she has been all that a woman of fpirit could be, fo she still continues that eafy and independent creature that a sensible woman always will be. I must tell you the truth, which is not, however, much to my credit. I never thought fo much of yourself and your fifter, as fince I have been fourscore miles distant from you. In the Forest I looked upon you as good neighbours, at London as pretty kind of women, but here as divinities, angels, goddeffes, or what you will. In the fame manner I never knew at what rate I valued your life till you were upon the point of dying. If Mr. — and you will but fall very fick every feason, I fhall certainly die for you. Seriously I value you both fo much, that I esteem others much the less for your fakes; you have robbed me of the pleasure of esteeming a thousand pretty qualities in them, by fhowing me fo many finer in yourselves. There are but two things in the world which could make indifferent to me, which, I believe, you are not capable of, I mean ill-nature and malice. I have feen enough of you, not to overlook any frailty you could have, and nothing lefs than a vice could make me like you lefs. I expect you fhould difcover by my conduct towards you both, that this is true, and that therefore you should pardon a thousand things in me for that one difpofition. Expect nothing from me but truth and freedom, and I fhall always be thought by you, what I always am, you Your, etc. LETTER IX. TO THE SAME. 1714. I RETURNED home as flow and as contemplative after I had parted from you, as my Lord retired from the Court and glory to his Country-feat and wife, a week ago. I found here a dismal desponding letter from the son of another great courtier who expects the fame fate, and who tells me the great ones of the earth will now take it very kindly of the mean ones, if they will favour them with a vifit by day-light. With what joy would they lay down all their schemes of glory, did they but know you have the generosity to drink their healths once a day, as foon as they are fallen? Thus the unhappy, by the fole merit of their misfortunes, become the care of Heaven and you. I intended to have put this last into verse, but in this age of ingratitude my best friends forfake me, I mean my rhymes. I defire Mrs. P— to stay her stomach with these half hundred Plays, till I can procure her a Romance big enough to fatisfy her great foul with adventures. As for Novels, I fear fhe can depend upon none from me but that of my Life, which I am ftill, as I have been, contriving all poffible methods to fhorten, for the greater ease both of the hiftorian and the reader. May the believe all the paffion and tenderness expreffed You pressed in these Romances to be but a faint image of what I bear her, and may you (who read nothing) take the fame truth upon hearing it from me. will both injure me very much, if you don't think me a truer friend, than ever any romantic lover, or any imitator of their style could be. The days of beauty are as the days of greatness, and fo long all the world are your adorers. I am one of those unambitious people, who will love you forty years hence when your eyes begin to twinkle in a retirement, and without the vanity which every one now will take to be thought Your, etc. THE LETTER X. THE more I examine my own mind, the more romantic I find myself. Methinks it is a noble fpirit of contradiction to Fate and Fortune, not to give up those that are snatched from us; but to follow them the more, the farther they are removed from the sense of it. Sure, Flattery never travelled fo far as three thousand miles; it is now only for Truth, which overtakes all things, to reach you at this distance. 'Tis a generous piece of Popery, that pursues even those who are to be eternally absent, into another world; whether you think it right or wrong, you'll own the very extravagance a fort of piety. I can't be fatisfied with ftrowing flowers over you, and barely honouring you as a thing loft: but must confider you as a glorious, though remote being, and be sending addresses after you. You have carried away so much of me, that what remains is daily languishing and dying over my acquaintance here, and, I believe, in three or four months more I fhall think Aurat Bazar as good a place as Covent Garden. You may imagine this is raillery, but I am really fo far gone as to take pleasure in reveries of this kind. Let them fay I am romantic, fo is every one faid to be, that either admires a fine thing or does one. On my confcience, as the world goes, 'tis hardly worth any body's while to do one for the honour of it: Glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill paid as other juft debts; and neither Mrs. Macfarland for immolating her lover, nor you, for conftancy to your lord, muft ever hope to be compared to Lucretia or Portia. I write this in fome anger: for having, fince you went, frequented thofe people moft, who seemed most in your favour, I heard nothing that concerned you talked of fo often, as that you went away in a black full-bottomed wig; which I did not affert to be a bob, and was anfwered, Love is blind. I am perfuaded your wig had never fuffered this criticism, but on the score of your head, and the two eyes that are in it. At Conftantinople. Pray, Pray, when you write to me, talk of yourself; there is nothing I fo much defire to hear of; talk a great deal of yourfelf; that the who I always thought talked best, may speak upon the best fubject. The fhrines and reliques you tell me of no way engage my curiofity; I had ten times rather go on pilgrimage to fee one fuch face as yours, than both St. John Baptift's heads. I wifh (fince you are grown fo covetous of golden things) you had not only all the fine ftatues you talk of, but even the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar fet up, provided you were to travel no farther than you could carry it. The court of Vienna is very edifying. The ladies, with respect to their hufbands, feem to understand that text literally, that commands to bear one another's burthens: but, I fancy, many a man there is like Iffachar, an afs between two burthens. I fhall look upon you no more as a Christian, when you pass from that charitable court to the land of jealousy. I expect to hear an exact account how, and at what places, you leave one of the thirty-nine articles after another, as you approach to the lands of infidelity. Pray how far are you got already? Amidft the pomp of a high mass and the ravishing trills of a Sunday opera, what did you think of the doctrine and discipline of the church of England? Had you from your heart a reverence for Sternhold and Hopkins? How did Christian virtues hold out in fo long a voyyour age? |