favour."

The letter was hardly read over, when she rushed out of bed in her
wrapping-gown, and consulted her glass for the truth of his passion. She
raised her head, and turned it to a profile, repeating the last lines,
"my being is ended, which consisted only in your favour." The goddess
immediately called her maid, and fell to dressing that mischievous face
of hers, without any manner of consideration for the mortal who had
offered up his petition. Nay, it was so far otherwise, that the whole
time of her woman's combing her hair was spent in discourse of the
impertinence of his passion, and ended, in declaring a resolution, if
she ever had him, to make him wait. She also frankly told the favourite
gipsy that was prating to her, that her passionate lover had put it out
of her power to be civil to him, if she were inclined to it; "for," said
she, "if I am thus celestial to my lover, he will certainly so far think
himself disappointed, as I grow into the familiarity and form of a
mortal woman."

I came away as I went in, without staying for other remarks than what
confirmed me in the opinion, that it is from the notions the men inspire
them with, that the women are so fantastical in the value of themselves.
This imaginary pre-eminence which is given to the fair sex, is not only
formed from the addresses of people of condition; but it is the fashion
and humour of all orders to go regularly out of their wits, as soon as
they begin to make love. I know at this time three goddesses in the New
Exchange;[125] and there are two shepherdesses who sell gloves in
Westminster Hall.[126]

[Footnote 123: See No. 138.]

[Footnote 124: "Under a Lady's Picture" (Waller's Poems: "Epigrams,
Epitaphs," &c.).]

[Footnote 125: See No. 26.]

[Footnote 126: See No. 145. Part of Westminster Hall was devoted to
shopkeepers' stalls, where toys, books, &c., could be brought. Tom Brown
("Amusements," &c. 1700) says: "On your left hand you hear a
nimble-tongued painted sempstress with her charming treble invite you to
buy some of her knick-knacks, and on your right a deep-mouthed crier,
commanding impossibilities, viz., silence to be kept among women and
lawyers."]

No. 140. [STEELE.

From _Tuesday, Feb. 28_, to _Thursday, March 2, 1709-10_.

----Aliena negotia centum
Per caput, et circa saliunt latus--
HOR., 2 Sat. vi. 33.

*