this Toy is fatal found,
Nor did that fabled Dart more surely wound.
Both Gifts destructive to the Givers prove,
Alike both Lovers fall by those they love:
Yet guiltless too this bright Destroyer lives,
At random wounds, nor knows the Wound she gives.
She views the Story with attentive Eyes,
And pities_ Procris, _while her Lover dies.'

[Footnote 1: This second letter and the verses were from Pope.]

* * * * *

No. 528. Wednesday, November 5, 1712. Steele.

'Dum potuit solite gemitum virtute repressit.'

Ovid.

_Mr_. SPECTATOR,

'I who now write to you, am a Woman loaded with Injuries, and the
Aggravation of my Misfortune is, that they are such which are
overlooked by the Generality of Mankind, and tho' the most afflicting
imaginable, not regarded as such in the general Sense of the World. I
have hid my Vexation from all Mankind; but have now taken Pen, Ink,
and Paper, and am resolv'd to unbosom my self to you, and lay before
you what grieves me and all the Sex. You have very often mentioned
particular Hardships done to this or that Lady; but, methinks, you
have not in any one Speculation directly pointed at the partial
Freedom Men take, the unreasonable Confinement Women are obliged to,
in the only Circumstance in which we are necessarily to have a
Commerce with them, that of Love. The Case of Celibacy is the great
Evil of our Nation; and the Indulgence of the vicious Conduct of Men
in that State, with the Ridicule to which Women are exposed, though
ever so virtuous, if long unmarried, is the Root of the greatest
Irregularities of this Nation. To shew you, Sir, that tho' you never
have given us the Catalogue of a Lady's Library as you promised, we
read good Books of our own chusing, I shall insert on this occasion a
Paragraph or two out of _Echard's Roman History_. In the 44th Page of
the second Volume the Author observes, that _Augustus_, upon his
Return to _Rome_ at the end of a War, received Complaints that too
great a Number of the young Men of Quality were unmarried. The Emperor
thereupon assembled the whole _Equestrian_ Order; and having separated
the Married from the Single, did particular Honours to the former, but
he told the latter, that is to say, Mr. SPECTATOR, he told the
Batchelors,

"That their Lives and Actions had been