This vision lasted till my usual hour of waking, which I did with some surprise, to find myself alone, after having been engaged almost a whole night in so prodigious a multitude. I could not but reflect with wonder at the partiality and extravagance of my vision; which according to my thoughts, has not done justice to the sex. If virtue in men is more venerable, it is in women more lovely; which Milton has very finely expressed in his "Paradise Lost," where Adam, speaking of Eve, after having asserted his own pre-eminence, as being first in creation and internal faculties, breaks out into the following rapture:
----"_Yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems, And in herself complete, so well to know Her own, that what she wills, or do, or say, Seems wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded. Wisdom, in discourse with her, Loses, discountenanced, and like Folly shows. Authority and Reason on her wait, As one intended first, not after made Occasionally: and to consummate all Greatness of mind and nobleness, their seat Build in her loveliest, and create an awe About her, as a guard angelic placed._"[323]
From _Saturday, Dec. 3_, to _Tuesday, Dec. 6, 1709_.
----Hæ nugæ seria ducent In mala derisum semel exceptumque sinistre.
There is nothing gives a man greater satisfaction than the sense of having despatched a great deal of business, especially when it turns to the public emolument. I have much pleasure of this kind upon my spirits at present, occasioned by the fatigue of affairs which I went through last Saturday. It is some time since I set apart that day for examining the pretensions of several who had applied to me for canes, perspective-glasses, snuff-boxes, orange-flower waters, and the like ornaments of life. In order to adjust this matter, I had before directed Charles Lillie of Beauford Buildings to prepare a great bundle of blank licences in the following words:
"You are hereby required to permit the bearer of this cane to pass and repass through the streets and suburbs of London, or any place within ten miles of it, without let or molestation; provided that he does not walk with it under his arm, brandish it in the air, or hang it on a button: in which case it shall be forfeited; and I hereby declare it forfeited to any one who shall think it safe to take it from him.