56
HANNAH MORE.
ridicules, so "Blue Stocking" arrived at being an opprobrious epithet. Hannah was rather hard on the French original salon, as she speaks of the conversation of her friends,—
Oh! how unlike the wit that fell,
Rambouillet, at thy quaint hotel,
Where point, and turn, and equivoque,
Distorted every word they spoke,
All so intolerably bright,
Plain common-sense was put to flight,
Each speaker so ingenious ever,
'Twas tiresome to be so clever.
Whereas, at the parties under the patronage of Mrs. Montagu or Mrs. Vesey,—
Sober duchesses are seen,
Chaste wits, and critics void of spleen,
Physicians, fraught with real science,
And Whigs and Tories in alliance,
Poets, fulfilling Christian duties,
Just lawyers, reasonable beauties,
Bishops who preach, and peers who pay,
And countesses who seldom play,
Learned antiquaries, who, from college,
Reject the rust and bring the knowledge,
And hear it, Age, believe it, youth,
Polemics really seeking truth,
And travellers of that rare tribe,
Who've seen the countries they describe,
Who studied there, so strange their plan,
Not plants, or herbs alone, but man,
While travellers of other notions,
Scale mountain tops and traverse oceans,
As if, so much these themes engross,
The study of mankind was—moss.
Chaste wits, and critics void of spleen,
Physicians, fraught with real science,
And Whigs and Tories in alliance,
Poets, fulfilling Christian duties,
Just lawyers, reasonable beauties,
Bishops who preach, and peers who pay,
And countesses who seldom play,
Learned antiquaries, who, from college,
Reject the rust and bring the knowledge,
And hear it, Age, believe it, youth,
Polemics really seeking truth,
And travellers of that rare tribe,
Who've seen the countries they describe,
Who studied there, so strange their plan,
Not plants, or herbs alone, but man,
While travellers of other notions,
Scale mountain tops and traverse oceans,
As if, so much these themes engross,
The study of mankind was—moss.
