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When Lucy decks with Flowers her swelling Breast,
And on her Elbow leans, dissembling Rest,
Unable to refrain my madding Mind,
Nor Sleep nor Pasture worth my Care I find.

Once Delia slept, on easie Moss reclin’d,
Her lovely Limbs half bare, and rude the Wind;
I smoothed her Coats, and stole a silent Kiss:
Condemn me Shepherds if I did amiss. [4]

Such good Offices as these, and such friendly Thoughts and Concerns for one another, are what make up the Amity, as they call it, between Man and Woman.

It is the Permission of such Intercourse, that makes a young Woman come to the Arms of her Husband, after the Disappointment of four or five Passions which she has successively had for different Men, before she is prudentially given to him for whom she has neither Love nor Friendship. For what should a poor Creature do that has lost all her Friends? There’s Marinet the Agreeable, has, to my Knowledge, had a Friendship for Lord Welford, which had like to break her Heart; then she had so great a Friendship for Colonel Hardy, that she could not endure any Woman else should do any thing but rail at him. Many and fatal have been Disasters between Friends who have fallen out, and their Resentments are more keen than ever those of other Men can possibly be: But in this it happens unfortunately, that as there ought to be nothing concealed from one Friend to another, the Friends of different Sexes [very often [5]] find fatal Effects from their Unanimity.

For my Part, who study to pass Life in as much Innocence and Tranquility as I can, I shun the Company of agreeable Women as much as possible; and must confess that I have, though a tolerable good Philosopher, but a low Opinion of Platonick Love: for which Reason I thought it necessary to give my fair Readers a Caution against it, having, to my great Concern, observed the Waste of a Platonist lately swell to a Roundness which is inconsistent with that Philosophy.

T.

[Footnote 1: Rochester’s ‘Allusion to the 10th Satire of the 1st Book of Horace.’]

[Footnote 2: Dryden’s All for Love, Act III. sc. i. ]

[Footnote 3: The Sixth.]

[Footnote 4: Two stanzas from different parts of Ambrose Philips’s sixth Pastoral. The first in the original follows the second, with three stanzas intervening.]

[Footnote 5: (, for want of other Amusement, often study Anatomy together; and what is worse than happens in any other Friendship, they)]