If she be pure,
she will, when she wakes, clasp her husband fondly in
her arms; but if she be guilty, she will fall out of
bed, and run away."
When I first read this wonderful passage, I could
not easily conceive why it had remained hitherto
unregarded in such a zealous competition for
magnetical fame. I would surely be unjust to suspect
that any of the candidates are strangers to the name
or works of Rabbi Abraham, or to conclude, from
a late edict of the Royal Society in favour of the
English language, that philosophy and literature
are no longer to act in concert. Yet, how should a
quality so useful escape promulgation, but by the
obscurity of the language in which it was delivered?
Why are footmen and chambermaids paid on every
side for keeping secrets, which no caution nor expense
could secure from the all penetrating magnet?
Or, why are so many witnesses summoned, and so
many artifices practised, to discover what so easy an
experiment would infallibly reveal?
Full of this perplexity, I read the lines of Abraham
to a friend, who advised me not to expose my
life by a mad indulgence of the love of fame; he
warned me by the fate of Orpheus, that knowledge
or genius could give no protection to the invader of
female prerogatives; assured me that neither the
armour of Achilles, nor the antidote of Mithridates,
would be able to preserve me; and counselled me,
if I could not live without renown, to attempt the
acquisition of universal empire, in which the honour
would perhaps be equal, and the danger certainly
be less.
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