Classic Poem

Unhand me, gentlemen, by Heaven, I say,
I'll make a ghost of him who bars my way.
Forth lot me came—A Poetaster true,
As lean as Envy, and as baneful too;
On the dull audience let me vent my rage,
Or drive these female scribblers from the stage.
For scene or history, we've none but these,
The law of liberty and wit they seize;
In tragic—comic—pastoral—they dare to please.
Each puny bard must surely burst with spite,
To find that women with such fame can write,
But oh, your partial favour is the cause,
Which feeds their follies with such full applause.
Yet still our tribe shall seek to blast their fame,
And ridicule each fair pretender's aim;
Where the dull duties of domestic life
Wage with the muse's toils eternal strife.
What motley cares Corilla's mind perplex,
While maids and metaphors conspire to vex!
In studious dishabille behold her sit.
A latter'd gossip, and a housewife wit,
At once invoking, though for different views,
Her gods, her cook, her milliner, and muse,
Round her strow'd room a frippery chaos lies,
A chequer'd wreck of notable and wise;
Bills, books, caps, couplets, comba, a varied mass,
Oppress the tollet, and obscure the glass;
Unfinish'd here an epigram is laid,
And there a mantun-maker's bill unpaid:
Here new-born plays foretaste the town's applause,
There, dormant patterns pine for future gauze;
A moral essay now is all her care,
A satire next, and then a bill of fare:
A scene she now projects, and now a dish,
Here's act the first—and here—remove with fish.
Now while this eye in a fine frenzy rolls,
That, soberly casts up a bill for coals;
Black pins and daggers in one leaf she sticks,
And tears, and thread, and balls, and thimbles mix.
Sappho, 'tis true, long vers'd in epic song,
For years esteem'd all household studies wrong;
When dire mishap, though neither shame nor sin,
Sappho herself, and not her muse, lies in.
The virgin Nine in terror fly the bower,
And matron Juno claims despotic power;
Soon gothic bags the classic pile o'erturn,
A candle-cup supplants the sacred urn;
Nor books nor implements escape their rage,
They spike the inkstand, and they read the page;
Poems and plays one barbarous fate partake,
Ovid and Plautus suffer at the stake,
And Aristotle's only sav'd—to wrap plumb-cake.
Yet, shall a woman tempt the tragic scene?
And dare—but hold—I must repress my spleen;
I see your hearts are pledg'd to her applause,
While Shakspeare's spirit seems to aid her cause;
Well pleas'd to aid—since o'er his sacred bier
A female hand did ample trophies rear,
And gave the greenest laurel that is worshipp'd there.