That, Nature gives; and where the lesson taught

Is but to please, can pleasure seem a fault?
Experience, this; by Man's oppression curs'd,
They seek the second not to lose the first.
Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; 215
But every woman is at heart a rake;
Men, some to quiet, some to public strife;
But every lady would be queen for life.

Yet mark the fate of a whole sex of queens!
Power all their end, but beauty all the means: 220
In youth they conquer, with so wild a rage,
As leaves them scarce a subject in their age:

For foreign glory, foreign joy, they roam;
No thought of peace or happiness at home.

But wisdom's triumph is well-tim'd retreat,
As hard a science to the fair as great!
Beauties, like tyrants, old and friendless grown,

225

Yet hate repose, and dread to be alone,

Worn out in public, weary every eye,

Nor leave one sigh behind them when they die. 230

NOTES.

Ver. 211.] This is occasioned partly by their Nature, partly by their Education, and in some degree by Necessity. Pope.

Ver. 216. But every woman is at heart a rake:] This line has given offence: but in behalf of the Poet we may observe, that what he says amounts only to this: Some men take to business, some to pleasure; but every woman would willingly make pleasure her business; which being the proper periphrasis of a rake, he uses that word, but of course includes in it no more of the rake's ill qualities than is implied in this definition, of one who makes pleasure his business. Warburton.

Ver. 219.] What are the Aims and the Fate of this sex.-I. As Pope.

Pleasures the sex, as children birds, pursue,
Still out of reach, yet never out of view;
Sure, if they catch, to spoil the toy at most,
To covet flying, and regret when lost :

At last, to follies youth could scarce defend, 235

It grows their age's prudence to pretend;
Asham'd to own they gave delight before,
Reduc'd to feign it, when they give no more:
As hags hold Sabbaths less for joy than spite,
So these their merry, miserable night :
Still round and round the ghosts of beauty glide,
And haunt the places where their honour died.
See how the world its veterans rewards!

A youth of frolics, an old age of cards;

NOTES.

240

Ver. 229. Worn out in public,] Copied from Young, Satire 5. written eight years before this Epistle appeared :

" Worn in the public eye, give cheap delight
To throngs, and tarnish to the sated sight."

Ver. 231.]-II. As to Pleasure.

Warton.
Pope.

Ver. 234. To covet flying,] It is impossible not to recollect the witty simile of Young, Sat. 5.

" Pleasures are few, and fewer we enjoy ;

Pleasure, like quicksilver, is bright and coy;
We strive to grasp it with our utmost skill,
Still it eludes us, and it glitters still ;

If seiz'd at last, compute your mighty gains,
What is it, but rank poison in your veins?" Warton.

Ver. 244. A youth of frolics,] The antithesis, so remarkably strong in these lines, was a very favourite figure with our Poet. He has indeed used it but in too many parts of his works; nay, even in his translation of the Iliad, where it ought not to have been admitted, and which Dryden has but rarely used in his Virgil. Our author seldom writes many words together without an antithesis. It must be allowed sometimes, to add strength to

a

Fair to no purpose, artful to no end,
Young without lovers, old without a friend;
A fop their passion, but their prize a sot;
Alive, ridiculous; and dead, forgot!

245

Ah! Friend! to dazzle let the vain design; To raise the thought, and touch the heart, be 250

thine!

That charm shall grow, while what fatigues the ring,

Flaunts and goes down, an unregarded thing :

NOTES.

a sentiment by an opposition of images: but, too frequently repeated, it becomes tiresome and disgusting. Rhyme has almost a natural tendency to betray a writer into it: but the purest authors have despised it, as an ornament pert and puerile and epigrammatic. Seneca, Pliny, Tacitus, and later authors, abound in it. Quintilian has sometimes used it with much success, as when he speaks of style; "magna, non nimia; sublimis, non abrupta ; severa, non tristis ; læta, non luxuriosa; plena, non tumida." And sometimes Tully; as, " vicit pudorem libido, timorem audacia, rationem amentia." But these writers fall into this mode of speaking but seldom, and do not make it their constant and general manner. Those moderns, who have not acquired a true taste for the simplicity of the best ancients, have generally run into a frequent use of point, opposition, and contrast. They who begin to study painting, are struck at first with the pieces of the most vivid colouring; they are almost ashamed to own that they do not relish and feel the modest and reserved beauties of Raphael. The exact proportion of St. Peter's at Rome occasions it not to appear so great as it really is. It is the same in writing; but by degrees we find that Lucan, Martial, Juvenal, Q. Curtius, and Florus, and others of that stamp, who abound in figures that contribute to the false florid, in luxuriant metaphors, in pointed conceits, in lively antitheses, unexpectedly darting forth, are contemptible for the very causes which once excited our admiration. It is

then we relish Terence, Cæsar, and Xenophon.

Ver. 249.] Advice for their true interest.

Pope.

Warton.

So when the sun's broad beam has tir'd the sight, All mild ascends the moon's more sober light,

Serene in virgin modesty she shines,

And unobserv'd the glaring orb declines.

255

Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray,

Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;
She, who can love a sister's charms, or hear
Sighs for a daughter, with unwounded ear; 260
She, who ne'er answers till a husband cools,
Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules,
Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
Yet has her humour most, when she obeys;
Lets fops or fortune fly which way they will; 265
Disdains all loss of tickets, or codille;
Spleen, vapours, or small-pox, above them all,
And mistress of herself, tho' china fall.

And yet, believe me, good as well as ill,
Woman's at best a contradiction still.
Heaven, when it strives to polish all it can
Its last best work, but forms a softer man;
Picks from each sex, to make the fav'rite blest,
Your love of pleasure, our desire of rest;

Blends, in exception to all general rules,
Your taste of follies, with our scorn of fools;

270

275

Reserve with frankness, art with truth allied,
Courage with softness, modesty with pride;

NOTES.

Ver. 268. though china fall.] Addison has touched this subject with his usual exquisite humour, in the Lover, No. 10. p. 291. of his works, 4to. quoting Epictetus to comfort a lady that labours under this heavy calamity. Warton.

Fix'd principles, with fancy ever new;
Shakes all together, and produces--You.

280

Be this a woman's fame: with this unblest, Toasts live a scorn, and queens may die a jest. This Phœbus promis'd (I forget the year) When those blue eyes first open'd on the sphere; Ascendant Phœbus watch'd that hour with care, 285 Averted half your parent's simple prayer; And gave you beauty, but denied the pelf That buys your sex a tyrant o'er itself.

NOTES.

Ver. 285, &c. Ascendant Phœbus watch'd that hour with care, Averted half your parents' simple pray'r;

And gave you beauty, but denied the pelf]

The poet concludes his epistle with a fine Moral, which deserves the serious attention of the public. It is this: that all the extravagances of these vicious characters here described, are much inflamed by a wrong education, hinted at in ver. 203; and that even the best are rather secured by a good natural, than by the prudence and providence of parents; which observation is conveyed under the sublime classical machinery of Phœbus in the ascendant, watching the natal hour of his favourite, and averting the ill effects of her parents' mistaken fondness. For Phœbus, as the God of wit, confers genius, and, as one of the astronomical influences, defeats the adventitious bias of education.

In conclusion, the great moral from both these Epistles together is, that the two rarest things in all nature are, a disINTERESTED MAN, and a reasonabLE WOMAN. Warburton.

It may be doubted whether the preceding note, like some others of the same learned critic, does not tend to obscure rather than to elucidate the sense of the author; who meant nothing more in this passage, than by an elegant fiction to reconcile the Lady to whom it is addressed to her lot in life, by the consideration, that sense and good humour, with the additional advantage of a Poet to celebrate them, were preferable to riches. The MORAL of this Epistle