In the second place I would desire my female reader to consider, that as the term of life is short, that of beauty is much shorter. The finest skin wrinkles in a few years, and loses the strength of its colouring so soon, that we have scarce time to admire it. I might embellish this subject with roses and rainbows, and several other ingenious conceits, which I may possibls reserve for another opportunity.

There is a third consideration which I would likewise recommend to a demurrer, and that is the great danger of her falling in love when she is about threescore, if she can not satisfy her doubts and scruples before that time. There is a kind of latter spring that sometimes gets into the blood of an old woman, and turns her into a very odd sort of an animal. I would therefore have the demurrer consider what a strange figure she will make, if she chances to get over all difficulties, and comes to a final resolution in that unseasonable part of her life.

I would not however be understood, by any thing I have here said, to discourage that natural modesty in the sex, which renders a retreat from the first approaches of a lover both fashionable and graceful: all that I intend is, to advise them, when they are prompted by reason and inclination, to demur only out of form, and so far as decency requires. A virtuous woman should reject the first offer of marriage, as a good man does that of a bishopric: but I would advise neither the one nor the other to persist in refusing what they secretly approve. I would in this particular propose the example of Eve to all her daughters, as Milton has represented her in the following

passage, which I can not forbear transcribing entire, though only the twelve last lines are to my present purpose.

"The rib he form'd and fashion'd with his hands;
Under his forming hands a creature grew,
Man like, but diff'rent sex: so lovely fair!
That what seem'd fair in all the world seem'd now
Mean, or in her summ'd up, in her contain❜d,
And into her looks; which from that time infus'd
Sweetness into my heart, unfelt before:
And into all things from her air inspir'd
The spirit of love and amorous delight.

She disappear'd, and left me dark! I wak'd
To find her, or for ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure.
When out of hope, behold her! not far off,
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorn'd
With what all earth or heav'n could bestow
To make her amiable. On she came,
Led by her heav'nly Maker, though unseen,
And guided by his voice; nor uninform'd
Of nuptial sanctity, and marriage rites;
Grace was in all her steps, heav'n in her eye,
In every gesture, dignity and love!

I, overjoy'd could not forbear aloud;

"This turn hath made amends; thou hast fulfill’J
Thy words, Creator bounteous and benign!
Giver of all things fair! but fairest this

Of all thy gifts, nor enviest. I now see

Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, myself"

She heard me thus, and though divinely brought,

Yet innocence, and virgin modesty,

Her virtue, and the conscience of her worth,

That would be woo'd and not unsought be won,
Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retir'd.
The more desirable: or, to say all,

Nature herself, though pure of sinful thought,
Wrought in her so, that seeing me she turn'd
I follow'd her; she what was honour knew,

And with obsequious majesty approv'd

My pleaded reason. To the nuptial bow'r
I led her blushing like the morn.'-

No. 90.

L.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13. By Addison.

-Magnus sine viribus ignis

Incassum furit

VIRG. Georg. 3. v. 99. In vain he burns, like hasty stubble fires.

DRYDEN.

THERE is not, in my opinion, a consideration more effectual to extinguish inordinate desires in the soul of man, than the notions of Plato and his followers upon that subject. They tell us, that every passion which has been contracted by the soul during her residence in the body, remains with her in a separate state; and that the soul in the body, or out of the body, differs no more than the man does from himself, when he is in his house, or in the open air. When therefore the obscene passions in particular have once taken root, and spread themselves in the soul, they cleave to her inseparably, and remain in her for ever, after the body is cast off and thrown aside. As an argument to confirm this their doctrine, they observe, that a lewd youth who goes on in a continued course of voluptuousness, advances by degrees into a libidinous old man; and that the passion survives in the mind, when it is altogether dead in the body; nay, that the desire grows more violent, and (like all other habits) gathers strength by age, at the same time that it has no power of executing its own purposes. If, say they, the soul is the most subject to these passions at a time when it has the least instigations from the

VOL. II.

body, we may well suppose she will still retain them when she is entirely divested of it. The very substance of the soul is festered with them, the gangrene is gone too far to be ever cured; the inflammation will rage to all eternity.

In this, therefore, (say the Platonists) consists the punishment of a voluptuous man after death; he is tormented with desires which it is impossible for him to gratify, solicited by a passion that has neither objects nor organs adapted to it; he lives in a state of invincible desire and impotence, and always burns in the pursuit of what he always despairs to possess. It is for this reason (says Plato) that the souls of the dead appear frequently in cemeteries, and hover about the places where their bodies are buried, as still hankering after their old brutal pleasures, and desiring again to enter the body that gave them an opportunity of fulfilling them.

Some of our most eminent divines have made use of this Platonic notion, so far as it regards the subsistence of our passions after death, with great beauty and strength of reason. Plato indeed carries the thought very far, when he grafts upon it his opinion of ghosts appearing in places of burial. Though I must confess if one did believe that the departed souls of men and women wandered up and down in these lower regions, and entertained themselves with the sight of their species, one could not devise a more proper hell for an impure spirit than that which Plato has touched upon.

The ancients seem to have drawn such a state of torments in the description of Tantalus, who was punished with the rage of an eternal thirst,

and set up to the chin in water that fled from his lips whenever he attempted to drink it.

Virgil, who has cast the whole system of Platonic philosophy, so far as it relates to the soul of man, into beautiful allegories, in the sixth book of his Eneid, gives us the punishment of a voluptuary after death, not unlike that which we are here speaking of.

-Lucent genialibus altis

Aurea fulcra toris, epulæque ante ora paratæ
Regifico luxu: Furiarum maxima juxta
Accubat, et manibus prohibet contingere mensas;
Exurgitque facem attollens, atque intonat ore.

They lie below on golden beds display'd,
And genial feasts with regal pomp are made;
The queen of furies by their side is set,

EN.

And snatches from their mouths th' untasted meat; Which if they touch, her hissing snakes she rears, Tossing her torch, and thund'ring in their ears. DRYDEN.

That I may a little alleviate the severity of this my speculation (which otherwise may lose me several of my polite readers,) I shall translate a story that has been quoted upon another occasion by one of the most learned men of the present age, as I find it in the original. The reader will see it is not foreign to my present subject, and I dare say will think it a lively representation of a person lying under the torments of such a kind of Tantalism or Platonic hell as that which we have now under consideration. Monsieur Pontignan, speaking of a love adventure that happened to him in the country, gives the following account of it. (a)

'When I was in the country last summer, I was often in company with a couple of charming women, who had all the wit and beauty one could