fufpeat the fincerity of their virtue, who are too warmly provoked at other people's perfonal fins. The unlawful commerce of the fexes is of all other the hardest to avoid; and yet there is no one which you fhall hear the rigider part of womankind peak of with fo little mercy. It is very certain that a modeft woman cannot abhor the breach of chaftity too much; but pray let her hate it for herself, and only pity it in others. WILL HONEYCOMB calls thefe over-offended ladies, the outrageonfly virtuous.

I do not defign to fall upon failures in general, with relation to the gift of chastity, but at prefent only enter upon that large field, and begin with the confideration of poor and public whores. The other evening paffing along near Covent Garden, I was jogged on the elbow as I turned into the piazza, on the right hand coming out of James-ftreet, by a young flim girl of about feventeen, who with a pert air asked me if I was for a pint of wine. I do not know but I fhould have indulged my curiofity in having fome chat with her, but that I am informed the man of the Bumper knows me; and it would have made a ftory for him not very agreeable to fome part of my writings, though I have in others fo frequently faid that I am wholly unconcerned in any fcene I am in, but merely as a fpectator. This impediment being in any way, we food under one of the arches by twilight; and there I could obferve as exact features as I had ever feen, the most agreeable fhape, the finest neck and bofom, in a word, the whole perfon of a woman exquifitely beautiful. She affected to allure me with a forced wantonnefs in her look and air; but I faw it checked with hunger and coid: her eyes were wan and eager, her drefs thin and tawdry, her mien genteel and childish. This ftrange figure gave me much anguish of heart, and to avoid been feen with her I went away, but could not forbear giving her a crown. The poor thing fighed, curtfied, and, with a bleffing expreffed with the utmoft vehemence, turned from me. This creature is what they call" newly come upon the

town," but who, I fuppofe, falling into cruel hands, was left in the firft month from her difhonour, and expofed to país through the hands and difcipline of one of thofe

hags of hell whom we call bawds. But left I should grów too fuddenly grave on this subject, and be myself outrageoufly good, I fhall turn to a fcene in one of Fletcher's plays, where this character is drawn, and the œconomy of whoredom most admirably defcribed. The paffage I would point to is in the third fcene of the fecond act of the Humorous Lieutenant. Leucippe, who is agent for the king's luft, and bawds at the fame time for the whole court, is very pleasantly introduced, reading her minutes as a perfon of bufinefs, with two maids, her under-fecretaries, taking instructions at a table before her. Her women, both those under her prefent tutelage, and those which fhe is laying wait for, are alphabetically fet down in her book; and the is looking over the letter C, in a muttering voice, as if between foliloquy and speaking out, fhe fays,

"Her maidenhead will yield me; let me fee now; "She is not fifteen they fay: for her complexionCloe, Cloe, Cloe, here I have her,

66

"Cloe, the daughter of a country gentleman; "Her age upon fifteen. Now her complexion. "A lovely brown; here 'tis; eyes black and rolling, "The body neatly built; fhe ftrikes a lute well, "Sings most enticingly: thefe helps confider'd, "Her maidenhead will amount to fome three hundred, "Or three hundred and fifty crowns, 'twill bear it handfomely,

"Her father's poor, fome little fhare deducted, "To buy him a hunting nag".

Thefe creatures are very well inftructed in the circumstances and manners of all who are any way related to the fair one whom they have a defign upon. As Cloe is to be purchased with 350 crowns, and the father taken off with a pad; the merchant's wife next to her, who abounds in plenty, is not to have downright money, but the mercenary part of her mind is engaged with a prefent of plate and a little ambition. She is made to understand that it is a man of quality who dies for her. The examination of a young girl for bufinels, and the crying down her value for being a flight thing, together with every other circumftance in the fcene, are inimi

tably excellent, and have the true fpirit of comedy though it were to be wifhed the author had added a circumftance which would make Leucippe's baseness more odious.

It must not be thought a digreffion from my intended fpeculation, to talk of bawds in a difcourfe upon wenches; for a woman of the town is not thoroughly and properly fuch, without having gone through the education of one of thefe houses. But the compaffionate cafe of very many is, that they are taken into fuch hands without any the leaft fufpicion, previous temptation, or admonition to what place they are going. The laft week I went to an inn in the city to inquire for fome provifions which were fent by a waggon out of the country; and as I waited in one of the boxes till the chamberlain had looked over his parcels, I heard an old and a young voice repeating the questions and refponfes of the churchcatechifm. I thought it no breach of good-manners to peep at a crevife, and look in at people fo well employed; but who fhould I fee there but the moft artful procurefs in the town, examining a moft beautiful countrygirl, who had come up in the fame waggon with my things, "Whether fhe was well educated, could forbear playing the wanton with fervants and idle fellows, of "which this town," fays fhe, "is too full:" at the fame time, "whether the knew enough of breeding, as that "if a 'fquire or gentleman, or one that was her betters, "fhould give her a civil falute, fhe could curtefy and. "be humble nevertheless." Her innocent forfooths, yes's, an't please you's, and fhe would do her endeavour, moved the good old lady to take her out of the hands of a country bumkin her brother, and hire her for her own maid. I ftaid till I faw them all marched out to take coach; the brother loaded with a great cheese, he prevailed upon her to take for her civilities to his filter. This poor creature's fate is not far off that of hers whom I fpoke of above, and it is not to be doubted, but after the has been long enough a prey to luft, fhe will be delivered over to famine. The ironical commendation of the industry and charity of these antiquated ladies, thefe directors of fin, after they can no longer commit it, makes up the beauty of the inimitable

dedication to the Plain-Dealer, and is a mafter-piece of raillery on this vice. But to understand all the purlieus of this game the better, and to illustrate this fubject in future difcourfes, I'muft venture myfelf, with my friend WILL, into the haunts of beauty and gallantry; from pampered vice in the habitations of the wealthy, to diftreffed indigent wickedness expelled the harbours of the brothel.

T.

N° 267.

Saturday, January 5.

Cedite Romani fcriptores, cedite Graii.

PROPERT. El. 34.

lib. 2. ver. 65.

Give place, ye Roman, and ye Grecian wits.

THERE is nothing in nature fo irkfome as general difcourfes, especially when they turn chiefly upon words. For this reafon I fhall wave the difcuffion of that point which was started fome years fince, whether Milton's Paradife Loft may be called an heroic poem ? Those who will not give it that title, may call it, if they please, a divine poem. It will be fufficient to its perfection, if it has in it all the beauties of the highest kind of poetry y; and as for those who allege it is not an heroic poem, they advance no more to the diminution of it, than if they should fay Adam is not Æneas, nor Eve Helen.

I shall therefore examine it by the rules of epic poetry, and fee whether it falls thort of the Iliad or Æneid, in the beauties which are effential to that kind of writing. The first thing to be confidered in an epic poem, is the fable, which is perfect or imperfe&t, according as the action which it relates is more or lefs fo. This action fhould have three qualifications in it. First, it should be but one action. Secondly, it fhould be an entire action; and, thirdly, it fhould be a great action. To confider the action of the Iliad, Æneid, and Paradife Loft, in thefe three feveral lights. Homer to preferve.

the unity of his action haftens into the midft of things, as Horace has obferved: had he gone up to Leda's egg, or begun much later even at the rape of Helen, or the invefting of Troy, it is manifeft that the story of the poem would have been a feries of feveral actions. He therefore opens his poem with the difcord of his princes, and artfully interweaves, in the feyeral fucceeding parts of it, an account of every thing material which relates to them, and had paffed before that fatal diffenfion. After the fame manner Æneas makes his first appearance in the Tyrrhene feas, and within fight of Italy, because the action propofed to be celebrated was that of his fettling himfelf in Latium. But because it was neceffary for the reader to know what had happened to him in the taking of Troy, and in the preceding parts of his voyage, Virgil makes his hero relate it by way of epifode in the fecond and third books of the Æneid. The contents of both which books come before thofe of the first book in the thread of the ftory, though for preferving of this unity of action they follow them in the difpofition of the poem. Milton, in imitation of thefe two great poets, opens his Paradife Loft, with an infernal council plotting the fall of man, which is the action he propofed to celebrate; and as for thofe great actions, which preceded in point of time, the battle of the angels, and the creation of the world, which would have intirely deftroyed the unity of his principal action, had he related them in the fame order they happened, he caft them into the fifth, fixth, and feventh books, by way of epifode to this noble poem.

Ariftotle himself allows, that Homer has nothing to boaft of as to the unity of his fable, though at the fame time that great critic and philofopher endeavours to palliate this imperfection in the Greek poet by imputing it in fome measure to the very nature of an epic poem. Some have been of opinion, that the Æneid also labours in this particular, and has epifodes which may be looked upon as excrefcences rather than as parts of the action. On the contrary, the poem, which we have now under our confideration, hath no other epifodes than fuch as naturally arife from the fubject, and yet is filled with fuch a multitude of aftonishing incidents,