I still had a secret satisfaction in his courtship, and always exposed myself to his solicitations.  See here the bane of our sex!  Let the flattery be never so apparent, the flatterer never so ill thought of, his praises are still agreeable and we contribute to our own deceit.  I was therefore ever fond of all opportunities and pretences of being in his company.  In a word, I was at last ruined by him, and brought to this place, where I have been ever since immured; and from the fatal day after my fall from innocence, my worshipper became my master and my tyrant.  Thus you see me habited in the most gorgeous manner, not in honour of me as a woman he loves, but as this attire charms his own eye, and urges him to repeat the gratification he takes in me, as the servant of his brutish lusts and appetites.  I know not where to fly for redress; but am here pining away life in the solitude and severity of a nun, but the conscience and guilt of a harlot.  I live in this lewd practice with a religious awe of my minister of darkness, upbraided with the support I receive from him, for the inestimable possession of youth, of innocence, of honour, and of conscience.  I see, sir, my discourse grows painful to you; all I beg of you is, to paint in so strong colours, as to let Decius see I am discovered to be in his possession, that I may be turned out of this detestable scene of regular iniquity, and either think no more, or sin no more.  If your writings have the good effect of gaining my enlargement, I promise you I will atone for this unhappy step, by preferring an innocent laborious poverty, to all the guilty affluence the world can offer me.”

Will’s Coffee-house, July 21.

To show that I do not bear an irreconcilable hatred to my mortal enemy, Mr. Powell at Bath, I do his function the honour to publish to the world, that plays represented by puppets are permitted in our universities,[437] and that sort of drama is not wholly thought unworthy the critic of learned heads:  but as I have been conversant rather with the greater Ode, as I think the critics call it, I must be so humble as to make a request to Mr. Powell, and desire him to apply his thoughts to answering the difficulties with which my kinsman, the author of the following letter, seems to be embarrassed.

#"To my Honoured Kinsman, Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.#

“DEAR COUSIN,

“Had the family of the Beadlestaffs,[438] whereof I, though unworthy, am one, known of your being lately at Oxon, we had in our own name, and in the Universities’ (as it is our office), made you a compliment:  but your short stay here robbed us of an opportunity of paying our due respects, and you of receiving an ingenious entertainment, with which we at present divert ourselves and strangers.  A puppet-show at this time supplies the want of an Act.[439] And since the nymphs of this city are disappointed of a luscious music-speech, and the country ladies of hearing their sons or brothers speak verses; yet the