Mrs Baxter, should state the result of their experience on this subject Such a report, I am convinced, would have great influence on the public opinion with regard to this accusation.
The following picture I can never admit to be true. "An English lady walks the streets like a badly-drilled grenadier, her arms (which she never knows how to dispose of) swinging at her sides like the pendulum of a clock." The same author has likewise the impudence to assert, that, "for elegance, he should be doing injustice to a French chambermaid, to compare her to an English duchess." Quinze Jours à Londres, p. 17. In "Londres en 1815" I find the following passage: "I have met in this country with several beautiful women," (mighty candid, to be sure!) "but they were universally deficient in that last grace, which even their language cannot express, la tournure." Now supposing I was even candid enough to admit that the English, and more especially our Scottish belles, do in walking take rather long strides, and that their servile imitation of the French ladies in dress is a tacit acknowledgment of the inferiority of their own taste, they must still be universally admitted to be the most accomplished women anywhere to be found. What ladies of any other nation possess the same knowledge of languages, and play so charmingly on the piano forte? What ladies can paint tables and fire-screens with such taste and delicacy of execution? In short, until our continental belles can excel us in these qualifications, we shall still retain the unshaken conviction, that in this island are to be found the most charming and accomplished women in the world.
Such is the manner in which I would vindicate my fair countrywomen from the vile and ignorant aspersions of these French travellers. Were I to proceed to further extracts, I fear I should be encroaching too much on the limits assigned to other more learned and valuable contributors. I trust, however, that those I have already collected will be amply sufficient to shew the necessity for some Blue Stocking lady to come forward and give these foreign calumniators a complete set down. Let them either speak now, or for ever after hold their tongues. I am certain that Mr Blackwood, or any other of our bickering booksellers, will be happy to treat with any lady for two quarto volumes on the subject. There can be no doubt of such a work having a great run, particularly should some amateur adorn it with his etchings. In the mean time, I beg to assure the fair sex, that my feeble pen shall at all times be exerted in their behalf, although inexorably
Royal Hotel, Princes Street,
Nov. 6.
ON THE COCKNEY SCHOOL OF POETRY.
No II.
Our talk shall be (a theme we never tire on)
Of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron,
(Our England's Dante)—Wordsworth—Hunt, and Keats,
The Muses' son of promise; and of what feats
He yet may do.
In our last paper we made an attempt to give a general outline of Mr Hunt's qualifications, both as a poet and as a founder of a sect. We alluded, among other weak points in his writing, to the indecent and immoral tendency of his poem Rimini, and shall now proceed to state, at somewhat greater length, what those circumstances are which induced us to select that production for the object of our unmitigated indignation. It is not our intention to enter into any general argument respecting the propriety of making incest the subject of poetry. The awful interest excited by the contemplation of passions abandoned to the extreme of infamy, has tempted many illustrious poets to indulge themselves in such unhallowed themes. But they themselves were at all times aware, that in so doing they have done wrong; and we know of no great poem, turning on such a subject, which does not contain within it some marks of the contrition of the author. All men, who have any souls and any hearts, must be of the same opinion with us in this matter; and after all the volumes that have been written on either side of the controversy, we know of no words which express the real truth of the case better than those of Sir T. Brown:
