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The Nuns of the Desart; or the Woodland Witches, in 2 Vols. By Eugenia De Acton. Lane and Co. 1805.
Miss Eugenia is doubtless considered by Mr Lane as one of his first rate female performers, for, in a preface written with the most unblushing front, she talks of assisting to effect, by her performances, 'the reformation of the moral world.' 'I employ,' says she, 'to the utmost, my delegated power.' Pref. p. vii. - The fruits of which are The Nuns of the Desart, or the Woodland Witches; and the characters that attract most notice here are Hindo, an ape, which, being asked by one of the witches, or fortune-tellers, 'how the wind appeared,' replies, 'blue, checked with scarlet, and spotted with black.' Vol. I. p. 313*. Brimo, a talking dog, and Zotto, a parrot, that holds conversations, and sings these instructive verses:
The sound of the drum Will strike the 'squire dumb; The tower will shake, And Dicky will quake The morning will dawn, And shine o'er the lawn; Then Justice will judge, And Dicky must budge. P. 112
The parrot excepted, this is all bunglingly attempted, at the end, to be ascribed to ventriloquism; we, however, can ascribe it to nothing but 'a native weakness of intellect' in the writer, who, after deceiving men and women in her story, with this, and much even more miserable artifice, composes a preface, saying, 'I am actuated by a blended design of instructing and entertaining,' and adds - 'It is indispensibly necessary that I likewise blend a short but consistent system of morality with probable story.' P. xi.
In this age of crops, it may not be amiss to observe, that, by 'a biped whose tail is pendant from his head,' v.i. p. 75, Miss Eugenia means a man with a queue; and this is her refined senti-[111]ment of perpetual virginity: - 'I think it is the sweetest thing in the world, and it is so delicate too, to die an oldmaid [sic].' P. 315.
To crown the whole, Miss De Acton assures us, (Pref. p. x.) that it is totally unnecessary to refute what has been said (but by what good judges we are not told) that she has imitated Fielding!!
*Our grandmother, who studied the same learned book of natural history as Miss Eugenia, used to say that no animals but pigs saw the wind. [complete].
Provided by Julie A. Shaffer, November 1999
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