For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias. that success in love depends upon Fortune.  “They particularly renounce Celestial Venus, into whose temple, &c. &c. &c.  I remember, too, to have seen a building in AEgina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea; and near her there is a winged Love.  The meaning of this is, that the success of men in love affairs depends more on the assistance of Fortune than the charms of beauty.  I am persuaded, too, with Pindar (to whose opinion I submit in other particulars), that Fortune is one of the Fates, and that in a certain respect she is more powerful than her sisters.”—­See Pausanias, Achaics, book vii. chap.26. p.246.  Taylor’s “Translation.”

Grimm has a remark of the same kind on the different destinies of the younger Crebillon and Rousseau.  The former writes a licentious novel, and a young English girl of some fortune and family (a Miss Strafford) runs away, and crosses the sea to marry him; while Rousseau, the most tender and passionate of lovers, is obliged to espouse his chambermaid.  If I recollect rightly, this remark was also repeated in the Edinburgh Review of Grimm’s correspondence, seven or eight years ago.

In regard “to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes profane levity, which his conduct and language often exhibited,” and which so much shocks Mr. Bowles, I object to the indefinite word “often;” and in extenuation of the occasional occurrence of such language it is to be recollected, that it was less the tone of Pope, than the tone of the time.  With the exception of the correspondence of Pope and his friends, not many private letters of the period have come down to us; but those, such as they are—­a few scattered scraps from Farquhar and others—­are more indecent and coarse than any thing in Pope’s letters.  The comedies of Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Cibber, &c., which naturally attempted to represent the manners and conversation of private life, are decisive upon this point; as are also some of Steele’s papers, and even Addison’s.  We all know what the conversation of Sir R. Walpole, for seventeen years the prime minister of the country, was at his own table, and his excuse for his licentious language, viz. “that every body understood that, but few could talk rationally upon less common topics.”  The refinement of latter days,—­which is perhaps the consequence of vice, which wishes to mask and soften itself, as much as of virtuous civilisation,—­had not yet made sufficient progress.  Even Johnson, in his “London,” has two or three passages which cannot be read aloud, and Addison’s “Drummer” some indelicate allusions.