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Intolerable vanity! your sex

Was never in the right! you're always false
Or silly! even your dresses are not more
Fantastical than your appetites! you think
Of nothing twice! opinion you have none :
To-day you are nice, to-morrow not so free;
Now smile, then frown; now sorrowful, then glad ;
Now pleas'd, now not; and all you know not why:
Virtue you affect, inconstancy you practice;
And when your loose desires once get dominion,
No hungry churl feeds coarser at a feast :
Every rank fool goes down.

Otway's Orphan.

A woman! if you love my peace of mind,
Name not a woman to me! but to think
Of woman were enough to turn my brains,
Till they ferment to madness! a woman is a thing
I would forget, and blot from my remembrance.

Why was I made with all my sex's softness,
Yet want the cunning to conceal its follies?
I'll see Castalio; tax him with his falsehood;
Be a true woman: rail, protest my wrongs;
Resolve to hate him, yet love him still.

O woman! lovely woman! nature made you

Ibid.

Ibid.

To temper man: we had been brutes without you.
Angels are painted fair, to look like you;
There's in you, all that we believe of Heaven:
Amazing brightness, purity, and truth,

Eternal joy, and everlasting love.

Otway's Venice Preserved.

I've made

A study of the sex, and found it frail:

The black, the brown, the fair, the old, the young, Are earthly minded all: there's not a she,

The coldest constitution of her sex,
Nay, at the altar, telling o'er her beads,

But some one rises on her heavenly thoughts,
That drives her down the wind of strong desire,
And makes her taste mortality again.

Southern's Disappointment.

How poor a thing is he, how worthy scorn,
Who leaves the guidance of imperial manhood
To such a paltry piece of stuff as this!
A moppet made of prettiness and pride;
That oftener does her giddy fancies change,
Than glittering dew-drops in the sun do colours.

Rowe's Jane Shore, a. 4, s. 1.

Beshrew my heart, but it is wondering strange;
Sure there is something more than witchcraft in them,
That masters ev'n the wisest of us all.

Who can describe

Their affectation, pride, ill-nature, noise,

Ibid.

Proneness to change, even from the joy that pleas'd 'em.

So gracious is their idol, dear variety,
That for another's love they would forego
An angel's form, to mingle with a devil's.

Rowe's Ambitious Stepmother.

Prophet, take notice, I disclaim thy paradise,
Thy fragrant bow'rs, and everlasting shades;
Thou hast placed woman there, and all thy
Joys are tainted.

Rowe's Tamerlane.

Women, like summer storms, awhile are cloudy,
Burst out in thunder, and impetuous showers;
But straight the sun of beauty dawns abroad,
And all the fair horizon is serene.

Ibid.

O woman! woman! thou primitive seducer,
That with the serpent clubb'd for our damnation !
Man was forewarn'd, and could have stood his guile;
But thou, the greater fiend, not being suspected,
Finish'd what Satan but imperfect drew!

Mountford's Successful Stranger.

Join to a slender shape a syren's head,
Two eyes of basilisks, a serpent's tongue,
The heart and whining of a crocodile,

The dazzling of the sun, the moon's inconstancy :
To this odd compound give but hands and feet,
And cover all with a soft skin, and fair complexion,
You'll make a perfect woman.

Smith's Princess of Parma.

Who trusts himself to woman, or to waves,
Should never hazard what he fears to lose :
For he that ventures all his hopes like me,
On the frail promise of a woman's smiles,
Like me will be deceiv'd, and curse his folly.

Oldmixon's Governor of Cyprus.

Oh, wretched woman! Oh, defenceless sex!
Of the whole animated race most helpless.
We purchase slavery with wealth and honours;
And when we take a husband, buy a tyrant;
A stern, domestic foe; morose, unjust;
Bound by no law himself, and yet demanding
A strict obedience from the frail and weak.

C. Johnson's Medæa.

When love once pleads admission to our hearts,
In spite of all the virtue we can boast,
The woman that deliberates is lost.

Addison's Cato.

Ten thousand curses fasten on 'em both!
Now will this woman, with a single glance,
Undo what I've been lab'ring all this while.

Ibid.

O my shame! I sue, and sue in vain; it is most just: When women sue, they sue to be deny'd.

Young's Revenge, a. 1,

In life, how weak, how helpless, is a woman!
Soon hurt, in happiness itself unsafe,

And often wounded, while she plucks the rose ;
So properly the object of affliction,

That heav'n is pleas'd to make distress become her,
And dresses her most amiably in tears.

Ibid. a. 2.

I am a woman! nay a woman wrong'd!
And when our sex, from injuries take fire,
Our softness turns to fury-and our thoughts
Breathe vengeance and destruction.

Savage's Sir Thomas Overbury.

Not e'en the soldier's fury, rais'd in war,

The rage of tyrants, when defiance stings 'em!
The pride of priests, so bloody when in power!
Are half so dreadful as a woman's vengeance. Ibid.

O woman!

Such is thy varying nature, that the waves
Are not more fuctuating than thy opinion,
Nor sooner are displac'd.

Havard's King Charles I.

O woman! woman! stain of the creation!
Let no philosopher henceforth perplex
His brain to find the region of the damn'd,
For woman is our hell.

Tracy's Periander.

Simple woman

Is weak in intellect, as well as frame,

And judges often from the partial voice

That soothes her wishes most. Smollett's Regicide.

Grief is the unhappy charter of our sex;
The gods who gave us readier tears to shed,
Gave us more cause to shed them.

Whitehead's Creusa.

Why, what a wilful, wayward thing is woman!
Even in their best pursuits so loose of soul,

That every breath of passion shakes their frame,
And every fancy turns them. Francis's Eugenia.
Woman's grief is like a summer storm,

Short as it violent is.

Joanna Baillie's Basil, a. 5, s. 3.

I have no skill in woman's changeful moods,
Tears without grief and smiles without a joy.

Maturin's Bertram, a. 4, s. 2.

The very first

Of human life must spring from woman's breast,
Your first small words are taught you from her lips,
Your first tears quench'd by her, and your last sighs
Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hour of him who led them.
Byron's Sardanapalus, a. 1, s. 2.

What they ask in aught that touches on
The heart, is dearer to their feelings or
Their fancy, than the whole external world.

Ibid. a. 4, s. 1.

e;

She was like me in lineaments-her eyes,
Her air, her features, all, to the very tone
Even of her voice, they said were like to mine
But soften'd all, and temper'd into beauty;
She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings,
The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind
To comprehend the universe: nor these

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