owever mistaken; women are never mercenary in their amours,
until they are totally debauched, and prostitution has
become their trade, and many not even then, where they like
their man. The youngest and most artless of them all know,
that when money is offered beforehand they are treated like
prostitutes, a character which they naturally hate and
despise, they are sensible their man entertains the same
sentiments of them, and they as naturally hate and despise
him for doing so. Neither is the greatest success to be
expected from putting them in ill humour, and keeping their
tempers constantly on the fret; surely more is to be done
when their hearts are at ease, their fears asleep, and their
minds softened by sympathizing love and tenderness. At the
same time there is a due medium between an abject whiner,
and an obstinate insulting teazer, which characters women
know well how to distinguish; they despise the one, and they
hate the other: all your lovers are of these kinds; Hickman
and Lord Goosecap of the first; Lovelace and Booby, when he
put on his _stately airs_ after the summer-house adventure,
of the last. You have not been able to describe an
agreeable, artful, and accomplish'd seducer, who, without
raising fears and terrors, could melt, surprize, or reason a
woman out of her virtue. It is well you have not, for such a
character could do no good, and might do a great deal of
mischief. Nay, there is reason to fear, that the characters
you have already drawn, whatever your intentions may be,
have not quite so innocent a tendency as you imagine.

Having now enquired into the merit of your compositions,
with respect to the manner of their execution, I shall next
proceed to examine what tendency their subject, or the
matter contained in them, has to promote chastity, modesty,
and delicacy; virtues, the advancement of which I believe
you have sincerely at heart. You and I, perhaps, entertain
quite different notions about their nature and origin; but
while we are agreed as to their utility and fitness, and
that the conduct of both sexes ought to be more under the
influence of these principles than it generally is, we need
not trouble ourselves about such abstract speculations; so
that it is to be hoped we shall reason henceforth upon
common principles, and the natural and necessary connection
between causes and effects. Love, eternal Love, is the
subject, the burthen of all your writings; it is the
poignant sauce,