Truth, and there is no Man living whose Being is such a Weight or Vexation as his is.  He is an utter Stranger to the pleasing Reflections in the Evening of a well-spent Day, or the Gladness of Heart or Quickness of Spirit in the Morning after profound Sleep or indolent Slumbers.  He is not to be at Ease any longer than he can keep Reason and good Sense without his Curtains; otherwise he will be haunted with the Reflection, that he could not believe such a one the Woman that upon Trial he found her.  What has he got by his Conquest, but to think meanly of her for whom a Day or two before he had the highest Honour? and of himself for, perhaps, wronging the Man whom of all Men living he himself would least willingly have injured?

Pleasure seizes the whole Man who addicts himself to it, and will not give him Leisure for any good Office in Life which contradicts the Gaiety of the present Hour.  You may indeed observe in People of Pleasure a certain Complacency and Absence of all Severity, which the Habit of a loose unconcerned Life gives them; but tell the Man of Pleasure your secret Wants, Cares, or Sorrows, and you will find he has given up the Delicacy of his Passions to the Cravings of his Appetites.  He little knows the perfect Joy he loses, for the disappointing Gratifications which he pursues.  He looks at Pleasure as she approaches, and comes to him with the Recommendation of warm Wishes, gay Looks, and graceful Motion; but he does not observe how she leaves his Presence with Disorder, Impotence, down-cast Shame, and conscious Imperfection.  She makes our Youth inglorious, our Age shameful.

WILL.  HONEYCOMB gives us twenty Intimations in an Evening of several Hags whose Bloom was given up to his Arms; and would raise a Value to himself for having had, as the Phrase is, very good Women.  WILL.’S good Women are the Comfort of his Heart, and support him, I warrant, by the Memory of past Interviews with Persons of their Condition.  No, there is not in the World an Occasion wherein Vice makes so phantastical a Figure, as at the Meeting of two old People who have been Partners in unwarrantable Pleasure.  To tell a toothless old Lady that she once had a good Set, or a defunct Wencher that he once was the admired Thing of the Town, are Satires instead of Applauses; but on the other Side, consider the old Age of those who have passed their Days in Labour, Industry, and Virtue, their Decays make them but appear the more venerable, and the Imperfections of their Bodies are beheld as a Misfortune to humane Society that their Make is so little durable.

But to return more directly to my Man of Wit and Pleasure.  In all Orders of Men, wherever this is the chief Character, the Person who wears it is a negligent Friend, Father, and Husband, and entails Poverty on his unhappy Descendants.  Mortgages Diseases, and Settlements are the Legacies a Man of Wit and Pleasure leaves to his Family.  All the poor Rogues that make such lamentable Speeches after every Sessions at Tyburn, were, in their Way, Men of Wit and Pleasure, before they fell into the Adventures which brought them thither.