she has nobody to blame for it but herself. You know very well that she would never think of me whilst she had a tooth in her head. I have put the date of my passion, (Anno Amoris trigesimo primo,) instead of a posie, on my weddingring. I expect you should send me a congratulatory letter; or, if you please, an epithalamium, upon this occasion.

"Mrs. Martha's and yours eternally,

SAM. HOPEWELL."

In order to banish an evil out of the world, that does not only produce great uneasiness to private persons, but has also a very bad influence on the public, I shall endeavour to show the folly of demurring, from two or three reflections, which I earnestly recommend to the thoughts of my fair readers.

First of all, I would have them seriously think on the shortness of their time. Life is not long enough for a coquette to play all her tricks in. A timorous woman drops into her grave before she has done deliberating. Were the age of man the same that it was before the flood, a lady might sacrifice half a century to a scruple, and be two or three ages in demurring. Had she nine hundred years good, she might hold out to the conversion of the Jews before she thought fit to be prevailed upon. But, alas! she ought to play her part in haste, when she considers that she is suddenly to quit the stage, and make room for others.

In the second place, I would desire my female readers to consider, that as the term of life is short, that of beauty is much shorter. The finest skin wrinkles in a few years, and loses the strength of its colouring so soon, that we have scarce time to admire it. I might embellish this subject with roses and rainbows, and several other ingenious conceits, which I may possibly reserve for another opportunity.

There is a third consideration, which I would likewise recommend to a demurrer, and that is, the great danger of her falling in love when she is about threescore, if she cannot satisfy her doubts and scruples before that time. There is a kind of latter spring, that sometimes gets into the blood of an old woman, and turns her into a very odd sort of an animal. I would therefore have the demurrer consider what a strange figure she will make, if she chances to get over all difficulties, and comes to a final resolution, in that unseasonable part of her life.

I would not, however, be understood by anything I have here said, to discourage that natural modesty in the sex, which renders a retreat from the first approaches of a lover both fashionable and graceful; all that I intend is, to advise them, when they are prompted by reason and inclination, to demur only out of form, and so far as decency requires. A virtuous woman should reject the first offer of marriage, as a good man does that of a bishopric; but I would advise neither the one nor the other to persist in refusing what they secretly approve. I would in this particular propose the example of Eve to all her daughters, as Milton has represented her in the following passage, which I cannot forbear transcribing entire, though only the twelve last lines are to my present purpose.

The rib he formed and fashioned with his hands;
Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Manlike, but different sex, so lovely fair,

That what seemed fair in all the world seemed now
Mean, or in her summed up, in her contained,
And in her looks, which from that time infused
Sweetness into my heart unfelt before,

And into all things from her air inspired
The spirit of love and amorous delight.

She disappeared, and left me dark. I waked
To find her, or for ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure:
When out of hope, behold her, not far off,
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorned
With what all earth or heaven could bestow
To make her amiable. On she came,
Led by her heavenly Maker, though unseen,
And guided by his voice, nor uninformed
Of nuptial sanctity and marriage rites:
Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye,
In every gesture dignity and love.

I, overjoyed, could not forbear aloud :

This turn hath made amends; thou hast fulfilled
Thy words, Creator, bounteous and benign!

Giver of all things fair, but fairest this

Of all thy gifts; nor enviest. I now see
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, myself

She heard me thus, and though divinely brought,

Yet innocence and virgin modesty,

Her virtue and the conscience of her worth,
That would be wooed, and not unsought be won,
Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retired

The more desirable; or, to say all,

Nature herself, though pure of sinful thought,
Wrought in her so, that seeing me she turned:

I followed her: she what was honour knew,
And with obsequious majesty approved
My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bower
I led her blushing like the morn—

No. 90. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13.

-Magnus sine viribus ignis

Incassum furit

VIRG.

THERE is not, in my opinion, a consideration more effectual to extinguish inordinate desires in the soul of man, than the notions of Plato and his followers upon that subject. They tell us, that every passion which has been contracted by the soul during her residence in the body, remains with her in a separate state; and that the soul in the body, or out of the body, differs no more than the man does from himself when he is in his house, or in open air. When, therefore, the obscene passions in particular have once taken root, and spread themselves in the soul, they cleave to her inseparably, and remain in her for ever, after the body is cast off and thrown aside. As an argument to confirm this their doctrine, they observe, that a lewd youth, who goes on in a continued course of voluptuousness, advances by degrees into a libidinous old man; and that the passion survives in the mind when it is altogether dead in the body; nay, that the desire grows more violent, and (like all other habits) gathers strength by age, at the same time that it has no power of executing its own purposes. If, say they, the soul is the most subject to these passions at a time when she has the least instigation from the body, we may well'suppose she will still retain them when she is entirely divested of it. The very substance of the soul is festered with them; the gangrene is gone too far to be ever cured; the inflammation will rage to all eternity.

In this, therefore, (say the Platonists,) consists the punishment of a voluptuous man after death: he is tormented with desires which it is impossible for him to gratify, solicited by a passion that has neither objects nor organs adapted to it: he lives in a state of invincible desire and impotence, and always burns in the pursuit of what he always despairs to possess. It is for this reason (says Plato) that the souls of the dead appear frequently in cemeteries, and hover about the places where their bodies are buried, as still hankering

after their old brutal pleasures, and desiring again to enter the body that gave them an opportunity of fulfilling them. Some of our most eminent divines have made use of this Platonic notion, so far as it regards the subsistence of our passions after death, with great beauty and strength of reason. Plato, indeed, carries his thought very far, when he grafts upon it his opinion of ghosts appearing in places of burial. Though, I must confess, if one did believe that the departed souls of men and women wandered up and down these lower regions, and entertained themselves with the sight of their species, one could not devise a more proper hell for an impure spirit than that which Plato has touched upon.

The ancients seem to have drawn such a state of torments in the description of Tantalus, who was punished with the rage of an eternal thirst, and set up to the chin in water, that fled from his lips whenever he attempted to drink it.

Virgil, who has cast the whole system of Platonic philosophy, so far as it relates to the soul of man, into beautiful allegories, in the sixth book of his Eneid, gives us the punishment of a voluptuary after death, not unlike that which we are here speaking of.

-Lucent genialibus altis

Aurea fulcra toris, epulæque ante ora paratæ
Regifico luxu; furiarum maxima juxta

Accubat, et manibus prohibet contingere mensas;
Exurgitque facem attollens, atque intonat ore.

They lie below on golden beds displayed,
And genial feasts with regal pomp are made.

The queen of furies by their side is set,

And snatches from their mouths the untasted meat;

Which if they touch, her hissing snakes she rears,

Tossing her torch, and thundering in their ears. DRYDEN.

pre

That I may a little alleviate the severity of this my speculation, (which otherwise may lose me several of my polite readers,) I shall translate a story that has been quoted upon another occasion by one of the most learned men of the sent age, as I find it in the original. The reader will see it is not foreign to my present subject, and I dare say will think it a lively representation of a person lying under the torments of such a kind of tantalism, or Platonic hell, as that which we have now under consideration. Monsieur Pontignan, speaking of a love-adventure that happened to him in the country, gives the following account of it.

"When I was in the country last summer, I was often in company with a couple of charming women, who had all the wit and beauty one could desire in female companions, with a dash of coquetry, that from time to time gave me a great many agreeable torments. I was, after my way, in love with both of them, and had such frequent opportunities of pleading my passion to them when they were asunder, that I had reason to hope for particular favours from each of them. As I was walking one evening in my chamber with nothing about me but my night-gown, they both came into my room, and told me they had a very pleasant trick to put upon a gentleman that was in the same house, provided I would bear a part in it. Upon this they told me such a plausible story, that I laughed at their contrivance, and agreed to do whatever they should require of me. They immediately began to swaddle me up in my night-gown with long pieces of linen, which they folded about me till they had wrapt me in above an hundred yards of swathe: my arms were pressed to my sides, and my legs closed together by so many wrappers one over another, that I looked like an Egyptian mummy. As I stood bolt upright upon one end in this antique figure, one of the ladies burst out a laughing. 'And now, Pontignan, (says she,) we intend to perform the promise that we find you have extorted from each of us. You have often asked the favour of us, and I dare say you are a better bred cavalier than to refuse to go to bed to ladies that desire it of you.' After having stood a fit of laughter, I begged them to uncase me, and do with me what they pleased. 'No, no, (say they,) we like you very well as you are;' and upon that ordered me to be carried to one of their houses, and put to bed in all my swaddles. The room was lighted up on all sides; and I was laid very decently between a pair of sheets, with my head (which was, indeed, the only part I could move) upon a very high pillow: this was no sooner done, but my two female friends came into bed to me in their finest night-clothes. You may easily guess at the condition of a man that saw a couple of the most beautiful women in the world undrest and abed with him, without being able to stir hand or foot. I begged them to release me, and struggled all I could to get loose, which I did with so much violence, that about midnight they both leaped out of the bed, crying out they were undone. But seeing me safe, they took