Note 161 — Chapter VIII · SOCIETY

There is another similar passage so early as in Popanilla, which says that “... there were those who paradoxically held all this Elysian morality was one of great delusion, and that this scrupulous anxiety about the conduct of others arose from a principle, not of Purity, but Corruption. The woman who is “talked about,” these sages would affirm, is generally virtuous....” But the allusion may here be to Queen Caroline.