The Sylph, Volumes I and II
9781465517609
pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
TO LORD BIDDULPH. It is a certain sign of a man's cause being bad, when he is obliged to quote precedents in the follies of others, to excuse his own. You see I give up my cause at once. I am convinced I have done a silly thing, and yet I can produce thousands who daily do the same with, perhaps, not so good a motive as myself. In short, not to puzzle you too much, which I know is extremely irksome to a man who loves to have every thing as clear as a proposition in Euclid; your friend (now don't laugh) is married. "Married!" Aye, why not? don't every body marry? those who have estates, to have heirs of their own; and those who have nothing, to get something; so, according to my system, every body marries. Then why that stare of astonishment? that look of unbelief? Yes, thou infidel, I am married, and to such a woman! though, notwithstanding her beauty and other accomplishments, I shall be half afraid to present her in the world, she's such a rustic! one of your sylvan deities. But I was mad for her. "So you have been for half the women in town." Very true, my Lord, so I have, till I either gained them, or saw others whose image obliterated theirs. You well know, love with me has ever been a laughing God, "Rosy lips and cherub smiles," none of its black despairing looks have I experienced. What will the world say? How will some exult that I am at last taken in! What, the gay seducive Stanley shackled! But, I apprehend, your Lordship will wish to be informed how the "smiling mischief" seized me. Well, you shall have the full and true particulars of the matter how, the time when, and place where. I must, however, look back. Perhaps I have been too precipitate—I might possibly have gained the charming maid at a less expense than "adamantine everlasting chains."—But the bare idea of losing her made every former resolution of never being enslaved appear as nothing.—Her looks "would warm the cool bosom of age," and tempt an Anchorite to sin
