The Guardian Author:David Garrick Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: fringement of the English liberty for a man to keep his neighbour's person in custody in order to force an hearing ; and farther declare, that all assent given b... more »y an auditor under such constraint, is of itself void and of no effect. NESTOR IRONSIDE. STEELE. 85. THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1713. Sedte decor iste, qwd optas Esse vetat, votoque tuo tua forma repugnat, OVID. Met. i. 488. But so much youth, with so much beauty join'd, Oppose the state which thy desires design'd. DRYDEN. To suffer scandal (says somebody') is the tax which every person of merit pays to the public; and my Lord Verulam finely observes,that a man who has no virtue in himself, ever envies virtue in others. I know not how it comes to pass, but detraction, through all ages, has been found a vice which the fair sex too easily give into. Not the Roman satyrist could use them with more severity than they themselves do one another. Some audacious critics, in my opinion, have launched out a little too far when they take upon them to prove, in opposition to history, that Lais was a woman of as much virtue as beauty; which violently displeasing the Phrynes of those times, they secretly prevailed with the historians to deliver her down to posterity under the infamous character of an extorting 1 Swift. prostitute. But though I have the greatest regard imaginable to that softer species, yet am I sorry to find they have very little for themselves. So far are they from being tender of one another's reputation, that they take a malicious pleasure in destroying it. My lady the other day, when Jack was asking who could be so base to spread such a report about Mrs. . answered, 'None, you may be sure, but a wo man.' A little after, Dick told my lady, that he had heard Florellahint as if Cleora wo...« less