He requited them bitterly; for he seems to have broken the heart of the one, and worn out that of the other; and he had his reward, for he died a solitary idiot in the hands of servants.
"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 Ægina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea; and near here 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 page 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 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, Gibber, &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."