Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

credit, are all in one interest; and that without the concurrence of the former, the latter are but impositions upon ourselves and others. The force these delusive words have is not seen in the transactions of the busy world only, but they have also their tyranny over the fair sex. Were you to ask the unhappy Lais, what pangs of reflection preferring the consideration of her honour to her conscience has given her? she could tell you, that it has forced her to drink up half a gallon this winter of Tom Dassapas's potions; that she still pines away for fear of being a mother; and knows not but, the moment she is such, she shall be a murderess: but if conscience had as strong a force upon the mind as honour, the first step to her unhappy condition had never been made: she had still been innocent as she is beautiful. Were men so enlightened and studious of their own good, as to act by the dictates of their reason and reflection, and not the opinion of others, conscience would be the steady ruler of human life: and the words truth, law, reason, equity, and religion, could be but synonymous terms for that only guide which makes us pass our days in our own favour and approbation.'

N 49. TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1709.

Quicquid agunt homines

nostri est farrago libelli.

Juv. Sat. i. 85, 86.

Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream,
Our motley paper seizes for its theme.-P.

White's Chocolate-house, August 1.

THE imposition of honest names and words upon improper subjects, has made so regular a confusion

among us, that we are apt to sit down with our errors, well enough satisfied with the methods we are fallen into, without attempting to deliver ourselves from the tyranny under which we are reduced by such innovations. Of all the laudable motives of human life, none have suffered so much in this kind, as love: under which revered name a brutal desire called lust is frequently concealed and admitted; though they differ as much as a matron from a prostitute, or a companion from a buffoon. Philander the other day was bewailing this misfortune with much indignation, and upbraided me for having some time since quoted those excellent lines of the satirist;

To an exact perfection they have brought
The action love, the passion is forgot.

'How could you,' said he, 'leave such a hint so coldly? How could Aspasia and Sempronia enter into your imagination at the same time, and you never declare to us the different receptions you gave them?'

The figures which the ancient mythologists and poets put upon love and lust in their writings are very instructive. Love is a beauteous blind child, adorned with a quiver and a bow, which he plays with, and shoots around him, without design or direction; to intimate to us, that the person beloved has no intention to give us the anxieties we meet with, but that the beauties of a worthy object are like the charms of a lovely infant; they cannot but attract your concern and fondness, though the child so regarded is as insensible of the value you put upon it, as it is that it deserves your benevolence. On the other side, the sages figured lust in the form of a satyr: of shape, part human, part bestial; to signify that the followers of it prostitute the reason

of a man to pursue the appetites of a beast. This satyr is made to haunt the paths and coverts of the wood-nymphs and shepherdesses, to lurk on the banks of rivulets, and watch the purling streams, as the resorts of retired virgins; to shew, that lawless desire tends chiefly to prey upon innocence, and has something so unnatural in it, that it hates its own make, and shuns the object it loved, as soon as it has made it like itself. Love, therefore, is a child that complains and bewails its inability to help itself, and weeps for assistance, without an immediate reflection or knowledge of the food it wants: lust, a watchful thief, which seizes its prey, and lays snares for its own relief; and its principal object being innocent, it never robs, but it murders at the same time.

From this idea of a Cupid and a Satyr, we may settle our notions of these different desires, and accordingly rank their followers. Aspasia must, therefore, be allowed to be the first of the beauteous order of love, whose unaffected freedom, and conscious innocence, give her the attendance of the graces in all her actions. That awful distance which we bear towards her in all our thoughts of her, and that cheerful familiarity with which we approach her, are certain instances of her being the truest object of love of any of her sex. In this accomplished lady, love is the constant effect, because it is never the design. Yet though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; and to love her is a liberal education; for, it being the nature of all love to create an imitation of the beloved person in the lover, a regard for Aspasia naturally produces decency of manners, and good conduct of life, in her admirers. If, therefore, the giggling Leucippe. could but see her train of fops assembled, and As

pasia move by them, she would be mortified at the veneration with which she is beheld, even by Leucippe's own unthinking equipage, whose passions have long taken leave of their understandings.

As charity is esteemed a conjunction of the good qualities necessary to a virtuous man, so love is the happy composition of all the accomplishments that make a fine gentleman. The motive of a man's life is seen in all his actions: and such as have the beauteous boy for their inspirer have a simplicity of behaviour, and a certain evenness of desire, which burns like the lamp of life in their bosoms; while they who are instigated by the satyr are ever tortured by jealousies of the object of their wishes; often desire what they scorn, and as often consciously and knowingly embrace where they are mutually indifferent.

Florio, the generous husband, and Limberham, the kind keeper, are noted examples of the different effects which these desires produce in the mind. Amanda, who is the wife of Florio, lives in the continual enjoyment of new instances of her husband's friendship, and sees it the end of all his ambition to make her life one series of pleasure and satisfaction; and Amanda's relish of the goods of life is all that makes them pleasing to Florio: they behave themselves to each other, when present, with a certain apparent benevolence, which transports above rapture; and they think of each other in absence with a confidence unknown to the highest friendship; their satisfactions are doubled, their sorrows lessened, by participation.

On the other hand, Corinna*, who is the mistress of Limberham, lives in constant torment: her equip

*The persons here alluded to under the names of Corinna and Limberham, were Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, junior, and Henry Cromwell.

age is an old woman, who was what Corinna is now; an antiquated footman, who was pimp to Limberham's father; and a chambermaid, who is Limberham's wench by fits, out of a principle of politics, to make her jealous and watchful of Corinna. Under this guard, and in this conversation, Corinna lives in state the furniture of her habitation, and her own gorgeous dress, make her the envy of all the strolling ladies in the town; but Corinna knows she herself is but part of Limberham's household stuff, and is as capable of being disposed of elsewhere, as any other moveable. But while her keeper is persuaded by his spies, that no enemy has been within his doors since his last visit, no Persian prince was ever so magnificently bountiful: a kind look or falling tear is worth a piece of brocade, 'a sigh is a jewel, and a smile is a cupboard of plate. All this is shared between Corinna and her guard in his absence. With this great economy and industry does the unhappy Limberham purchase the constant tortures of jealousy, the favour of spending his estate, and the opportunity of enriching one by whom he knows he is hated and despised. These are the ordinary and common evils which attend keepers; and Corinna is a wench but of common size of wickedness, were you to know what passes under the roof where the fair Messalina reigns with her humble adorer.

Messalina is the professed mistress of mankind; she has left the bed of her husband, and her beauteous offspring, to give a loose to want of shame and fulness of desire. Wretched Nocturnus, her feeble keeper! How the poor creature fribbles in his gait, and skuttles from place to place to dispatch his necessary affairs in painful daylight, that he may return to the constant twilight preserved in that scene of wantonness, Messalina's bedchamber!

« AnkstesnisTęsti »