chool, who will glory in describing a dish of cutlets
at Calais, or an ill-trimmed bonnet, or the contents of an old maid's
reticule, or of a young gentleman's portmanteau, or those rare occasions
for sentimentality, moonlight, twilight, arbours, and cascades, in the
moderate space of an hour by Shrewsbury clock: but a man who has it
weightily upon his mind to explain himself and others, to insist,
refute, enjoin: a man--frown not, fair helpmates; the controversial pen,
as the controversial sword, be ours; we will leave your flower-beds and
sweeter human nurseries, despotism over cooks and Penelobean penance
upon carpet-work; nay, a trip to Margate prettily described, easy
lessons and gentle hymns in behalf of those dear prattlers, and for the
more coerulean sort, "lyrics to the Lost one," or stanzas on a sickly
geranium, miserably perishing in the mephitic atmosphere of routs--these
we masculine tyrants, we Dionysii of literature, ill-naturedly have
accounted your prerogatives of authorship. But who then are Sevigne and
Somerville, Edgeworth and De Stael, Barbauld and Benger, and Aikin, and
Jameson, Hemans, Landon, and a thousand more, not less learned, less
accomplished, nor less useful? Forgive, great names, my half-repeated
slander: riding with the self-conceited _cortege_ of male critics, my
boasted loyalty was well-nigh guilty of _leze majeste_: but I repudiate
the thought; my verdict shall have no reproach in it, as my championship
no fear: how much has man to learn from woman! teach us still to look on
humanity in love, on nature in thankfulness, on death without fear, on
heaven without presumption; fairest, forgive those foolish and ungallant
calumnies of my ruder sex, who boast themselves your teachers--making
yet this wise use of the slander: never be so bold in authorship, as to
hazard the loss of your sweet, retiring, modest, amiable, natural
dependence: never stand out as champions on the arena of strife, but if
you will, strew it with posies for the king of the tournament; it ill
becomes you to be wrestlers, though a Lycurgus allowed it, and Atalanta,
another Eve, was tripped up by an apple in the foot-race. So digressing,
return we to our author; to wit, a man, _homo_--a human, as they say in
the west--with news of actual value to communicate, and powers of pen
competent to do so graphically, honestly, kindly, boldly.

Much as we may emulate Homer's wordy braggadocios in boasting ourselves
far better than