and looking in the glass.  The insignificancy of my manners to the rest of the world makes the laughers call me a quidnunc, a phrase I shall never inquire what they mean by it.  The last of me each night is at St. James’s Coffee-house, where I converse, yet never fall into a dispute on any occasion, but leave the understanding I have, passive of all that goes through it, without entering into the business of life.  And thus, madam, have I arrived by laziness, to what others pretend to by devotion, a perfect neglect of the world.”  Sure, if our sex had the liberty of frequenting public-houses and conversations, we should put these rivals of our faults and follies out of countenance.  However, we shall soon have the pleasure of being acquainted with them one way or other, for my brother Isaac designs, for the use of our sex, to give the exact characters of all the chief politicians who frequent any of the coffee-houses from St. James’s to the Change; but designs to begin with that cluster of wise heads, as they are found sitting every evening, from the left side of the fire, at the Smyrna,[165] to the door.  This will be of great service for us, and I have authority to promise an exact journal of their deliberations; the publication of which I am to be allowed for pin-money.  In the meantime, I cast my eye upon a new book, which gave me a more pleasing entertainment, being a sixth part of “Miscellany Poems,” published by Jacob Tonson,[166] which I find, by my brother’s notes upon it, no way inferior to the other volumes.  There are, it seems, in this, a collection of the best pastorals that have hitherto appeared in England; but among them, none superior to that dialogue between Sylvia and Dorinda, written by one of my own sex,[167] where all our little weaknesses are laid open in a manner more just, and with, truer raillery than ever man yet hit upon.

Only this I now discern.  From the things thou’st have me learn; That womankind’s peculiar joys From past or present beauties rise.

But to reassume my first design, there cannot be a greater instance of the command of females, than in the prevailing charms of the heroine in the play which was acted this night, called “All for Love; or, The World Well Lost."[168] The enamoured Antony resigns glory and power to the force of the attractive Cleopatra, whose charms were the defence of her diadem, against a people otherwise invincible.  It is so natural for women to talk of themselves, that it is to be hoped all my own sex, at least, will pardon me, that I could fall into no other discourse.  If we have their favour, we give ourselves very little anxiety for the rest of our readers.  I believe I see a sentence of Latin in my brother’s day-book of wit, which seems applicable on this occasion, and in contempt of the critics.

      —­Tristitiam et metus
    Tradam protectis in mare Criticum
    Portare ventis.[169]

But I am interrupted by a packet from Mr. Kidney,[170] from the St. James’s Coffee-house, which I am obliged to insert in the very style and words which Mr. Kidney uses in his letter.