Eurip.

It is my Custom to take [frequent] Opportunities of enquiring from time to time, what Success my Speculations meet with in the Town.  I am glad to find in particular, that my Discourses on Marriage have been well received.  A Friend of mine gives me to understand, from Doctors-Commons, that more 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 without Leaves; and a Man of Mode among us, who has not some Fair One to sigh for, might as well pretend to appear dressed, without his Periwig.  We have Lovers in Prose innumerable.  All our Pretenders to Rhyme are professed Inamorato’s; and there is scarce a Poet, good or bad, to be heard of, who has not some real or supposed Sacharissa to improve his Vein.