A Satyrical Epistle TO THE FEMALE AUTHOR OF A POEM, CALLED SILVIA's REVENGE, etc.  
By the AUTHOR of the satire against Woman.  Mil. Par. Lost. 
— Revenge at first, tho' sweet,  
Bitter, e'er long, back on itself recoils.  
LONDON: Printed for R. Bentley, at the Posthouse in Russel street in Covent-Garden, near the Piazza's. MDCXCI.   

A Satyrical Epistle TO THE FEMALE AUTHOR OF A POEM CALLED SILVIA's REVENGE, etc.  

YES, Dame, 'tis so; satire shall scourge the Age,  
While there is Subject to maintain her Rage,  
And that, no doubt, there will for ever be;  
At least, as long as we are plagued with thee.  
Thou ill Defendress of a Cause as ill,  
Rashly led on by that Blind Guide, thy Will;  
In Ink thy fulsome Pen why didst thou foul,  
Unless to show the Blackness of thy Soul?  
Which thou hast proved (so well y'ave plied the Task)  
Of the same Fiend-Complexion, as thy Mask:  
Marked for the Stygian Colloney below,  
It here does Practise what 'tis there to do:  
All you have Writ does show y'are thence inspired,  
And only there can hope to be admired;  
For Men detest thee; nay, so far y'ave gone,  
Y'ave pulled the women's Indignation on,  
And Reason too— as we will show anon.   

Of all thy Sex thou art the most unfit  
To Vindicate their Virtues, or their Wit,  
For in the rest, some Sparks of Worth may shine,  
And from their Breasts put forth a Gleam Divine,  
But they for ever are extinct in thine;  
In thee the Sun of Virtue's set, and lies  
Eclipsed in loose Desires, no more to rise,  
And with its Maiden Glories, gilled the Blushing Skies.  
Ephelia, poor Ephelia, Ragged Jilt,  
And Sappho, Famous for her Gout and Gild,  
Either of these, tho' both Debauched and Vile,  
Had answered me in a more Decent Style;  
Yet Hackney Writers; when their Verse did fail  
To get 'em Brandy, Bread and Cheese, and Ale,  
Their Wants by Prostitution were supplied,  
Show but a Tester, you might up and Ride;  
For Punk and Poesy agree so pat,  
You cannot well be this, and not be that:  
Than thou, even these had better Conduct shown,  
Preserved their Sex's Fame, and half retrieved their own.   

Show me one Page, of all the goodly Store,  
That's free from words like these; Iilt, Strumpet, Whore,  
Hag, Hothouse, Fluxing, Leach'ry, empirics Bills,  
Claps, Cully, Keeper, Pox and Pocky Pills;  
Things that would shock the Modest Matron's Ear,  
And make her blush to think a Female fixed 'em there.  
But what are those you Hag and Harlot name?  
Women! what the destructive Bawd? the same;  
What Drabs and Guzzeling Gossips? Women still!  
Why dost thou tell us they could be so Ill?  
Methinks I hear the Hebrew Nymphs again,  
When two Great Hero's Deeds employed their strain,  
Thy Thousands thou, thou hast ten Thousands Slain!  
A Thousand Crimes I named (and more concealed)  
But by Ten Thousands they're by thee revealed!  
But say it all were true (truth 'tis we know)  
'Twas, sure, unkind in you to blaze it so;  
You on such Failings should have drawn their Vails,  
And not obscenely showed their Cloven-feet and Tails:  
Vices enough in Mankind there appears,  
Enough to Exercise thy Rage for years,  
What need, so lavishly, exposing theirs?   

Compared to thee, I'm careful of their Fame:—  
But sure thou only Scribblest for a Name;  
And, since thou art fond of it, thy Name shall live,  
What you can't give yourself, my pointed Lines shall give:  
Above all things called Shame, thou shalt be shamed,  
For thy loose Life so Infamously Famed,  
Even Bawds, through all their Brass, shall Blush to hear thee Named.   

Wretched is She that dares to be thy Friend,  
But far more Wretched She that you commend;  
For though She might for Modest pass before,  
Thy Praise would Transubstantiate her to Whore:  
Thus, tho' thou shouldst mean well, 'twould never take,  
Virtue itself would suffer for thy sake;  
To be her Votary thought, thou art so Evil,  
Would, tho' a Goddess, make her look like Devil.   

Silvia's Revenge, d'ye say? indeed 'tis like,  
Revenge will strike our own Fame, rather than not strike:  
For take this sharp-nailed Truth, to scratch thy Itch,  
The Silvia you extol so, was a B—  
A Coquet Airy, Impudent and Vain,  
Made up of too much Love, or overmuch Disdain;  
Restless her Temper, Frantic her Desire,  
Either all Ice, or all o'er flaming Fire,  
Either she'd Frieze, or Burn, no Mean betwixt,  
But all Extreme; to no one point e'er fixed,  
This Hour was Heaven, and worse than Hell the next;  
Perjured from Head to Foot, one Blot all over  
Of Sin, and quite round Rotten to the Core:  
She, and all such, I justly reprehend,  
Thee, and all such unjustly you defend:  
How dar'st thou to appear thus in a Cause  
So opposite to Heaven and Humane Laws?  
It speaks thee plainly her lewd Sister Twin,  
In Sense as shallow, and as deep in Sin,  
And perhaps deeper; as the World may find,  
In that part of jambick yet behind.   

In all my Rage and most Inveterate Fit,  
When Spleen had got the Mastery of Wit,  
I ne'er said Maidenheads were Nothing yet;  
Tho', without Blush, thus far with thee we join,  
They are mere Nothings all, if all like Thine;  
In thee alone the bold Assertion's good;  
Lust was so soon Incorporate with thy Blood,  
At Ten Years Age the tingling Itch began,  
In Streams away thy Liquid Virgin ran,  
Dissolved even but by thinking upon Man;  
And if the Thought could so much Gild contract,  
What were't thou when that Thought was put in Act?  
Insatiate, even Messalina could  
Sooner have laid the Devil in her Blood.  
But is not the Fair Sex beholden much  
To thee, on that nice point, their Fame to touch?  
Virginity, that Angel-State, wherein  
To live, almost is to live free from Sin;  
If we can be contented with the State,  
Nor, Gudgeon-like, by't at the Specious Bait:  
But for that Charm who is it that would care,  
Mere Lust excepted, to approach the Fair?  
Why are we Fond, why Languish and Adore,  
But to have something none e'er had before?  
To be the first that Crops the Virgin Flower,  
Just in the Critical and Blissful hour,  
When the strong watchful Guard resign their Power;  
No longer by strict Honour kept in awe,  
But side with Nature's more Seraphic Law;  
When in the Blushing Virgins kindling Eyes  
We see a Lovely Care, and Guilty Sweetness rise,  
While every Touch does raise her Ardour higher,  
Till she's all over nothing but Desire;  
When, pregnant with a thousand Nameless Charms,  
She Dies away, and Sinks into your Arms,  
Then Grapes, Breathes short, her Glowing Eve-Balls roll,  
And a Convulsive Rapture seizes on her Soul!  
The Youth, by this, to the same pitch inflamed,  
Here throws— but what succeeds need not be named.  
O Transport! Killing Transport! Racking Bliss!  
And is it Nothing that can cause all this?  
Then, Sacred Nothing, let me cease to be  
That Something that I am, rather than Banish thee,  
Rather than not, sometimes, have the Delight  
To dive for Thee into thy Realm of Night,  
To break thy Shell, and bid thee take thy Everlasting Flight!  
The very thought w'have had thee gives us rest,  
And builds a Halcyon Calm in the kind Husband's Breast;  
It gives even Marriage a Delicious taste,  
And is the Oil that makes those Colours last:  
Who e'er does tie that Miserable Knot,  
And thinking sure to find thee, finds thee not,  
Words are too poor to paint his more than cursed Lot!  
For She that let her Tail to Hire before,  
Has now a Specious Mask to gild the Whore;  
Who does ill things unveiled, will with a Veil do more:  
But She that brings it to the Nuptial Bower,  
She that preserves it Sacred to that Hour,  
To keep it so preserved has double Power:  
And what in Maid's Virginity we name,  
In chaste and Faithful Wives does ripen into Fame.   

While thou, Accursed, Created for our harm,  
Couldst never find this lucky hour to Charm;  
Thou ne'er were't capable to give Delight,  
Thy Love was Lust, as now thy Anger's Spite:  
When thou wert young, and for a Change, might please  
Some Fop that did not fear the Foul Disease,  
We never heard of thee in Lines like these;  
Then 'twas Amintor, Strephon, gentle Swain,  
And Songs, writ in a Melancholy Strain,  
Made known thy want of Stallion through the Plain:  
The Brawny Porter that best pitched the Bar,  
Was formed, thou saidst, by Heaven to ease thy Care:  
In Truth, nor Youth, nor Wit, no Charm you thought,  
But strength of Back was all, and that you bought:  
(Cursed, the mean while, be he (lewd, to be fed)  
That by that Slimy Drudgery gets his Bread)  
Thus with a lumpish Airyness, too dull  
To move Good Men, you preyed on Knave and Fool:  
Now Ball-browed Time has Hagged thee into Age,  
Thy Swains have left to Pipe, and thou, in Rage,  
Has brought the Broad-backt Brutes upon the Stage;  
Telling the World, what thou needest not have told,  
That they are very False, and thou a very Scold.  
False, said I? but that no ill thing, can be,  
Perjury's no Fault when it relates to thee:  
Even in thy Youth, in all thy Gloating Prime,  
Thou couldst not be Caressed without a Crime;  
Who e'er did gaze on thee, his Mistress, strait,  
Did Brand him with the Name of Profligate;  
The Man that stooped to thee, could never rise  
Gracious in any other Female's Eyes:  
What now then, when those borrowed Charms are failed,  
Which but with Fops and Monkeys e'er prevailed,  
And all the Paints washed off, and all is Fiend unveiled?  
Nor hast a Refuge left to Drudge for Life,  
But turning Bawd, or that worse thing, a Wife;  
A Wife! if any man so wild will be,  
To leap that horrid Precipice for thee;  
That Husband's Fate in Wedlock's hard to tell;  
Others might bring him Care, but thou wouldst bring him Hell.   

Yet Man you Curse; and Woman, his Delight,  
He must not see by day, nor touch by Night;  
Why, could you do your Sex a Plaguier spite?  
But most thyself; all that have Eyes may see  
That Curse would fall most heavy upon thee:  
Almost from Five to Fifty thou hast known  
What Man was Carnally, nor lain alone  
Without one, two, or more, but with Regret and Moan:  
Purse without Money is a burning shame,  
Bed and no Man in't, thou dost think the same:  
Even Posture-Moll herself, when thou art by,  
Obscene! has some pretence to Modesty.  
But mark th' Inconstancy of Womankind,  
And the wild variations of their Mind:  
She who but now (in this her Temper scan)  
Did toil to make her Sex abandon Man,  
Now blames those Husbands that so dull can prove,  
Drunk, to neglect the great Affair of Love:  
I find her fulsome Itch is not yet gone,  
She loves by Drunkards to be Belched upon:  
What Modest Dame, that had a Spouse so ill,  
Would not much rather have him then be still?  
A Drunkard is a Brute beneath our Curse,  
But she, who then can fondle him, is worse;  
Swine as he is, could he but Mount and Ride,  
Thy Poem with his Praise had been supplied:  
As Wine's Provocative, you like it well,  
But as it spoils Performance, hate it more than Hell;  
So not mere Drink itself caused thy disgust,  
But that it does unnerve desire, and balk expecting Lust.   

O Female Innocence!— but since I'm in,  
What is't by Female Innocence you mean?  
A Wife, it seems— who'd think it could have been?  
If (as it oft haps in the space of Life)  
We of Sir Spouse should ask for Dame his Wife,  
How Comical 'twould look, thus to begin?  
Pray— is your Female Innocence within?  
Who's that, he cries?— Your Wife— the Devil, says he,  
Shall as soon pass for Innocent with me;  
A Wife an Innocent— then Bawds are chaste,  
Hags, grim as Death, are with all Beauty graced,  
Coquets not vain, a thrice Fluxed Actress just,  
And Monarches Shining Strumpets free from Pride and Lust.   

But thou, who, in a Loose and Frontless Strain,  
Virtue and Virtuous Women dost Profane,  
Blush first, then hear thy Injured Sex Complain;  
For one, for all, I see come from the throng,  
In Shape an Angel, and her Heavenly Tongue,  
Her Speech to thee directed, thus redeems her wrong.   

Shame of our Sex, what Rage could thee Inspire  
With such wild Flames, instead of Lambent Fire?  
In Maiden Breasts no Lamp so fiercely burns,  
But mild as those enclosed in Vestal Virgins Urns.  
Of things Ridiculous, I dare maintain  
Nothing's more Sottish, Frivolous, and Vain,  
Than to take satire ill, and think weare gauled,  
When we are not the obscene things weare called.  
If of Ill Wives he talks, what is't to me,  
While I walk hand in hand with Modesty?  
But She that does resent it, that Ill Wife is She:  
And this may be laid down a Standard Rule,  
To whom e'er it relates, Punk, Pimp, or Fool:  
What Fame to thy Defence then can accrue,  
But that his satire sat too close on You,  
And like straight Stays, made you unlace for Air?  
Who sees a Pounded Beast, does know why it came there;  
Sated with lawful Grass he leapt the bound:  
O let us never quit that Fertile Ground,  
Where virtuous Herbage springs and Honour raised the Mound.  
Up from the Slave to those that wait on Kings,  
His satire took her course with steady wings,  
And from the Womb of Vice delivered monstrous things;  
Such as for many Ages there lay hid,  
And all, but the like piercing Eye, forbid  
To see the Secrets of that dark Divan,  
And quite unveil the inmost Mind of Man;  
His Pride, Ambition, Rage, Intemperance, Lust,  
And the hard Fate of him that dares be Just;  
Now in an Age that does such Gild reveal,  
He's not relieved though he to God's appeal,  
Thou see'st 'twas hate of Vice, not Love to spite,  
That sharped his pointed Spleen and bid him write:  
A Perjured Nymph abused him, broke his Rest,  
When her, and all like her, he Banished from his Breast:  
Who dare accuse him for so just a Deed?  
Or with such senseless Rigour can proceed  
To blame him that preserves the Corn, by rooting out the Weed?  
That Virtue he respects is understood,  
For who pulls down the Ill, in that does raise the Good.  
Yet if thou were't resolved to write, to show  
Thy Parts, which don't distinguish Friend from Foe,  
Why was't in Rhyme? (but Rage all Sense devours)  
That Scandal to their Sex, and worse to Ours:  
'Tis not as formerly, when 'twas the use  
For Verse t' instruct, as now 'tis to traduce;  
As from thy own Example canst thou plead excuse?  
Hast thou not heard what Rochester declares?  
That Man of Men, for who with him compares,  
Must be what e'er the Graces can bestow  
Upon their chiefest Favourite below:  
He tells thee, Whore's the like Reproachful Name,  
As Poetress— the luckless Twins of Shame.  
Fly then those Seas, or look to be undone;  
The Rock on which the Argosy does run  
And find its Fate, our weak-built Skiffs should shun.  
'Tis not, I say, as when Orinda wrote,  
With all the Grace and Majesty of thought;  
So well proportioned her soft strain appears,  
She pleased our Eyes, not more than that our Ears;  
Rapt we all stood, nor knew which to prefer,  
Whether to Read her Verse, or gaze on Her!  
She reaped the Harvest of Immortal Fame,  
And who comes after can but have the Glean of a Name.  
Our Poesies changed from what, in her, 'twas then,  
For Songs obscene fit not a Woman's Pen,  
Let's leave that Guilty Glory to the Men;  
Nor satire is our Province, let 'em throw  
Their Darts, while we are Chaste we ward the blow:  
O let us not be Snakes beneath the Flower,  
Nor ill, because we know 'tis in our Power,  
But keep in thought, the last the scrutinizing hour;  
For after Death a strict Account succeeds;  
Our Idle Thoughts are punished with our Evil Deeds.  
In Virtuous Authors, Virtuous Thoughts we find,  
For what is Written paints the Writer's Mind,  
And partly points how all his Passions are inclined:  
Thus through Orinda's Works does brightly shine,  
A Spark that shows her Nature was Divine,  
And always on Sublime Ideas fixed,  
Her Heavenly Thoughts with grosser things unmixed:  
And thus what thou hast writ, in every Page,  
Does show a wild, fantastic, groundless Rage.  
A mean Revenge, beneath a Woman's Pen,  
How much then to be slighted by the Men?  
Then thou dost talk of Love at such a rate,  
As thou hast showed it, 'tis what we should hate,  
A Freakish, Hare-brained, Bess of a Bedlam State.  
Love, the soft Seal, by which alone we find  
Something of Angel stamped on Humankind!  
While we, like Wax, to its Impression bow,  
And find our Souls are mixed, we know not how!  
While lifted high, above all sordid Fears,  
weare disencumbered of our Clog of Cares;  
Agreeing Minds does make more Music than the Spheres:  
Thus like Translated Saints to Bliss we flee,  
Rapt up to the Third Heaven of Ecstasy!  
This is the Fate that Constancy does prove,  
And such, in its true Nature, is a guiltless Love:  
But in thy Numbers 'tis a Lapland Witch,  
Sailing through Air, astride, upon a Switches,  
Mumbling of Wicked, but successless Charms;  
In vain, the Dart recoils, and she that threw it harms.  
How like a Fiend does Ariadne speak?  
Or how like thee? (no fitter Parallel we'll seek)  
In such Extravagant and Pettish starts,  
She'd sooner make our sides ache than our Hearts.  
Leave, leave thy Scribbling Itch, and write no more,  
When you began 'twas time to give it o'er:  
What has this Age produced from Female Pens,  
But a wide boldness that outstrides the men's?  
Succeeding Times will see the difference plain,  
And wonder at a Style so loose and vain,  
And what should make the Women rise so high  
In love of Vice, and scorn of Modesty:  
For why art thou concerned a Common Whore  
Should be turned off, and Cully-kept no more?  
If by kept Jilts Men lose their Cash and time,  
And oft, alas! what is much more sublime,  
To leave 'em is one step t' atone the Crime:  
Of Cashiered Punks, so feelingly you speak,  
You have been served, sure, some such slippery trick,  
And so by sad Experience (as you sing)  
Know but too much of it— a barbarous thing!  
It seems a Keeper's not disliked by thee,  
That he is Faulty, but that he'll be Free  
From Faults, his Strumpet's Insolence and Pride,  
And Lust, perhaps the Foul Disease beside.  
Thy Language all along is mena and vile;  
We see thy want of Manners in thy Style.  
Thy words are boisterous, but their Sense is weak,  
Thou writ'st with the same Boldness Bullies speak;  
Coherence there is none; Thy Genius warms  
No more than now thy Face, at Fifty, Charms:  
To all a Nuisance, to thyself a Plague,  
And five year more makes thee a Toothless Hag;  
But I forbear thee; and may he forbear  
You write against, and not be too severe:  
If such scurrility you long pursue,  
No Creatures e'er will be so mauled as you;  
Thy Faults and Follies he'll to all make plain,  
And in his Angry, Bold, Satiric Vein,  
Set a worse Mark on thee than God on Cain.  
But may he spare thee— here she would give o'er:  
And I will spare thee— for I'll say no more.   
FINIS.