PREFACE. DOCTOR FORDYCE'S excellent Sermons for Young Women in fome measure gave rife to the following compilation. In that work, where he fo judiciously points out all the defects of female conduct to remedy them, and all the proper ftudies which they should purfue, with a view to improvement, Poetry is one to which he particularly would attach them. He only objects to the danger of pursuing this charming ftudy through all the immoralities and falfe pictures of happiness with which it abounds, and thus becoming the martyr of innocent curiofity. In the following compilation care has been taken to felect, not only fuch pieces as innocence may read without a blufh, but fuch as will even tend to ftrengthen that innocence. In this little work a Lady may find the most exquifite pleasure, while fhe is at the fame time learning the duties of life; and, while fhe courts only entertainment, be deceived into wifdom. Indeed, this would be too great a boaft in the preface to any original work; but here it can be made with fafety, as every Poem in the following collection would fingly have procured an Author great reputation. They are divided into Devotional, Moral, and Entertaining, thus comprehending the three great duties of life; that which we owe to God, to our neighbour, and to ourselves. In the first part, it must be confeffed, our English Poets have not very much excelled. In that department, namely, the praise of our Maker, by which Poetry began, and from which it deviated by K 4 time, time, we are moft faultily deficient. There are one or two, however, particularly the Deity, by Mr. Boyse; a Poem, when it firft came out, that lay for fome time neglected, till introduced to public notice by Mr. Hervey and Mr. Fielding. In it the reader will perceive many ftriking pictures, and perhaps glow with a part of that gratitude which feems to have infpired the writer. In the Moral part I am more copious, from the fame reason, because our language contains a large number of the kind. Voltaire, talking of our Poets, gives them the preference in moral pieces to those of any other nation; and indeed no Poets have better fettled the bounds of duty, or more precifely determined the rules for conduct in life than ours. this department the fair reader will find the Mufe has been folicitous to guide her, not with the allurements of a fyren, but the integrity of a friend. In In the entertaining part my greatest difficulty was what to reject. The materials lay in fuch plenty, that I was bewildered in my choice; in this cafe then I was folely determined by the tendency of the Poem; and where I found one, however well executed, that feemed in the least tending to distort the judgement, or inflame the imagination, it was excluded without mercy. I have here and there indeed, when one of particular beauty offered with a few blemishes, lopt off the defects, and thus, like the tyrant, who fitted all strangers to the bed he had prepared for them, I have inferted fome, by first adapting them to my plan; we only differ in this, that he mutilated with a bad defign, I from motives of a contrary nature. It will be easier to condemn a compilation of this kind, than to prove its inutility. While young Ladies are readers, and while their guardians are folicitous that they fhall only read the best books, there can can be no danger of a work of this kind being difagreeable. It offers, in a very fmall compass, the very flowers of our Poetry, and that of a kind adapted to the fex supposed to be its readers. Poetry is an art, which no young Lady can, or ought to be wholly ignorant of. The pleasure which it gives, and indeed the neceffity of knowing enough of it to mix in modern converfation, will evince the usefulnefs of my defign, which is to fupply the highest and the most innocent entertainment at the smallest expence; as the Poems in this collection, if fold fingly, would amount to ten times the price of what I am able to afford the prefent. |