PORTRAIT-GALLERY OF OLD BACHELORS. 475 



Swift made a tine and just comparison between a woman's heart 

 and her album 



' Here you may read " Dear charming saint" 

 Beneath a new receipt for paint ; 

 Here in beau-spelling " tru tel deth," 

 There in her own " for an el breth ; " 

 Here " lovely nymph, pronounce my doom," 

 There " a safe way to use perfume ;" 

 Here a page fill'd with billet-doux, 

 On t'other side " laid out for shoes ; " 

 " Madam, I die without your grace," 

 " Item for half a yard of "lace." ' 



A most agreeable compound truly of nothingness and vanity : 

 their minds are as artificial and changeable as their faces 



' For 'tis in vain to think to guess 

 At women by appearances 

 That paint and patch their imperfection 

 Of intellectual complexion ; 

 And daub their tempers o'er with washes 

 As artificial as their faces/ 



A woman's mind indeed ! a mighty thing to praise there 's no idea 

 in it that soars higher than 



' A dog, a parrot, or an ape, 

 Or some worse brute in human shape.' 



Trust your happiness to a woman, you simple Simon ! trust your 

 footing to a quicksand, and flatter yourself that you stand on a rock 

 of granite. Pope said well, ' Most women have no character at 

 all ' and still better that 



' Woman and fool are two hard things to hit, 

 For true, no meaning puzzles more than wit.' 



Why, Sir, I would rather live with a colony of monkies, than 

 trust my happiness to a woman's mind : 'tis a nonentity, man a 

 thing of bubbles, ever rising, ever bursting, and glittering only from 

 its very transparency. What is woman's life ? and judge if you 

 would make your happiness one of her frolics 



* A youth of frolics, an old age of cards, 

 Fair to no purpose, artful to no end ; 

 Young without lovers, old without a friend ; 

 A fop their passion, but their prize a sot; 

 Alive, ridiculous; and dead, forgot.' 



I tell you that, both body and mind, women are only painted 

 miseries fair (as you say) to look at ; but break the rind, and, like 

 the apples of Sodom, your mouth and eyes are filled with dust and 

 ashes. This has been so from the beginning of time : witness Adam 



