ary 14, 1712. Steele.

Audire est operae pretium, procedere recte
Qui moechis non vultis.

Hor.

I have upon several Occasions (that have occurred since I first took
into my Thoughts the present State of Fornication) weighed with my self,
in behalf of guilty Females, the Impulses of Flesh and Blood, together
with the Arts and Gallantries of crafty Men; and reflect with some Scorn
that most Part of what we in our Youth think gay and polite, is nothing
else but an Habit of indulging a Pruriency that Way. It will cost some
Labour to bring People to so lively a Sense of this, as to recover the
manly Modesty in the Behaviour of my Men Readers, and the bashful Grace
in the Faces of my Women; but in all Cases which come into Debate, there
are certain things previously to be done before we can have a true Light
into the Subject Matter; therefore it will, in the first Place, be
necessary to consider the impotent Wenchers and industrious Haggs, who
are supplied with, and are constantly supplying new Sacrifices to the
Devil of Lust. You are to know then, if you are so happy as not to know
it already, that the great Havock which is made in the Habitations of
Beauty and Innocence, is committed by such as can only lay waste and not
enjoy the Soil. When you observe the present State of Vice and Virtue,
the Offenders are such as one would think should have no Impulse to what
they are pursuing; as in Business, you see sometimes Fools pretend to be
Knaves, so in Pleasure, you will find old Men set up for Wenchers. This
latter sort of Men are the great Basis and Fund of Iniquity in the Kind
we are speaking of: You shall have an old rich Man often receive Scrawls
from the several Quarters of the Town, with Descriptions of the new
Wares in their Hands, if he will please to send Word when he will be
waited on. This Interview is contrived, and the Innocent is brought to
such Indecencies as from Time to Time banish Shame and raise Desire.
With these Preparatives the Haggs break their Wards by little and
little, till they are brought to lose all Apprehensions of what shall
befall them in the Possession of younger Men. It is a common Postscript
of an Hagg to a young Fellow whom she invites to a new Woman, _She has,
I assure you, seen none but old Mr. Such-a-one_. It pleases the old
Fellow that the Nymph is brought to him unadorned, and from his Bounty
she is accommodated with enough to dress her for other Lovers. Th