Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/204

 198 Whitford Bluestockings), and Miss Hannah More. The satirical attacks upon Miss Burney were few and unimportant. The principal satire on Mrs. Piozzi concerned her qualifications for writing a biography of Samuel Johnson. But Miss More, partly because she was to a certain extent the controversial champion of the Bas Bleu, 115 was the object of regular if somewhat rancor- ous criticism in verse-satire. Satire's view of Fanny Burney is typically represented by passages from Pasquin's Children of Thespis and Matthew Bramble's Odes to Actors. Anthony Pasquin wrote: For rancourous Authorlings sink to Reviewers, As channels neglected become common sewers: Hence Folly to high estimation is rais'd, Hence Sternes were bespatter'd, and Burneys be-prais'd: They lacerate Wit from their cowardly stations, And grub for a weed, in a bed of carnations. 118 In a note HI identified Miss Burney as "an attendant on the Queen, who has been highly lauded for writing silly novels, the subjects and characters of which are totally irreconcileable to nature on her principles." Bramble, for his part, discussing the fact that readers have affirmed that "Matthew Bramble" is a pen name of Hannah More, "Apollo's scrubbing house- maid," or of Miss Seward, declares: As lief I'd have them call me Mrs. Smith, Miss Burney, Marg'ret Nicholson, John Frith, Or any other Genius they can name. 117 115 Her laudatory poem called The Bas Bleu: or, Comer sation is one of the major sources of information concerning the blues, Mrs. Vesey, Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Boscawen, and their friends Walpole, Burke, and Pepys as they came together in the Bluestocking assemblies. Cf. also Letter X, "A Conversatione, " of Samuel Hoole's Modern Manners; or, The Country Cousins . . . (London, 1782). Some of Miss More's less known poems contain along with a very little of sarcasm much interesting if somewhat indiscriminate praise for contemporary authors. In Sensibility: An Epistle to the Honourable Mrs. Boscawen, for instance, she finds room for laudatory lines upon Lyttelton, Young, Mason, the Wartons, Walpole, Beattie, Bealby Porteus, Bishop of London, Johnson, Miss Carter, Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Walsing- ham, Mrs. Delaney, Mrs. Barbauld, Mackenzie the "man of feeling," Bishop Lowth, and David Garrick. "'Pasquin, II, 23. 117 Works of A. M' Donald, 44.