f Heart or Quickness of Spirit in the Morning after profound Sleep or
indolent Slumbers. He is not to be at Ease any longer than he can keep
Reason and good Sense without his Curtains; otherwise he will be haunted
with the Reflection, that he could not believe such a one the Woman that
upon Trial he found her. What has he got by his Conquest, but to think
meanly of her for whom a Day or two before he had the highest Honour?
and of himself for, perhaps, wronging the Man whom of all Men living he
himself would least willingly have injured?
Pleasure seizes the whole Man who addicts himself to it, and will not
give him Leisure for any good Office in Life which contradicts the
Gaiety of the present Hour. You may indeed observe in People of Pleasure
a certain Complacency and Absence of all Severity, which the Habit of a
loose unconcerned Life gives them; but tell the Man of Pleasure your
secret Wants, Cares, or Sorrows, and you will find he has given up the
Delicacy of his Passions to the Cravings of his Appetites. He little
knows the perfect Joy he loses, for the disappointing Gratifications
which he pursues. He looks at Pleasure as she approaches, and comes to
him with the Recommendation of warm Wishes, gay Looks, and graceful
Motion; but he does not observe how she leaves his Presence with
Disorder, Impotence, down-cast Shame, and conscious Imperfection. She
makes our Youth inglorious, our Age shameful.
WILL. HONEYCOMB gives us twenty Intimations in an Evening of several
Hags whose Bloom was given up to his Arms; and would raise a Value to
himself for having had, as the Phrase is, very good Women. WILL.'S good
Women are the Comfort of his Heart, and support him, I warrant, by the
Memory of past Interviews with Persons of their Condition. No, there is
not in the World an Occasion wherein Vice makes so phantastical a
Figure, as at the Meeting of two old People who have been Partners in
unwarrantable Pleasure. To tell a toothless old Lady that she once had a
good Set, or a defunct Wencher that he once was the admired Thing of the
Town, are Satires instead of Applauses; but on the other Side, consider
the old Age of those who have passed their Days in Labour, Industry, and
Virtue, their Decays make them but appear the more venerable, and the
Imperfections of their Bodies are beheld as a Misfortune to humane
Society that their Make is so little durable.
But to return more directly to my Man of Wit and Pleasure. In all Order
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