May God desert me, whenever I make
worldly grandeur my chiefest good! I know I am in your power; I dread
your will to ruin me is as great as your power. Yet, will I dare to
tell you, I will make no free-will offering of my virtue. All that I
_can_ do, poor as it is, I _will_ do, to shew you, that my will
bore no part in the violation of me.' And when future marriage was
intimated to her, to induce her to yield, to be able to answer, 'The
moment I yield to your proposals, there is an end of all merit, if
now I have any. And I should be so far from _expecting_ such an honour
that I will pronounce I should be most _unworthy_ of it.'
"If, I say, such a girl can be found, thus beautifully attractive in
_every one's_ eye, and not partially so only in a young gentle man's
_own_; and after that (what good persons would infinitely prefer
to beauty), thus piously principled; thus genteely educated and
accomplished; thus brilliantly witty; thus prudent, modest, generous,
undesigning; and having been thus tempted, thus tried, by the man she
hated not, pursued (not intriguingly pursuing), be thus inflexibly
virtuous, and proof against temptation: let her reform her libertine,
and let him marry her; and were he of princely extraction, I dare
answer for it, that no _two_ princes in _one age_, take the world
through, would be in danger.
Pages:
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317