by its powerful
instinct in taking pleasure by its right handle, I could scarce have
made a choice more to my purpose.

Mr. H....'s loftier qualifications of birth, fortune and sense, laid
me under a sort of subjection and constraint, that were far from making
harmony in the concert of love; nor had he, perhaps, thought me worth
softening that superiority to; but, with this lad, I was more on the
level which love delights in.

We may say what we please, but those we can be the easiest and freest
with, are ever those we like, not to say love the best.

With this stripling, all whose art of love was the action of it, I
could, without check of awe or restraint, give a loose to jay, and
execute every scheme of dalliance my fond fancy might put me on, in
which he was, in every sense, a most exquisite companion. And now my
great pleasure lay in humouring all the petulances, all the wanton
frolic of a raw novice just fledged, and keen on the burning scent of
his game, but unbroken to the sport: and, to carry on the figure, who
could better read the wood than he, or stand fairer for the heart of the
hunt?

He advanced then to my bed side, and whilst he faultered out his
message, I could observe his colour rise, and his eyes lighten with joy,
in seeing me in a situation as favourable to his loosest wishes, as if
he had bespoke the play.

I smiled, and put out my hand towards him, which he kneeled down to
(a politeness taught him by love alone, that great master of it) and
greedily kissed. After exchanging a few confused questions and answers,
I asked him if he would come to bed to me, for the little time I could
venture to detain him. This was just asking a person, dying with hunger,
to feast upon the dish on earth the most to his palate. Accordingly,
without further reflection, his clothes were off in an instant; when,
blushing still more at this new liberty, he got under the bed clothes
I held up to receive him, and was now in bed with a woman for the first
time in his life.

Here began the usual tender preliminaries, as delicious, perhaps, as the
crowning act of enjoyment itself; which they often beget an impatience
of, that makes pleasure destructive of itself, by hurrying on the
final period, and closing that scene of bliss, in which the actors
are generally too well pleased with their parts, not to wish them an
eternity of duration.

When we had sufficiently graduated our advances towards the main point,
by toyi