_Let me whisper you Harriet--sure you proud maiden minxes think--But I did once--I wonder in my heart oftentimes--But men and women are cheats to one another. But we may in a great measure thank the poetical tribe for the fascination. I hate them all. Are they not inflamers of the worst passions? With regard to Epics, would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman had it not been for Homer? Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the Epic Poets been the occasion, by propagating false honour, false glory, and false religion? Those of the amorous class ought in all ages (could their future geniuses for tinkling sound and measure have been known) to have been strangled in their cradles. Abusers of talents given them for better purposes (for all this time I put sacred poesy out of the question) and avowedly claiming a right to be licentious, and to overleap the bounds of decency, truth and nature._ _What a rant!_ (a rant indeed, Charlotte) _how came these fellows into my rambling head? O I remember my whisper to you led me into all this stuff._ _Well, and you at last recollect the trouble you have given my brother about you. Good Girl! Had I remembered that, I would have spared you my reflections on the poets and poetasters of all ages, the truly inspired ones_ (who are these, my dear) _excepted. And yet I think the others should have been banished our commonwealth as well as Plato’s._ So it seems we are to have a female republic, of which I suppose these _Varletesses_ Harriet and Charlotte will be _Consulesses_.