Note 12 — JOHN WILKES, ESQ. CONVICTED OF SEDITION AND BLASPHEMY.
Reading edition
The “Essay on Woman” was a parody on Pope’s sublime work, called “An Essay on Man.”
A learned divine, the Rev. Mr. Kidgell, thus writes on the works of Wilkes:—
“On the title-page is an obscene print, with a Greek inscription, signifying ‘The Saviour of the world.’ We shall, the poison of the publication being long eradicated, merely quote a commentator on the subject:
“In this work (‘An Essay on Woman’) the lewdest thoughts are expressed in terms of the greatest obscenity; the most horrid impurity is minutely represented; the sex is vilified and insulted; and the whole is scurrilous, impudent, and impious, to an incredible degree. In the variations and notes the inspired writings are perverted into the gross ideas of a libidinous blasphemer, with an invention new, wonderful, and horrid. The most solemn and important passages of the Gospel are tortured into the oblique obscenity of double meanings, worthy only of him who is at once the enemy of God and man.”