The comparison, madam, said Mr. Selvin, who took all occasions to show his reading, is too injurious to you; for I am of opinion you as much excel that licentious lady in the beauties of your person, as you do in the qualities of your mind.
I never heard licentiousness imputed to the daughter of Augustus Cæsar, said Arabella; and the most her enemies can say of her, is, that she loved admiration, and would permit herself to be beloved, and to be told so, without showing any signs of displeasure.
Bless me, madam! interrupted Mr. Selvin, how strangely do you mistake the character of Julia! Though the daughter of an emperor, she was (pardon the expression) the most abandoned prostitute in Rome. Many of her intrigues are recorded in history; but, to mention only one, was not her infamous commerce with Ovid, the cause of his banishment?
[Chapter VIII.]
Some reflections very fit, and others very unfit, for an assembly-room.
You speak in strange terms, replied Arabella, blushing, of a princess, who if she was not the most reserved and severe person in the world, was yet nevertheless, absolutely chaste.
I know there were people who represented her partiality for Ovid in a very unfavourable light; but that ingenious poet, when he related his history to the great Agrippa, told him in confidence all that had passed between him and the princess Julia, than which nothing could be more innocent, though a little indiscreet. For it is certain that she permitted him to love her, and did not condemn him to any rigorous punishment for daring to tell her so; yet, for all this, as I said before, though she was not altogether so austere as she ought to have been, yet she was nevertheless a most virtuous princess.
Mr. Selvin, not daring to contradict a lady whose extensive reading had furnished her with anecdotes unknown almost to any body else, by his silence confessed her superiority. But Mr. Glanville, who knew all these anecdotes were drawn from romances, which he found contradicted the known facts in history, and assigned the most ridiculous causes for things of the greatest importance, could not help smiling at the facility with which Mr. Selvin gave in to those idle absurdities. For notwithstanding his affectation of great reading, his superficial knowledge of history made it extremely easy to deceive him; and as it was his custom to mark in his pocket-book all the scraps of history he heard introduced into conversation, and retail them again in other company, he did not doubt but he would make a figure with the curious circumstances Arabella had furnished him with.