Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/16

6 a very liberal education on him, and endeavoured to inſpire his mind with other principles, than thoſe he had received from his father. This young gentleman had very promiſing parts, but under the appearance of an open ſimplicity, he concealed the moſt treacherous hypocriſy. Sir Roger, who had a high opinion of his nephew’s honour, as well as of his great abilities, on his deathbed bequeathed to him the care of our authoreſs, and her youngeſt ſiſter.

This man had from nature a very happy addreſs, formed to win much upon the hearts of unexperienced girls; and his two couſins reſpected him greatly. He placed them at the houſe of an old, out-of-faſhion aunt, who had been a keen partizan of the royal cauſe during the civil wars; ſhe was full of the heroic ſtiffneſs of her own times, and would read books of Chivalry, and Romances with her ſpectacles.

This fort of converſation, much infected the mind of our poeteſs, and fill’d her imagination with lovers, heroes, and princes; made her think herſelf in an inchanted region, and that all the men who approached her were knights errant. In a few years the old aunt died, and left the two young ladies without any controul; which as ſoon as their couſin Mr. Manley heard, he haſted into the country, to viſit them; appeared in deep mourning, as he ſaid for the death of his wife; upon which the young ladies congratulated him, as they knew his wife was a woman of a moſt turbulent temper, and ill fitted to render the conjugal life tolerable.

This gentleman, who had ſeen a great deal of the world, and was acquainted with all the artifices of ſeducing, loſt no time in making love to his couſin, who was no otherwiſe pleaſed with it, than as it anſwered ſomething to the character ſhe had found in thoſe books, which had poiſoned and deluded her