therefore bear hard upon the suspected party, pursue her close through all her turnings and windings, and are too well acquainted with the chace, to be flung off by any false steps or doubles: befides their acquaintance and converfation has lain wholly among the vicious part of womankind, and therefore it is no wonder they cenfure all alike, and look upon the whole sex as a fpecies of impofters. But if, notwithstanding their private experience, they can get over these prejudices, and entertain a favourable opinion of fome women; yet their own loose defires will ftir up new fufpicions from another fide, and inake them believe all men subject to the fame inclinations with themselves..

WHETHER these or other motives are most predominant, we learn from the modern histories of America, as well as from our own experience in this part of the world, that jealousy is no northen passion, but rages most in those nations that lie nearest the influence of the fun. It is a mif fortune for a woman to be born between the tropics; for there lie the hottest regions of jealousy, which as you come northward cools all along with the climate, till you scarce meet with any thing like it in the polar circle. Our own nation is very temperately situated in this refpect; and if we meet with fome few difordered with the violence of this paffion, they are not the proper growth of our country, but are many degrees nearer the fun in their constitutions than in their climate.

AFTER this frightful account of jealousy, and the perfons who are most subject to it, it will be but fair to shew by what means the passion may be best allayed, and those who are poffeffed with it fet at ease. Other faults indeed are not under the wife's jurifdiction, and should, if poffible, escape her observation; but jealousy calls upon her particularly for its cure, and deferves all her art and aplication in the attempt: befides, she has this. for her encouragement, that her endeavours will be always pleasing, and that she will still find the affection of her husband rifing towards her in proportion as his doubts and fufpicions vanish; for, as we have feen all along, there is so great a mixture of love in jealoufy, as is well worth the feparating. But this shall be the subject of another paper.

No. 171.

N° 171.

Saturday, September 15.

Credula res amor est

OVID. Met. 1. 7. v. 826.

The man, who loves, is easy of belief.

H

TAVING in my yesterday's paper, discovered the nature of jealousy, and pointed out the perfons who are most subject to it, I must here apply myself to my fair correspondents, who defire to live well with a jealous hufband, and to ease his mind of its unjust fufpicions,

THE first rule I shall propofe to be observed, is, that you never feem to dislike in another what the jealous inan is himself guilty of, or to admire any thing, in which he himself does not excel. A jealous man is very quick in his applications, he knows how to find a double edge in an invective, and to draw a fatire on himself out of a panegyric on another. He does not trouble himself to confi. der the perfon, but to direct the character; and is secretly pleafed or confounded as he finds more or less of himself in it. The commendation of any thing in another ftirs up his jealoufy, as it shews you have a value for others befides himself; but the commendation of that, which he himself wants, inflames him more, as it shews, that, in some respects, you prefer others before him. Jealousy is admirably described in this view by Horace in his ode to Lydia.

Quum tu, Lydia, Telephi

Cervicem rofeam, & cerea Telephi

Laudas brachia, vae meum
Fervens difficili bili tumet jecur :

Tunc nec mens mihi, nec color

Gerta fede manet; humor & in genas

Furtim labitur, arguens

Quam lentis penitus macerer ignibus. Od. 13.1. 1.

When Telephus his youthful charms,
His rofy neck and winding arms,
With endless rapture you recite,
And in the pleasing name delight,

My

My heart inflam'd with jealous heats,
With numberless resentments beats;
From my pale cheek the colour flies,
And all the man within me dies :
By turns my hidden grief appears
In rising fighs and falling tears,
That shew too well the warm defires,
The silent, flow, confuming fires,
Which on my inmost vitals prey,
And melt my very foul away.

THE jealous man is not indeed angry if you dislike another: but if you find those faults which are to be found in his own character, you discover not only your diflike of another, but of himself. In short, he is so defirous of engrossing all your love, that he is grieved at the want of any charm, which he believes has power to raise it; and if he finds by your cenfures on others, that he is not fo agreeable in your opinion as he might be, he naturally concludes you could love him better if he had other qualifications, and that by confequence your affection does not rife so high as he thinks it ought. If therefore his temper be grave or fullen, you must not be too much pleased with a jeft, or transported with any think that is gay and diverting. If his beauty be none of the best, you must be a professed admirer of prudence, or any other quality he is master of, or at least vain enough to think he is.

In the next place, you must be sure to be free and open in your conversation with him, and to let in light upon your actions, to unravel all your designs, and difcover every secret however trifling or indifferent A jealous huf, band has a particular aversion to winks and whispers, and if he does not fee to the bottom of every thing, will be fure to go beyond it in his fears and suspicions. He will always expect to be your chief confident, and where he finds himself kept out of a fecret, will believe there is more in it than there should be. And here it is of great concern, that you preferve the character of your fincerity uniform and of a piece: for if he once finds a false glofs put upon any fingle action, he quickly suspects all the reft; his working imagination immediately takes a false hint, and runs off with it into feveral remote consequences, till

he

he has proved very ingenious in working out his own mifery.

If both these methods fail, the best way will be to let him fee you are much cast down and afflicted for the ill opinion he entertains of you, and the disquietudes he himfelf fuffers for your foke. There are many who take a kind of barbarous pleafure in the jealousy of those who love them, that infult over an aking heart, and triumph in their charms which are able to excite so much uneasiness.

Ardeat ipfa licet, tormentis gaudet amantis.

Juv. Sat. 6. v. 1. 208.

Tho' equal pains her peace of mind defiroy.
A lover's torments give her spiteful joy.

But these often carry the humour so far, till their affected coldness and indifference quite kills all the fondness of a lover, and are then fure to meet in their turn with all the contempt and fcorn that is due to so infolent a behaviour. On the contrary, it is very probable a melancholy, dejected carriage, the ufual effects of injured innocence, may foften the jealous husband into pity, make him sensible of the wrong he does you, and work out of his mind all those fears and fufpicions that make you both unhappy At least it will have this good effect, that he will keep his jealoufy to himself, and repine in private, either because he is fenfible it is a weakness, and will therefore hide it from your knowledge, or because he will be apt to fear fome ill effect it may produce, in cooling your love towards him, or diverting it to another.

THERE is ftill another secret that can never fail, if you can once get it believed, and which is often practifed by women of greater cunning than virtue: this is to change fides for a while with the jealous man, and to turn his own paffion upon himself; to take fome occafion of growing jealous of him, and to follow the example he himself hath fet you. This counterfeited jealousy will bring him a great deal of pleasure, if he thinks it real; for he knows experimentally how much love goes along with his pafsion, and will befides feel fomething like the fatisfaction of a revenge, in seeing you undergo all his own tortures. But this, indeed, is an artifice so difficult, and at the fame time so disingenuous, that it ought never to be put in prac

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tice, but by fuch as have skill enough to cover the deceit, and innocence to render it excufeable.

I SHALL conclude this effay with the story of Herod and Mariamne, as I have collected it from Jofephus; which may ferve almost as an example to whatever can be faid on this fubject.

MARIAMNE had all the charms that beauty, birth, wit, and youth could give a woman, and Herod all the love that fuch charms are able to raife in a warm and amorous disposition. In the midst of this his fondness for Ma riamne, he put her brother to death, as he did her father not inany years after. The barbarity of the action was represented to Mark Antony, who immediately fummoned Herod into Egypt, to answer for the crime that was there laid to his charge. Herod attributed the summons to Antony's defire of Mariamne, whom therefore, before his departure, he gave unto the cuftody of his uncle Jofeph, with private orders to put her to death, if any fuch violence was offered to himself. This Joseph was much delighted with Mariamne's converfation, and endeavoured with all his art and rhetoric, to set out the excess of Herod's paffion for her; but when he still found her cold and incredulous, he inconfiderately told her, as a certain instance of her lord's affection, the private orders he had left behind him, which plainly shewed, according to Joseph's interpretation, that he could neither live nor die without her. This barbarous instance of a wild unreasonable paffion quite put out, for a time, those little remains of affection she still had for her ford: her thoughts were fo wholly taken up with the cruelty of his orders, that she could not confider the kindness that produced them, and therefore represented him in her imagination rather under the frightful idea of a murderer than a lover. Herod was at length acquitted and dismissed by Mark Antony, when his foul was all in flames for his Mariamue; but before their meeting, he was not a little alarmed at the report he had heard of his uncle's converfation and familiarity with her in his abfence. This therefore was the first discourse he entertained her with, in which the found it no easy inatter to quiet his fufpicions. But at Iaft he appeared fo well fatisfied of her innocence, that from reproaches and wranglings he fell to tears and embraces. Both of them wept very tenderly at their recon. VOL. III. ciliation,

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