If it were not for these witty contrivances, subtle shifts and evasions, which we are forc’d to use to keep the male sex easy, a pretty or an ingenious woman, to make one happy must make twenty miserable; or wit and beauty are never without abundance of admirers; and if such a woman were to sacrifice all her charms to the miserly temper of one single lover, the rest must run distracted, and at this rate the whole world in a short time would become one great _Bedlam_; besides, since there is enough to make all happy, if prudently dispens’d, I know no reason why one man should engross more than he is able to deal with, and other men want that, which by using there can be no miss of; therefore I commend you for the liberty you take to oblige your chosen friends, and the prudence you use to conceal it from the envious number you think unworthy of your smiles; so with this advice I shall conclude, if you have twenty gallants that taste your favours in their turns, let no man know he has a rival-sharer in the happiness, but swear to every one a-part, none enjoys you but himself; and by this means you will oblige the whole herd, and make yourself easy in their numerous embraces. A. BEHN. _The Virgin’s Answer to Mrs._ BEHN. It is no great wonder to me you should prove so witty, since so many sons of _Parnassus_, instead of climbing the _Heliconian_ hill, should stoop so low, as to make your _mount of Venus_ the barren object of their poetick fancies: I have heard some physicians say, the sweet fornication draws mightily from the brain; for which reason, it is more affected with the pleasure than any other part of the body; if so, how could the spirit of poesy be otherwise than infus’d into you, since you always gain’d by what the fraternity of the Muses lost in your embraces? you were the young poets _Venus_; to you they paid their devotion as a Goddess, and their first adventure, when they adjourn’d from the university to the town, was to solicite your favours; and this advantage you enjoy’d above the rest of your sex, that if a young student was but once infected with a rhiming itch, you by a butter’d bun could make him an establish’d poet at any time; for the contagion, like that of a worse distemper, will run a great way, and be often strangely contracted. I have heard a gentleman say, that when he was bedded with a poetess, or rival’d a poet in his mistress, that he has dreamt of nothing but plays, ballads and lampoons for six months after; and has been forc’d to cuckold a critick, before he could get cur’d of the distemper. From hence it appears, that a man in his sober senses runs a greater hazard of his brains in having familiar contract with a daughter of the _Muses_, than a drunken man does of his nobler parts, in paving the common-shore of a town prostitute.