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 visit 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 soul with adventures. As for Novels, I fear fhe can depend upon none from me but that of my Life, which I am still, as I have been, contriving all poffible methods to shorten, for the greater ease both of the historian and the reader. May she believe all the paffion and tenderness exprefs'd 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. You 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 The days of beauty are as the days of greatnefs, and so 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, &c. TH LETTER X. HE more I examine my own mind, the more romantic I find myself. Methinks it is a noble spirit of contradiction to Fate and Fortune, not to give up those that are fnatched from us; but to follow them the more, the farther they are remov'd from the fenfe 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 abfent, into another world; whether 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 muft confider you as a glorious tho' remote being, and be fending addreffes you think it addreffes after you. You have carried away fo 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 a as good a place as Covent Garden. You may imagine this is raillery, but I am really fo far gone as to take pleafure in reveries of this kind. Let them say I am romantic, fo is every one faid to be, that either admires a fine thing or does one. On my conscience, 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 just debts; and neither Mrs. Macfarland for immolating her lover, nor you, for conftancy to your lord, must ever hope to be compared to Lucretia or Portia. I write this in fome anger; for having, fince you went, frequented those people most, who seemed moft in your favour, I heard nothing that concerned you talked of so often, as that you went away in a black full-bottom'd 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. 2 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 yourself; that the who I always thought talked beft, may fpeak upon the beft fubject. The shrines and reliques you tell me of no way engage my curiofity; I had ten times rather go on pilgrimage to see one fuch face as yours, than both St. John Baptift's heads. I wish (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 husbands, seem 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 jealoufy. 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? amidst 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 Stern hold hold and Hopkins? How did your Chriftian virtues hold out in fo long a voyage? you have, it feems (without paffing the bounds of Christendom) out-travelled the fin of fornication: in a little time you'll look upon fome others with more patience, than the ladies here are capable of. I reckon, you'll time it fo well as to make your religion laft to the verge of Christendom, that you may discharge your Chaplain (as humanity requires) in a place where he may find fome business. I doubt not but I fhall be told (when I come to follow you through those countries) in how pretty a manner you accommodated yourself to the customs of the true Muflemen. They will tell me at what town you practised to fit on the Sopha, at what village you learned to fold a Turbant, where you was bathed and anointed, and where you parted with your black fullbottom. How happy must it be for a gay young woman, to live in a country where it is a part of religious worship to be giddy-headed? I fhall hear at Belgrade how the good Bashaw received you with tears of joy, how he was charmed with your agreeable manner of pronouncing the words Allab and Muhamed; and how earneftly you joined with him in exhorting your friend to embrace that religion. But I think his objection was a juft one, that it was attended 1 |