Smirk! But alas! when we discover all, as to preserve the fidelity
of our history we must, when we relate that every familiarity had
past between them, and that the FAIR Laetitia (for we must, in
this single instance, imitate Virgil when he drops the pius and
the pater, and drop our favourite epithet of chaste), the FAIR
Laetitia had, I say, made Smirk as happy as Wild desired to be,
what must then be our reader's confusion! We will, therefore, draw
a curtain over this scene, from that philogyny which is in us, and
proceed to matters which, instead of dishonouring the human
species, will greatly raise and ennoble it.




CHAPTER ELEVEN

CONTAINING AS NOTABLE INSTANCES OF HUMAN GREATNESS AS ARE TO BE
MET WITH IN ANCIENT OR MODERN HISTORY. CONCLUDING WITH SOME
WHOLESOME HINTS TO THE GAY PART OF MANKIND.


Wild no sooner parted from the chaste Laetitia than, recollecting
that his friend the count was returned to his lodgings in the same
house, he resolved to visit him; for he was none of those half-
bred fellows who are ashamed to see their friends when they have
plundered and betrayed them; from which base and pitiful temper
many monstrous cruelties have been transacted by men, who have
sometimes carried their modesty so far as to the murder or utter
ruin of those against whom their consciences have suggested to
them that they have committed some small trespass, either by the