This Fable will look well enough in the Moral, how Fantastical soever
it may appear at first Blush, in the Lines and Traces of it. Here’s
a _Beast_ in Love with a _Virgin_; which is but a Reverse of the
Preposterous Passions we meet with Frequently in the World, when
Reasonable Creatures of Both Sexes fall in love with Those, that in the
Allusion may (almost without a Figure) pass for Beasts. There’s Nothing
so Fierce, or so Savage, but Love will Soften it; Nothing so Generous,
but it will Debauch it; Nothing so sharp-sighted in Other Matters, but it
throws a Mist before the Eyes on’t. It puts the Philosopher beside his
_Latin_; and to sum up All in a Little, where This Passion Domineers,
neither Honour, nor Virtue, is able to stand before it. The _Lyons_
parting with his _Teeth_, and his _Clawes_, in a Complement to his New
Mistress, is no more then what we see Every Day Exemplify’d in the Case
of making over Estates and Joyntures, with the Malice Prepense all this
While of holding their Noses to the Grindstone, and with the Girls Father
here, of Jilting them at last.