We all dined together in Mrs. Sinclair's parlour:--All excessively right!
The two nieces have topped their parts--Mrs. Sinclair her's. Never was
so easy as now!--'She really thought a little oddly of these people at
first, she said! Mrs. Sinclair seemed very forbidding! Her nieces were
persons with whom she could not wish to be acquainted. But really we
should not be too hasty in our censures. Some people improve upon us.
The widow seems tolerable.' She went no farther than tolerable.--'Miss
Martin and Miss Horton are young people of good sense, and have read a
great deal. What Miss Martin particularly said of marriage, and of her
humble servant, was very solid. She believes with such notions she
cannot make a bad wife.' I have said Sally's humble servant is a woolen-
draper of great reputation; and she is soon to be married.
I have been letting her into thy character, and into the characters of my
other three esquires, in hopes to excite her curiosity to see you
to-morrow night. I have told her some of the worst, as well as best
parts of your characters, in order to exalt myself, and to obviate any
sudden surprizes, as well as to teach her what sort of men she may expect
to see, if she will oblige me with her company.
By her after-observation upon each of you, I shall judge what I may or
may not do to obtain or keep her good opinion; what she will like, or
what not; and so pursue the one or avoid the other, as I see proper. So,
while she is penetrating into your shallow heads, I shall enter her
heart, and know what to bid my own to hope for.
The house is to be taken in three weeks.--All will be over in three
weeks, or bad will be my luck!--Who knows but in three days?--Have I not
carried that great point of making her pass for my wife to the people
below? And that other great one, of fixing myself here night and day?
--What woman ever escaped me, who lodged under one roof with me?--The
house too, THE house; the people--people after my own heart; her
servants, Will. and Dorcas, both my servants.--Three days, did I say!
Pho! Pho! Pho!--three hours!
***
I have carried my third point: but so extremely to the dislike of my
charmer, that I have been threatened, for suffering Miss Partington to be
introduced to her without her leave. Which laid her under a necessity to
deny or comply with the urgent request of so fine a young lady; who had
engaged to honour me at my collation, on condition that my beloved would
be present at it.
To be obliged to appear before my friends as what she was not! She was
for insisting, that I should acquaint the women here with the truth of
the matter; and not go on propagating stories for her to countenance,
making her a sharer in my guilt.
But what points will not perseverance carry? especially when it is
covered over with the face of yielding now, and, Parthian-like, returning
to the charge anon. Do not the sex carry all their points with their men
by the same methods? Have I conversed with them so freely as I have
done, and learnt nothing of them? Didst thou ever know that a woman's
denial of any favour, whether the least or the greatest, that my heart
was set upon, stood her in any stead? The more perverse she, the more
steady I--that is my rule.
But the point thus so much against her will carried, I doubt thou will
see in her more of a sullen than of an obliging charmer: for, when Miss
Partington was withdrawn, 'What was Miss Partington to her? In her
situation she wanted no new acquaintances. And what were my four friends
to her in her present circumstances? She would assure me, if ever again'
--And there she stopped, with a twirl of her hand.
When we meet, I will, in her presence, tipping thee a wink, show thee the
motion, for it was a very pretty one. Quite new. Yet have I seen an
hundred pretty passionate twirls too, in my time, from other fair-ones.
How universally engaging is it to put a woman of sense, to whom a man is
not married, in a passion, let the reception given to every ranting
scene in our plays testify. Take care, my charmer, now thou art come to
delight me with thy angry twirls, that thou temptest me not to provoke a
variety of them from one, whose every motion, whose every air, carries in
it so much sense and soul.
But, angry or pleased, this charming creature must be all loveliness.
Her features are all harmony, and made for one another. No other feature
could be substituted in the place of any one of her's but most abate of
her perfection: And think you that I do not long to have your opinion of
my fair prize?
If you love to see features that glow, though the heart is frozen, and
never yet was thawed; if you love fine sense, and adages flowing through
teeth of ivory and lips of coral; an eye that penetrates all things; a
voice that is harmony itself; an air of grandeur, mingled with a
sweetness that cannot be described; a politeness that, if ever equaled,
was never excelled--you'll see all these excellencies, and ten times
more, in this my GLORIANA.
Mark her majestic fabric!--She's a temple,
Sacred by birth, and built by hands divine;
Her soul the deity that lodges there:
Nor is the pile unworthy of the god.
Or, to describe her in a softer style with Rowe,
The bloom of op'ning flow'rs, unsully'd beauty,
Softness, and sweetest innocence she wears,
And looks like nature in the world's first spring.
Adieu, varlets four!--At six, on Monday evening, I expect ye all.