f shame, pride of family,
may make rifled rank get up, and shake itself to rights: and if any thing
come of it, such a one may suffer only in her pride, by being obliged to
take up with a second-rate match instead of a first; and, as it may fall
out, be the happier, as well as the more useful, for the misadventure;
since (taken off of her public gaddings, and domesticated by her
disgrace) she will have reason to think herself obliged to the man who
has saved her from further reproach; while her fortune and alliance will
lay an obligation upon him; and her past fall, if she have prudence and
consciousness, will be his present and future security.

But a poor girl [such a one as my Rosebud for instance] having no recalls
from education; being driven out of every family that pretends to
reputation; persecuted most perhaps by such as have only kept their
secret better; and having no refuge to fly to--the common, the stews, the
street, is the fate of such a poor wretch; penury, want, and disease, her
sure attendants; and an untimely end perhaps closes the miserable scene.

And will you not now all join to say, that it is more manly to attach a
lion than a sheep?--Thou knowest, that I always illustrated my eagleship,
by aiming at the noblest quarries; and by disdaining to make a stoop at
wrens, phyl-tits,* and wag-tails.

* Phyl-tits, q. d. Phyllis-tits, in opposition to Tom-tits. It needs not
now be observed, that Mr. Lovelace, in this wanton gaiety of his heart,
often takes liberties of coining words and phrases in his letters to this
his familiar friend. See his ludicrous reason for it in Vol. III. Letter
XXV. Paragr. antepenult.

The worst respecting myself, in the case before me, is that my triumph,
when completed, will be so glorious a one, that I shall never be able to
keep up to it. All my future attempts must be poor to this. I shall be
as unhappy, after a while, from my reflections upon this conquest, as Don
Juan of Austria was in his, on the renowned victory of Lepanto, when he
found that none of future achievements could keep pace with his early
glory.

I am sensible that my pleas and my reasoning may be easily answered, and
perhaps justly censured; But by whom censured? Not by any of the
confraternity, whose constant course of life, even long before I became
your general, to this hour, has justified what ye now in a fit of
squeamishness, and through envy, condemn. Having, therefore, vindicated
myself