Decipimur specie recti

  Hor.

When I meet with any vicious Character that is not generally known, in order to prevent its doing Mischief, I draw it at length, and set it up as a Scarecrow; by which means I do not only make an Example of the Person to whom it belongs, but give Warning to all Her Majesty’s Subjects, that they may not suffer by it.  Thus, to change the [Allusion,[1]] I have marked out several of the Shoals and Quicksands of Life, and am continually employed in discovering those [which [2]] are still concealed, in order to keep the Ignorant and Unwary from running upon them.  It is with this Intention that I publish the following Letter, which brings to light some Secrets of this Nature.

  Mr.  SPECTATOR,

There are none of your Speculations which I read over with greater Delight, than those which are designed for the Improvement of our Sex.  You have endeavoured to correct our unreasonable Fears and Superstitions, in your Seventh and Twelfth Papers; our Fancy for Equipage, in your Fifteenth; our Love of Puppet-Shows, in your Thirty-First; our Notions of Beauty, in your Thirty-Third; our Inclination for Romances, in your Thirty-Seventh; our Passion for French Fopperies, in your Forty-Fifth; our Manhood and Party-zeal, in your Fifty-Seventh; our Abuse of Dancing, in your Sixty-Sixth and Sixty-Seventh; our Levity, in your Hundred and Twenty-Eighth; our Love of Coxcombs, in your Hundred and Fifty-Fourth, and Hundred and Fifty-Seventh; our Tyranny over the Henpeckt, in your Hundred and Seventy-Sixth.  You have described the Pict in your Forty-first; the Idol, in your Seventy-Third; the Demurrer, in your Eighty-Ninth; the Salamander, in your Hundred and Ninety-Eighth.  You have likewise taken to pieces our Dress, and represented to us the Extravagancies we are often guilty of in that Particular.  You have fallen upon our Patches, in your Fiftieth and Eighty-First; our Commodes, in your Ninety-Eighth; our Fans in your Hundred and Second; our Riding Habits in your Hundred and Fourth; our Hoop-petticoats, in your Hundred and Twenty-Seventh; besides a great many little Blemishes which you have touched upon in your several other Papers, and in those many Letters that are scattered up and down your Works.  At the same Time we must own, that the Compliments you pay our Sex are innumerable, and that those very Faults which you represent in us, are neither black in themselves nor, as you own, universal among us.  But, Sir, it is plain that these your Discourses are calculated for none but the fashionable Part of Womankind, and for the Use of those who are rather indiscreet than vicious.  But, Sir, there is a Sort of Prostitutes in the lower Part of our Sex, who are a Scandal to us, and very well deserve to fall under your Censure.  I know it would debase your Paper too much to enter into the Behaviour of these Female Libertines; but as your Remarks on some Part of it would be a doing of Justice to several