"Female youth, left to weak woman's care" are "Strangers to reason and reflection made, / Left to their passions, and by them betrayed; / Untaught the noble end of glorious truth, / Bred to deceive even from earliest youth; / Unused to books, nor virtue taught to prize; / Whose mind, a savage waste, unpeopled lies; / Which to supply, trifles fill up the void, / And idly busy, to no end employed."
— Ingram, Anne [née Howard; other married name Douglas], Viscountess Irwin (c. 1696-1764)
Date
1736, 1737, 1759, 1744, 1771, 1773
Metaphor
"Female youth, left to weak woman's care" are "Strangers to reason and reflection made, / Left to their passions, and by them betrayed; / Untaught the noble end of glorious truth, / Bred to deceive even from earliest youth; / Unused to books, nor virtue taught to prize; / Whose mind, a savage waste, unpeopled lies; / Which to supply, trifles fill up the void, / And idly busy, to no end employed."
Metaphor in Context
Can female youth, left to weak woman's care,
Misled by Custom (Folly's fruitful heir);
Told that their charms a monarch may enslave,
That beauty like the gods can kill or save;
Taught the arcanas, the mysterious arts,
By ambush dress to catch unwary hearts;
If wealthy born, taught to lisp French and dance,
Their morals left (Lucretius-like) to chance;
Strangers to reason and reflection made,
Left to their passions, and by them betrayed;
Untaught the noble end of glorious truth,
Bred to deceive even from earliest youth;
Unused to books, nor virtue taught to prize;
Whose mind, a savage waste, unpeopled lies;
Which to supply, trifles fill up the void,
And idly busy, to no end employed:
Can these, from such a school, more virtue show,
Or tempting vice treat like a common foe?
(ll. 27-44, p. 151 in Lonsdale)
Misled by Custom (Folly's fruitful heir);
Told that their charms a monarch may enslave,
That beauty like the gods can kill or save;
Taught the arcanas, the mysterious arts,
By ambush dress to catch unwary hearts;
If wealthy born, taught to lisp French and dance,
Their morals left (Lucretius-like) to chance;
Strangers to reason and reflection made,
Left to their passions, and by them betrayed;
Untaught the noble end of glorious truth,
Bred to deceive even from earliest youth;
Unused to books, nor virtue taught to prize;
Whose mind, a savage waste, unpeopled lies;
Which to supply, trifles fill up the void,
And idly busy, to no end employed:
Can these, from such a school, more virtue show,
Or tempting vice treat like a common foe?
(ll. 27-44, p. 151 in Lonsdale)
Provenance
Reading
Citation
First published anonymously in The Gentleman's Magazine vol. 6 (December 1736), p. 745. <Link to Google Books> [Reprinted in 1771]
I first encountered the poem while reading Roger Lonsdale's Eighteenth Century Women Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) [in excerpt]. Full poem available in Fairer and Gerrard's Eighteenth-Century Poetry, 3rd ed. (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), pp. 337-40.
Lonsdale finds more reprintings of the poem in The London Magazine (January 1737, repr. in 1759), in Ashley's Cowper's Norfolk Poetical Miscellany (1744), and New Foundling Hospital for Wit, vol. 6 (1773).
I first encountered the poem while reading Roger Lonsdale's Eighteenth Century Women Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) [in excerpt]. Full poem available in Fairer and Gerrard's Eighteenth-Century Poetry, 3rd ed. (Wiley Blackwell, 2015), pp. 337-40.
Lonsdale finds more reprintings of the poem in The London Magazine (January 1737, repr. in 1759), in Ashley's Cowper's Norfolk Poetical Miscellany (1744), and New Foundling Hospital for Wit, vol. 6 (1773).
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
