Mercy Warren (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1896. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... VII LITERARY WORK Mercy Warren belonged to that more advanced period of literary activity when effort was not altogether tentative. Vague or rough as it might be, she had a background, though she was not to prove herself eminently superior to it. Her work was by no means the outcome of that welling impulse we are accustomed to call inspiration, but the product of an intellectual and moral activity which might easily have been otherwise expressed. In her handling of public affairs, she had all the true woman's scorn of expediency and intolerance of any action short of taking the bull by the horns. Thus, seizing the medium of verse, she gave free play to her powers of reflection and satire; and, with Mrs. Warren, what her "heart thinks " her "tongue speaks." For her there was never a middle course. Life, and even political life, was right or wrong. There were moral blacks and whites; there were no grays. Tell-tale evidence lies in a certain reminiscence of hers called forth by John Adams. December 16, 1778, she writes him, reminding him that six years before he had said by the Plymouth fireside, in a moment of despondency, that "the dispute between Great Britain and America would not be settled untill your sons and my sons were able to visit and negociate with the different European courts. A Lady replied (though perhaps not from prescience but from presentiment or presumption) that you must do it yourselves -- that the work must be done immediately." If the patriots who, at Plymouth, discussed the political weather, needed heartening or even a bold push into the storm, Dame Mercy was more than ready, though always in courteous deprecation lest she overstep the bounds of her feminine province. One letter written her husband in 1776 contains this pertinent extract: ...