Ficta Voluptatis causâ sint proxima Veris.
Hor.
There is nothing which one regards so much with an Eye of Mirth and Pity as Innocence, when it has in it a Dash of Folly. At the same time that one esteems the Virtue, one is tempted to laugh at the Simplicity which accompanies it. When a Man is made up wholly of the Dove, without the least Grain of the Serpent in his Composition, he becomes ridiculous in many Circumstances of Life, and very often discredits his best Actions. The
Cordeliers
tell a Story of their Founder St.
Francis
, that as he passed the Streets in the Dusk of the Evening, he discovered a young Fellow with a Maid in a Corner; upon which the good Man, say they, lifted up his Hands to Heaven with a secret Thanksgiving, that there was still so much Christian Charity in the World. The Innocence of the Saint made him mistake the Kiss of a Lover for a Salute of Charity. I am heartily concerned when I see a virtuous Man without a competent Knowledge of the World; and if there be any Use in these my Papers, it is this, that without presenting Vice under any false alluring Notions, they give my Reader an Insight into the Ways of Men, and represent human Nature in all its changeable Colours. The Man who has not been engaged in any of the Follies of the World, or, as
Shakespear
expresses it,
hackney'd in the Ways of Men
, may here find a Picture of its Follies and Extravagancies. The Virtuous and the Innocent may know in Speculation what they could never arrive at by Practice, and by this Means avoid the Snares of the Crafty, the Corruptions of the Vicious, and the Reasonings of the Prejudiced. Their Minds may be opened without being vitiated.