'Nay, Amelia,' said Mrs. Atkinson, 'you are now concerned as well as I am; for he hath now abused the whole sex, and quoted the severest thing that ever was said against us, though I allow it is one of the finest.'
'With all my heart, my dear,' cries Amelia. 'I have the advantage of you, however, for I don't understand him.'
'Nor doth she understand much better than yourself,' cries the doctor; 'or she would not admire nonsense, even though in Virgil.'
'Pardon me, sir,' said she.
'And pardon me, madam,' cries the doctor, with a feigned seriousness; 'I say, a boy in the fourth form at Eton would be whipt, or would deserve to be whipt at least, who made the neuter gender agree with the feminine. You have heard, however, that Virgil left his AEneid incorrect; and, perhaps, had he lived to correct it, we should not have seen the faults we now see in it.'
'Why, it is very true as you say, doctor,' cries Mrs. Atkinson; 'there seems to be a false concord. I protest I never thought of it before.'
'And yet this is the Virgil,' answered the doctor, 'that you are so fond of, who hath made you all of the neuter gender; or, as we say in English, he hath made mere animals of you; for, if we translate it thus,
'Woman is a various and changeable animal,
'there will be no fault, I believe, unless in point of civility to the ladies.'
Mrs. Atkinson had just time to tell the doctor he was a provoking creature, before the arrival of Booth and his friend put an end to that learned discourse, in which neither of the parties had greatly recommended themselves to each other; the doctor's opinion of the lady being not at all heightened by her progress in the classics, and she, on the other hand, having conceived a great dislike in her heart towards the doctor, which would have raged, perhaps, with no less fury from the consideration that he had been her husband.
Chapter 2
What Happened At The Masquerade
From this time to the day of the masquerade nothing happened of consequence enough to have a place in this history.
On that day Colonel James came to Booth's about nine in the evening, where he stayed for Mrs. James, who did not come till near eleven. The four masques then set out together in several chairs, and all proceeded to the Haymarket.
When they arrived at the Opera-house the colonel and Mrs. James presently left them; nor did Booth and his lady remain long together, but were soon divided from each other by different masques.
A domino soon accosted the lady, and had her away to the upper end of the farthest room on the right hand, where both the masques sat down; nor was it long before the he domino began to make very fervent love to the she. It would, perhaps, be tedious to the reader to run through the whole process, which was not indeed in the most romantick stile. The lover seemed to consider his mistress as a mere woman of this world, and seemed rather to apply to her avarice and ambition than to her softer passions.
As he was not so careful to conceal his true voice as the lady was, she soon discovered that this lover of her's was no other than her old friend the peer, and presently a thought suggested itself to her of making an advantage of this accident. She gave him therefore an intimation that she knew him, and expressed some astonishment at his having found her out. 'I suspect,' says she, 'my lord, that you have a friend in the woman where I now lodge, as well as you had in Mrs. Ellison.' My lord protested the contrary. To which she answered, 'Nay, my lord, do not defend her so earnestly till you are sure I should have been angry with her.'
At these words, which were accompanied with a very bewitching
