The first edition (1696) of the poems of Philomela (Mrs. Elizabeth Singer Rowe) was published pseudonymously: her ‘Name had been prefixed, had not her own Modesty absolutely forbidden it’. The preface was written (from Harding’s Rents) by Elizabeth Johnson, who stoutly defended her sex:
We are not unwilling to allow Mankind the Brutal Advantages of Strength, they are Superior to ours in Force, they have Custom on their Side, and have Ruled, and are like to do so; and may freely do it without Disturbance or Envy; at least they should have none from us, if they could keep quiet among themselves. But when they would Monopolize Sense too, when neither that, nor Learning, nor so much as Wit must be allow’d us, but all over-ruled by the Tyranny of the Prouder Sex; nay when some of them will not let us say our Souls are our own, but would persuade us we are no more Reasonable Creatures than themselves, or their Fellow-Animals; we then must ask their Pardons if we are not yet so Compleatly Passive as to bear all without so much as a Murmur: We complain, and we think with Reason, that our Fundamental Constitutions are Destroyed; that here is a plain and open Design to render us mere Slaves, perfect Turkish Wives, without Properties or Sense or Souls; and are forced to Protest against it, and Appeal to all the World, whether these are not notorious Violations on the Liberties of Freeborn Englishwomen? This makes the meekest Worm amongst us all, ready to turn again when we are thus trampled on; But alas! What can we do to Right ourselves? Stingless and Harmless as we are, we can only Kiss the Foot that hurts us. However, sometimes it pleases Heaven to raise up some Brighter Genius than ordinary to Succour a Distressed People; an Epaminondas in Thebes; a Timoleon for Corinth; (for you must know we read Plutarch, now he is translated) and a Nassau for all the World: Nor is our Defenceless Sex forgotten! we have not only Bonducas and Zenobias; but Saphos and Daciers; Schurmans, Orindas and Behns, who have humbled the most haughty of our Antagonists, and made them do Homage to our Wit as well as to our Beauty.
Forty years passed before her poems were reprinted by Curll with a note from the author desiring him ‘to own, that it’s his Partiality to my Writings, not my Vanity, which has occasioned the Re-publishing of them’. Curll himself wrote the preface, telling the story of Mrs. Rowe’s life and marriage in the strain of ‘Long had this Lady been the Wish and Hope of many desiring Swains’. He addressed himself to Pope; said that Prior had praised Philomela; and quoted Dr. Watts as saying that ‘the Honour of Poetry is retrieved by such Writers, from the Scandal which has been cast upon it, by the Abuse of Verse to loose and profane Purposes’. Philomela’s diffident reserve was the common thing. Mary Jones, one of the best known, a friend of Dr. Johnson and author of verses respectably polished and pointed, prefaced her fat volume with the apologetic statement that her poems were ‘the product of pure nature only, and most of them wrote at a very early age’. She had for long shrunk from publication out of respect for ‘them [her friends], the world and myself’ and only resorted to it at last (under the patronage of the Dutch Stadtholder) in order to raise money for an aged and indigent relative. She must have raised a good deal: her subscription list (Christopher Smart and Horace Walpole appear in it) is a huge one. Her opening lines are unpromising:
How much of paper’s spoil’d, what floods of ink!
And yet how few, how very few can think.
But the rest of the poem (printed in this volume) is amusing and explains her pretty well. Her reluctance to set out a dedication
With lies enough to make a lord asham’d!
was not shared by her contemporary Mary Masters, whose verses (alleged to have been corrected by Dr. Johnson) were dedicated to the Earl of Burlington. She prostrates herself in the most approved Grub Street mode. He is exalted; she lowly and untuneful:
Yet when a British Peer has deign’d to shed
His gen’rous favours on my worthless Head;