Foxon M372. Very Rare. Only one other copy is known (at Yale) which is also lacking the title-page. Advertised in the Gentleman’s Magazine as “published this month” (price 1s, Cave, Dodd) in November 1745.
A largely unknown and anonymous frivolous poem on women’s fashion.
This amusing poem begins by praising British women over the “Belles of France” and describing fashion as “The Mode, which strengthens Beauty’s Snare.” The poem soon moves on to discuss various articles of women’s fashion such as the capuchin, a hooded cloak or cape:
“Convenient this! when Storms arise
To skreen the Fair from wint’ry Skies!
Or guard the Breasts of tender Maids,
When piercing Frost the Air prevades…“ (p.3)
The author also imagines a typical morning for an 18th-century woman of fashion:
“The Clock strikes Ten! with drowsy Head,
Corinna quits the downy Bed;
First reads the Billets of the Day,
Next goes to Prayers, and then to Tea;
Trifles with Veny, or the Spoon,
Till you may judge ’tis almost Noon;
Then huddles on her Capuchin,
To view Lace, China, or a Screen;
To view, for Ladies seldom go
(To buy, but ramble to and fro) (p.4)
The author also discusses hair worn in ringlets, fans (“Man / May fall a Victim to a Fan p.7), hooped skirts and headdresses. The poem ends by declaring: “A Thousand Fashions still remain / Unsung, and ask a lengthen’d Strain!”
The poem is mentioned in a footnote on a book on Alexander Pope and “the seriousness of a mock epic” (the poem mentions Pope and (“Twick’nam’s Shore p.13) as well as Addison, Gay and Thompson) but other than that it seems to have been entirely overlooked (see The Enduring Legacy - Alexander Pope Tercentenary Essays (1988) ed. G.S. Rousseau & Pat Rogers p.35).
The advertisement on the verso of the final leaf “To be had of the Publisher” is for Mark Akenside’s The British philippic: a poem, in Miltonic verse. Occasion’d by the insults of the Spaniards, and the preparations for war which was published by J. Chaney for Dodd in 1738 but with a note in this advertisement “The spirit inculcated in this Poem may be equally useful, at this Time, on occasion of the Ravages of the Highlanders, and the Insults of a presumptuous, cruel, rash Invader, and Pretender….”
Provennace: No signs of any early provenance. Bought by Maggs in 1993.
