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"One would not, fure, be frightfulwhen one's dead"And-Betty-give this Cheek a little Red.”

The Courtier smooth, who forty years had shin'd An humble fervant to all human kind,

Just brought out this, when scarce his tongue could ftir, “If—where I'm going—I could serve you, Sir? "I give and I devise (old Euclio said, 256 And figh'd) "my lands and tenements to Ned. Your money, Sir; "My money, Sir, what all?

Why,-if I must-(then wept) I give it Paul. The Manor, Sir?-" The Manor! hold, he cry'd, "Not that,—I cannot part with that”—and dy’d.

And you! brave COBHAM, to the latest breath Shall feel your ruling paffion ftrong in death: Such in those moments as in all the past,

"Oh, fave my Country, Heav'n!" fhall be your last

N.Blakey inv. & del

G. Scotin Sculp In Men, we various ruling Passions find, In Women, two almost divide the Kind:

Those only fix'd, they first or last obey, The Love of Pleasure, and the Love of Iway.

Char: of Women.

MORAL ESSAYS.

EPISTLE II.

то

ALAD Y.

Of the Characters of Women.

OTHING fo true as what you once let fall,

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"Moft Women have no Characters at all."

Matter too foft a lafting mark to bear,

And beft diftinguish'd by black, brown, or fair.

NOTES.

tention given to it. He said, that no one character in it was drawn from the life. The Public believed him on his word, and expreffed little curiofity about a Satire in which there was nothing perfonal.

Of the Characters of Wo-haps account for the fmall atmen.] There is nothing in Mr. Pope's works more highly finished than this Epiftle: Yet its fuccefs was in no proportion to the pains he took in compofing it. Something he chanced to drop in a fhort Advertisement prefixed to it, on its first publication, may per

VER. 1. Nothing fo true &c.] The reader perhaps may

How many pictures of one Nymph we view, 5 All how unlike each other, all how true!

NOTES.

be disappointed to find that this Epiftle, which propofes the fame fubject with the preceding, is conducted on very different rules of method; for instead of being disposed in the fame logical connection, and filled with the like philofophical remarks, it is wholly taken up in drawing a great variety of capital Characters: But if he would reflect, that the two Sexes make but one Species, and confequently, that the Characters of both must be ftudied and explained on the fame principles, he would fee, that when the poet had done this in the preceding Epiftle, his business here was, not to repeat what he had already delivered, but only to verify and illuftrate his doctrine, by every view of that perplexity of Nature, which his philofophy only can explain. If the reader therefore will but be at the

pains to study these Characters with any degree of attention, as they are here masterly drawn, one important particular (for which the poet has artfully prepared him by the introduction) will very forcibly ftrike his obfervation; and that is, that all the great ftrokes in the feveral Characters of Women are not only infinitely perplexed and discordant, like thofe in Men, but abfolutely inconfiftent, and in a much higher degree contradictory. As ftrange as this may appear, yet he will fee that the poet has all the while strictly followed Nature, whose ways, we find by the former Epistle, are not a little mysterious; and a mystery this might have remained, had not our author explained it at 207, where he fhuts up his Characters with this philofophical reflexion :

In Men, we various ruling Paffions find;
In Women, two almost divide the kind;
Thofe, only fix'd, they first or last obey,
The love of Pleafure, and the love of Sway.
If this account be true, we fee
the perpetual neceffity (which
is not the cafe in Men) that
Women lye under of difguifing

their ruling paffion. Now the variety of arts employed to this purpose must needs draw them into infinite contradic

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