Those Authors who have treated of the manner in which Men ought to behave in their intercourse with the fair Sex, have been so sensible that the latter must unavoidably, at one time or other, have occasion to bestow lectures and corrections on their Suitors or Lovers (and also their Husbands) that they have made it a point to these, to bear those momentary mortifications with patience and humility, and not to think that such submission reflects any dishonour upon them. This is the precept expressly given by Ovid, in his _Art of Love_;--‘Do not think it in any degree shameful for you, to submit to the harsh words, and the blows, of the young Woman you court.’ _Nec maledicta puta, nec verbera ferre puellæ Turpe_---- And indeed we find that those Lovers who have best understood their business, have not only constantly followed the advice of Ovid, and chearfully submitted to receive such corrections as their Mistresses were pleased to impose upon them; but when they have happened to have been involuntarily guilty of offences of a somewhat grievous kind, they have done more; they have, of themselves, offered freely to submit to them. Thus Polyenos, in the Satyr of Petronius, who had been guilty with Circe of one of those faults which Ladies so difficultly prevail upon themselves to forgive, who had in short committed that offence which the abovementioned Miller boasted he never happened to be guilty of, wrote afterwards to her,--“If you want to kill me, I will come to you with an iron weapon; or if you are satisfied with stripes, I run naked to my Mistress.” (_Polyaenos Circæ salutem.... Sive occidere placet, cum ferro venio; sive verberibus contenta es, curro nudus ad dominam. Id tantum memento, non me, sed instrumenta, peccasse, &c. Cap. 130._) The illustrious Count of Guiche, as we find in the Count of Buffi’s _Amorous History of Gauls_, a Book which caused the disgrace of its Author, on account of the liberties he had taken in it with the character of King Lewis the Fourteenth, and his Mistress, _Madame de la Valiere_, the Count of Guiche, I say, one of the first-rate Beaux of the Court of the King just mentioned, behaved in the same manner that Polyenos had done. Having committed a fault with the well-known Countess of Olonne, of the same kind with that of Polyenos, he wrote the next day to the Countess in much the same terms as the latter had done to Circe. ‘If you want me to die, I will bring you my sword; if you think I only deserve to be flagellated, I will come to you in my shirt.’ (_Si vous voulez ma mort, j’irai vous porter mon épée; si vous jugez que je ne mérite que le fouët, j’irai vous trouver en chemise._)