they
were commanded not to eat; I mean the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. This is a heavy, and indeed the principal
charge against you; and I shall now condemn, or, if you
please, judge you out of your own mouth. Lady G. in the
letter she wrote to Harriet, just as she was setting out for
Northamptonshire, to witness her happy nuptials with
Grandison, has this remarkable passage.

_Let me whisper you Harriet--sure you proud maiden minxes
think--But I did once--I wonder in my heart oftentimes--But
men and women are cheats to one another. But we may in a
great measure thank the poetical tribe for the fascination.
I hate them all. Are they not inflamers of the worst
passions? With regard to Epics, would Alexander, madman as
he was, have been so much a madman had it not been for
Homer? Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not
the Epic Poets been the occasion, by propagating false
honour, false glory, and false religion? Those of the
amorous class ought in all ages (could their future geniuses
for tinkling sound and measure have been known) to have been
strangled in their cradles. Abusers of talents given them
for better purposes (for all this time I put sacred poesy
out of the question) and avowedly claiming a right to be
licentious, and to overleap the bounds of decency, truth and
nature._

_What a rant!_ (a rant indeed, Charlotte) _how came these
fellows into my rambling head? O I remember my whisper to
you led me into all this stuff._

_Well, and you at last recollect the trouble you have given
my brother about you. Good Girl! Had I remembered that,
I would have spared you my reflections on the poets and
poetasters of all ages, the truly inspired ones_ (who are
these, my dear) _excepted. And yet I think the others should
have been banished our commonwealth as well as Plato's._ So
it seems we are to have a female republic, of which I
suppose these _Varletesses_ Harriet and Charlotte will be
_Consulesses_.

There is good reason to believe that her lively ladyship
speaks here your own sentiments, but what you can understand
by sacred poesy is, I confess, above my comprehension. Does
it consist in celestial ballads, holy madrigals, spiritual
garlands, or bellmen's verses? for I hardly know any other
species of sacred poesy in our language, our religion being
the most unpoetical in the world; so that a sacred subject
can never appear with any grace, dignity, or beauty in a
poem. I have already d