New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1869-07-06
TYPES OF WOMANHOOD.

In an old-fashlOncd poem, Whlch our granu-
mothers were wont to read with great respect,
the author says of our primitive parents: For
contemplation he and valor formed; For soft
"ness she, and sweet, attractive grace"
Although there should be no end of the
banter and the ridicule which the mere
quotation of these lines may excite in certain
circles, vet we hazard the assertion that John
Milton knew exactly what he was saying, and
that his opinions, gTavely and conscentlously
uttered, are entitled to some consideration.
The duplex and cOmplemental nature which
he was considering was in his day just what
il is i'm ours, and just what it will be in all
the days to come. Manners may change, and
the cheaper mOralities may be modified; wives
and mothers may more generally neglect
natural for artificial duties; the genter quail
ties of her character may be hardened by
more intimate contact with the coarse realities
outside her home; but her physical constitu-
ton and physical duties, and the pcrvading
domesticity of her instincts, are n sufficient
guaranty against a more than limited unseXlng
of Woman. We may dread the temporary and
intervening mischief; of the ultimate result,
we have no fear.
There is nothing new under the sun at least,
the romps, the hOydens, the yiragoes the ter
magants, and the tom-bOys, are as old as the
oldest English drama, or the most venerable
English novel. One might have thought that
the author of that ancient Interlude. Jack
"Jugler," had drawn his Abigail from per-
sonal observation in our own Broadway:
"she minceth she brdeleth she swmmeth TO and fro.
She readet not one hair awry she tryppeth Ike doe;
A bTOde in the streete. going or coming home ward
She quaverth and wardeiith, like one In gallard."
The type Of the fast woman is to be found
in the plays of Mrs. Behn, of Shadwell, of
COngreve, and of WyChery, rs well as in the
prose fctions of Fielding and of SmOllct. Some
of the most serious admonitiOns which The
SDectator addressed to his fair cOuntrywomen
were Occasoned by their senseless aping of mas
culne vices and foibes. The general tone of
literature, however light its mood, has been
hostile to such frivolity, and writers not pro-
fessedly moral have subjected it either to grave
and elevated satire, or to the severcr mocke-
ries of contempt, from the days of Juvenal to
the days of Byron. Even Milton, whose special
vocation was not the castigation of the public
manners. has, in the Dalila of the "Sam-
"son AgOnistes,' drawn portrait of the
woman of that period-a picture which has a
modern value still. 1t is instructive to COM
pare the description of this thing of sea or
Gland" with Millions Ninth Sonnet {" Lady,
THAT in the prime of earliest youthf), or with
the Fourteenth (On the Memory of Mrs. Thorn
son, My Christian Friend), or with the Twenty
third {" MethOught / saw my late espOusGd
SANITY At no period of his life was Milton
Indifferent to the charms Of Woman and there
was a certain sensuous element in his charac-
ter, which usually accompanies the pOetical
faculty, and which might have led man less
rigidly self-gOverned into excuses; but Milton
was close student and an impartial critic of
social relations; and he seems to have accepted
the general opinion of all the civilized world
in all ages, rs to those things in Woman which
are specially attractive, decent. virtuous, and
becoming. He probably thought that the rela-
termined from the first, by some natural law;
but, if he had lived in our time and go believed,
there is many flippant and glib-tongued dam
sci who would have sneered at him for bigot
or laughed at him for a fool
In this day of hasty conclusions, it is worth
while to mark the tone which the instructive
feeling of great writers has given to female
portrature. Shakespeare, who always seems
10 create q wicked woman with reluctance,
makes Lady Macbeth, while she is imagining
the murder of Duncan, call upon "the spirits
"that tend on mortal thoughts" to "unseS
cher" The reader will readily recall the best
women in the best literature, and will natu
rally compare them with the vain, the eiddy,
the shallow, and the mOnstrous-the Mrs.
Trails and Mrs. FOresights, the Lady Vanes
and the Lady Bellastons. Who does not re-
member Miss Byron. the Dtincesa of all Drudes