"Nay, madam," said the doctor, "I am not your husband; and you shall not hinder me from supposing what I please. Surely it is not such a paradox to conceive that a man of learning should be unreasonable. Are there no unreasonable opinions in very learned authors, even among the critics themselves? For instance, what can be a more strange, and indeed unreasonable opinion, than to prefer the Metamorphoses of Ovid to the AEneid of Virgil?" "It would be indeed so strange," cries the lady, "that you shall not persuade me it was ever the opinion of any man." "Perhaps not," cries the doctor; "and I believe you and I should not differ in our judgments of any person who maintained such an opinion-- What a taste must he have!" "A most contemptible one indeed," cries Mrs. Atkinson. "I am satisfied," cries the doctor. "And in the words of your own Horace, _Verbum non amplius addam_." "But how provoking is this," cries Mrs. Atkinson, "to draw one in such a manner! I protest I was so warm in the defence of my favourite Virgil, that I was not aware of your design; but all your triumph depends on a supposition that one should be so unfortunate as to meet with the silliest fellow in the world." "Not in the least," cries the doctor. "Doctor Bentley was not such a person; and yet he would have quarrelled, I am convinced, with any wife in the world, in behalf of one of his corrections. I don't suppose he would have given up his _Ingentia Fata_ to an angel." "But do you think," said she, "if I had loved him, I would have contended with him?" "Perhaps you might sometimes," said the doctor, "be of these sentiments; but you remember your own Virgil--_Varium et mutabile semper faemina_." "Nay, Amelia," said Mrs. Atkinson, "you are now concerned as well as I am; for he hath now abused the whole sex, and quoted the severest thing that ever was said against us, though I allow it is one of the finest." "With all my heart, my dear," cries Amelia. "I have the advantage of you, however, for I don't understand him." "Nor doth she understand much better than yourself," cries the doctor; "or she would not admire nonsense, even though in Virgil." "Pardon me, sir," said she. "And pardon me, madam," cries the doctor, with a feigned seriousness; "I say, a boy in the fourth form at Eton would be whipt, or would deserve to be whipt at least, who made the neuter gender agree with the feminine. You have heard, however, that Virgil left his AEneid incorrect; and, perhaps, had he lived to correct it, we should not have seen the faults we now see in it." "Why, it is very true as you say, doctor," cries Mrs. Atkinson; "there seems to be a false concord. I protest I never thought of it before." "And yet this is the Virgil," answered the doctor, "that you are so fond of, who hath made you all of the neuter gender; or, as we say in English, he hath made mere animals of you; for, if we translate it thus, "Woman is a various and changeable animal,