A Satyrical Epistle TO THE FEMALE AUTHOR OF A POEM, CALL'D SILVIA's REVENGE, &c.
By the AUTHOR of the SATYR against Woman.
Mil. Par. Lost.
—Revenge at first, tho' sweet,
Bitter, e're long, back on it self recoils.
LONDON: Printed for R. Bentley, at the Post-House in Russel street in Covent-Garden, near the Piazza's. MDCXCI.
A Satyrical Epistle TO THE FEMALE AUTHOR OF A POEM CALL'D SILVIA's REVENGE, &c.
YES, Dame, 'tis so;
Satyr shall scourge the Age,
While there is Subject to maintain her Rage,
And that, no doubt, there will for ever be;
At least, as long as we are plagu'd with thee.
Thou ill Defendress of a Cause as ill,
Rashly led on by that
Blind Guide, thy Will;
[Page 4] In Ink thy fulsom Pen why didst thou foul,
Unless to show the Blackness of thy Soul?
Which thou hast prov'd (so well y'ave ply'd the Task)
Of the same
Fiend-Complexion, as thy Mask:
Markt for the Stygian Colloney below,
It here does Practise what 'tis there to do:
All you have Writ does shew y'are thence inspir'd,
And only there can hope to be admir'd;
For Men detest thee; nay, so far y'ave gone,
Y'ave pull'd the Womens Indignation on,
And Reason too—as we will shew anon.
Of all thy Sex thou art the most unfit
To Vindicate their
Virtues, or their
Wit,
For in the rest, some Sparks of Worth may shine,
And from their Breasts put forth a Gleam Divine,
But they for ever are extinct in thine;
In thee the Sun of Virtue's set, and lies
Eclips'd in loose Desires, no more to rise,
And with its Maiden Glories, gild the Blushing Skies.
And
Sapho, Famous for her Gout and Guilt,
Either of these, tho' both Debaucht and Vile,
Had answer'd me in a more Decent Style;
Yet
Hackny Writers; when their Verse did fail
To get 'em Brandy, Bread and Cheese, and Ale,
Their Wants by Prostitution were supply'd,
Shew but a
Tester, you might up and Ride;
For
Punk and
Poesie agree so pat,
You cannot well be
this, and not be
that:
Than thou, even these had better Conduct shown,
Preserv'd their Sexes Fame, and half retriev'd their own.
Shew me one Page, of all the goodly Store,
That's free from words like these;
Iilt, Strumpet, Whore,
Hag, Hot-House, Fluxing, Leach'ry, Emp'ricks Bills,
Claps, Cully, Keeper, Pox and
Pocky Pills;
Things that wou'd shock the Modest Matron's Ear,
And make her blush to think a Female fixt 'em there.
Women! what the destructive
Bawd? the same;
What
Drabs and
Guzzeling Gossips? Women still!
Why dost thou tell us they cou'd be so Ill?
Methinks I hear the
Hebrew Nymphs again,
When two Great
Hero's Deeds employ'd their strain,
Thy Thousands thou, thou hast ten Thousands Slain!
A Thousand Crimes I nam'd (and more conceal'd)
But by Ten Thousands they're by thee reveal'd!
But say it all were true (truth 'tis we know)
'Twas, sure, unkind in you to blaze it so;
You on such Failings shou'd have drawn their Vails,
And not obscenely shew'd their
Cloven-feet and
Tails:
Vices enow in Mankind there appears,
Enough to Exercise thy Rage for years,
What need, so lavishly, exposing theirs?
Compar'd to thee, I'me careful of their Fame:—
But sure thou only Scribblest for a Name;
[Page 7] And, since thou art fond of it, thy Name shall live,
What you can't give yourself, my pointed Lines shall give:
Above all things call'd Shame, thou shalt be sham'd,
For thy loose Life so Infamously Fam'd,
Ev'n Bawds, thro' all their Brass, shall Blush to hear thee Nam'd.
Wretched is She that dares to be thy Friend,
But far more Wretched She that you commend;
For though She might for Modest pass before,
Thy Praise wou'd Transubstantiate her to Whore:
Thus, tho' thou shou'd'st mean well, 'twou'd never take,
Virtue it self wou'd suffer for thy sake;
To be her
Votary thought, thou art so Evil,
Wou'd,
tho' a Goddess, make her look like
Devil.
Silvia's
Revenge, d'ye say? indeed 'tis like,
Revenge will strike our own Fame, rather than not strike:
For take this sharp-nail'd Truth, to scratch thy Itch,
The
Silvia you extol so, was a B—
[Page 8] A Coquet Airy, Impudent and Vain,
Made up of too much Love, or over-much Disdain;
Restless her Temper, Frantick her Desire,
Either all Ice, or all o'er flaming Fire,
Either she'd Freeze, or Burn, no Mean betwixt,
But all Extreme; to no one point e're fixt,
This Hour was
Heav'n, and worse than
Hell the next;
Perjur'd from Head to Foot, one Blot all o'er
Of Sin, and quite round Rotten to the Core:
She, and all such, I justly reprehend,
Thee, and all such unjustly you defend:
How dar'st thou to appear thus in a Cause
So opposite to Heav'n and Humane Laws?
It speaks thee plainly her lewd Sister Twin,
In Sense as shallow, and as deep in Sin,
And perhaps deeper; as the World may find,
In that part of
Iambick yet behind.
In all my Rage and most Inveterate Fit,
When Spleen had got the Mastery of Wit,
I ne're said
Maidenheads were
Nothing yet;
[Page 9] Tho', without Blush, thus far with thee we joyn,
They are meer
Nothings all, if all like Thine;
In thee alone the bold Assertion's good;
Lust was so soon Incorporate with thy Blood,
At Ten Years Age the tingling Itch began,
In Streams away thy
Liquid Virgin ran,
Dissolv'd ev'n but by thinking upon Man;
And if the Thougt cou'd so much Guilt contract,
What wer't thou when that Thought was put in Act?
Insatiate, ev'n
Messalina cou'd
Sooner have laid the Devil in her Blood.
But is not the Fair Sex beholden much
To thee, on that nice point, their Fame to touch?
Virginity, that Angel-State, wherein
To live, almost is to live free from Sin;
If we can be contented with the State,
Nor, Gudgeon-like, bite at the Specious Bait:
But for that Charm who is it that wou'd care,
Meer Lust excepted, to approach the Fair?
[Page 10] Why are we Fond, why Languish and Adore,
But to have something none e'er had before?
To be the first that Crops the Virgin Flower,
Just in the Critical and Blissful hour,
When the strong watchful Guard resign their Power;
No longer by strict
Honour kept in awe,
But side with
Nature's more Seraphick Law;
When in the Blushing Virgins kindling Eyes
We see a Lovely Care, and Guilty Sweetness rise,
While every Touch does raise her Ardour higher,
Till she's all over nothing but
Desire;
When, pregnant with a thousand Nameless Charms,
She Dies away, and Sinks into your Arms,
Then Graps, Breaths short, her Glowing Eve-Balls rowl,
And a Convulsive Rapture seizes on her Soul!
The Youth, by this, to the same pitch enflam'd,
Here throws—but what succeeds need not be nam'd.
O Transport! Killing Transport! Racking Bliss!
And is it
Nothing that can cause all this?
[Page 11]Then,
Sacred Nothing, let me cease to be
That
Something that I am, rather than Banishe thee,
Rather than not, sometimes, have the Delight
To dive for Thee into thy Realm of Night,
To break thy Shell, and bid thee take thy Everlasting Flight!
The very thought w'have had thee gives us rest,
And builds a Halcyon Calm in the kind Husbands Breast;
It gives ev'n Marriage a Delicious tast,
And is the
Oyl that makes those
Colours last:
Who e're does tye that Miserable Knot,
And thinking sure to find thee, finds thee not,
Words are too poor to paint his more than cursed Lot!
For She that let her Tail to Hire before,
Has now a Specious Mask to gild the Whore;
Who does ill things unvail'd, will with a Vail do more:
But She that brings it to the
Nuptial Bower,
She that preserves it Sacred to that Hour,
To keep it so preserv'd has double Power:
And what in Maids
Virginity we name,
In Chast and Faithful Wives does ripen into Fame.
While thou, Accurst, Created for our harm,
Cou'd'st never find this lucky hour to Charm;
Thou ne're wer't capable to give Delight,
Thy Love was Lust, as now thy Anger's Spite:
When thou wert young, and for a Change, might please
Some Fop that did not fear the Foul Disease,
We never heard of thee in Lines like these;
Then 'twas
Amintor, Strephon, gentle Swain,
And Songs, writ in a Melancholy Strain,
Made known thy want of Stallion thro' the Plain:
The Brawny Porter that best pitcht the Bar,
Was form'd, thou said'st, by Heav'n to ease thy Care:
In Truth, nor Youth, nor Wit, no Charm you thought,
But strength of Back was all, and that you bought:
(Curst, the mean while, be he (lewd, to be fed)
That by that Slimy Drudgery gets his Bread)
Thus with a lumpish Airyness, too dull
To move Good Men, you prey'd on Knave and Fool:
[Page 13] Now Ball-Brow'd Time has Hagg'd thee into Age,
Thy Swains have left to Pipe, and thou, in Rage,
Has brought the Broad-backt Brutes upon the Stage;
Telling the World, what thou need'st not have told,
That they are very False, and thou a very Scold.
False, said I? but that no ill thing, can be,
Perjury's no Fault when it relates to thee:
Ev'n in thy Youth, in all thy Gloting Prime,
Thou cou'd'st not be Caress'd without a Crime;
Who e're did gaze on thee, his Mistress, straight,
Did Brand him with the Name of Profligate;
The Man that stoopt to thee, cou'd never rise
Gracious in any other Female's Eyes:
What now then, when those borrow'd Charms are fail'd,
Which but with Fops and Monkeys e're prevail'd,
And all the Paint's washt off, and all is Fiend unvail'd?
Nor hast a Refuge left to Drudge for Life,
But turning
Bawd, or that worse thing, a
Wife;
A Wife! if any man so wild will be,
To leap that horrid Precipice for thee;
[Page 14] That Husband's Fate in Wedlock's hard to tell;
Others might bring him
Care, but thou wou'd'st bring him
Hell.
Yet Man you Curse; and Woman, his Delight,
He must not see by day, nor touch by Night;
Why, cou'd you do your Sex a Plaguier spite?
But most thy self; all that have Eyes may see
That Curse wou'd fall most heavy upon thee:
Almost from
Five to
Fifty thou hast known
What Man was Carnally, nor lain alone
Without one, two, or more, but with Regret and Moan:
Purse without Money is a burning shame,
Bed and no Man in't, thou dost think the same:
Ev'n
Posture-Moll her self, when thou art by,
Obscene! has some pretence to Modesty.
But mark th' Inconstancy of Womankind,
And the wild variations of their Mind:
She who but now (in this her Temper scan)
Did toil to make her Sex abandon Man,
[Page 15] Now blames those Husbands that so dull can prove,
Drunk, to neglect the great Affair of Love:
I find her fulsom Itch is not yet gone,
She loves by Drunkards to be Belcht upon:
What Modest Dame, that had a Spouse so ill,
Wou'd not much rather have him then be still?
A Drunkard is a Brute beneath our Curse,
But she, who then can fondle him, is worse;
Swine as he is, cou'd he but Mount and Ride,
Thy Poem with his Praise had been supply'd:
As Wine's
Provocative, you like it well,
But as it spoils
Performance, hate it more than
Hell;
So not meer Drink it self caus'd thy disgust,
But that it does unnerve desire, and baulk expecting Lust.
O
Female Innocence!—but since I'm in,
What is't by
Female Innocence you mean?
A Wife, it seems—who'd think it cou'd have been?
If (as it oft haps in the space of Life)
We of Sir Spouse shou'd ask for Dame his Wife,
[Page 16] How Comical 'twou'd look, thus to begin?
Pray—is your
Female Innocence within?
Who's that, he crys?—Your Wife—the Devil, says he,
Shall as soon pass for
Innocent with me;
A Wife an
Innocent—then Bawds are Chast,
Hags, grim as Death, are with all Beauty grac't,
Coquets not vain, a thrice Flux'd Actress just,
And Monarchs Shining Strumpets free from Pride and Lust.
But thou, who, in a Loose and Frontless Strain,
Virtue and Virtuous Women dost Prophane,
Blush first, then hear thy Injur'd Sex Complain;
For one, for all, I see come from the throng,
In Shape an Angel, and her Heav'nly Tongue,
Her Speech to thee directed, thus redeems her wrong.
Shame of our Sex, what Rage cou'd thee Inspire
With such wild Flames, instead of Lambent Fire?
In Maiden Breasts no Lamp so fiercely burns,
But mild as those enclos'd in Vestal Virgins Urns.
[Page 17] Of things Ridiculous, I dare maintain
Nothing's more Sottish, Frivolous, and Vain,
Than to take Satyr ill, and think w'are gaul'd,
When we are not the obscene things w'are call'd.
If of
Ill Wives he talks, what is't to me,
While I walk hand in hand with Modesty?
But She that does resent it, that
Ill Wife is She:
And this may be laid down a
Standard Rule,
To whom e're it relates, Punk, Pimp, or Fool:
What Fame to thy Defence then can accrue,
But that his
Satyr sat too close on You,
And like strait Stays, made you unlace for Air?
Who sees a Pounded Beast, does know why it came there;
Sated with lawful Grass he leapt the bound:
O let us never quit that Fertile Ground,
Where virtuous Herbage springs and Honor rais'd the Mound.
Up from the Slave to those that wait on Kings,
His Satyr took her course with steady wings,
And from the Womb of Vice deliver'd monstrous things;
[Page 18] Such as for many Ages there lay hid,
And all, but the like piercing Eye, forbid
To see the Secrets of that dark Divan,
And quite unvail the inmost Mind of Man;
His Pride, Ambition, Rage, Intemperance, Lust,
And the hard Fate of him that dares be Just;
Now in an Age that does such Guilt reveal,
He's not reliev'd though he to Gods appeal,
Thou see'st 'twas hate of Vice, not Love to spite,
That sharpt his pointed Spleen and bid him write:
A Perjur'd Nymph abus'd him, broke his Rest,
When her, and all like her, he Banisht from his Breast:
Who dare accuse him for so just a Deed?
Or with such senseless Rigour can proceed
To blame him that preserves the Corn, by rooting out the Weed?
That Virtue he respects is understood,
For who pulls down the Ill, in that does raise the Good.
Yet if thou wer't resolv'd to write, to show
Thy Parts, which don't distinguish Friend from Foe,
[Page 19] Why was't in Rhime? (but Rage all Sense devours)
That Scandal to their Sex, and worse to Ours:
'Tis not as formerly, when 'twas the use
For Verse t' instruct, as now 'tis to traduce;
As from thy own Example can'st thou plead excuse?
Hast thou not heard what
Rochester declares?
That Man of Men, for who with him compares,
Must be what e're the Graces can bestow
Upon their chiefest Favourite below:
He tells thee,
Whore's the like Reproachful Name,
As Poetress—the luckless Twins of Shame.
Fly then those Seas, or look to be undone;
The Rock on which the
Argosie does run
And find its Fate, our
weak-built Skiffs shou'd shun.
'Tis not, I say, as when
Orinda wrote,
With all the Grace and Majesty of thought;
So well proportion'd her soft strain appears,
She pleas'd our Eyes, not more than that our Ears;
Rapt we all stood, nor knew which to prefer,
Whether to Read her Verse, or gaze on Her!
[Page 20] She reapt the Harvest of Immortal Fame,
And who comes after can but have the Gleanings of a Name.
Our Poesies chang'd from what, in her, 'twas then,
For Songs obscene fit not a Womans Pen,
Let's leave that Guilty Glory to the Men;
Nor
Satyr is our Province, let 'em throw
Their Darts, while we are Chaste we ward the blow:
O let us not be Snakes beneath the Flower,
Nor ill, because we know 'tis in our Power,
But keep in thought, the last the scrutinizing hour;
For after Death a strict Account succeeds;
Our Idle Thoughts are punisht with our Evil Deeds.
In Virtuous Authors, Virtuous Thoughts we find,
For what is Written paints the Writer's Mind,
And partly points how all his Passions are enclin'd:
Thus thro'
Orinda's Works does brightly shine,
A Spark that shows her Nature was Divine,
And alwaies on Sublime Idea's fixt,
Her Heav'nly Thoughts with grosser things unmixt:
[Page 21] And thus what thou hast writ, in every Page,
Does shew a wild, fantastick, groundless Rage.
A mean Revenge, beneath a Woman's Pen,
How much then to be slighted by the Men?
Then thou dost talk of Love at such a rate,
As thou hast shew'd it, 'tis what we shou'd hate,
A Freakish, Hair-Brain'd,
Bess of a Bedlam State.
Love, the soft Seal, by which alone we find
Something of Angel stampt on Humankind!
While we, like Wax, to its Impression bow,
And find our Souls are mixt, we know not how!
While lifted high, above all sordid Fears,
W'are disencumber'd of our Clog of Cares;
Agreeing Minds does make more Musick than the Spheres:
Thus like Translated Saints to Bliss we flee,
Rapt up to the
Third Heav'n of Extasie!
This is the Fate that Constancy does prove,
And such, in its true Nature, is a guiltless Love:
But in thy Numbers 'tis a
Lapland Witch,
Sailing thro' Air, astride, upon a Switch,
[Page 22] Mumbling of Wicked, but successless Charms;
In vain, the Dart recoils, and she that threw it harms.
How like a Fiend does
Ariadne speak?
Or how like thee? (no fitter Parallel we'll seek)
In such Extravagant and Pettish starts,
She'd sooner make our sides ake than our Hearts.
Leave, leave thy Scribling Itch, and write no more,
When you began 'twas time to give it o're:
What has this Age produc'd from Female Pens,
But a wide boldness that outstrides the Mens?
Succeeding Times will see the difference plain,
And wonder at a Style so loose and vain,
And what shou'd make the Women rise so high
In love of Vice, and scorn of Modesty:
For why art thou concern'd a Common Whore
Shou'd be turn'd off, and Cully-kept no more?
If by kept Jilts Men lose their Cash and time,
And oft, alas! what is much more sublime,
To leave 'em is one step t' attone the Crime:
[Page 23] Of Cashier'd Punks, so feelingly you speak,
You have been serv'd, sure, some such slippery trick,
And so by sad Experience (as you sing)
Know but too much of it—a barbarous thing!
It seems a
Keeper's not dislik'd by thee,
That he is Faulty, but that he'll be Free
From Faults, his Strumpets Insolence and Pride,
And Lust, perhaps the
Foul Disease beside.
Thy Language all along is mena and vile;
We see thy want of Manners in thy Style.
Thy words are boist'rous, but their Sense is weak,
Thou writ'st with the same Boldness Bullies speak;
Coherence there is none; Thy
Genius warms
No more than now thy Face, at Fifty, Charms:
To all a Nusance, to thy self a Plague,
And five year more makes thee a
Toothless Hag;
But I forbear thee; and may he forbear
You write against, and not be too severe:
If such Scurrillity you long pursue,
No Creatures e're will be so maul'd as you;
[Page 24] Thy Faults and Follies he'll to all make plain,
And in his Angry, Bold,
Satyrick Vein,
Set a worse Mark on thee than
God on
Cain.
But may he spare thee—here she wou'd give o're:
And I will spare thee—for I'le say no more.
FINIS.