Young girls finding themselves vested with new powers, and a set of new inclinations, turn their staring eyes out of themselves; and the first man th… - Samuel Richardson

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Young girls finding themselves vested with new powers, and a set of new inclinations, turn their staring eyes out of themselves; and the first man they see, they imagine, if he be a single man, and but simpers at them, they must receive him as a Lover: Then they return downcast for ogle, that he may ogle on without interruption. They are soon brought to write answers to Letters which confess flames the writer’s heart never felt. The girl doubts not her own gifts, her own consequence; she wonders that her father, mother, and other friends, never told her of these new-found excellencies: She is more and more beautiful in her own eyes, as he more and more flatters her. If her parents are a -verse, the girl is per -verse; and the more, the less discretion there is in her passion. She adopts the word constancy; she declaims against persecution; she calls her idle flame, LOVE; which only was a Something she knew not what to make of — and, like a wandering bee, had it not settled on this flower, would on the next, were it either bitter or sweet.