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women, that is

Her husband
Now, because

bour I mention is one of your common modest to say, those who are ordinarily reckoned such. knows every pain in life with her but jealousy. she is clear in this particular, the man cannot say his soul is his own, but she cries: 'No modest woman is respected nowa-days.' What adds to the comedy in this case is, that it is very ordinary with this sort of women to talk in the language of distress; they will complain of the forlorn wretchedness of their condition, and then the poor helpless creatures shall throw the 10 next thing they can lay their hands on at the person who offends them. Our neighbour was only saying to his wife, she went a little too fine,' when she immediately pulled his periwig off, and stamping it under her feet, wrung her hands and said: 'Never modest woman was so used.' These ladies of irresistible modesty are those who make virtue unamiable; not that they can be said to be virtuous, but as they live without scandal; and being under the common denomination of being such, men fear to meet their faults in those who are as agreeable as they are innocent.

20 I take the Bully among men, and the Scold among women, to draw the foundation of their actions from the same defect in the mind. A Bully thinks honour consists wholly in being brave; and therefore has regard to no one rule of life if he preserves himself from the accusation of cowardice. The froward woman knows chastity to be the first merit in a woman; and therefore, since no one can call her one ugly name, she calls all mankind all the rest.

These ladies, where their companions are so imprudent as to take their speeches for any other than exercises of their own 30 lungs and their husbands' patience, gain by the force of being resisted, and flame with open fury, which is no way to be opposed but by being neglected; though at the same time human frailty makes it very hard, to relish the philosophy of contemning even frivolous reproach. There is a very pretty instance of this infirmity in the man of the best sense that ever was, no less a person than Adam himself. According to Milton's description of the first couple, as soon as they had fallen, and the turbulent passions of anger, hatred, and jealousy, first entered their breasts; Adam grew moody, and talked to his wife, as you 40 may find it in the three hundred and fifty-ninth page, and

S

ninth book of Paradise Lost, in the octavo edition, which, out of heroics, and put into domestic style, would run thus :

'Madam, if my advices had been of any authority with you, when that strange desire of gadding possessed you this morning, we had still been happy; but your cursed vanity and opinion of your own conduct, which is certainly very wavering when it seeks occasions of being proved, has ruined both yourself and me, who trusted you.'

Eve had no fan in her hand to ruffle, or tucker" to pull down; 10 but with a reproachful air she answered :

'Sir, do you impute that to my desire of gadding, which might have happened to yourself, with all your wisdom and gravity? The serpent spoke so excellently, and with so good a grace, that--Besides, what harm had I ever done him, that he should design me any? Was I to have been always at your side, I might as well have continued there, and been but your rib still but if I was so weak a creature as you thought me, why did you not interpose your sage authority more absolutely? You denied me going as faintly, as you say I resisted 20 the serpent. Had not you been too easy, neither you nor I had now transgressed.' Adam replied, 'Why, Eve, hast thou the impudence to upbraid me as the cause of thy transgression for my indulgence to thee? Thus will it ever be with him who trusts too much to woman. At the same time that she refuses

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to be governed, if she suffers by her obstinacy, she will accuse the man that shall leave her to herself.’

Thus they in mutual accusation spent

The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning;
And of their vain contest appear'd no end.

:

This, to the modern, will appear but a very faint piece of conjugal enmity but you are to consider, that they were but just begun to be angry, and they wanted new words for expressing their new passions.... The passionate and familiar terms, with which the same case repeated daily for so many thousand years has furnished the present generation, were not then in use; but the foundation of debate has ever been the same, a contention about their merit and wisdom. Our general mother was a beauty; and hearing there was another now in the world, could not forbear, as Adam tells her, showing herself, though to the

devil, by whom the same vanity made her liable to be betrayed.

I cannot, with all the help of science and astrology, find any other remedy for this evil, but what was the medicine in this first quarrel, which was, as appears in the next book, that they were convinced of their being both weak, but the one weaker than the other.

If it were possible that the beauteous could but rage a little before a glass, and see their pretty countenances grow wild, it 10 is not to be doubted but it would have a very good effect: but that would require temper; for lady Firebrand, upon observing her features swell when her maid vexed her the other day, stamped her dressing-glass under her feet. In this case, when one of this temper is moved, she is like a witch in an operation", and makes all things turn round with her. The very fabric is in a vertigo when she begins to charm. In an instant, whatever was the occasion that moved her blood, she has such intolerable servants, Betty is so awkward, Tom cannot carry a message, and her husband has so little respect for her, that she, 20 poor woman, is weary of this life, and was born to be unhappy. Desunt multa.

ADVERTISEMENT.

The season now coming on in which the town will begin to fill, Mr. Bickerstaff gives notice, That from the first of October next he will be much wittier than he has hitherto been.

Tatler, No. 217.]

[August 29, 1710.

No. 80. On the Loss of Beauty; Case of Parthenissa; Letters of Corinna and Amilcar.

Quæ forma, ut se tibi semper
Imputet?
Juv. Sat. vi. 177.

'MR. SPECTATOR,

'I write this to communicate to you a misfortune which frequently happens, and therefore deserves a consolatory discourse on the subject. I was within this half-year in the possession of

as much beauty and as many lovers as any young lady in England. But my admirers have left me, and I cannot complain of their behaviour. I have within that time had the small-pox": and this face, which (according to many amorous epistles which I have by me) was the seat of all that is beautiful in woman, is now disfigured with scars. It goes to the very soul of me to speak what I really think of my face; and though I think I did not over-rate my beauty while I had it, it has extremely advanced in its value with me, now it is lost. There is one cir10 cumstance which makes my case very particular; the ugliest fellow that ever pretended to me, was and is most in my favour, and he treats me at present the most unreasonably. If you could make him return an obligation which he owes me, in liking a person that is not amiable;-But there is, I fear, no possibility of making passion move by the rules of reason and gratitude. But say what you can to one who has survived herself, and knows not how to act in a new being. My lovers are at the feet of my rivals, my rivals are every day bewailing me, and I cannot enjoy what I am, by reason of the distracting 20 reflection upon what I was. Consider the woman I was did not die of old age, but I was taken off in the prime of youth, and according to the course of nature may have forty years after-life to come. I have nothing of myself left which I like, but that 'I am, Sir, your most humble Servant,

'PARTHENISSA.'

When Lewis of France had lost the battle of Ramillies, the addresses to him at that time were full of his fortitude, and they turned his misfortune to his glory; in that, during his prosperity, he could never have manifested his heroic constancy under dis30 tresses, and so the world had lost the most eminent part of his character. Parthenissa's condition gives her the same opportunity and to resign conquests is a task as difficult in a beauty as a hero. In the very entrance upon this work she must burn all her love-letters; or since she is so candid as not to call her lovers, who follow her no longer, unfaithful, it would be a very good beginning of a new life from that of a beauty, to send them back to those who writ them, with this honest inscription, 'Articles of a Marriage Treaty broken off by the Small-Pox.' I have known but one instance where a matter of this kind went

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on after a like misfortune, where the lady, who was a woman of spirit, writ this billet to her lover :

'SIR,

'If you flattered me before I had this terrible malady, pray come and see me now: but if you sincerely liked me, stay away, for I am not the same

'CORINNA.'

The lover thought there was something so sprightly in her behaviour, that he answered:

'MADAM,

'I am not obliged, since you are not the same woman, to let you know whether I flattered you or not; but I assure you I do not, when I tell you I now like you above all your sex, and hope you will bear what may befal me when we are both one, as well as you do what happens to yourself now you are single; therefore I am ready to take such a spirit for my companion as soon as you please.

'AMILCAR.'

If Parthenissa can now possess her own mind and think as 20 little of her beauty as she ought to have done when she had it, there will be no great diminution of her charms; and if she was formerly affected too much with them, an easy behaviour will more than make up for the loss of them. Take the whole sex together, and you find those who have the strongest possession of men's hearts are not eminent for their beauty. You see it often happen that those who engage men to the greatest violence, are such as those who are strangers to them would take to be remarkably defective for that end. The fondest lover I know, said to me one day in a crowd of women at an 30 entertainment of music, 'You have often heard me talk of my beloved; that woman there,' continued he, smiling, when he had fixed my eye, 'is her very picture.' The lady he showed me was by much the least remarkable for beauty of any in the whole assembly; but having my curiosity extremely raised, I could not keep my eyes off her. Her eyes at last met mine, and with a sudden surprise she looked round her to see who near her was remarkably handsome that I was gazing at. This little act explained the secret. She did not understand herself for

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