Every temper, except downright insipid, is to be animated and softened by the influence of beauty: but of this untractable sort is a lifeless handsome fellow that visits us, whom I have dressed at this twelvemonth; but he is as insensible of all the arts I use, as if he conversed all that time with his nurse. He outdoes our whole sex in all the faults our enemies impute to us; he has brought laziness into an opinion, and makes his indolence his philosophy: insomuch, that no longer ago than yesterday in the evening he gave me this account of himself: "I am, madam, perfectly unmoved at all that passes among men, and seldom give myself the fatigue of going among them; but when I do, I always appear the same thing to those whom I converse with. My hours of existence, or being awake, are from eleven in the morning to eleven at night; half of which I live to myself, in picking my teeth, washing my hands, paring my nails, and looking in the glass. The insignificancy of my manners to the rest of the world makes the laughers call me a _quidnunc_, a phrase I shall never inquire what they mean by it. The last of me each night is at St. James's Coffee-house, where I converse, yet never fall into a dispute on any occasion, but leave the understanding I have, passive of all that goes through it, without entering into the business of life. And thus, madam, have I arrived by laziness, to what others pretend to by devotion, a perfect neglect of the world." Sure, if our sex had the liberty of frequenting public-houses and conversations, we should put these rivals of our faults and follies out of countenance. However, we shall soon have the pleasure of being acquainted with them one way or other, for my brother Isaac designs, for the use of our sex, to give the exact characters of all the chief politicians who frequent any of the coffee-houses from St. James's to the Change; but designs to begin with that cluster of wise heads, as they are found sitting every evening, from the left side of the fire, at the Smyrna,[165] to the door. This will be of great service for us, and I have authority to promise an exact journal of their deliberations; the publication of which I am to be allowed for pin-money. In the meantime, I cast my eye upon a new book, which gave me a more pleasing entertainment, being a sixth part of "Miscellany Poems," published by Jacob Tonson,[166] which I find, by my brother's notes upon it, no way inferior to the other volumes. There are, it seems, in this, a collection of the best pastorals that have hitherto appeared in England; but among them, none superior to that dialogue between Sylvia and Dorinda, written by one of my own sex,[167] where all our little weaknesses are laid open in a manner more just, and with, truer raillery than ever man yet hit upon.