“Unde sit infamis, quare male fortibus undis Salmacis enervet tactosque remolliat artus, discite causa latet, vis est notissima fontis” Ovid, Met. 4.285-7

My Lords and Gentlemen,

I have again annoyed the proponents of Wokery. I am seemingly unable to put pen to paper without being accused of the Sin of Slumbering. You will recall that at the front of my last short essay, I cited a short passage from that most amusing and saucy author, to wit,  Geoffrey Chaucer to whom we who seek to scribble our thoughts in the English language are most indebted¹For the importance of Chaucer the modern reader may wish to consult Bloom, Harold (1994). The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace. p. 226. ISBN 0-15-195747-9.. Shortly thereafter was published a pamphlet by some men of little learning and still less wit urging me to remove such references and that my writings should henceforward provide room for [sic] “race, ethnicity, sexuality and diversity” .

The very next day I was again denounced in another pamphlet for my use of the Classical languages. The authors assert that by using these tongues I am seeking to establish the Supremacy of the English and that the inhabitants of Ancient Rome and Athens were “white”. It appears that the Proponents of Wokery have not met an Italian nor a Greek²The Grand Tour had not yet become an established part of the education of Gentlemen. It is more likely that the Somnambulist encountered Italians and Greeks as traders and sailors..

But be that as it may, affronted by such attacks upon my writing, I have consigned these impertinent papers to a place by my closet stool where they may serve their most useful function.

Seeking to put myself in a better humour, I read a draught of a fable which Dean Swift has sent me and which he intends to include in the work which he is to entitle Oliver’s Travels. In this chapter Dean Swift has written of a Land of Genderneutrality in which men may imagine themselves into being women and women may imagine themselves into men. It is the law of this Land that should any person suggest a man who imagines himself to be a women is incapable of suckling an infant he is sent to the pillory. In this land too, a woman who imagines herself a man is not to be called a woman even though she may give birth. I am an admirer of the Satirick works of Dean Swift but this fable is too wild a fancy to attract any readers and I have written to vouchsafe to him that he should not diverge from his present schema in which Oliver will visit lands of dwarfs, giants and speaking horses. These are much more within the realm of fancy than these outlandish notions of Genderneutrality which Dean Swift was good enough to share with me³This is another example of Jonathan Swift sharing ideas with the Somnambulist before publication. One cannot but consider that on this occasion the judgment of the Somnambulist was sound and that the inclusion of this tale in the work ultimately named Gulliver’s Travels would have been considered beyond the wildest imagination of the reading public.. 

In my Treatise, which I will soon commence, I will examine the very limits to which the proponents of Wakefulness will extend their Reasoning. The proponents of Wakefulness are indeed fanaticks but still one sees the germ of reason in their enthusiasms albeit that their logick is misguided and their methods those of Papist Inquisitors seeking to look into the souls of men. Yet, I cannot conceive that they will yet consider a man capable of suckling an infant.

I remain your humble and obedient servant,

The Somnambulist.