LETTER X. TO THE SAME. Sunday. INDEED, dear Madam, 'tis not possible to tell you, whether you give me every day I see you, more pleasure or more respect. And, upon my word, whenever I see you after a day or two's absence, it is in just such a view as that you yesterday had of your own writings. I find you still better than I could imagine, and I think I was partial before, to your prejudice. The picture dwells really at my heart, and I have made a perfect passion of preferring your present face to your past. I know and thoroughly esteem yourself of this year: I know no more of Lady Mary Pierrepoint, than to admire at what I have heard of her, or be pleased with some fragments of hers as I am with Sappho's. But now-I can't say what I would say of you now. Only still give me cause to say you are good to me, and allow me as much of your person as Sir Godfrey can help me to. Upon conferring with him yesterday, I find he thinks it absolutely necessary to draw the face first, which he says can never be set right on the figure, if the drapery and posture be finished before. To give you as little trouble as possible, he proposes to draw your face with crayons, and finish it up at your own house in a morning; from whence he will transfer it to the canvas, so that you need not go to sit at his house. This, I must observe, is a manner in which they seldom draw any but crowned heads; and I observe it with secret pride and pleasure. Be so kind as to tell me if you care he should do this to-morrow at twelve. Though I am but assured from you of the thing, let the manner and time be what you best like let every decorum you please, be observed. I should be very unworthy of any favour from your hands, if I desire any at the expence of your quiet, or conveniency, in any degree. I have just received this Pamphlet, which may divert you. I am sincerely Yours, etc. LETTER XI. TO THE SAME. MADAM, Tuesday morning. So natural as I find it is to me, to neglect every body else in your company, I am sensible I ought to do any thing that might please you; and I fancied, upon recollection, our writing the Letter you proposed was of that nature. I therefore sate down to my part of it last night, when I should have gone out of town. Whether or no you will order me, in recompence, to see you again, I leave to you; for indeed I find I begin to behave myself worse to you than to any other woman, as I value you more, and yet if I thought I should not see you again, I would say some things here, which I could not to your person. For I would not have you die deceived in me, that is, go to Constantinople without knowing, that I am to some degree of extravagance, as well as with the utmost reason, Madam, Your, etc. MADAM, LETTER XII. TO THE SAME. IF to live in the memory of others have any thing desirable in it, 'tis what you possess with regard to me, in the highest sense of the words. There is not a day in which your figure does not appear before me; your conversations return to my thoughts, and every scene, place, or occasion, where I have enjoyed them, are as livelily painted, as an imagination equally warm and tender can be capable to represent them. Yet how little accrues to you from all this, when not only my wishes, but the very expressions of them, can hardly ever arrive to be known to you? I cannot tell whether you have seen half the letters I have writ; but if you had, I have not said in them half of what I designed to say; and you can have seen but a faint, slight, timorous, Eschantillon of what my spirit suggests, and my hand follows slowly, and imperfectly, indeed unjustly, because discreetly and reservedly. When told me there was no way left for our correspondence, but by merchant ships, I watched ever since for any set out, and this is the first I could learn of. I owe the knowledge of it to Mr. Congreve (whose letters, you that with my Lady Rich's, accompany this). However I was impatient enough to venture two from Mr. Methuen's office: they have miscarried, you have lost nothing but such words and wishes as I repeat every day in your memory, and for your welfare. I have had thoughts of causing what I write for the future to be transcribed, and to send copies by more ways than one, that one at least might have a chance to reach you. The letters themselves would be artless and natural enough to prove there could be no vanity in this practice, and to shew it proceeded from the belief of their being welcome to you, not as they came from me, but from England. My eyesight is grown so bad, that I have left off all correspondence except with yourself; in which methinks I am like those people who abandon and abstract themselves from all that are about them (with whom they might have business and intercourse), to employ their addresses only to invisible and distant beings, whose good offices and favours cannot reach them in a long time, if at all. If I hear from you, I look upon it as little less than a miracle, or extraordinary visitation from another world; 'tis a sort of dream of an agreeable thing, which subsists no more to me; but however it is such a dream as exceeds most of the dull realities of my life. Indeed, what with ill-health and ill-fortune, I am grown so stupidly philosophical as to have no thought about me that deserves the name of warm or lively, but that which sometimes awakens me into an imagination that I may yet see you again. Compassionate a poet, who has lost all manner of romantic ideas; except a few that hover about the Bosphorus and Hellespont, not so much for the fine sound of their names as to raise up images of Leander, who was drowned in crossing the sea to kiss the hand of fair Hero. This were a destiny less to be lamented, than what we are told of the poor Jew, one of your interpreters, who was beheaded at Belgrade as a Spy. I confess such a death would have been a great disappointment to me; and I believe Jacob Tonson will hardly venture to visit you, after this news. You tell me, the pleasure of being nearer the Sun has a great effect upon your health and spirits. You have turned my affections so far Eastward, that I could almost be one of his worshippers: for I think the Sun has more reason to be proud of raising your spirits, than of raising all the plants, and ripening all the minerals in the earth. It is my opinion, a reasonable man might gladly travel three or four thousand leagues, to see your nature, and your wit, in their full perfection. What may not we expect from a creature that went out the most perfect of this part of the world, and is every day improving by the Sun in the other! If you do not write and speak the finest things imaginable, you must be content to be involved in the same imputation with the rest of the East, and be concluded to have abandoned yourself to extreme effeminacy, laziness, and lewdness of life. I make not the least question but you could give me great eclaircissements upon many passages in Homer since you have been enlightened by the same Sun that inspired the father of Poetry. You are now |