Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/76

 62 woman ever yet wrote a truly beautiful poem the length of her little finger." The same satiric enjoyment of the situation is apparent in Thackeray's description of Barnes Newcome's lecture on "Mrs. Hemans, and the Poetry of the Affections," as delivered before the appreciative audience of the Newcome Athenæum. The distinction which the lecturer draws between man's poetry and woman's poetry, the high-flown civility with which he treats the latter, the platitudes about the Christian singer appealing to the affections, and decorating the homely threshold, and wreathing flowers around the domestic hearth;—all these graceful and generous nothings are the tributes laid without stint at the feet of that fragile creature known to our great-grandfathers as the female muse.

It may as well be admitted at once that this tone of combined diversion and patronage has changed. Men, having come in the course of years to understand that women desire to work, and need to work, honestly and well, have made room for them with simple sincerity, and stand ready to compete with them for the coveted prizes of life. This is all that can in