Saturday, Feb. 25, to Tuesday, Feb. 28, 1709-10.
——Nihil est, quod credere de se
Non possit, cum laudatur Dis æqua potestas.
Juv., Sat. iv. 70.
Sheer Lane, February 27.
When I reflect upon the many nights I have sat up for some months last past in the greatest anxiety for the good of my neighbours and contemporaries, it is no small discouragement to me, to see how slow a progress I make in the reformation of the world. But indeed I must do my female readers the justice to own, that their tender hearts are much more susceptible of good impressions, than the minds of the other sex. Business and ambition take up men's thoughts too much to leave room for philosophy: but if you speak to women in a style and manner proper to approach them, they never fail to improve by your counsel. I shall therefore for the future turn my thoughts more particularly to their service, and study the best methods to adorn their persons, and inform their minds in the justest methods to make them what Nature designed them, the most beauteous objects of our eyes, and the most agreeable companions of our lives. But when I say this, I must not omit at the same time to look into their errors and mistakes, that being the readiest way to the intended end of adorning and instructing them. It must be acknowledged, that the very inadvertencies of this sex are owing to the other; for if men were not flatterers, women could not fall into that general cause of all their follies, and our misfortunes, their love of flattery. Were the commendation of these agreeable creatures built upon its proper foundation, the higher we raised their opinion of themselves, the greater would be the advantage to our sex; but all the topic of praise is drawn from very senseless and extravagant ideas we pretend we have of their beauty and perfection. Thus when a young man falls in love with a young woman, from that moment she is no more Mrs. Alice such-a-one, born of such a father, and educated by such a mother; but from the first minute that he casts his eye upon her with desire, he conceives a doubt in his mind, what heavenly power gave so unexpected a blow to a heart that was ever before untouched. But who can resist Fate and Destiny, which are lodged in Mrs. Alice's eyes? After which he desires orders accordingly, whether he is to live or breathe; the smile or frown of his goddess is the only thing that can now either save or destroy him. By this means, the well-humoured girl, that would have romped with him before she received this declaration, assumes a state suitable to the majesty he has given her, and treats him as the vassal he calls himself. The girl's head is immediately turned by having the power of life and death, and takes care to suit every motion and air to her new sovereignty. After he has placed himself at this distance, he must never hope to recover his former familiarity, till she has had the addresses of another, and found them less sincere.
If the application to women were justly turned, the address of flattery, though it implied at the same time an admonition, would be much more likely to succeed. Should a captivated lover, in a billet, let his mistress know, that her piety to her parents, her gentleness of behaviour, her prudent economy with respect to her own little affairs in a virgin condition, had improved the passion which her beauty had inspired him with, into so settled an esteem for her, that of all women breathing he wished her his wife; though his commending her for qualities she knew she had as a virgin, would make her believe he expected from her an answerable conduct in the character of a matron, I will answer for it, his suit would be carried on with less perplexity.
Instead of this, the generality of our young women, taking all their notions of life from gay writings, or letters of love, consider themselves as goddesses, nymphs, and shepherdesses.
By this romantic sense of things, all the natural relations and duties of life are forgotten, and our female part of mankind are bred and treated, as if they were designed to inhabit the happy fields of Arcadia, rather than be wives and mothers in old England. It is indeed long since I had the happiness to converse familiarly with this sex, and therefore have been fearful of falling into the error which recluse men are very subject to, that of giving false representations of the world from which they have retired, by imaginary schemes drawn from their own reflections. An old man cannot easily gain admittance into the dressing-room of ladies; I therefore thought it time well spent, to turn over Agrippa, and use all my occult art, to give my old cornelian ring the same force with that of Gyges, which I have lately spoken of.[123] By the help of this, I went unobserved to a friend's house of mine, and followed the chamber-maid invisibly about twelve of the clock into the bed-chamber of the beauteous Flavia, his fine daughter, just before she got up.
I drew the curtains, and being wrapped up in the safety of my old age, could with much pleasure, without passion, behold her sleeping with Waller's poems, and a letter fixed in that part of him, where every woman thinks herself described. The light flashing upon her face, awakened her: she opened her eyes, and her lips too, repeating that piece of false wit in that admired poet:
Such Helen was, and who can blame the boy,
That in so bright a flame consumed his Troy?[124]
This she pronounced with a most bewitching sweetness; but after it fetched a sigh, that methought had more desire than languishment, then took out her letter, and read aloud, for the pleasure, I suppose, of hearing soft words in praise of herself, the following epistle: