It is certain, that whoever pretended to make his addresses to Miss Betsy, stood in need of being previously provided with a good stock of repartees, to silence the sarcasms of the witty fair, as well as fine speeches to engage her to more seriousness. Mr. Munden often found himself at his _ne plus ultra_, but was not the least disconcerted at it; he was a courtier; he was accustomed to attend at the levees of the great; and knew very well, that persons in power seldom failed to exercise it over those who had any dependance on them: and looking on the case of a lover with his mistress, as the same with one who is soliciting for a pension or employment, had armed himself with patience, to submit to every thing his tyrant should inflict, in the hope that it would one day be his turn to impose those laws, according to the poet's words-- 'The humbled lover, when he lowest lies, But kneels to conquer, and but falls to rise.' Miss Betsy was indeed a tyrant, but a very gentle one; she always mingled some sweet with the sharpness of her expressions: if in one breath she menaced despair, in the next she encouraged hope; and her very repulses were sometimes so equivocal, as that they might be taken for invitations. She played with her lovers, as she did with her monkey; but expected more obedience from them: they must look gay or grave, according as she did so; their humour, and even their very motions, must be regulated by her influence, as the waters by the moon. In fine, an exterior homage was the chief thing to be required; for, as to the heart, her own being yet untouched, she gave herself but little trouble how that of her lovers stood affected. Mr. Munden, with less love perhaps than any man who had addressed her, knew better how to suit himself to her humour: he could act over all the delicacies of the most tender passion, without being truly sensible of any of them; and though he wished, in reality, nothing so much as attaining the affections of Miss Betsy, yet wishing it without those timid inquietudes, those jealous doubts, those perplexing anxieties, which suspense inflicts on a more stolid mind, he was the more capable of behaving towards her in the way she liked.