LETTER XX.

CAN fay little to recommend the letters I fhall write

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to you, but that they will be the most impartial representations of a free heart, and the trueft copies you ever faw, though of a very mean original. Not a feature will be foftened, or any advantageous light employed to make the ugly thing a little less hideous; but you fhall find it in all refpects, most horribly like. You will do me an injustice if you look upon any thing I fhall fay from this inftant, as a compliment either to you or to myself: whatever I write will be the real thought of that hour; and I know you'll no more expect it of me to perfevere till death, in every fentiment or notion I now fet down, than you would imagine a man's face fhould never change when once his picture was drawn.

The freedom I fhall use in this manner of thinking aloud, may indeed prove me a fool; but it will prove me one of the best fort of fools, the honest ones. And fince what folly we have, will infallibly buoy up at one time or other in spite of all our art to keep it down; methinks, 'tis almost foolish to take any pains to conceal it at all, and almost knavish to do it from those that are our friends. If Momus's project had taken, of having windows in our breasts, I should be for carrying it further, and making those windows cafements; that while a man fhowed his heart to all

the world, he might do fomething more for his friends; even give it them, and trust it to their handling. I think I love you as well as King Herod did Herodias, (though I never had fo much as one dance with you,) and would as freely give you my heart in a dish, as he did another's head. But fince Jupiter will not have it fo, I must be content to fhew my taste in life, as I do my taste in painting, by loving to have as little drapery as poffible. Not that I think every body naked altogether fo fine a fight, as yourself and a few more would be, but becaufe 'tis good to ufe people to what they must be acquainted with: and there will certainly come fome day of judgment or other, to uncover every foul of us. We fhall then fee that the prudes of this world owed all their fine figure only to their being straiter-laced than the rest; and that they are naturally as arrant fquabs as thofe that went more loofe, nay as thofe that never girded their loins at all.-But a particular reafon that may engage you to write your thoughts the more freely to me, is, that I am confident no one knows you better; for I find, when others exprefs their thoughts of you, they fall very fhort of mine, and, I know, at the fame time, theirs are fuch as you would think fufficiently in your favour.

You may easily imagine how desirous I must be of a correspondence with a perfon, who had taught me long ago that it was as poffible to esteem at firft fight, as to love: and who has fince ruined me for all the

converfation

converfation of one fex, and almost all the friendship of the other. I am but too fenfible through your means, that the company of men wants a certain foftnefs to recommend it, and that of women wants every thing else. How often have I been quietly going to take poffeffion of that tranquillity and indolence I had so long found in the Country; when one evening of your conversation has spoiled me for a Solitaire! Books have loft their effect upon me, and I was convinced fince I faw you, that there is one alive wiser than all the fages. A plague of female wisdom! it makes a man ten times more uneafy than his own. What is very strange, Virtue herself (when you have the dreffing her) is too amiable for one's repose. You might have done a world of good in your time, if you had allowed half the fine gentlemen who have feen you, to have converfed with you; they would have been strangely bit, while they thought only to fall in love with a fair lady, and you had bewitched them with Reason and Virtue (two beauties that the very fops pretend to no acquaintance with).

The unhappy distance at which we correspond, removes a great many of those restrictions and punctilious decorums, that oftentimes in nearer converfation prejudice truth, to fave good-breeding. I may now hear of my faults, and you of your good qualities, without a blush; we converfe upon fuch unfortunate generous terms, as exclude the regards of fear, fhame, or defign, in either of us. And, methinks it would

be as paultry a part, to impofe (even in a single thought) upon each other in this state of separation, as for fpirits of a different sphere, who have fo little intercourse with us, to employ that little (as fome would make us think they do) in putting tricks and delufions upon poor mortals.

Let me begin then, Madam, by asking you a question, that may enable me to judge better of my own conduct than most instances of my life. In what manner did I behave in the last hour I faw you? What degree of concern did I discover, when I felt a miffortune, which, I hope, you will never feel, that of parting from what one most esteems? for if my parting looked but like that of your common acquaintance, I am the greatest of all the hypocrites that ever decency made.

I never fince pass by your house but with the fame fort of melancholy that we feel upon seeing the tomb of a friend, which only ferves to put us in mind of what we have loft. I reflect upon the circumftances of your departure, which I was there a witnefs of, (your behaviour in what I may call your last moments,) and I indulge a gloomy kind of pleasure in thinking that those last moments were given to me. I would fain imagine that this was not accidental, but proceeded from a penetration, which, I know, you have, in finding out the truth of people's fentiments; and that you are willing, the last man that would have parted from you, fhould be the last that did. I really looked upon

you

gene

you just as the friends of Curtius might have done upon that Hero, at the inftant when he was devoting himself to glory, and running to be lost out of rofity: I was obliged to admire your refolution, in as great a degree as I deplored it: and had only to wish, that Heaven would reward fo much virtue as was to be taken from us, with all the felicities it could enjoy elsewhere!

I am, etc.

1

LETTER XXI.

your

letters. I am

CAN never have too many of angry at every scrap of paper loft, and though it is but an odd compliment to compare a fine lady to a Sibyl, your leaves, methinks, like hers, are too good to be committed to the winds; though I have no other way of receiving them but by those unfaithful meffengers. I have had but three, and I reckon that short one from D, which was rather a dying ejaculation than a letter.

You have contrived to fay in your last the two things most pleasing to me: the first, that whatever be the fate of your letters, you will continue to write in the discharge of your confcience. The other is, the juftice you do me, in taking what I write to you, in the serious manner it was meant; it is the point upon which I can bear no fufpicion, and in which, above