LXII. There's also nightly, to the uninitiated, It is I meant and mean not to disparage The show of virtue even in the vitiated It adds an outward grace unto their carriageBut to denounce the amphibious sort of harlot, "Couleur de rose," who's neither white nor scarlet. LXIII. "No," Such is your cold coquette, who can't say Then sees your heart wreck'd, with an inward This works a world of sentimental woe, And sends new Werters yearly to their coffin; But yet is merely innocent flirtation, Not quite adultery, but adulteration. LXIV. "Ye gods, I grow a talker!" Let us prate. The next of perils, though I place it sternest, Is when, without regard to " church or state," A wife makes or takes love in upright earnest. Abroad, such things decide few women's fate (Such, early traveller! is the truth thou learnest) -But in old England, when a young bride errs, Poor thing! Eve's was a trifling case to hers. LXV. For 'tis a low, newspaper, humdrum, lawsuit LXVI. But they who blunder thus are raw beginners; LXVII. Juan, who did not stand in the predicament meant But he had seen so much good love before, That he was not in heart so very weak ;-I meant But thus much, and no sneer against the shore Of white cliffs, white necks, blue eyes, bluer stockings, Tithes, taxes, duns, and doors with double knockings. LXVIII. But coming young from lands and scenes romantic, I say LXIX. at first-for he found out at last, LXX. Though travell'd, I have never had the luck to Trace up those shuffling negroes, Nile or Niger, To that impracticable place Timbuctoo, Where Geography finds no one to oblige her With such a chart as may be safely stuck to For Europe ploughs in Afric like "bos piger:" But if I had been at Timbuctoo, there No doubt I should be told that black is fair.(') (1) [Major Denham says, that when he first saw European women after his travels in Africa, they appeared to him to have unnatural sickly countenances.-E.] LXXI. It is. I will not swear that black is white; Or if I'm wrong, I'll not be ta'en aback:- LXXII. But I'm relapsing into metaphysics, That labyrinth, whose clue is of the same Construction as your cures for hectic phthisics, Those bright moths fluttering round a dying flame; And this reflection brings me to plain physics, And to the beauties of a foreign dame, Compared with those of our pure pearls of price, Those polar summers, all sun, and some ice. LXXIII. Or say they are like virtuous mermaids, whose Who have a due respect for their own wishes. Like Russians rushing from hot baths to snows (1) Are they, at bottom virtuous even when vicious: They warm into a scrape, but keep of course, As a reserve, a plunge into remorse. (1) The Russians, as is well known, run out from their hot baths to plunge into the Neva; a pleasant practical antithesis, which it seems does them no harm. LXXIV. But this has nought to do with their outsides. Half her attractions-probably from pity— Than storms it as a foe would take a city; But once there (if you doubt this, prithee try) She keeps it for you like a true ally. LXXV. She cannot step as does an Arab barb, Nor in her eye Ausonia's glance is burning; LXXVI. She cannot do these things, nor one or two (A thing approved as saving time and toil);But though the soil may give you time and trouble, Well cultivated, it will render double. |