
could see, and I should have thought any one much out of taste that could not
have made a hearty meal of such a morsel as nature seemed to have design'd for
the highest diet of pleasure.
    And why should I here suppress the delight I received from this amiable
creature, in remarking each artless look, each motion of pure undissembled
nature, betrayed by his wanton eyes; or shewing, transparently, the glow and
suffusion of blood through his fresh, clear skin, whilst even his sturdy rustic
pressures wanted not their peculiar charm? Oh! but, say you, this was a young
fellow of too low a rank of life to deserve so great a display. May be so: but
was my condition, strictly consider'd one jot more exalted? or, had I really
been much above him, did not his capacity of giving such exquisite pleasure
sufficiently raise and ennoble him, to me, at least? Let who would, for me,
cherish, respect, and reward the painter's, the statuary's, the musician's arts,
in proportion to delight taken in them: but at my age, and with my taste for
pleasure, a taste strongly constitutional to me, the talent of pleasing, with
which nature has endowed a handsome person, form'd to me the greatest of all
merits; compared to which, the vulgar prejudices in favour of titles, dignities,
honours, and the like, held a very low rank indeed. Nor perhaps would the
beauties of the body be so much affected to be held cheap, were they, in their
nature, to be bought and delivered. But for me, whose natural philosophy all
resided in the favourite center of sense, and who was rul'd by its powerful
instinct in taking pleasure by its right handle, I could scarce have made a
choice more to my purpose.
    Mr. H...'s loftier qualifications of birth, fortune and sense laid me under
a sort of subjection and constraint that were far from making harmony in the
concert of love; nor had he, perhaps, thought me worth softening that
superiority to; but, with this lad, I was more on that level which love delights
in.
    We may say what we please, but those we can be the easiest and freest with
are ever those we like, not to say love, the best.
    With this stripling, all whose art of love was the action of it, I could,
without check of awe or restraint, give a loose to joy, and execute every scheme
of dalliance
