N° 217. TUESDAY, AUGUST 29, 1710. Atque deos atque astra vocat crudelia matér. VIRG. Ecl. v. ver. 28. She sigh'd, she sobb'd, and furious with despair, From my own Apartment, August 28. DRYDEN. As I was passing by a neighbour's house this morning, I overheard the wife of the family speaking things to her husband which gave me much disturbance, and put me in mind of a character which I wonder I have so long omitted, and that is, an outrageous species of the fair sex, which is distinguished by the term Scolds. The generality of women are by nature loquacious; therefore mere volubility of speech is not to be imputed to them, but should be considered with pleasure when it is used to express such passions as tend to sweeten or adorn conversation: but when through rage, females are vehement in their eloquence, nothing in the world has so ill an effect upon the features; for by the force of it I have seen the most amiable become the most deformed; and she that appeared one of the Graces, immediately turned into one of the Furies. I humbly conceive, the great cause of this evil may proceed from a false notion the ladies have of, what we call, a modest woman. They have too narrow a conception of this lovely character; and believe they have not at all forfeited their pretensions to it, pro vided they have no imputations on their chastity. But, alas! the young fellows know they pick out better women in the side-boxes, than many of those who pass upon the world and themselves for modest. never Modesty never rages, never murmurs, pouts; when it is ill-treated, it pines, it beseeches, it languishes. The neighbour I mention is one of your common modest women, that is to say, those who are ordinarily reckoned such. Her husband knows every pain in life with her, but jealousy. Now, because she is clear in this particular, the man cannot say his soul is his own, but she cries, "No modest woman is respected now a-days." What adds to the comedy in this case is, that it is very ordinary with this sort of women to talk in the language of distress; they will complain of the forlorn wretchedness of their condition, and then the poor helpless creatures shall throw the next thing they can lay their hands on at the person who offends them. Our neighbour was only saying to his wife," she went a little too fine," when she immediately pulled his periwig off, and stamping it under her feet, wrung her hands, and said, "Never modest woman was so used." These ladies of irresistible modesty are those, who make virtue unamiable; not that they can be said to be virtuous, but as they live without scandal; and being under the common denomination of being such, men fear to meet their faults in those who are as agreeable as they are innocent. I take the Bully among men, and the Scold among women, to draw the foundation of their actions from the same defect in the mind. A Bully thinks honour consists wholly in being brave; and therefore has regard to no one rule of life, if he preserves himself from the accusation of cowardice. The froward woman knows chastity to be the first merit in a woman; and therefore, since no one can call her one ugly name, she calls mankind all the rest. These ladies, where their companions are so imprudent as to take their speeches for any other, than exercises of their own lungs and their husbands patience, gain by the force of being resisted, and flame with open fury, which is no way to be opposed but by being neglected; though at the same time human frailty makes it very hard, to relish the philosophy of contemning even frivolous reproach. There is a very pretty instance of this infirmity in the man of the best sense that ever was, no less a person than Adam himself. According to Milton's description of the first couple, as soon as they had fallen, and the turbulent passious of anger, hatred, and jealousy, first entered their breasts; Adam grew moody, and talked to his wife, as you may find it in the three hundred and fifty-ninth page, and ninth book, of Paradise Lost, in the octavo edition, which out of heroics, and put into domestic style, would run thus: "Madam, if my advices had been of any authority with you, when that strange desire of gadding possessed you this morning, we had still been happy; but your cursed vanity and opinion of your own conduct, which is certainly very wavering when it seeks occasions of being proved, has ruined both yourself and me, who trusted you." Eve had no fan in her hand to ruffle, or tucker to pull down; but with a reproachful air she answered: Sir, do you impute that to my desire of gadding, which might have happened to yourself, with all your wisdom and gravity? The serpent spoke so excellently, and with so good a grace, that Besides, what harm had I ever done him, that he should design me any? Was I to have been always at your side, I might as well have continued there, and been but your rib still; but if I was so weak a creature as you thought me, why did you not interpose your sage authority more absolutely? You denied me going as faintly, as you say I resisted the serpent. Had not you been too easy, neither you nor I had now transgressed." Adam replied, "Why, Eve, hast thou the impudence to upbraid me as the cause of thy transgression for my indulgence to thee? Thus will it ever be with him, who trusts too much to woman. At the same time that she refuses to be governed, if she suffers by her obstinacy, she will accuse the man that shall leave her to herself." "Thus they in mutual accusation spent This, to the modern, will appear but a very faint. piece of conjugal enmity: but you are to consider, that they were just begun to be angry, and they wanted new words for expressing their new passions; but by her accusing him of letting her go, and telling him how good a speaker, and how fine a gentleman the devil was, we must reckon, allowing for the improvements of time, that she gave him the same provocation as if she had called him cuckold. The passionate and familiar terms, with which the same case repeated daily for so many thousand years has furnished the present generation, were not then in use; but the foundation of debate has ever been the same, a contention about their merit and wisdom. Our general mother was a beauty; and hearing there was another now in the world, could not forbear, as Adam tells her, shewing herself, though to the devil, by whom the same vanity made her liable to be betrayed. I cannot, with all the help of science and astrology, find any other remedy for this evil, but what was the medicine in this first quarrel; which was, as appears in the next book, that they were vinced of their being both weak, but the one weaker than the other. con If it were possible that the beauteous could but rage a little before a glass, and see their pretty countenances grow wild, it is not to be doubted but it would have a very good effect: but that would require temper; for Lady Firebrand, upon observing her features swell when her maid vexed her the other day, stamped her dressing-glass under her feet. In this case, when one of this temper is moved, she is like a witch in an operation, and makes all things turn round with her. The very fabric is in a vertigo when she begins to charm. In an instant, whatever was the occasion that moved her blood, she has such intolerable servants, Betty is so aukward, Tom cannot carry a message, and her busband has so little respect for her, that she poor woman, is weary of this life, and was born to be unhappy. Desunt multa, ADVERTISEMENT. The season now coming on in which the town will begin to fill, Mr. Bickerstaff gives notice, That from the first of October next, he will be much wittier than he has hitherto been. |