Mirror of Literature,  11 (1828), 239.

Blue Stockings over the Border

Anon

Genre:

Extract, Poetry, Drollery

Publications extracted:

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine

Subjects:

Education, Universities, Gender, Cultural Geography, Mathematics, Medical Practitioners, Nomenclature, Steam-power, Machinery, Phrenology, Astronomy, Geology, Natural History, Chemistry, Steamships, Alchemy


    Warns University of Oxford and University of Cambridge men to attend to their studies, in advance of an invasion of blue stockings from Scotland. The bluestockings will beat them at solving problems in Euclid and will soon probe the depths of medical science. 'Their clack is resounding, / With hard words abounding; / Steam-guns are their weapons, which cause great disorder. / By Gas they're enlighten'd— / By nothing they're frighten'd'. They excel in every department, including phenology, and have a predominant 'organ of Prying'. They will surpass astronomers, geologists, conchologists, chemists, and steam-boat inventors. ''Tis said they've discover'd perpetual motion, / Attach'd to their tongues, 'twill be henceforth their own'. Counsels the reader not to believe the enemy who claims their heads are 'vacuum engines' and that 'Watt's Steamer teaches / The plan of their speeches, / Beginning in noise, and concluding in smoke'.



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