Perhaps, my Friend, at this Account of my Humor you may smile, but with a reasonable consideration you will commend it, at least, though you are not so wise as to persue my Dictates. Yet I know you will be diverted with my Adventures; though there be no love in ‘em that can resemble ‘em to yours. Take then the History of my Heart, which I assure you, boasts itself of the Conquests it has made. A thousand Martyrs I have made, All sacrific’d to my desire; A thousand Beauties have betray’d, That languish in resistless Fire. The untam’d Heart to hand I brought, And fixt the wild and wandring Thought. I never vow’d nor sigh’d in vain But both, thô false, were well receiv’d. The Fair are pleas’d to give us pain, And what they wish is soon believ’d. And thô I talk’d of Wounds and Smart, Loves Pleasures only toucht my Heart. Alone the Glory and the Spoil I always Laughing bore away; The Triumphs, without Pain or Toil, Without the Hell, the Heav’n of Joy. And while I thus at random rove Despise the Fools that whine for Love. I was a great while, (like you,) before I forgot the remembrance of my first Languishments, and I almost thought (by an excess of Melancholy,) that the end of my Misfortunes were with my Life at hand: Yet still like a fond Slave, willing to drag my Fetters on, I hop’d she would find Arguments to convince me she was not false; and in that Humor, fear’d only I should not be handsomly and neatly jilted. Could she but have dissembled well, I had been still her Cully. Could she have play’d her Game with discretion, but, vain of her Conquest, she boasted it to all the World, and I alone was the kind keeping Blockhead, to whom ’.was unperceived, so well she swore me into belief of her Truth to me. Till one day, lying under a solitary Shade, with my sad Thoughts fixt on my declining Happiness, and almost drown’d in Tears, I saw a Woman drest in glorious Garments, all loose and flowing with the wind, scouring the Fields and Groves with such a pace, as _Venus_, when she heard her lov’d Youth was slain, hasted to behold her ruin. She past me, as I lay, with an unexpressible swiftness, and spoke as she run, with a loud Voice. At her first approach, I felt a strange trembling at my Heart without knowing the reason, and found at last this Woman was _Fame_. Yet I was not able to tell from whence proceeded my Inquietude. When her Words made me but too well understand the Cause: The fatal Subject of what she cry’d, in passing by me, were these: Poor _Lycidus_, for shame arise, And wipe _Loves_ Errors from thy Eyes; Shake off the God that holds thy Heart; Since _Silvia_ for another burns, And all thy past Indurement scorns While thou the Cully art.