American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)
Science, Animal Sympathy, and Anna Barbauld's "The Mouse's Petition"
Author(s): Mary Ellen Bellanca
Source: Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1, Exploring Sentiment (Fall, 2003), pp. 47-67
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Sponsor: American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
(ASECS).
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25098029 .
Accessed: 28/08/2013 10:49
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
.
The Johns Hopkins University Press and American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Eighteenth-Century Studies.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ciENCE, Animal
Barbauld's
Petition"
Ellen Bellanca
Mary
"The
immediate
use of natural
Priestley,
Joseph
"An
and Anna
Sympathy,
"The Mouse's
infant may
Anna
science
The History
life, but
destroy
and
Barbauld
is the power
and
John
Aikin,
Present
State
"What
nature."
of Electricity
cannot
of the earth
all the kings
us over
it gives
restore
For"
Are Made
Animals
it."
of Joseph Priestley could evidently be an un
of newly caught animal speci
orthodox
affair, punctuated
by the introduction
mens
As the natural philosopher's
for his scientific experiments.
friend, Anna
to observe
first
this phenomenon
had occasion
Letitia Aikin
(later Barbauld)
in the household
Mealtime
lead to his discovery of oxygen, Priest
that would
hand. In 1771, in experiments
to
test
was
mice
of
air with various gases. One
live
the
effects
mixing
using
ley
was
to
memoirist
William
when
Barbauld
Turner, "It
visiting, according
evening
in after
that a captive
[mouse] was brought
to be made with it that night, and the servant
experiment
while Priestley may have
till next morning."
Overnight,
a
of her own:
of
Barbauld
made
air,
position
composition
happened
was
which
Turner
"twisted
supper, too late for any
was desired to set it by
the com
contemplated
her poem "The Mouse's
among the wires of the
reports,
Petition,"
found,
it "was brought in after breakfast."
cage" the next day when
voice,
the
poem
an
makes
eloquent,
if tongue-in-cheek,
in the mouse's
Cast
for
argument
the
rodent's
release:
Mary
Sumter.
Ellen
Bellanca
She has
is completing
teenth-Century
is Assistant
published
a book
Professor
manuscript
Diaries
British
of English
on Pope,
articles
entitled
and
George
Days
at
of Green
the University
and Gerard
Eliot,
Discovery:
of
Manley
Writing
South
Carolina
Hopkins.
She
in Nine
Nature
Journals.
Eighteenth-Century
Studies,
vol.
37,
no.
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
1 (2003)
Pp.
47-67.
48
Eighteenth-Century
a pensive
Oh!
hear
For
liberty
never
And
that
prayer,
prisoner's
let thine
heart
be
shut
cries.
If e'er
freedom
thy breast with
a
chain,
tyrant's
spurn'd
not thy strong
oppressive
And
Let
A
mouse
free-born
detain.
glow'd,
force
(Poem
the plea was
to Turner,
According
37/1
sighs;
the wretch's
Against
Studies
lines
19,
so effective
1-4,
9-12)1
that Priestley
let the mouse
go.2
struck a responsive
chord as well with contem
porary and later readers. It has been reprinted often, by admirers ranging from
to the World Wildlife
Fund, and it may have influenced
Mary Wollstonecraft
Robert Burns's "To aMouse."
The text was first published
in Barbauld's Poems
Petition"
"The Mouse's
in 1773,
Confined
"The Mouse's
Petition, Found in the Trap where he had been
all Night"
"To Doctor Priestley." Readers
and dedicated
immediately
seized upon it as an indictment of animal experimentation.3
Barbauld disclaimed
any intent of criticizing Priestley, but her critics saw the poem as a denunciation
entitled
of "the cruelty practised
seem to think the
who
by experimental
philosophers,
brute creation void of sensibility, or created only for them to torment."4 By 1796,
two years before The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?"the
great English romantic
about
the
of
the
animal
poem
consequences
mistreating
kingdom"?Samuel
Tay
lor Coleridge
could write, "thanks toMrs. Barbauld,...
it has become universal
to teach
ly fashionable
lessons of compassion
towards
animals."5
Petition"
lends it
Invoking liberty and decrying tyranny, "The Mouse's
a mouthpiece
in which
self to interpretations
the suppliant mouse,
for liberal
reform, stands in for detained and oppressed humans. Marlon Ross, for example,
asks whether
it is "a political poem that uses the occasion
of an 'imprisoned'
mouse
ous
to
satirize
petition
for
was
admittedly
slaves
'enlighteners'"
signification,
were
of
rights
a powerful
whether
imprisonment,
reciprocal
the
the
represented
or
commoners."6
image
physical,
confined
The
in print and
psychological,
one vulnerable
as
"a political
or
group
exploited
caged,
social.
often
or
trapped,
In a
pointed
animals,
a seri
abused
animal
for various
iconography
or
. . .
make[s]
that
poem
complex
kinds
texture
to another,
women
as
slaves
of
of
so that
or
as
to injurious uses of nonhuman
caged birds, pet animals as slaves. Opposition
as
such
increased in
creatures,
hunting, blood sports, and scientific experiments,
the 1770s alongside debates about slavery. Barbauld's
a rheto
"Petition" wields
ric of sensibility that sought to change attitudes about inequality?and
the poten
tial violence of unequal power relations?in
forms:
chattel
many
slavery, incar
and
In
animal
the
while
ceration, marriage,
labor,
1790s,
ownership.7
publishing
children's texts that promoted
animal sympathy, Barbauld would mobilize what
Moira
gate
slave
Ferguson
the nation,
calls the century's "multilayered
discourse on cruelty" to casti
in her "Epistle to William Wilberforce,"
for failing to halt the
trade.8
In this essay, however,
Petition"?the
of "The Mouse's
which
by midcentury
I focus on the more immediate and literal context
use of living animals in scientific
experiments,
had emerged as a topic of public debate9?and
on the role
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
/ Anna
Bellanca
of science
rationale
in Barbauld's
of animal
Defenders
work.
since
argued
"The Mouse's
Barbauld's
experiments
creatures
nonhuman
that
antiquity,
49
Petition"
in a
maintained,
serve
to
exist
human
because they possess neither souls nor
and require no ethical consideration
cen
and social changes in the eighteenth
rational minds. But scientific, political,
needs
tury,
some
dermine
the globe,
extinct
ancient
animals
assumptions.
no
that
human-animal
Rapid
human
had
ever
exotic
seen?challenged
to un
worked
relations,
of
discoveries
around
species
of insects and microorganisms?to
thousands
including
of
constructions
shifting
including
of
say nothing
com
anthropocentric
for the "brute
of feeling, advocates
sensibility's valorization
new
sensation
and can
that
animals
belief
the
experience
promoted
suffer pain.10 The first-person plea of Barbauld's mouse, who claims to
Extending
placency.
creation"
therefore
(line 34), gives voice to the concern with
"myth of kinship"11 based on fellow-feeling.
have a "brother's
and to a cultural
soul"
animal
suffering
late
also provides an entry point for exploring
from the
excluded
century dynamics of science and gender. As a young woman
on Priest
Barbauld commented
natural philosophers,
fraternity of experimental
Petition"
"The Mouse's
but in the domes
ley's work not in the laboratory or in scientific correspondence
in a tradition of wom
tic spaces of the dining room and the meal table. Working
en's anthropomorphic
writing about animals, Barbauld does "challenge the male
as Stuart Curran ob
universe exemplified
scientific experiments,"
by Priestley's
between scien
serves.12 Yet the "Petition" does not simply inscribe a showdown
the "universe" of experimen
tific patriarchy and feminine sensibility. Alongside
another world
of women's
scientific
tal inquiry flourished
learning. Barbauld,
as well as the qual
of scientific knowledge
like Priestley, valued the advancement
or compassion
ity of "humanity"
to
insensitive
ness
about
hurting
in general,
force
animal
weaker
simultaneously
cultural
boundaries
toward
as we
welfare;
shall
creatures
in the pursuit
promote
science
the
between
animals. Nor was
nonhuman
see,
own
his
Barbauld's
for women
knowledge
sexes'
betray
writings
of knowledge.
intellectual
Priestley
an
and
uneasi
works,
rein
men,
warn
and
territories,
the excessive ambition of male scientists. Her poetry both celebrates and
science that increased the physical comfort of human
critiques an Enlightenment
animals
for knowledge
about their bodies, and opened intel
yet
beings
destroyed
them
well
behind its frontiers of discovery.
lectual avenues to women
yet kept
against
As a crowded
poem
captures
discursive
a moment
space, then, the mousetrap
in a multivocal
imagined
encompassing
dialogue
in Barbauld's
the
poet,
the
and the cultures of science and sensibility. The "Petition"
philosopher,
not
but
does
embodies,
reconcile, tensions in both Barbauld's and Priestley's work
between the desire for knowledge
and misgivings
about its ethical and humanitar
ian costs. In addition,
the poem experiments with a motif
that recurs subtly but
natural
in Barbauld's work: the dangers inherent
persistently
ture by an increasingly
technocratic world view.
in the manipulation
of na
SCIENCE FOR "BOTH SEXES,"WOMEN'S
"BOUNDED
which
SPHERE"
Barbauld may
women
studied
improvement.
be situated
in the eighteenth-century
culture of science in
for "rational amusement"
and personal
the natural world
Practitioners
of traditional
herbal
healing,
women
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
also
became
50
and by col
studied and
knowledge"
by reading books
and flowers. Some aristocratic women
"consumers
enthusiastic
37/1
Studies
Eighteenth-Century
of scientific
lecting and sketching
plants
and astronomy.13 Barbauld's books for children
entomology,
patronized
exerted an important influence on younger writers such as Charlotte Smith, Priscilla
and Sarah Trimmer, who earned public authority and success by pop
Wakefield,
As an author and educator, Barbauld encouraged
scientific
knowledge.
ularizing
to study and appreciate
sexes"
the natural world.14
of
both
"many young persons
botany,
in attitudes
of a "cultural paradox"
the same time, her career is emblematic
was
toward women's
including science knowledge,
learning: general knowledge,
un
were
as
serious
and
ridiculed
but
pursuits
pedantic
"excessively"
approved,
At
a backlash
feminine.15 Anticipating
itmay
ed?reluctantly,
to
their
vocation.
domestic
about
Learning
but
imperative.
the
father,
against female learnedness, Barbauld acced
interests
of women's
intellectual
the subordination
be?to
natural
At Warrington
was
curriculum
was, for Barbauld, not only desirable
the Dissenting
college founded by her
processes
Academy,
strong
"particularly
in natural
science."16
There
Bar
friends with Priestley, who was a tutor at the academy, and his
an advocate of scientific knowl
wife, Mary Priestley, as well as Hester Chapone,
as
a
writer and editor
women.17
Barbauld's
work
for
Later,
collaborating
edge
a
with her brother, John Aikin,
natural phi
polymath with interests inmedicine,
bauld
became
in natural
losophy, and chemistry, brought her into contact with current work
she founded with her husband, Roche
science.18 At the Palgrave School, which
mont Barbauld, she instructed scores of boys, including Joseph Priestley Jr., about
"the natural history of animals," reportedly in an engaging way.19 Although Charles
crew" for "cramming"
the "cursed Barbauld
chil
famously condemned
dren with the "sore evil" of science, modern
scholars have found that Barbauld's
students enjoyed and fondly remembered her "imaginative and entertaining"
teach
Lamb
ing, especially
in natural
Like the works
introduce
readers
to
history.20
of Smith, Trimmer,
factual
observation
and Wollstonecraft,
at an
early
age.
Her
Barbauld's
Lessons
for
books
Children
to follow the stages of insect metamorphosis?"all
the pretty
prompts youngsters
butterflies
that you see flying about were caterpillars
once, and crawled on the
on
her instruction
animal habits and habitats
fosters sympathy:
ground"?and
"Here is a poor little snail crawling up the wall. Touch him with your little finger.
Ah, the snail is crept into his shell. . . . Let him alone, and he will soon come out
or, the Juve
again."21 Barbauld and Aikin's prose collection, Evenings at Home:
nile Budget Opened,
if relentlessly empirical,
revels in the passionate,
fascination
texts of the 1790s. Replete with
with nature that characterizes many educational
facts
about
oaks,
pines,
grasses,
"Leguminous
Plants,"
and
"Compound
Flow
to
form of the edifying adult-child
ers," the volume uses the popular
dialogue
In older students, including women,
cultivate a sense of wonder.22
Barbauld urged
reverence for nature as well as knowledge.
In a series of letters to "Young La
wrote:
she
laws
"The
of the universe,
the nature and properties
of
dies,"
great
those objects which
not to know: it ismore un
surround us, it is unpardonable
to know, and not to feel the mind
struck with
pardonable
lively gratitude."23
General science was a topic of lifelong learning: in 1800, attending a lecture at the
the poet was "much pleased to see a fashionable
and very at
Royal Institution,
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
/ Anna
Bellanca
tentive
and
about
audience,
Barbauld's
of science
for the purposes
assembled
ladies,
her
own
for women.
The
loguing and classifying
3, line 21). The poem
Nor
winter
bites
nor
food
of
in the groves
nations
o'er
However,
entitled
cul
the
essential
naturalist's
tasks,
cata
of "various [bird] nations"
(Poem
a topic of keen interest to
the
as
poet
her
plain,
remain;
their way
wing
trackless
the
sea.
a naturalist,
leisure activity to fill the "lonely
female friendship.
not
were
bird migration,
the naked
upon
shelter
congregated
In dusky
columns
portrait
out
and habitats
behaviors
also discusses
The
this
acts
that
some Drawings
of
P[riestley],
Pennant's British Zoology25
and possi
Thomas
poem
nature
with
ornithologists:
eighteenth-century
When
with
For "To Mrs.
she consulted
observation.
interactions
dramatize
poems
early
turally
Birds and Insects,"
In
third
51
Petition"
improvement."24
sanctioned
bly
one
"The Mouse's
Barbauld's
hour"
also
writings
(lines
61-2,
65-6)26
nature
embraces
Barbauld
study
(line 121) and as a satisfying medium
propagate
the
view
that
men
and
women
a
as
of
are
to the same degree
that she neglected
Complaining
with the sexes' divergent
that she and her brother
ent assignments:
bours of a manly
of learning about nature. "To Dr. Aikin on his
him" (Poem 7) describes Barbauld's
experience
"paths." The poem recalls the interests and "sympathy"
shared
sent them on differ
in their youth, until maturity
thee fair fate assign'd / The nobler la
In adulthood,
the sister's scope is con
"Our path divides?to
mind"
(lines 20, 50-1).
fined to "more humble works,
and lower cares" (line 52). While
John Aikin will
acclaim
for
his
his
medical work and
her
garner
writing, Barbauld acknowledges
own "bounded sphere" (line 6). The poem's negatives
suggest the self-restraint of
desire: Barbauld will not "strive to soar too high, /Nor for the tree of knowledge
sigh"; rather, she will "Check the fond love of science and of fame, / A
In Harriet Guest's view, the
flame" (lines 56-9).
bright, but ah! a too devouring
.
.
.
chafes"
the
in life paths; William
difference
poet "briefly
against
prescribed
"wistful
goes further, arguing that these passages
express Barbauld's
McCarthy
enviousness"
of Aikin's opportunities:
the text "documents]
her resentment of
vainly
woman's
Barbauld's
lectual
female
fate
restricted
aspirations
learnedness
[and]
her
imaginative
resistance
to
that
fate."27
"bounded
of women's
intel
sphere" limns the containment
as Ann B. Shteir has written,
in an era when,
the "fear of
was a leitmotif"
in texts about women
and science, which
often brandished
Guest
could
the horrifying
"specter" of overeducated
spinsterhood.28 Harriet
the host of contradictory
roles inwhich the "learned lady"
be cast: public spectacle,
icon of British progressiveness,
sexual
potential
has documented
Women's
scandal, imitator of male scholarly over-specialization.29
participation
in "science culture" notwithstanding,
the perceived benefits of formal scientific
study were limited. Shteir notes that until well into the nineteenth century, women
were "excluded from formal participation
in the public institutions of...
science.
of the Royal Society [which admitted Priestley] or the
They could not be members
Linnean Society, could not attend meetings,
read papers, or (with very rare excep
in the journals of these societies."30
tions) see their findings published
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
52
Eighteenth-Century
Studies
37/1
The disapproval
that could shadow intellectual women
helps to contex
the much-debated
letter of 1774 inwhich Barbauld declines an invitation
to establish a young "ladies'" academy.31 For women
"to be taught in a regular
tualize
manner
systematic
ly produce
liere,
than
entails
the
"such
various
branches
as
characters
or
wives
good
agreeable
she writes,
science,"
or
the
more
would
'Femmes
like
of Mo
scavantes'
Advanced
companions."
and risks public
deception
of
'Pr?cieuses'
the
for women
learning
humiliation:
to have
such a general
tincture
of
ladies, who
ought
only
as to make
to a man
them agreeable
of sense,
knowledge
companions
and to enable
them to find rational
entertainment
for a solitary
hour,
more
a
should
in
these
gain
accomplishments
quiet and unobserved
Young
. . .The
manner.
while
carefully
A woman's
ultimate
intellectual
pursuits:
The
line of
woman
of knowledge
in our sex are only connived
at
if
and
with
concealed,
punished
displayed,
disgrace.32
thefts
is the domestic
calling
between
separation
to me
excused
of a young
studies
fixed
[department
a mother,
a mistress
wife,
is your
of a family.
professional
have
The
is
one
but
It is, to be a
to these
belonging
knowledge
the want
of which
knowledge,
for
a young
and
a woman
....
same
the
little room
affords
man
by this,?that
. . Women
.
all professional
knowledge.
in life], and all women
have
from
duties
the
to be chiefly
appears
sphere, which
nothing
will
excuse.
Young
women
suitable
ments
a
rural
are
or
also
from
"excused"
for them are those
lessons
hands-on
scientific
the most
research:
that "may be learnt at home without
experi
apparatus."33
These
rules of engagement
retreat
poem
to govern
appear
"To Mrs.
like
written,
P,"
for
"The Invitation"
an
woman
absent
(Poem 4),
friend.34
is a scene of female pleasures both sensory and
Early in the poem, the outdoors
are
cerebral. Nature's
energies
represented
through feminine bird and plant imag
of
the
botanical
the spring's "transforming
ery: "FLORA," deity
world, wields
power,"
and
"heav'n-born"
inine, a proud,
By the poem's
delights
zoology,
a
science,
at
attraction
key
is also
Warrington,
fem
eagle that can soar almost anywhere
(lines 42, 98, 101).
the emphasis moves
from the country's
end, however,
leisurely
to the academic pursuits of Warrington's
include
(male) inmates, which
and
botany,
entomology:
Some
[students]
Unfold
the
With
trace with
Some
nature's
Untwist
And
silky
hunt
her
beauteous
to her
the
shelly
[that is, microscopes]
of an insect's wing.
curious
changes,
her
creep along
of a flower;
pensive
texture
eyes
sharpen'd
all the wonders
And
Of
"ardent"
search
and
her
web,
elemental
inspect
disrobe
forms,
an hornet's
sting,
cause
the hidden
various
shore;
laws;
her
charms,
(lines
155-62)
the
Along with the poem's focus, power relations have radically shifted. When
school's formal studies enter the picture, feminine nature diminishes
in strength.
No
acted
force, "she" becomes passive and sexualized,
longer a transformative
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
/ Anna
Bellanca
"The Mouse's
Barbauld's
53
Petition"
upon rather than acting?even
preyed upon. The earth makes herself available
for the students' searching, inspection, and analysis, and she obligingly
"opens all
secret
who
"hunt" and "disrobe"
would
her
springs" for the "inquiring youth"
her
(lines 97, 95).
The
people
are male.
nature
who
Some
perform
are
all this
the
laborers,
inspecting,
"sons
of
and disrobing
tracing,
toil"
who
the
"scoop
hard
of
bo
som of the solid rock" to build the Duke of Bridgewater's
canal. "Resistless"
and
to
men
river
flood"
of
make
the
the
these
genius
th'unwilling
"compel
patient,
run where designing humans choose
61, 63). But the most
(lines 59-60,
impor
are
tant masculine
the alumni who,
"MAN,"
Warrington's
product,
players
by some resistless force" like the canal builders, will assume important
in trade and the professions
(lines 153, 145). The triumphant power of
positions
science contrasts
feminine "Muse," who appears at the
with
Barbauld's
starkly
. . .
far
end:
such
My drooping Muse
bright designs to paint, /
poem's
"Unequal
folds up her fluttering wing"
(lines 185, 187).
"impell'd
does not attack
"The Invitation"
women
from advanced
scientific
or the exclusion
activities
of
study. On the contrary, the poet expresses pride in
of students whom
"their country calls" and the canal,
formal
both
the "little group"
foster "social plenty" (lines 135, 78). Barbauld's portrayal of feminine
in a cultural language that subjects the femi
"Nature"
suggests her immersion
nine to a knowledge
used
system
largely by men. As gender theorists have argued,
the myth of nature as "Woman" both describes and fosters an agenda of mastery
which will
science. The metaphor
does not empower actual flesh-and-blood
women
but identifies them with passive, pliable "Nature" and empowers
actual
men to control both women
In "The Invitation,"
and the material
environment.35
women
look on with awe as male scientists and engineers apply knowledge
that
in Enlightenment
has
valued
real-world
"fluttering"
The
consequences,
capability
using
that
powers
surpass
the
"drooping,"
of the feminine.
shifting borderlines
for all and acceptance
in Barbauld's
writings
limitations
between
on
insistence
of feminine
exemplify her culture's
about nature, gender, and knowledge. Women
could and did pursue
ambiguities
natural history in its descriptive,
aesthetic, and noninvasive modes;
they became
serious students of science, taught the young, and produced
successful books for
knowledge
general
But
readers.
were
women
not
encouraged
to become
experimental
or
the
and "shapers" of new knowledge.36
Barbauld's
scientists, the producers
as
in A Legacy for Young Ladies, women
is suggestive:
she writes
very phrasing
were "excused"
from the professions,
but "nothing
[would] excuse" them from
their domestic duty. Harriet Guest suggests that the public/professional
and pri
so
vate/domestic
realms were more fluidly interactive than previously
recognized,
oretical
that women's
from [professional]
may have been vital
"exemption
productivity"
role of "civilizing" men.37 Even so, Barbauld's
language of offense
and judgment, pardon and excuse hints that the stakes were high for the trans
intellectual woman.
The anecdote of the surreptitious
gressively
deposit of her
to their valued
in
"Petition"
cultural
acquiescence
of
one
man's
epitomizes
women's
need
to maneuver
around
to speak about science. Nonetheless,
they wanted
to gender divisions
in scientific study did not preclude
when
proscriptions
Barbauld's
criticism
mousetrap
Priestley's
practice.
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
54
Studies
Eighteenth-Century
37/1
"SOMUCH MANGLED": PRIESTLEYAND VIVISECTION
was
If Barbauld
an outsider
science, she was an insider
influence raised [her] pen
"brightening
a safe environment
home provided
for
to experimental
in the Priestleys'
"social circle," whose
sive mind"
(Poem 1, lines 41-2). Their
the young poet's horizons beyond the bounds
dialogue and broadened
no
means
was "The Mouse's
the only
Petition"
her
by
parents.38 By
prescribed
text inwhich she challenged Joseph Priestley; rather, itwas one volley in an ongo
ing battle of wits between the friends about the pursuit of knowledge.
intellectual
reaction to Priestley's History
Their dialogue begins with Barbauld's
of
In the preface to the second edition, Priestley lo
the Present State of Electricity.
cates himself with other natural philosophers
of knowledge:
atop the mountain
"To look down from the eminence,
and to see, and compare all those gradual
cannot
in the ascent,
advances
seated on the eminence,
and who
to those who are
but give the greatest pleasure
feel all the advantages
of their elevated situa
his claims for science sweeping: "The immediate
tion." His agenda is ambitious,
use of natural science is the power it gives us over nature, by means of the knowl
edge we acquire of its laws; whereby human life is, in its present state, made more
comfortable
and happy .... And by these sciences also it is, that the views of the
human
mind
are
itself
and
enlarged,
our
common
nature
and
improved
enno
bled."39
a prose work
is "The Hill of Science: A Vision,"
response
as
same
In
the
"The
Mouse's
Petition."
it
she
echoes
year
published
Priestley's
own phrasing while she rewrites the hill-of-science
the value
allegory to question
of the "eminence" on which her friend is "seated." In Barbauld's
Pil
text?part
Barbauld's
Progress,
grim's
part
Purgatorio?a
of Truth."
labors
pilgrim-dreamer
the moun
toward
hill
is noticeably messier
than Priestley's,
taintop "temple
due to the "heaps of rubbish, [which] continually
tumbled down from the higher
Some climbers become "disgusted"
and give up: "sitting
parts of the mountain."
on
some
down
the multitude
below
fragment of the rubbish,
[they] harangued
with
the
greatest
"form
of
nounces,
and
features
raise
may
and
importance
by a sudden
diviner
"Science
of
marks
is rescued
tagonist
Barbauld's
you
apparition:
a more
to
not Truth
but
Barbauld's
but the goddess
radiance,"
benign
eminence,
But
self-complacency."
I alone
who
can
pro
an
imperiously
guide
a
Virtue,
you
to
felici
"Hill of Science" reads like a reminder to Priestley of his own
ty!"40 Barbauld's
assertion that the claims of "benevolence"
and moral virtue supersede the pursuit of
"The greatest, and noblest use of philosoph
power over nature. As he had written,
ical speculation
is the discipline
of the heart, and the opportunity
it affords of
inculcating
benevolent
and
pious
sentiments
upon
the mind.
. . .The
contempla
should give a sublimity to [the philosopher's]
virtue . . .
and teach him to aspire to the moral perfections of the great author of all things."41
One realm inwhich virtue might cultivate a "discipline of the heart" was
tion of the works
of God
sympathy for animals.
on animals had begun
of sensibility began
emphasis on animals'
demnations
In parallel but not coincidental
developments,
experiments
to attract criticism around midcentury,
when the discourse
to assert nonhuman
creatures' capacity to suffer pain. The
feeling departed from debates of previous eras, when con
of cruelty usually cited human-centered
reasons such as animals' val
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bellanca
/ Anna
"The Mouse's
Barbauld's
55
Petition"
ue as property or the belief that animal abusers would
likely abuse humans as
well.42 In Barbauld's
lifetime, while English culture remained strongly anthropo
animal
centric,
of
conflation
"feeling"?a
sensation
physical
and
emotion?took
on unprecedented
importance.43 More people insisted that to inflict needless suf
or not it [had] any human
on
was
animals
"wrong regardless of whether
fering
Tristram
Like
uncle
who
spares a fly's life, sensi
consequences."
Shandy's
Toby,
tive
spiders deserve
even
that
decided
persons
creatures
unpopular
and some expressed
respect,
such
as
snakes,
about killing
qualms
and
toads,
insects or catch
in traps.44
ing mice
a menagerie
Barbauld's writings,
of beset birds, cats, dogs,
Throughout
and other "small vulnerable
animals" provides company
for the furry captive of
45
"The Mouse's
Petition."
Barbauld and Aikin's Evenings at Home contains many
In "The Trans
that imagine the world from animal characters' viewpoints.
a
man
to
of Indur," for example,
kind
realizes his wish
become differ
migrations
pieces
ent
animals
with
"rational
souls"
and
memory,
he
whereupon
first
experiences
and pr?dations of animal existence.46 These stories clearly imply
that living things exist for their own reasons, not merely for human exploitation.
are Made
is propounded
in the dialogue
That message
"What Animals
explicitly
hand
the dangers
For," inwhich a father exhorts
she finds them annoying:
[T]he
Creator
looks
down
his young
daughter
not to kill flies simply because
desires
the happiness
of all his
equally
as much
with
these
flies
upon
benignity
.
. . We
around
ourselves.
have a right to
us, as upon
use of all animals
for our advantage,
and also to free
as are hurtful
such
extend.
take
But we
their
away
the kings
upon
If destroying
attached
to experiments
since the Renaissance,
In the
medicine.
to us.
So
never
should
lives wantonly.
earth cannot
far our
abuse
and
creatures,
that
are
make
sporting
a reasonable
from
ourselves
over
them may
superiority
fairly
nor
them for our mere
amusement,
. . .An
restore
infant
may
destroy
life, but
all
it.47
flies was questionable,
it is not surprising that disapproval
on animals. Such experimentation
had played a key role,
in advancing knowledge
about anatomy, physiology,
and
seventeenth
vivisection?that
century,
is, dissection
or
other
sur
been
gical procedures performed on living animals for research or teaching?had
as the "lacteals," or lymphatic system,
involved in such fundamental
discoveries
and circulation of the blood. By the eighteenth century, animal experiments were
that,
as
creatures
without
claim on humans.48
the
scientific
gained was
that the knowledge
argued
moral
outside
controversy
generating
reason,
community.
unavailable
animals
could
Defenders
through
be
of
vivisection
other methods
treated
as
objects
with
and
no
In Jonathan
Swift's satire of speculative science in Gulliv
er's Travels, indignities perpetrated on a dog serve to lambaste experimental
prac
tices as crude and preposterous,
without
for
the
necessarily
implying sympathy
the potential
dog. Other writers, more respectful of science in general, weighed
benefits of research against its costs in harm to animals. The Spectator and the
Gentleman's Magazine
as well as
declared vivisection
and unnecessary
pointless
the "right" to kill animals even for med
cruel, while Alexander
Pope questioned
to human health.49 A particularly
ical discoveries
important
strong indictment
appeared
in Samuel
Johnson's
Idler in 1758. Although
Johnson
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
usually
followed
56
Eighteenth-Century
37/1
Studies
in this essay he expressed
"abhorrence"
for "the infer
enthusiasm,
"race of wretches,"
iour professors of medical knowledge"?a
he declared, "whose
is to nail dogs to tables and open them alive; to try how
favourite amusement
or with the excision
in various degrees of mutilation,
long life may be continued
or laceration of the vital parts ....
if the knowledge
of physiology
has been
somewhat
learns the use of the
encreased, he surely buys knowledge
dear, who
lacteals at the expence of his humanity."50
science with
The phrase "at the expence of humanity" must have resonated with Jo
some nine years later in his account of his own
seph Priestley, for it appeared
work.
Priestley
"a
performed
great
number
of
on
experiments
animals,"
begin
in his History
ning with the research discussed
of the Present State of Electricity.
some
These experiments
earned him
distinction:
according to Benjamin Franklin,
"Animals larger and more difficult to kill, appear to have been killed by the doc
tor's Apparatus,
than by any other before used."51 But the History
also betrays
even
this
about
of
his
work.
his
distaste,
aspect
Priestley's ambivalence,
Narrating
of
the
effects
of
study
physiological
lightning strikes, Priestley describes his sub
jection of a rat, a shrew, cats, and dogs to electric shock and the resulting "vio
lent" convulsions
and other disturbing
effects. In one instance, to spare a cat so
to administer
a "second
from a "lingering death," Priestley was moved
to put the creature out of its misery. When he tried a larger shock on the
head of a dog, "all his [the animal's] limbs were extended, he fell backwards,
and
or sign of life, for about a minute." After half an hour of
any motion,
lay without
treated
stroke"
a great quantity of saliva; and there was
the dog "kept discharging
convulsions,
also a great flux of rheum from his eyes, on which he kept putting his feet; though
in other respects he lay perfectly
listless." The dog survived in this condition until
the next day, when Priestley
part of his head."52
"dispatched
[him], by shooting
him through
the hinder
in connection with
Priestley expresses explicit doubts about these methods
an
on
a
the dramatic result of
experiment
frog. He had dissected the frog's thorax
to observe its heartbeat,
an electric shock: "Upon receiving the
then administered
stroke,
the
the lungs were
instantly
thrown
out
thorax,
quite
of
inflated;
the
body."
and, together with
After
some
the other contents
tentative
movements,
of
"at
last the creature seemed as if itwould have come to life, if it had not been so much
In an uneasy echo of Johnson, Priestley concludes
that "it is paying
mangled."
to
dear for philosophical
at
them
the expence of humani
discoveries,
purchase
if
ty."53 Barbauld probably knew about these episodes from reading the History,
not from firsthand observation.
At Warrington,
his
Priestley performed
experi
ments
near his house; he welcomed
in an outbuilding
and it seems
witnesses,
likely he would discuss his work with Barbauld and other friends. Even if Bar
bauld did not witness
in person, she may have heard their audi
any experiments
an explosion
of mixed gases on one occasion
that, according
"burst a glass and had like to have done me a mischief."54
ble results?such
Priestley,
Mice
lab in the early 1770s when,
the
Priestley's
undertaking
isolation of oxygen, he sought "a farther insight into the
constitution
of the atmosphere."55
Curious
about the differences
between ordi
and
"noxious"
a
determined
that
enclosed
nary
air, Priestley
"full-grown mouse"
in a glass vessel of "common air" could survive for "about a quarter of an hour."
work
that
entered
to
led to his
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
/ Anna
Bellanca
"The Mouse's
Barbauld's
57
Petition"
and ob
then placed mice in vessels of air mixed with various contaminants
as well as the effects of their breathing on
the effects on their respiration,
call adding in
the contained
air. In what vivisection
opponents would doubtless
on
sult to injury, Priestley
live mice of
studied, among other things, the effects
He
served
air that was "generated solely from putrefying mice, which
I have been
some months,
than which nothing can be more deadly."56 Itwas while
collecting
in a
that Barbauld placed her poem of animal advocacy
he was thus engaged
was
it
"after
discovered
mouse's
breakfast,"
where
cage,
breathing
THE "FELLOWSHIPOF SENSE":
"THEMOUSE'S PETITION"
Infiltrating the workspace of experiment via the domestic spaces of Priestley's
Petition" brings the cultures of science and sensibility
into
home, "The Mouse's
nor
intimate proximity. Neither
house
strictly private, Priestley's
strictly public
may qualify as Harriet Guest's "third site" of social exchange, an
cum-laboratory
arena where
interactions
could incubate public virtues.57 The mouse's
private
a
a cri
is
that deftly weaves
compact rhetorical performance
postprandial
plea
poem and a
tique of Priestley's work with the playful wit of the light occasional
web of allusion to the serious debate about animals. The poem deploys two cul
ven
the language of feeling and anthropomorphic
apparatus,
turally powerful
an
as
a
to
creature
sentient
effective
but
imagine
subject
triloquism,
speaking subject.
To begin with the critique of vivisection,
entrapment
though the mouse's
can certainly symbolize human bondage,
its immediate poignancy
arises from the
literal details of Priestley's method. The mouse's
sighing is not only a convention
of sentimental
literature; it also puns on the fact that the actual mouse may suffo
cate. The
captive's desire for "the vital air" (line 21) is thus quite literal as well.
its
assertion
that light and air are "common
Further,
(line 24) plays on
gifts"
to
meant
to be shared
"common
references
air"?air
both
and
Priestley's
ordinary
by all:
The
The
chearful
Are
Let
blessings
nature's
The
common
light,
the vital
air,
given;
widely
commoners
enjoy
gifts of heaven,
(lines
21-4)
"Petition"
takes advantage of the "overlapping
rhetorical
strategies" noted
Sant in narratives of suffering and scientific accounts:
like Priestley's
creature
Barbauld's
the
and
it suffer."58 The
poem "isolates]
experiment,
mak[es]
scene of sensibility
in humanitarian
and literary
poet literalizes the conventional
a
texts?the
and
of
scrutiny
display
representative
feeling captive?to
figure the
by Ann Van
distress
of an actual
flesh-and-blood
victim.
on Barbauld's warning
that "Virtue" ismore desirable
Elaborating
a
casts
intellectual
the
dubious
"eminence,"
poem
eye on the manipulation
weaker
creatures.
The
mousetrap's
"wiry
grate"
is associated
with
the
than
of
"tyrant's
chain," which Priestley ordinarily would
"spurn," and with the traps of fate that
threaten "men, like mice"
thus joins the dreamer
(lines 6, 10, 48, 46). The mouse
"Hill of Science" in raising moral rectitude above callous or soul
of Barbauld's
In place of ambition,
less scientific achievement.
the "Petition's"
language of feel
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
58
37/1
Studies
Eighteenth-Century
the mouse
imagination:
appeals not
sympathetic
ing seeks to ignite Priestley's
mouse
or
to
to
which
the
"breast"
his
its
head
but
heart,
implores
captor's
only
him to open so he may open the trap (line 9). The "well taught philosophic mind"
to other creatures; indeed, it should feel
should be more, not less, compassionate
"for all that lives" (lines 26, 28). The mouse's plea is concerned not so much with
as with the painful emotions
it already feels: "For
prospective
bodily discomfort
/Which
here forlorn and sad I sit, / . . .And tremble at th' approaching morn,
in
is
that
modeled
The
desired
fate"
response
(lines 5, 7-8).
brings impending
in which
of
the speaker's recognition
Barbauld's
later poem "The Caterpillar,"
her kinship with a "helpless thing" makes her "feel and clearly recognise / .. . [its]
of sense with
fellowship
all that breathes"
(Poem 133,
lines 1, 25-7).
In this approach Barbauld allies herself with other writers,
such as Anne
in human terms. G. J.
Finch and Anna Seward, who imagined animal subjectivity
asserts that women writers
in particular, who found themselves
Barker-Benfield
in a culture dominated
and "dependent"
"vulnerable"
by men, "put themselves
'in the place' of animals" even more than they did that of poor people, prisoners,
slaves,
or
other
intended
beneficiaries
In
creature.60
texts
Women's
reform.59
"mix humour and compassion
as the speaker projects herself
Anne Doody,
says Margaret
the immediate and physical
another
of
the mouse's
adopting
position,
subject
inHymns
tion" anticipates her admonishment
must speak on behalf of "dumb" nature.61
in Prose
about
animals,
with a strong sense of
. . . into the
being" of
Barbauld's
for Children
"Peti
that humans
to its literary genealogy,
is also descended
the "Petition"
from
creatures.
From time
debates about humans' relationship with other
In addition
philosophical
to time inWestern
the argument
of cruelty have countered
history, opponents
lack mind or spirit by hypothesizing
that they may have "rational
notion that implies both reasoning power and the potential
souls"62?a
for an
afterlife. In this vein, the mouse warns Priestley:
that animals
as ancient
If mind,
A never
Still
In every
form
Beware,
lest
A
brother's
And
sages
flame,
dying
shifts thro' matter's
the
tremble
forms,
varying
same,
in the worm
soul
taught,
you
you
crush
find;
lest thy luckless
hand
mind,
(lines 29-36)
a kindred
Dislodge
on animal welfare
A few commentators
believed in the transmigration
of souls, as
uses
did Priestley for a short time, and Barbauld's mouse
the
scientist's
craftily
former belief against him.63 The animal may, after all, be a kindred spirit who
shares the fellowship not only of "sense" or feeling but also that of mind.
The mouse
appeal
mals'
feelings:
the
on philosophical
issues in other ways.
It backs up its
an
with
argument older than the interest in ani
sympathy
draws
to Priestley's
consequences
to humans
of
their
own
cruelty.
es the scientist
The
mouse
wish
"health," "peace," and "heartfelt ease" if he spares its life (lines
and more ominously,
it hints at what may happen if he does
42, 43). Conversely,
not: "when destruction
lurks unseen, /Which men,
like mice, may share," there
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
/ Anna
Bellanca
"The Mouse's
Barbauld's
59
Petition"
be no "kind angel" around to "break the hidden snare" for Priestley
(lines
with
The poem thus affirms human-animal
kinship
irony by re
playful
mouse
can
to
the
that
what
Priestley
happens
easily happen to the man.
minding
may
45-8).
RESISTING THE TECHNOLOGY OF ENTRAPMENT
is not the only natural entity in Barbauld's poems en
caged mouse
Other creatures, as well as energy bearing forces
snared by human machinery.
confined or chan
such as rivers and lightning, share the mouse's
predicament,
a pheasant caught in a "wiry net"
In "To Mrs. P[riestley],"
neled by technology.
The
in its grate, for liberty
and longs, like the mouse
feels "Oppress'd
by bondage"
on
a
a
mourns
The
lines
Goldfinch"
51, 54).
prose poem "Epitaph
(Poem 3,
a
hands
animal
with
bird
abducted
of
the
by
"pitiless
two-legged
freedom-loving
out feathers" and "confined
in a grated prison." The goldfinch's
repeated "peti
until at last the bird dies.64 In other poems, as
tion for redress" goes disregarded
in "The Mouse's
gets wielded
entities
natural
Petition,"
for release
yearn
from scientific
gad
projectors.
by Priestleyesque
arose in
self-confessed
"enthusiasm"
for natural philosophy
Priestley's
In
in
instruments."
from
the
his
part
History
of Electricity
"philosophical
delight
he recommends
financing equipment purchases by spending less money on books,
"which are generally read and laid aside, without yielding half the entertainment."
Instruments
and reveal nothing less than
provide "an endless fund of knowledge"
... of the God of nature himself, which are infinitely various. By
the "operations
we are able to put an endless variety of things into an
the help of these machines,
endless
that
of
variety
recalcitrance
Nature
situations."
a need
creates
for
not
does
substantial
cooperate,
always
resources,
and
however,
especially
experimental
to be
"Nature will not be put out of her way, and suffer her materials
apparatus:
. . .without
thrown into all the variety of situations, which philosophy
requires,
trouble
and
expence."65
In this struggle between the "requirements"
of natural philosophy
and a
stubborn feminine nature, Barbauld's poems may be rooting for the latter. Several
of them concern devices contrived to manipulate
natural forces, but those devices
dominate
phenomena
for
only
a time.
In "Inscription
for
an
Ice-House,"
the
sea
son of winter
is imprisoned by "man, the great magician,"
the ele
who molds
ments to his will and presses winter
into the domestic
service of preserving
food
brothers' hot-air balloon, an exciting in
(Poem 95, lines 4-5). The Montgolfier
vention
that
appears
in
"Washing-Day,"
enables
men
to
harness
warm
air
and
elude gravity (Poem 102). "An Inventory of the Furniture inDr. Priestley's Study"
lists among the scientist's equipment Leyden jars containing electric charges (Poem
that is, specifically
21, line 19). Like the icehouse, these devices are manmade,
as
masculine;
Isobel
Armstrong
asserts,
the
phrase
"man,
the
great
magician"
men who
"surely [signifies]
subject
"control the genius of th'unwilling
in Barbauld's
flood"
"The Invitation,"
all
these technologies
of entrapment
seek to appropriate
the creatures and powers of
(usually) feminine nature.
the masculine
alone."66
Like
the "resistless"
of Barbauld's other texts
poems share the ineradicable ambivalence
In general they approvingly
treat inventions
like the icehouse and
balloon as instruments of progress that will better the human condi
These
about
science.
the hot-air
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
60
Eighteenth-Century
Studies
37/1
that these technologies
tion. But the mastery
represent entails a price, the poems
in
what
of
the
"oppress'd by bondage,"
uncertainty
trapped phenomena,
imply,
and will inevitably
in the icehouse only temporarily
is confined
may do. Winter
rule
the
in
"To
whirlwinds
and
rush
forth,
escape
year" (line 31). The hot-air
balloon in "Washing-Day"?whose
first, experimental
passengers were three do
crash or go awry. The poem wryly deflates, as it were,
mestic
animals67?could
"the
that resemble
triumph, an instance of "the toils of men"
in
line
The
of
children"
84),
(Poem 102,
laboratory
lightning
sports
Priestley's
like the exploding
gases that
"phials" could wreak havoc in the neighborhood,
a
if
these
once almost did him "a mischief."
released
electric
Like
rogue spirit,
the balloonists'
/ And kill
houses,
charges could "Bring down the lightning on [the neighbors']
In these texts,
their geese, and fright their spouses"
(Poem 21, lines 16, 21, 23-4).
tranquility and normalcy?
experimental
gadgetry disrupts or threatens domestic
work
in "Washing-Day"?as
well as the lives of helpless
such as the women's
on the problematic
entrapment
Elaborating
these images of incarcerated nature call into question
creatures.
aggressive
to
technocracy?an
optimism
in "The Mouse's
Petition,"
a headlong optimism about
Barbauld was inclined
that, paradoxically,
share.
BARBAULD'S DISCLAIMER AND THE "PETITION'S"
RECEPTION
Turner reports that the "Petition" moved Priestley to
Although William
one
to use mice in his work with
the
continued
free
particular mouse,
philosopher
gases until at least 1775 (then, citing imprecise results, he decided "not to make
in contrast,
took the
any more experiments with mice"),68 The reading public,
poem's
implications more to heart. At the same time, Barbauld's
in her attitudes. The
conflicts
further exposes unresolved
on
as
an
its subtitle
the
attack
poem
treating
Priestley, amended
antivivisection
with
critics
dialogue
Critical Review,
to say sarcastically
that the petition was found by "the humane Dr. P." (emphasis
the reviewer
in original). Evidently
familiar with Priestley's work on electricity,
that the mouse had been caught "to be tortured by electrical experi
misreported
not for experiments with gases. The writer went on to "commend
the
ments,"
to extricate the little wretch
from misery"
for endeavouring
and
lady's humanity
to "testify our abhorrence of the cruelty practised by experimental philosophers."69
"be of
Review desired that "The Mouse's
Petition" would
Similarly, The Monthly
as
as
service to that gentleman
well
other experimental
[Priestley]
philosophers,
to the poor harmless animals, that are
who are not remarkable for their humanity
so ill-fated as to fall in their way."70 In later editions of her Poems, Barbauld
over Priestley's
herself from faultfinding
A note in the
distanced
experiments.
to find, that
is
and
editions
Author
fifth
"The
concerned
third, fourth,
reads,
was
as
of
what
the petition
intended
mercy against justice, has been construed as
of humanity
against cruelty. She is certain that cruelty could never be
to whom this is addressed; and the poor animal
from
the
Gentleman
apprehended
would have suffered more as the victim of domestic economy,
than of philosoph
the pleas
ical
curiosity."71
Barbauld's
tice" to experiment
here is puzzling. Her implication that itwas "jus
backpedaling
with the mouse undercuts
the poem's message
of sympathy.
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
/ Anna
Bellanca
61
Petition"
"The Mouse's
Barbauld's
but horrified
the other hand, the poet may have been not merely "concerned"
in print as "not remarkable
to see her good friend condemned
for [his] humani
as much as a disclaimer
ty." Her note may be a defense against such a perception
On
the intent of the "Petition."
(She may also be dryly hinting that animal
sympathy, as a practical matter, has its limits: just as the mouse would have been
vermin in their
killed as a pest, most people would not hesitate to exterminate
account
Turner's
of
the poem's gen
after
Decades
Barbauld's
death,
later,
homes.)
about
esis reproduced her efforts at damage control, possibly out of loyalty to the Aikin
and
circle. Like Barbauld, Turner represents Priestley's use of mice as unavoidable
treats their fate in the lab as relatively humane: "no more easy or unexceptionable
such experiments
way of making
[on gases] could be devised, than the reserving
of these little victims of domestic economy, which were thus at least as easily and
as speedily
put out of existence,
other
"The
readers,
exist
unmolested
Mouse's
by human
on
variations
Mouse,"
equation
of
an
the
uncertain
like mice"
"men,
phrase
Possibly
and other
animals'
For many
usual modes."72
a humble
asserts
clearly
machinations.
humans'
representing
cissitudes
as by any of the more
Petition"
by way
have
creature's
right
"To a
of Burns's
become
to
shorthand,
an
to the vi
shared vulnerability
world.73
about the poem's reception
speaks to the final irrec
with
is desirable,
in
her
oncilability
dialogue
Priestley. Knowledge
costs
of knowledge?in
animal suffering, inmanipula
both writers agree, but the
tion of nature, in "trouble and expence"?are
"Truth" at the
high. Discovering
is a purchase
and "humanity"
expense of compassion
"dear," as
disturbingly
Barbauld's
anxiety
of the tensions
is neither a definitive
had put it. In the end, "The Mouse's
Petition"
a
on
nor
on science, but a
animal
broadside
attack
pronouncement
experiments
a
nonce utterance provoked
at
board"
by
caged animal
Priestley's
"hospitable
Priestley
(Poem 19, line 40). Mock-serious
though its tone may be, this slight poem about
a small mammal
is a nexus of more epochal phenomena:
science,
experimental
the culture of sensibility, advocacy for animals, and the gendered politics of knowl
"The Mouse's
Peti
edge. A sidelong subversion of Enlightenment
technocracy,
is a scene
tion"
of
to come
engagement
among
to terms with
struggling
and men.
thinking, feeling women
but
competing
the material
world
interdependent
and with
discourses
its meanings
for
NOTES
Iwould
Knowles,
like to thank Christopher
D. Johnson,
E. Lorraine
comments
and the ECS readers for their helpful
de Montluzin,
on
David
L. Cowles,
Travis W.
this essay.
1. William
and Elizabeth
eds., The Poems
Kraft,
McCarthy
(Athens,
of Anna Letitia Barbauld
of Georgia
of Barbauld's
hereafter
Press, 1994). Quotations
poems are from this edition,
in text by poem number
and line number.
For the full text of "The Mouse's
see
Petition,"
Ga.: Univ.
cited
appendix.
2. William
"Mrs. Barbauld,"
Newcastle
n.s., 4 (1825): 184, qtd. inMcCarthy
Turner,
Magazine,
and Kraft, Poems,
was an early historian
244. Turner, of Newcastle,
an
of Warrington
Academy,
Aikin
of Anna Letitia's poems.
and a collector
See McCarthy
and Kraft, Poems,
family acquaintance,
204, 377.
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
62 Eighteenth-Century
and Kraft,
3. McCarthy
4.
Review
of Poems
5.
Lawrence
don: Routledge
6. Marlon
7.
Donna
Literature,
Letitia
Critical
Aikin],
Review
35
192-5.
(1773):
Thor eau, Nature
and the Forma
Buell, The Environmental
Imagination:
Writing,
Univ. Press, 1985),
Culture
185; Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
vol. 2 of The Collected
Works
ed. Lewis Patton,
(Lon
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and Kegan Paul, 1970), 313.
tion of American
The Watchman,
of Dissent,"
en Writers,
37/1
245.
Poems,
[by Anna
Studies
B. Ross,
The Woman
of Feminine
Reform:
Writer
and the Tradition
"Configurations
in Carol Shiner Wilson
and Joel Haefner,
Romanticism:
British Wom
eds., Re-Visioning
1776-1837
Univ. of Pennsylvania
98-9.
Press, 1994),
(Philadelphia:
Landry,
1671-1831
Invention
The
and Ecology
of the Countryside:
Hunting,
Walking,
U. K.: Palgrave,
2001),
8, 123-4.
(Basingstoke,
in English
8. Moira
Animal
and Englishwomen,
1780-1900:
and
Patriots,
Nation,
Ferguson,
Advocacy
on anti-slavery
3-4. For more
and
rhetoric
(Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan
Press, 2001),
see Markman
of animals,
and Com
Race, Gender
Ellis, The Politics
representations
of Sensibility:
merce
in the Sentimental
Novel
Univ. Press,
1996), 50-5. Barbauld's
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
"Epis
Empire
tle toWilliam
Wilberforce,
on the Rejection
Esq.
of the Bill for abolishing
is number
the Slave Trade"
in Poems.
87
9.
Animal
Ferguson,
10. Andreas-Holger
End of the Eighteenth
Historical
Perspective
11.
Keith
Thomas,
1983),
Pantheon,
to the
"Animal Experimentation
from Antiquity
Trohler,
inNicolaas
and Arguments,"
A. Rupke,
in
ed., Vivisection
Helm,
1987), 30.
and Ulrich
Maehle
Attitudes
Century:
Croom
(London:
Man
4.
and Englishwomen,
Advocacy
and
the Natural
World:
A History
of the Modern
(New York:
Sensibility
175-6.
167-9,
12.
Stuart Curran,
"Romantic
Mellor
(Bloomington:
Indiana
Poetry: The IAltered,"
Univ. Press, 1988),
197.
in Romanticism
and Feminism,
K.
ed. Anne
13. Ann B. Shteir, Cultivating
Science: Flora's Daughters
in Eng
and Botany
Women,
Cultivating
to 1860
Univ. Press,
2. On women
aristocrats
and
land, 1760
(Baltimore:
1996),
Johns Hopkins
see Shteir, Cultivating
natural history,
and David E. Allen, The Naturalist
in Britain:
Women,
47-50;
A Social History
on women
For broader historical
context
and
(London: Allen Lane,
1976), 28-9.
see Barbara T. Gates and Ann B. Shteir, eds., Natural
Women
Science
Reinscribe
science,
Eloquence:
Univ. of Wisconsin
(Madison:
Press,
1997),
5-7; and Londa
Women
in the Origins
Science
of Modern
(Cambridge, Mass.:
14.
Prose
ence,
Anna
15.
Gates
and Shteir, Natural
Eloquence,
Interests
1520-1918
Scientific
16. McCarthy
17.
18.
and Kraft,
Poems,
7; Patricia
Phillips, The
(London: Weidenfeld
Aikin
The
circle was
and Gilbert
connected
the book's
to natural
Aikin,
20.
Letters
1975-78),
second
history
19.
naturalist's
edition
in 1802.
of Anna
the coterie
a friend
Poems,
Laetitia
Barbauld.
With
of naturalist-writers
that
a Memoir
included
by Lucy
Thomas
of Pennant,
whose
British Zoology
Barbauld
In 1795 Aikin
edited a Calendar
334, 224.
of
journals and Natural
History
of Selb orne, and he brought
These collaborations
had ample access
suggest that Barbauld
knowledge.
Memoir,
xxv.
of Charles
2:81-2;
with
John Aikin was
see McCarthy
and Kraft,
White.
may have known;
Nature
from White's
gleaned
Scientific
Lady: A Social Histo
and Nicolson,
129-30.
1990),
227.
vol. 1 of The Works
Lucy Aikin, Memoir,
2 vols.
(London: Longman,
1825), x-xi.
Pennant
out
Sex?
to A Legacy
in
Pieces,
Lucy Aikin,
preface
for Young Ladies,
Consisting
of Miscellaneous
and Verse, by the Late Mrs. Barbauld
iv. On Barbauld's
influ
(Boston: David,
1826),
Reed,
see William
at Palgrave:
"The Celebrated
A Documentary
of
McCarthy,
Academy
History
Letitia Barbauld's
8 (1997): 280.
School,"
Age of Johnson
ry of Women's
Aikin,
The Mind Has No
Schiebinger,
Harvard
Univ. Press, 1989).
and Mary
ed. Edwin W. Marrs
Lamb,
at Palgrave,"
"Celebrated
Academy
McCarthy,
Jr. (Ithaca:
313.
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Cornell
Univ.
Press,
/ Anna
Bellanca
21.
Barbauld,
Lessons
I (Charleston,
Part
for Children,
63
Petition"
"The Mouse's
Barbauld's
S.C.: J. Hoff,
1807),
12,
10-11.
rev. and
at Home;
22.
and Anna Barbauld,
or, the Juvenile
Budget Opened,
Evenings
John Aikin
for
the
and
York:
Hurd
ed. Cecil Hartley
1864).
See,
(New
"Eyes, and
example,
dialogue
Houghton,
conservative
Barbauld's
and Aikin's works
also reproduce
274-81.
No Eyes; or, The Art of Seeing,"
in
led by female mentors
Unlike
the dialogues
about the gendered
pursuit of knowledge.
expectations
and others, most of the natural history dialogues
of Trimmer, Wakefield,
the works
Wollstonecraft,
at Home
for adult male
teachers. While
in Evenings
feature boy protagonists
specimens
identifying
movements
are
of
the
learn lessons of
and
often
the
earth,
they
equally
studying gravity
depicted
girls
for animals.
moral
virtue,
compassion
including
probably wrote most of the natural
and female
For more on dialogues
history
dialogues
by Lucy Aikin's
Judging
at Home;
in Evenings
attributions,
see Memoir,
John Aikin
xxxvi-xxvii.
see Gates
and Shteir, Natural
7-12;
teacher-mentors,
Eloquence,
Rational
and
81-103; Mitzi Myers,
Governesses,
Dames,
Women,
Shteir, Cultivating
"Impeccable
in Georgian
Children's
and the Female Tradition
Mothers:
Moral
Books,"
Mary Wollstonecraft
14 (1986):
for Women
The
and Greg Myers,
"Science
and Children:
Literature
Children's
31-59;
in John Christie
in the Nineteenth
Science
and Sally Shuttleworth,
of Popular
Century,"
Dialogue
eds., Nature
Transfigured:
173-81.
1989),
23.
Barbauld,
24.
Barbauld,
25.
McCarthy
Legacy
Science
in Works,
and Kraft,
(Manchester:
Manchester
Univ.
Press,
29.
Ladies,
for Young
letter printed
1700-1900
and Literature,
2:67.
244.
Poems,
in her poetry;
"The wheat
Smith also discusses
26. Charlotte
bird migration
see, for example,
Univ. Press,
(New York: Oxford
1993),
ear," in The Poems
Smith, ed. Stuart Curran
of Charlotte
was fascinated
or hibernate.
194-6. Gilbert White
of whether
swallows migrate
by the mystery
27.
Women
Guest,
"Eighteenth-Century
in Britain,
and Literature
'"We Hoped
the Woman
Carthy,
Letitia Barbauld's
Early Poems,"
Writers:
Voices
28.
29.
Guest,
Small
Press,
2000),
95-110.
30.
in Vivien
Character,'"
Jones, ed.,
Univ.
2000),
Press,
53; Mc
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
to Appear':
in Anna
Was Going
and Gender
Desire,
Repression,
in Paula R. Feldman
and Theresa M. Kelley,
Women
eds., Romantic
and Countervoices
Shteir, Cultivating
Shteir, Cultivating
(Hanover,
N.H.:
Univ.
Sexual
Press
of New
England,
1995),
116.
56.
Women,
Change:
'A Supposed
Femininity:
1700-1800
Women,
Learning,
Patriotism,
1750-1810
(Chicago:
Univ.
of Chicago
37.
Women,
a touchstone
31. This letter has been
for critical debate about Barbauld
See Guest,
and feminism.
"We Hoped";
and Daniel White,
"The 'Joineriana':
Femininity";
"Eighteenth-Century
McCarthy,
Anna Barbauld,
the Aikin
and the Dissenting
Public
Family Circle,
Sphere,"
Eighteenth-Century
a biography
32A
is preparing
Studies
who
of Barbauld,
maintains
that
(1999): 530-1. McCarthy,
to make
her niece, Lucy Aikin,
edited the letter in Works
Barbauld
He
appear
safely conservative.
predicts
thy, "A
Harriet
the Doors
32.
seen in "full biographical
that the letter, when
will
context,"
Christian
'High-Minded
Lady': The Posthumous
Reception
Linkin and Stephen C. Behrendt,
Kramer
eds., Romanticism
of Reception
Aikin,
Memoir,
(Lexington:
Univ.
of Kentucky
Press,
1999),
a new
import; see McCar
Letitia Barbauld,"
in
Writers:
and Women
Opening
have
of Anna
189.
xvii-xviii.
nor anyone
24-6. Of course, neither Priestley
33. Barbauld,
else was a
Legacy
for Young Ladies,
in the eighteenth
ac
scientist
is marking
the difference
between
century. Barbauld
"professional"
in addition,
that would
distract women
from their
any avocation
quiring and producing
knowledge;
domestic
is problematic.
scientific work was not without
diffi
"professional
knowledge"
Priestley's
to get financing,
and coll?gial
culties; he labored constantly
support. His experiments
equipment,
were
and sometimes
for violating
ridicule, but he was not criticized
subject to criticism
gender norms
as an aspiring
woman
scientist
would
34.
For an analysis
of science
see Penny Bradshaw,
"Gendering
Anna Letitia Barbauld,"
Women's
likely have
been.
in this poem
and gender
that overlaps with mine
in some respects,
the Enlightenment:
in the Poetry of
Conflicting
Images of Progress
5.3 (1998): 357-9.
Writing
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Studies
64 Eighteenth-Century
35. Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections
64. Other key sources on "feminine"
in Michelle
Is to Culture?"
Zimbalist
Rose,
Univ.
Univ.
Press,
Rosaldo
Limits
Yale Univ. Press, 1985),
(New Haven:
as Nature
to Male
"Is Female
Sherry B. Ortner,
and
and Louise
Women,
Culture,
eds.,
Lamphere,
The Death
67-87;
Carolyn Merchant,
of Nature:
and Science
include
Press,
1974),
Revolution
and the Scientific
Ecology,
The
Feminism
and Geography:
Women,
(San Francisco:
and Row,
Harper
Knowledge
of Geographical
and Gillian
1980);
Minnesota
(Minneapolis:
1993).
"student of science"
6.1 borrow
between
the distinction
and Shteir, Natural
Eloquence,
in Andrew
and
and the Sciences,"
from Trevor
Levere,
Cunningham
"Coleridge
Univ. Press,
and the Sciences
1990),
eds., Romanticism
Cambridge
Jardine,
(Cambridge:
36.
and
Stanford
(Stanford:
Society
on Gender
nature
37/1
Gates
"scientist"
Nicholas
296.
Small
37.
Guest,
38.
McCarthy,
39.
Priestley,
(London:
120-2.
"We Hoped,"
The History
State of Electricity,
of the Present
and J. Payne,
1769), v, xviii, xvii.
of Science:
A Vision,"
Aikin
(London:
[Barbauld]
to Barbauld
of Science"
"The Hill
inMiscellaneous
J. Johnson,
inMemoir,
1773),
lxv.
Experiments,
Original
2nd
ed.
xviii.
Priestley,
42.
of Animals,
See John Passmore,
"The Treatment
Man
and the Natural
149-51,
World,
Thomas,
History
in Prose,
and Anna
by John Aikin
of
38. Lucy Aikin
attributes
authorship
Pieces,
31-4,
41.
201-2;
with
J. Johnson
"The Hill
40.
Letitia
238.
Change,
of Electricity,
"Journal
154.
of Ideas
of the History
36.2
(1975):
as
of emotion
notions
that sensibility,
informed
Sant shows
by traditional
of physiological
in its rhetoric of suf
and psychological
the categories
collapsed
and psychological
about emotion was
experience
"prominently
"rephysicalized"
fering. Language
see Eighteenth-Century
and the Novel:
The Senses in Social Context
located in the body";
Sensibility
Ann
43.
"partly
Van
Jessie
physical,"
Univ. Press,
and theories of the nervous
1993), 93, 97. On sensibility
(Cambridge:
Cambridge
in Eighteenth-Century
The Culture
Sex and Society
tem, see G. J. Barker-Benfield,
of Sensibility:
Britain
Press, 1992), 3-9.
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
44.
Man
see Thomas,
to destroy vermin,
151. On the reluctance
the Natural
World,
on the complexities
atti
of cultural
173, 176. For more
World,
background
see Harriet
in
Natural
for Children
from Animals:
Ritvo,
animals,
"Learning
History
13 (1995): 72-93;
and Nineteenth
Children's
Literature
Centuries,"
Ritvo, The Ani
Thomas, Man
and the Natural
toward
tudes
the Eighteenth
mal Estate:
The
Univ.
45.
Press,
Mitzi
Children's
and
in the Victorian
Creatures
and Other
Age
(Cambridge,
English
and Landry,
Invention
113-25.
7-9,
of the Countryside,
"Of Mice
Myers,
in Louise
in American
Experience
1995), 275. This article contains
works
for children.
Barbauld's
Women's
and Mothers:
Harvard
and Barbauld,
Evenings
47.
Aikin
and Barbauld,
Evenings
2:103.
1802),
at Home
(1864
at Home;
or, The Juvenile
48. Maehle
and Trohler,
"Animal Experimentation,"
came to be used more broadly
ry, the term vivisection
on live animals.
cal or otherwise,
49.
See Maehle
50.
The Yale Edition
and Trohler,
(New Haven:
156-7.
Lady,
'New Walk'
Barbauld's
and Gendered
in
Codes
and Janet Emig,
and
eds., Feminine
Phelps
Principles
and Rhetoric
Press,
Composition
(Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh
a useful discussion
of "The Mouse's
in
Petition"
and of animals
Aikin
phia: A. Bartram,
Mrs.
Wetherbee
46.
Scientific
Mass.:
1997);
Literature,"
L. F. Powell
sys
"Animal
ed.),
114.
14-20,
to denote
Experimentation,"
Budget
34-7.
Opened,
2nded.
(Philadel
In the later nineteenth
any kind
of experimentation,
centu
surgi
28-32.
vol. 2, ed. W. J. Bate, John M. Bullitt,
of the Works
of Samuel Johnson,
Yale Univ. Press,
see Phillips,
56. On Johnson
and science,
1963),
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
and
The
/ Anna
Bellanca
"The Mouse's
Barbauld's
Petition"
51.
ed. Robert
Joseph Priestley,
Scientific
Autobiography
of Joseph Priestley,
Institute of Technology
Press, 1966), 35. Franklin's
bridge, Mass.: Massachusetts
a paper of his that is printed
in Scientific Autobiography,
67.
52.
of Electricity,
Priestley, History
of the same experiment
ley's account
53.
Priestley,
History
The
618-20.
to "a lingering
35.
reference
in his Scientific
55.
Priestley,
56.
Priestley,
57.
Guest,
58.
Van
59.
Barker-Benfield,
60.
ture
Scientific
Small
of Joseph
in
in Priest
appears
experiments,
Georgian
(Teaneck,
see Scientific
Mrs.
Chronicle:
Associated
N.J.:
Univ.
88.
of Sensibility,
Poets
of the Eighteenth
(Cambridge:
71.
30,
Sensibility,
Culture
1700-1800
death"
(Cam
appears
11-12.
Change,
"Women
ed. Jack Lindsay
Priestley,
Autobiography,
Sant, Eighteenth-Century
Doody,
in Britain,
remark
621-2.
of Electricity,
Autobiography
113-4.
1970),
E. Schofield
Autobiography,
54. Priestley,
to Priestley's
65. On witnesses
Scientific
Autobiography,
see Betsy Rodgers,
22, 32; on his setup at Warrington,
Autobiography,
and Her Family
Barbauld
(London: Methuen,
1958), 41.
Presses,
65
234,
231.
227,
in Vivien
Century,"
Univ.
Press,
Cambridge
Jones, ed., Women
231.
and Litera
2000),
61. Hymns
in Prose for Children
10-11.
Barbauld writes,
"The birds
(London: J. Johnson,
1781),
can warble,
and young
lambs can bleat; but we can open our lips in [God's] praise, we can speak of
we will
all his goodness.
thank him for ourselves,
Therefore
thank him for those that
and we will
cannot
more
on
women
For
writers
see Barker-Benfield,
and animal
Culture
speak."
sympathy,
of
Sensibility,
232-6,
62.
Passmore,
63.
On
Priestley's
and Mitzi
"Treatment
Myers,
of Animals,"
197-8,
64.
Barbauld,
65.
Priestley,
66.
Romantic
Isobel Armstrong,
"The Gush
of
in Paula R. Feldman
Period?"
Voices
and Countervoices
Legacy
History
for Young
46-7.
43,
and
the Natural
World,
138-41;
on
105.
Ladies,
ix-x,
of Electricity,
22),
208.
see Thomas,
Man
246.
Poems,
the concept
of transmigration,
see McCarthy
and Kraft,
beliefs,
(see note
Governesses"
"Impeccable
xvi.
the Feminine:
and Theresa
How
Can We
M.
Read Women's
eds.,
Kelley,
of New England,
Romantic
Poetry of the
Women
Writers:
14.1 am indebted
to
(Hanover, N.H.: Univ. Press
1995),
to gadgetry
for calling my attention
in other Barbauld
texts. Armstrong
notes
that "In
for an Ice-House,"
while
"not quite the first poem written
to a refrigerator,"
is "certainly
scription
one of the earliest hymns
to technology."
this essay
67.
See Ann Messenger,
His and Hers: Essays
Univ. Press of Kentucky,
191.
1986),
in Restoration
and Eighteenth-Century
Literature
(Lexington:
68.
Priestley,
69.
Review
of Poems
[by Anna
70.
Review
of Poems
[by Anna
and Kraft,
The Discovery
Poems,
Part
of Oxygen:
Letitia
Letitia
Aikin],
Aikin],
1 (Edinburgh:
Critical
Monthly
E. S. Livingstone,
1961),
Review
35
(1773):
193.
Review
48
(1773):
138, qtd.
18.
inMcCarthy
245.
71.
Qtd.
inMcCarthy
and Kraft,
Poems,
245.
72.
Qtd.
inMcCarthy
and Kraft,
Poems,
245.
73.
and Men may be the most obvious
John Steinbeck's
Of Mice
example; WorldCat
five nonfiction
books about
animals whose
titles contain
the words
"mice
laboratory
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
lists at least
and men."
66
Studies
Eighteenth-Century
37/1
APPENDIX
"The Mouse's
in the Trap
Found
Petition,
where
he had
been
all Night"
Oh!
hear
For
liberty
never
And
here
And
Which
brings
If e'er
free-born
Oh!
be
shut
cries.
and
I sit,
sad
do
strong
mouse
not
morn,
fate.
impending
thy breast with
a tyrant's
spurn'd
not thy
Let
A
forlorn
prayer,
the wiry
grate;
at th' approaching
tremble
Within
And
heart
let thine
the wretch's
Against
For
a pensive
prisoner's
that sighs;
freedom
glow'd,
chain,
force
oppressive
detain.
stain with
blood
guiltless
Thy hospitable hearth;
Nor
that thy wiles
triumph
so little worth.
A prize
The
scatter'd
My
But
frugal
if thine
of a feast
gleanings
meals
betray'd
supply;
heart
unrelenting
boon
slender
deny,
That
The
chearful
Are
Let
blessings
nature's
The
common
the vital
light,
air,
widely
given;
commoners
enjoy
gifts of heaven.
The well taught philosophic mind
To
all compassion
Casts
And
gives;
an equal
the world
for all that lives.
round
feels
as ancient
If mind,
A never
Still
In every
form
lest
Beware,
A
tremble
if this
you
transient
little
all
you
crush
luckless
hand
mind.
gleam
of day
share,
Let pity plead within
That
forms,
varying
find;
lest thy
life we
Be all of
taught,
same,
in the worm
a kindred
Dislodge
Or,
the
soul
brother's
And
sages
flame,
dying
shifts thro' matter's
eye,
thy breast
to spare.
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Confined
/ Anna
Bellanca
So may
With
And
thy hospitable
health
thy
So, when
May
And
some
roof
be
like mice,
kind
"The Mouse's
Petition"
board
be crown'd;
ease
of heartfelt
destruction
men,
break
peace
charm
every
Beneath
Which
and
Barbauld's
angel
the hidden
found.
lurks
unseen,
may
share,
clear
thy path,
snare.
This content downloaded from 68.66.18.130 on Wed, 28 Aug 2013 10:49:46 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
67