[42]: Letter to a very young lady.
[43]: That ridiculous passion which has no being but in playbooks and romances.
[44]: I never yet knew a tolerable woman to be fond of her sex.... your sex employ more thought, memory and application to be fools than would serve to make them wise and useful.... When I reflect on this, I cannot conceive you to be human creatures, but a sort of species hardly a degree above a monkey; who has more diverting tricks than any of you, is an animal less mischievous and expensive, might in time be a tolerable critick in velvet and brocade, and, for aught I know, would equally become them.
[45]:
His talk was now of tithes and dues;
He smok'd his pipe and read the news....
Against dissenters would repine,
And stood up firm for right divine.
[46]:
And all their conduct would be try'd
By her, as an unerring guide.
Offending daughters oft would hear
Vanessa's praise rung in their ear.
Miss Betty, when she does a fault,
Lets fall her knife or spills the salt,
Will then by her mother be chid:
«'Tis what Vanessa never did!»
[47]:
He now could praise, esteem, approve,
But understood not what was love.
[48]: