look into the classic productions of Pope. King

William, the preceding sovereign, was so ignorant of books and the literary character, as to offer Swift, with whom he had been agreeably prepossessed, the place of a captain of a regiment of horse.

Indulging ourselves in a rapid transition, we pass from this era to the epoch of Johnson and Burke, and Goldsmith and Sheridan; we come to the reign of George III. Here we find the scene altered. From the gay saloon we are dropped as if by magic, into the library or conversation room. We read not of balls, but of literary dinners and æsthetic teas, and we meet for company, not thoughtless, dressy dames of fashion and minions of the goddess of pleasure, but grave, precise professors in petticoats, women who had exchanged a world of anxiety for the turn of a head-dress, or the shape of a flounce for an equally wise anxiety about the philosophy of education, the success of their sonnets and tragedies, and moral tales for the young. The pedantry of authorship and dogmatic conversation superseded the more harmless pedantry of dress. Then we read of the stupidest company in the world, which arrogated to itself the claim of being the best. A race of learned ladies arose; bas-bleus, the Montagues, the Mores, the Sewards, the Chapones, patronized by such prosing old formalists as Doctors Gregory and Aiken, and even by one man of vigorous talent, Johnson, and one man of real genius, Richardson. The last two endured much, because they were flattered much.

When we speak thus contemptuously of learned ladies, we intend to express a disgust at the pretensions of that name. Genuine learning can never be despised, whoever may be its possessor; but of genuine learning it is not harsh to suspect a considerable deficiency where there is

so much of display and anxious rivalry. Where the learning is exact and solid, it is to be remembered that many departments are utterly unsuited to the female mind; where, at best, little can be accomplished, and that of a harsh repulsive nature. We want no Daciers, no Somervilles, no Marcets, but give us an you will as many Inchbalds, Burneys, Edgeworths, Miss Barretts, as can be had for love or money.

We believe the question as to the relative sexual distinctions of intellectual character, is now generally considered as settled. There is allowed to be a species of genius essentially feminine. Equality is no more arrogated than superiority of ability, and it would be as wisely arrogated. The most limited observation of life and the most superficial acquaintance with books, must effectually demonstrate the superior capacity of man for the great works of life and speculation. It is true, great geniuses are rare and seldom needed, and the generality of women rank on a par with the generality of men. In many cases, women of talent surpass men of an equal calibre of mere talent, through other and constitutional causes-a greater facility of receiving and transmitting impressions, greater instinctive subtlety of apprehension, and a livelier sympathy. We cordially admit that female intellect, in the ordinary concerns of life and the current passages of society, has often the advantage of masculine understanding. Cleverness outshines solid ability, and a smart woman is much more showy than a profound man. In certain walks of authorship, too, women are preeminently successful: in easy narrative of real or fictitious events (in the last implying a strain of ready invention), in lively descriptions of natural beauty or artificial manners; in the develop

ment of the milder sentiment of love; in airy, comic ridicule. On the other hand, the highest attempts of women in poetry have uniformly failed. We have read of no

female epic of even a respectable rank: those who have written tragedies, have written moral lectures (of an inferior sort) like Hannah More; or anatomies of the passions, direct and formal, like Joanna Baillie; or an historical sketch, as Rienzi. We are apt to suspect that the personal charms of Sappho prove too much for the admirers of her poetic rhapsodies, otherwise Longinus has done her foul injustice; for the fragment he quotes is to be praised and censured solely for its obscurity. This would have been a great merit in Lycophron.

In the volume of British Poetesses, edited by Mr. Dyce, it is astonishing to find how little real poetry he has been able to collect out of the writings of near a century of authors, scattered over the surface of five or six centuries. It must be allowed that some of the finest short pieces by female writers have appeared since the publication of that selection. In the volume referred to, much sensible verse and some sprightly copies of verse occur; a fair share of pure reflective sentiment, delivered in pleasing language rarely rising above correctness; of high genius there is not a particle, no pretensions to sublimity or fervor. The best piece and the finest poem, we think, ever composed by woman, is the charming poem of Auld Robin Gray. That is a genuine bit of true poesy, and perfect in the highest department of the female imagination, in the pathos of domestic tragedy. In the present century we have Mrs. Howitt and Mrs. Southey, but chief of all, Miss Barrett. The finest attempts of the most pleasing writer of this class, do not rise so high as the delightful ballad

above named. They are sweet, plaintive, moral strains, the melodious notes of a lute, tuned by taper fingers in a romantic bower, not the deep, majestic, awful tones of the great organ, or the spirited and stirring blasts of the trumpet. The ancient bard struck wild and mournful, or hearty and vigorous notes from his harp-perchance placed on a rock whose frowning brow," &c., and striving with the rough symphonies of the tempest; but the sybil of modern days plays elegant and pretty, or soft and tender airs upon the flageolet or accordion, in the boudoir or saloon.

A poet is, from the laws both of physiology and philology-masculine. His vocation is manly, or rather divine. And we have never heard any traits of feminine character attributed to the great poet (in the Greek sense), the Creator of the universe. The muses are represented as females, but then they are the inspirers, never the composers, of verse. Women should be the poet's muse, as she is often the poet's theme. Let female beauty then sit for her portrait instead of being the painter. Let poets chaunt her charms, but let her not spoil a fair ideal image by writing bad verses. If all were rightly viewed, a happy home would seem preferable to a seat on Parnassus, and the Fountain of Content would furnish more palatable draughts than the Font of Helicon. The quiet home is not always the muses' bower; though we trust the muses' bower is placed in no turbulent society.

Women write for women. They may entertain, but cannot, from the nature of the case, become instructors to men. They know far less of life, their circle of experience is confined. They are unfitted for many paths of active exertion, and consequently are rendered incapable