To the other facts thus supplied by the Abbé’s Work, I have in this Chapter, conformably to the promise made at [p. 131], added the Abbé’s own expressions and remarks, not only on account of their great ingenuity, but also in order that the present final Chapter might be a common conclusion of our respective talks, and that the Abbé and me, joining hands again in it, might thus have an opportunity, as is the custom at the end of Plays, to make our obeisance together, and take a joint leave of the Public.
[119] ... ad cujus sententiam, meam libens volensque adjungo.
[120] Quippecum eâ de causâ Capucini, multæque Moniales, virorum Medicorum ac piorum hominum consilio, ascesim flagellandi sursum humeros reliquerint, ut sibi nates lumbosque strient asperatis virgis, ac nodosis funiculis conscribillent.
[121] Ho, ho, Monsieur l’Abbé! How come you to be so well acquainted with beauties of the kind you mention here, and to speak of them in so positive a manner? For, the Reader must not think I here lend any expressions to the Abbé which are not his own: Num probrosum (says he), soli ostendere lumbos & femora juvenilia, excellenti formê, quamvis religionis honestate consecrata? This Monsieur l’Abbé, for his excursion upon objects and beauties which, one should have thought, lie out of his province, richly deserves a lecture of the same kind with that which Parson Adams received from Lady Booby, when he ventured to expatiate, in her Ladyship’s presence, on the beauties of Fanny.
[122] These dangers arising from self-examination I do not allow myself to call in question; since, besides the Abbé Boileau, the Framers of Monastic Rules have taken notice of them; and indeed I find Brantôme has entertained thoughts of the same kind; and many facts are to be found in that Chapter of his which he has intitled Of Sight in Love, that fully confirm the above observations. But besides these serious dangers into which a too curious examination of one’s-self may lead, there are others very well worth mentioning: I mean to speak of the acts of pride, vanity, self-admiration and complacency, to which the above curiosity may give rise. Vanity and a disposition to admire one’s-self, are dispositions that are but too general among Mankind; and there is hardly a time in life at which we may be said to be perfectly cured of such worldly affections. On this occasion I shall produce the following anecdote, which is related by Brantôme.
A certain Lady, who had been very handsome, and now was somewhat advanced in years, would no longer look at her face in the looking-glass, for fear of discovering some new injury time might have done to it; but she used to survey the other parts of her body, and then, suddenly actuated by the worldly vanity we speak of, she exclaimed, “God be thanked, here I do not grow old” (je ne vieillis point.)
These dangers of a too curious examination of one’s own person, are extremely well expressed by Ovid, in that part of his Metamorphosis where he describes Narcissus sitting near that clear silver fountain in which he contemplated himself:
Fons erat illimis, nitidis argenteus undis.
And the Poet relates, in a very lively manner, the astonishment of the Youth, at the sight of, as he thought, his own charms and perfections.
... visæ correptus imagine formæ