and moving with her whole Body; and all this under Pain of never having an Husband, if she steps, looks, or moves awry.  This gives the young Lady wonderful Workings of Imagination, what is to pass between her and this Husband that she is every Moment told of, and for whom she seems to be educated.  Thus her Fancy is engaged to turn all her Endeavours to the Ornament of her Person, as what must determine her Good and Ill in this Life; and she naturally thinks, if she is tall enough, she is wise enough for any thing for which her Education makes her think she is designed.  To make her an agreeable Person is the main Purpose of her Parents; to that is all their Cost, to that all their Care directed; and from this general Folly of Parents we owe our present numerous Race of Coquets.  These Reflections puzzle me, when I think of giving my advice on the Subject of managing the wild Thing mentioned in the Letter of my Correspondent.  But sure there is a middle Way to be followed; the Management of a young Lady’s Person is not to be overlooked, but the Erudition of her Mind is much more to be regarded.  According as this is managed, you will see the Mind follow the Appetites of the Body, or the Body express the Virtues of the Mind.

Cleomira dances with all the Elegance of Motion imaginable; but her Eyes are so chastised with the Simplicity and Innocence of her Thoughts, that she raises in her Beholders Admiration and good Will, but no loose Hope or wild Imagination.  The true Art in this Case is, To make the Mind and Body improve together; and if possible, to make Gesture follow Thought, and not let Thought be employed upon Gesture.

R.

[Footnote 1:  John Hughes is the author of these two letters, and, Chalmers thinks, also of the letters signed R. B. in Nos. 33 and 53.  He was in 1711 thirty-two years old.  John Hughes, the son of a citizen of London, was born at Marlborough, educated at the private school of a Dissenting minister, where he had Isaac Watts for schoolfellow, delicate of health, zealous for poetry and music, and provided for by having obtained, early in life, a situation in the Ordnance Office.  He died of consumption at the age of 40, February 17, 1719-20, on the night of the first production of his Tragedy of ‘The Siege of Damascus’.  Verse of his was in his lifetime set to music by Purcell and Handel.  In 1712 an opera of ‘Calypso and Telemachus’, to which Hughes wrote the words, was produced with success at the Haymarket.  In translations, in original verse, and especially in prose, he merited the pleasant little reputation that he earned; but his means were small until, not two years before his death, Lord Cowper gave him the well-paid office of Secretary to the Commissioners of the Peace.  Steele has drawn the character of his friend Hughes as that of a religious man exempt from every sensual vice, an invalid who could take pleasure in seeing the innocent happiness of the healthy, who was never peevish or sour, and who employed his intervals of ease in drawing and designing, or in music and poetry.]