These lines, considered as detached from the rest, might perhaps admit of such an interpretation; but when the whole scope of the poem is taken in, it is impossible to put a bad one upon them, without giving up all pretensions to common sense, as well as candour. Cadenus is represented as a clergyman of the strictest morals, advanced in life, and who had at all times been proof against any weakness with regard to the fair sex. Vanessa is drawn as the most perfect model of every female perfection, particularly modesty:
From whence that decency of mind,
So lovely in the female kind,
Where not one careless thought intrudes,
Less modest than the speech of prudes.
She is represented as a pattern for all the sex to copy after:
As she advanced, that womankind,
Would, by her model form their mind;
And all their conduct would be try'd
By her, as an unerring guide.
Is it possible to conceive, that when a lady of this character confesses a passion for her reverend tutor, that any thing could be meant by it but virtuous love, to terminate in matrimony? If gallantry had been her object, in the whole race of mankind she could not have made a more preposterous choice; though by one of her refined way of thinking, who considered the beauties of the mind as superiour to all external accomplishments, he might have been preferred to all the world as a husband.
