"Woman! thoughtless, giddy creature!
Laughing, idle, fluttering thing!
Most fantastic work of Nature!
Still, like Fancy, on the wing!

Slave to every changing passion;
Loving, hating, in extreme;
Fond of every foolish fashion
And at best, a pleasing dream!

Lovely trifle! Dear illusion!

Conquering weakness! Wished-for pain!
Man's chief glory and confusion!
Of all vanity most vain!

Thus deriding Beauty's power,

Bevil called it all a cheat;

But in less than half-an-hour,

Kneeled and whined at Celia's feet."1

Smollett gives us a similar conception of woman :

"To fix her-'twere a task as vain
To count the April drops of rain,
To sow in Afric's barren soil,
Or tempests hold within a toil.

I know it, friend; she's light as air,
False as the fowler's artful snare,
Inconstant as the passing wind,
As winter's dreary frost unkind.

She's such a miser too in love,
Its joys she'll neither share nor prove;
Though hundreds of gallants await
From her victorious eyes their fate.
1 Henry Baker.

Blushing at such inglorious reign,
I sometimes strive to break her chain;
My reason summon to my aid,
Resolved no more to be betrayed.

Ah! friend! 'tis but a short-lived trance,
Dispelled by one enchanting glance;
She need but look, and, I confess,
Those looks completely curse, or bless.

So soft, so elegant, so fair,

Sure something more than human's there;
I must submit, for strife is vain :

'Twas destiny that forged the chain."

Then too, there are the cold and cruel charmers,

One of the most popular poems of the eighteenth century was Colin's Complaint, by Nicholas Rowe, which gives us, in the usual pastoral form, a picture of Colin deceived by a " false nymph":

"Despairing beside a clear stream,
A shepherd forsaken was laid;
And while a false nymph was his theme,
A willow supported his head.
The wind that blew over the plain,
To his sighs with a sigh did reply;
And the brook, in return to his pain,
Ran mournfully murmuring by.

Alas, silly swain that I was!'

Thus sadly complaining, he cried, 'When first I beheld that fair face, 'Twere better by far I had died. She talked, and I blessed the dear tongue; When she smiled, 'twas a pleasure too great. I listened, and cried, when she sung, "Was nightingale ever so sweet?"

'How foolish was I to believe

She could doat on so lowly a clown,
Or that her fond heart would not grieve,
To forsake the fine folk of the town!
To think that a beauty so gay,

So kind and so constant would prove;
Or go clad like our maidens in gray,
Or live in a cottage on love!

"What though I have skill to complain,

Though the Muses my temples have crowned;

What though, when they hear my soft strain,
The virgins sit weeping around.

D

Ah, Colin, thy hopes are in vain,
Thy pipe and thy laurel resign;
Thy false one inclines to a swain
Whose music is sweeter than thine.

And you, my companions so dear,
Who sorrow to see me betrayed,
Whatever I suffer, forbear,

Forbear to accuse the false maid.

Though through the wide world I should range,
'Tis in vain from my fortune to fly;
'Twas hers to be false and to change,
'Tis mine to be constant and die.

'If while my hard fate I sustain,
In her breast any pity is found,
Let her come with the nymphs of the plain,
And see me laid low in the ground.
The last humble boon that I crave,

Is to shade me with cypress and yew,
And when she looks down on my grave,
Let her own that her shepherd was true.

'Then to her new love let her

go,
And deck her in golden array,
Be finest at every fine show,

And frolic it all the long day;
While Colin, forgotten and gone,

No more shall be talked of, or seen,
Unless when beneath the pale moon

His ghost shall glide over the green.'

Love songs too we find, less artificial than this. Lord George Lyttelton, whose affection for his wife Lucy was the inspiration of many of his lyrics, wrote verses that at times strike the lingering cadences of seventeenth-century song:

"The heavy hours are almost past
That part my love and me:
My longing eyes may hope at last
Their only wish to see.

But how, my Delia, will you meet
The man you've lost so long?
Will love in all your pulses beat,
And tremble on your tongue?

Will you in every look declare
Your heart is still the same;
And heal each idly-anxious care
Our fears in absence frame?

Thus, Delia, thus I paint the scene,
When shortly we shall meet;
And try what yet remains between
Of loitering time to cheat.

But if the dream that soothes

my mind

Shall false and groundless prove;

If I am doomed at length to find
You have forgot to love;

All I of Venus ask, is this;

No more to let us join :

But grant me here the flattering bliss,

To die, and think you mine."

Others sing of their loves in the light but pleasing manner of the street ballads. Such is David Garrick's homely song:

PEGGY

Once more I'll tune the vocal shell,
To hills and dales my passion tell,
A flame which time can never quell
That burns for thee, my Peggy: