something free, forsooth, and original, is a desperate evidence of fallingoff! We cannot consent to take mere wildness for invention; a hasty and tangled piece of business, for a regular work of art. What is called nature will never do. Nature is unnatural. The best production by far of the fair author, was the auricula, one of those beautiful and regular pieces of composition, the right propositions of which are ascertained, and reducible to measurement. But tempora mutantur. Our fair florist has perhaps got into bad company. We have heard some talk about Zephyrs, bees, wild birds, and such worshipful society. Cannot this ingenious person be content with the hot-house invented by Vulcan and Co. without gadding abroad in this disreputable manner? We have heard that she speaks with disrespect of ourselves: but we need not assure the reader, that this can have no weight with an honest critic. By the by, why this briar is called sweet, we must unaffectedly and most sincerely say, is beyond our perceptions."

I was about to give a specimen of another article, by the same reviewer, on the subject of our present paper :--" WOMAN, being a companion to MAN," &c. But the tone of it would be intolerable. I shall therefore proceed with a more becoming and grateful criticism, such as the contemplation of my subject naturally produces. Oh Pygmalion, who can wonder (no artist surely) that thou didst fall in love with the work of thine own hands! Oh Titian! Oh Raphael! Oh Apelles! I could almost fancy this sheet of paper to be one of your tablets, my desk an easel, my pen a painting-brush; so impossible does it seem that the beauty I am about to paint should not inspire me with a gusto equal to your own!

Come then, the colours and the ground prepare.

This inkstand is my palette. I handle my pen, as if there were the richest bit of colour in the world at the end of it. The reds and whites look as if I could eat them. Look at that pearly tip at the end of the ear. The very shade of it has a glow. What a light on the forehead! What a moisture on the lip! What a soul, twenty fathom deep, in the eyes! Look at me, Madam, if you please. The eye right on mine. The forehead a little more inclined. Good. What an expression! Raphael, it is clear to me that you had not the feeling I have for you could paint such a portrait, and I cannot. I cannot paint after the life. Titian, how could you contrive it? Apelles, may I trouble you to explain yourself? It is lucky for the poets that their mistresses are not obliged to sit to them. They would never write a line. Even a prose-writer is baffled. How Raphael managed in the Palazzo Chigi, how Sacchiris contrived, when he wrote his Rinaldo and Armida, with Armida by his side, is beyond my comprehension. I can call to mind, but I cannot copy. Fair presence,

avaunt! I conjure you out of my study, as one of my brother writers, in an agony of article, might hand away his bride, the printer having sent to him for copy. Come forth, my tablets. Stand me in stead of more distracting suggestions, my memorandums.

It has been justly observed, that heroines are best painted in general terms, as in Paradise Lost.

Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, &c.

or by some striking instance of the effects of their beauty, as in Homer,

where old age itself is astonished at the sight of Helen, and does not wonder that Paris has brought a war on his country for her sake. Particular description divides the opinion of the readers, and may offend some of them. The most elaborate portrait of the heroine of Italian romance could say nothing for her, compared with the distractions that she caused to so many champions, and the millions that besieged her in Albracca.

Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp,
When Agrican with all his northern powers
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell,

The city of Gallaphrone, from whence to win
The fairest of her sex, Angelica,

Even Apuleius, a very "particular fellow," who is an hour in describing a chambermaid, enters into no details respecting Psyche. It was enough that the people worshipped her.

The case is different when a writer describes a real person, or chooses to acquaint us with his particular taste. In the Dream of Chaucer is an admirable portrait of a woman, supposed to be that of Blanche, duchess of John of Gaunt. Anacreon gives us a whole length of his mistress, in colours as fresh as if they were painted yesterday. The blue eye is moist in its sparkling; the cheek, which he compares to milk with roses in it, is young forever. Oh Titian, even thy colours are dry compared with those of poetry!

It happens luckily for me on the present occasion, that I can reconcile particulars with generals. The truth is, I have no particular taste. I only demand that a woman should be womanly; which is not being exclusive. I think also that any body who wishes to look amiable, should be so. The detail, with me, depends on a sentiment for instance, I used to think I never could tolerate flaxen hair; yet meeting one day with a lovely face that had flaxen locks about it, I thought for a good while after, that flaxen was your only wear. Harriet Omade me take to black; and yet, if it had not been for a combination of dark browns, I should the other night have been converted to the superiority of light brown by Harriet D. Upon the whole, the dark browns, chesnuts, &c. have it with me; but this is because the greatest number of kind eyes that I have met with, have looked from under locks of that colour. I find beauty itself a very poor thing unless beautified by sentiment. The reader may take the confession as he pleases, either as an instance of abundance of sentiment on my part, or as an evidence of want of proper ardour and impartiality. But I cannot (and that is the plain truth) think the most beautiful creature beautiful, or be at all affected by her, or long to sit next her, or go to a theatre with her, or listen to a concert with her, or dance with her, or sing with her (if I could), or walk in a field or a forest with her, or call her by her Christian name, or ask her if she likes poetry, or tie (with any satisfaction) her gown for her, or be asked whether I admire her shoe, or take her arm even into a dining-room; or kiss her at Christmas, or on April-fool day, or on May-day, or any other day, or dream of her, or wake thinking of her, or feel a want in the room when she has gone, or a pleasure the more when she appears. I remember the impression made on me by a female plaster-cast hand, sold in the shops as a model. It is beautifully turned, though I thought it somewhat too plump and well-fed. The fingers, however, are delicately tapered:

the outline flowing and graceful. I fancied it to have belonged to some jovial beauty, a little too fat and festive, but laughing withal, and as full of good nature. I was told it was the hand of Madame Brinvilliers, the famous poisoner. The word was no sooner spoken than I shrunk from it as if it had been a toad. It was now literally hideous; the fat seemed sweltering and full of poison. The beauty added to the deformity. You resented the grace: you shrunk from the look of smoothness, as from a snake. This woman went to the scaffold with as much indifference as she distributed her poisons. The character of her mind was insensibility. The strongest of excitement was to her what a cup of tea is to other people. And such is the character, more or less, of all mere beauty. Nature, if one may so speak, does not seem to intend it to be beautiful. It looks as if it were created in order to shew, what a nothing the formal part of beauty is, without the spirit of it. I have been so used to consider it with reference to considerations of this kind, that I have met with women generally pronounced beautiful, and spoken of with transport, who took a sort of ghastly and witch-like aspect in my eyes, as if they had been things walking the earth without a soul, or with some evil intention. The woman who supped with the Goule in the Arabian Nights, must have been a beauty of this species. But to come to my portrait. Artists, I believe, like to begin with the eyes. I will begin, like Anacreon, with the hair.

Its look of

HAIR should be abundant, soft, flexible, growing in long locks, of a colour suitable to the skin, thick in the mass, delicate and distinct in the particular. The mode of wearing it should differ. Those who have it growing low in the nap of the neck, should prefer wearing it' in locks hanging down, rather than turned up with a comb. The gathering it however in that manner is delicate and feminine, and suits many. In general the mode of wearing the hair is to be regulated according to the shape of the head. Ringlets hanging about the forehead suit almost every body. On the other hand, the fashion of parting the hair smoothly, and drawing it tight back on either side, is becoming to few. It has a look of vanity, instead of simplicity. The face must do every thing for it, which is asking too much, especially as hair, in its freer state, is the ornament intended for it by nature. Hair is to the human aspect, what foliage is to the landscape. fertility is so striking, that it has been compared to flowers, and even to fruit. The Greek and other poets talk of hyacinthine locks, of clus tering locks (an image taken from grapes), of locks like tendrils. The favourite epithet for a Greek beauty was "well-haired ;" and the same epithet was applied to wood. Apuleius says, that Venus herself, if she were bald, would not be Venus. So entirely do I agree with him, and so much do I think that the sentiment of any thing beautiful, even where the real beauty is wanting, is the best part of it, that I prefer the help of artificial hair to an ungraceful want of it. I do not wish to be deceived. I would know that the hair was artificial, and would have the wearer inform me so. This would show her worthy of being allowed it. I remember, when I was at Florence, a lady of quality, an Englishwoman, whose beauty was admired by every body; but never did it appear so admirable to me, as when she told me one day, that the ringlets that hung from under her cap, were not her own. Here, thought 1, it is not artifice that assists beauty; it is truth. Here is a

woman who knows that there is a beauty in hair, beyond the material of it, or the pride of being thought to possess it. O, wits of Queen Anne's day, see what it is to live in an age of sentiment, instead of your mere periwigs, and reds and whites!—The first step in taste is to dislike all artifice; the next is to demand nature in her perfection; but the best of all is to find out the hidden beauty, which is the soul of beauty itself, to wit, the sentiment of it. The loveliest hair is nothing, if the wearer is incapable of a grace. The finest eyes are not fine, if they say nothing. What is the finest harp to me, strung with gold, and adorned with a figure of Venus, if it answer with a discordant note, and hath no chords in it fit to be wakened? Long live, therefore, say I, lovely natural locks at five and twenty, and lovely artificial locks, if they must be resorted to, at five-and-thirty or forty. Let the harp be new strung, if the frame warrant it, and the sounding-board hath a delicate utterance. A woman of taste should no more scruple to resort to such helps at one age, than she would consent to resort to them at an age when no such locks exist in nature. Till then, let her not cease to help herself to a plentiful supply. The spirit in which it is worn, gives the right to wear it. Affectation and pretension spoil every thing sentiment and simplícity warrant it. Above all things, cleanliThis should be the motto of personal beauty. Let a woman keep what hair she has, clean, and she may adorn or increase it, as she pleases. Oil, for example, is two different things, on clean hair and unclean. On the one, it is but an aggravation of the dirt to the other, if not moist enough by nature, it may add a reasonable grace. The best, however, is undoubtedly that which can most dispense with it. A lover is a little startled, when he finds the paper, in which a lock of hair has been enclosed, stained and spotted as if it had wrapped a cheesecake. Ladies, when about to give away locks, may as well omit the oil that time, and be content with the washing. If they argue that it will not look so glossy in those eyes in which they desire it to shine most, let them own as much to the favoured person, and he will never look at it but their candour shall give it a double lustre.

ness.

Love adds a precious seeing to the eye;

and how much does not sincerity add to love! One of the excuses for oil is the perfume mixed with it. The taste for this was carried so far among the ancients, that Anacreon does not scruple to wish that the painter of his mistress's portrait could convey the odour breathing from her delicate oiled tresses. Even this taste seems to have a foundation in nature. Mary a little black-eyed relation of mine, (oftener called Molly from a certain dairy-maid turn of hers, and our regard for old English customs,) has hair with a natural scent of spice.

The poets of antiquity, and the modern ones after them, talk much of yellow and golden tresses, tresses like the morn, &c. Much curiosity has been evinced respecting the nature of this famous poetical hair; and as much anxiety shewn in hoping, that it was not red. May I venture to say, in behalf of red hair, that I am one of those in whose eyes it is not so very shocking. Perhaps, as "pity melts the soul to love," there may be something of such a feeling in my tenderness for that Pariah of a colour. Perhaps there are more reasons, all very good

natured but so it is, I find myself the ready champion of all persons who are at a disadvantage with the world, especially women, and sociable ones. Hair of this extreme complexion appears never to have been in request; and yet, to say nothing of the general liking of the ancients for all the other shades of yellow and gold, a good red headed commentator might render it a hard matter to pronounce, that Theocritus has not given two of his beautiful swains hair amounting to a positive fiery. Fire-red is the epithet, however it may be understood.

Both fiery-tressed heads, both in their bloom.*

I do not believe the golden hair to have been red; but this I believe, that it was nearer to it than most colours, and that it went a good deal beyond what it is sometimes supposed to have been, auburn. The word yellow, a convertible term for it, will not do for auburn. Auburn is a rare and glorious colour, and I suspect will always be more admired by us of the north, where the fair complexions that recommended golden hair, are as easy to be met with, as they are difficult in the south. Ovid and Anacreon, the two greatest masters of the ancient world in painting external beauty, both seem to have preferred it to golden, notwithstanding the popular cry in the other's favour: unless indeed, the hair they speak of is too dark in its ground for auburn. The Latin poet, in his fourteenth love-elegy, book the first, speaking of tresses which he says Apollo would have envied, and which he prefers to those of Venus, as Apelles painted her, tells us, that they were neither black nor golden, but mixed, as it were, of both. And he compares them to a cedar on the declivities of Ida, with the bark stripped. This implies a colour of tawny. I have seen pine-trees, in a southern evening sun, take a lustrous burnished aspect, between dark and golden, a good deal like what I conceive to be the colour he alludes to. Anacreon describes hair of a similar beauty. His touch, as usual, is brief and exquisite :

Deepening inwardly, a dun:
Sparkling golden, next the sun.f

Which Ben Jonson has rendered in a line.

Gold upon a ground of black.

Perhaps, the true auburn is something more lustrous throughout, and more metallic than this. The cedar with the bark stripped looks more like it. At all events, that it is not the golden hair of the ancients has been proved to me beyond a doubt by a memorandum in my possession, worth a thousand treatises of the learned. This is a solitary hair of the famous Lucretia Borgia, whom Ariosto has so praised for her virtues, and whom the rest of the world is so contented to call a wretch. It was given me by a wild acquaintance, who stole it from a

Αμφω των ητην πυρροτρχω, αμφω αναβω.

- Τα μεν ενδοθεν, μελαίνας,

Τα δ' ες ακρον, ήλιωσας.

Mr. Roscoe must be excepted, who has come into the field to run a tilt for her. I wish his lance may turn out to be the Golden Lance of the poet, and overthrow all his opponents. The greatest scandal in the world, is the readiness of the world to believe scandal.