Miss More’s chief tribute to Mrs. Boscawen, however, was her poem, Sensibility, published in 1782, in the form of an epistle to that lady. In rapturous verse Sensibility is hailed as the parent of charity, charm, and many other bluestocking virtues; but, above all, ’tis this that ‘gives Boscawen half her power to please.’ As the poem furnishes the most convenient statement of Mrs. Boscawen’s connection with the group of ladies we are studying, a rather long extract from it must be given:
Accept, Boscawen! these unpolish’d lays,
Nor blame too much the verse you cannot praise.
For you far other bards have wak’d the string,
Far other bards for you were wont to sing.[289]
Yet on the gale their parting music steals,
Yet your charm’d ear the loved impression feels;
You heard the lyre of Littleton and Young,
And this a Grace and that a Seraph strung....
Yes, still for you your gentle stars dispense