With woman's purity his darkest pages are starred. She is 'innocent as morning light,' 'more innocent than sleep,' 'as white as Innocence herself.' 'Armed with innocence' a tender spotless maid 'may walk safe among beasts.' Her 'prayers are pure,' and she is 'fair and virtuous still to ages.'[179] His fairest heroines are philosophers of 'the truth of maids and perjuries of men.' "All the men I meet are harsh and rude," says Aspatia, And have a subtilty in everything Which love could never know; but we fond women Harbour the easiest and the smoothest thoughts, And think all shall go so. It is unjust That men and women should be match'd together. His Viola of the _Coxcombe_ continues the contention: Woman, they say, was only made of man Methinks 'tis strange they should be so unlike; It may be, all the best was cut away To make the woman, and the naught was left Behind with him. And the philosophy of Beaumont's love-lorn maidens she sums up in her conclusion: Scholars affirm the world's upheld by love; But I believe women maintain all this, For there's no love in men. Deserted by her lover, she finds 'how valiant and how 'fraid at once, Love makes a virgin'; and, sought again by him repentant, she epitomizes the hearts of all Bellarios, Arethusas, Pantheas, Uranias: I will set no penance To gain the great forgiveness you desire, But to come hither, and take me and it ... For God's sake, urge your faults no more, but mend! All the forgiveness I can make you, is To love you: which I will do, and desire Nothing but love again; which if I have not, Yet I will love you still. All man can do in return for such long-suffering mercy is to revere: "How rude are all men that take the name of civil to ourselves" murmurs the reformed Ricardo; and then-- I do kneel because it is An action very fit and reverent, In presence of so pure a creature. So kneels Arbaces; and so, in spirit, Philaster and Amintor. Prayer is for Beaumont a very present aid. Of his women especially the 'vows' and 'oblations' are a poetic incense continually ascending. And closely akin to the prayerful innocence of tender maids is the pathos of their 'childhood thrown away.' Even his whimsical Oriana of _The Woman-Hater_ can aver: The child this present hour brought forth To see the world has not a soul more pure, More white, more virgin that I have.