Dear Mrs. TRIFLER,
I Cannot help suspecting that you artfully mean to cajole your fair readers into sense and seriousness, and that you only bait your periodical labours with a Trifler merely to captivate our attention, while you mean nothing less than our acquaintance with all useful and polite literature. Notwithstanding this pretty stratagem of yours, which is like teaching children their letters by gingerbread alphabets, we are resolved to disappoint your endeavours, and the purpose of this letter is to inform you of the very pernicious consequences which must necessarily result from your projected reformation.
There is one general argument which has always appeared to me unanswerable upon this subject: if we poor women furnished our minds with moral and historical truth, and took pains to acquire the true principles of taste and criticism, we should be very apt upon this supposition to discern the deficiencies of our admirers in these articles; and from a total dissimilitude of manners and pursuits, grow quickly disgusted at each other, and so risk our establishments for the sake of accomplishments no longer respected.
Pray, madam, have you ever known any ladies advantageously settled in life on account of their mental qualifications, where the metallic charms were wanting? I question extremely whether even a precedent could be found for so irregular a proceeding, so true it is what the poet sings.
Wit must wear the willow with the bays.
Indeed, my dear, you entirely mistake the point; a woman of knowledge is at present no object of request, and I am afraid literature, like virtue, is insufficient for its own reward—so well satisfied is the whole tribe of Triflers of this maxim, that there is not one of them who would not rather endanger their health and impair their sight by needle-work, than read ten pages of English history, or acquaint themselves with the very rudiments of the religion of their country.
Your ladies of literature were commonly susceptible of tenderness, (for I have looked into a translation of Ovid’s Epistles,) and this is a quality the Triflers have totally divested themselves of. I suppose you would endeavour, by enlarging our ideas, to soften and refine our affections, but that would be the most unfortunate thing in the world for us, for I can assure you, we have already more light in our minds than is friendly to our pursuits and desires, and we are not a little incommoded by its impertinent suggestions.
You know that our whole family has a mortal antipathy to every thing that is severe and formal, and I have been told that method and attention are very necessary to obtain the proper fruit of study and application: now, as to the method, we are utter strangers to it, and we have never been accustomed to bestow the least attention upon any thing but the adorning and exhibiting our dear persons—not that we are so averse to letters, as totally to neglect every species of composition, but we manage that affair in so compendious and pleasing a manner, that it becomes a mere amusement. Message-cards afford us a great deal of employment; nor are there wanting very elegant models of that pretty stile of writing.
There is a judicious gentleman in this town who advertises to teach all sorts of penmanship in a very few hours, the Italian hand in nineteen hours, and in proportion all the rest; I am credibly informed, that, in imitation of so worthy an original, there is a lady very shortly expected here from Brussels, who will undertake to teach French in a fortnight, history in sixteen hours, morality in half an hour, and religion in a quarter of an hour.
I have heard it said by a gentleman, that he knew only two books of any use, a bible and almanac; for my part, I think a spelling dictionary, and Grey’s Love Letters very ample furniture for a lady’s library.
You can say, no doubt, many plausible things in recommendation of your Platonic system, such as, that you do not purpose to convert ladies into philosophers and mathematicians, but only to qualify them for rational conversation; that you can’t apprehend any danger that ladies may be more remiss in the proper discharge of all duties, merely because they understand better the obligations they lie under to the performance of them: that ignorance of such matters as are necessary to be known, is not only highly contemptible but even criminal—all this and a great deal more you may urge to the same purpose, but be assured your remonstrances will be infallibly drowned amidst the noise and dissipation of public life,
I am, madam, Your very Humble Servant, PARTHENISSA.