ore Licences have been taken out there of late
than usual. I am likewise informed of several pretty Fellows, who have
resolved to commence Heads of Families by the first favourable
Opportunity: One of them writes me word, that he is ready to enter into
the Bonds of Matrimony, provided I will give it him under my Hand (as I
now do) that a Man may shew his Face in good Company after he is
married, and that he need not be ashamed to treat a Woman with Kindness,
who puts herself into his Power for Life.

I have other Letters on this Subject, which say that I am attempting to
make a Revolution in the World of Gallantry, and that the Consequence of
it will be, that a great deal of the sprightliest Wit and Satyr of the
last Age will be lost. That a bashful Fellow, upon changing his
Condition, will be no longer puzzled how to stand the Raillery of his
facetious Companions; that he need not own he married only to plunder an
Heiress of her Fortune, nor pretend that he uses her ill, to avoid the
[ridiculous [1]] Name of a fond Husband.

Indeed if I may speak my Opinion of great part of the Writings which
once prevail'd among us under the Notion of Humour, they are such as
would tempt one to think there had been an Association among the Wits of
those times to rally Legitimacy out of our Island. A State of Wedlock
was the common Mark for all the Adventurers in Farce and Comedy, as well
as the Essayers in Lampoon and Satyr, to shoot at, and nothing was a
more standing Jest in all Clubs of fashionable Mirth, and gay
Conversation. It was determined among those airy Criticks, that the
Appellation of a _Sober Man_ should signify a _Spiritless Fellow_. And I
am apt to think it was about the same Time, that _Good-Nature_, a Word
so peculiarly elegant in our Language that some have affirmed it cannot
well be expressed in any other, came first to be render'd suspicious,
and in danger of being transferred from its original Sense to so distant
an Idea as that of _Folly_.

I must confess it has been my Ambition, in the course of my Writings, to
restore, as well as I was able, the proper Ideas of things. And as I
have attempted this already on the Subject of Marriage, in several
Papers, I shall here add some further Observations which occur to me on
the same Head. Nothing seems to be thought, by our fine Gentlemen, so
indispensable an Ornament in fashionable Life, as Love. _A Knight
Errant_, says _Don Quixot, without a Mistress, is like a Tree