This opinion was soon
confirmed by one of my lovers, who married Lavinia with less beauty and
fortune than mine, because he thought a wife ought to have qualities
which might make her amiable when her bloom was past.
The vanity of my mother would not suffer her to discover any defect in
one that had been formed by her instructions, and had all the excellence
which she herself could boast. She told me that nothing so much hindered
the advancement of women as literature and wit, which generally
frightened away those that could make the best settlements, and drew
about them a needy tribe of poets and philosophers, that filled their
heads with wild notions of content, and contemplation, and virtuous
obscurity. She therefore enjoined me to improve my minuet-step with a
new French dancing-master, and wait the event of the next birth-night.
I had now almost completed my nineteenth year: if my charms had lost any
of their softness, it was more than compensated by additional dignity;
and if the attractions of innocence were impaired, their place was
supplied by the arts of allurement. I was therefore preparing for a new
attack, without any abatement of my confidence, when, in the midst of my
hopes and schemes, I was seized by that dreadful malady which has so
often put a sudden end to the tyranny of beauty.
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