do me an injustice if you look upon anything I shall say from this instant, as a compliment either to you or to myself: whatever I write will be the real thought of that hour, and I know you will no more expect it of me to persevere till death in every sentiment or notion I now set down, than you would imagine a man's face should never change after his picture was once drawn.

The freedom I shall use in this manner of thinking aloud (as somebody calls it), or talking upon paper, may indeed prove me a fool, but it will prove me one of the best sort of fools, the honest ones. And since what folly we have will infallibly buoy up at one time or other in spite of all our art to keep it down, it is 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 his project had taken, of having windows in our breasts, I should be for carrying it further and making those windows casements: that while a man showed his heart to all the world, he might do something more for his friends, e'en take it out and trust it to their handling. I think I love you as well as King Herod could Herodias (though I never had so much as one dance with you), and would as freely give you my heart in a dish as he did another's head. But since Jupiter will not have it so, I must be content to show my taste in life as I do my taste in painting, by loving to have as little drapery as possible. Not that I think every body naked altogether so fine a sight as yourself and a few more would be; but because it is good to use people to what they must be acquainted with; and there will certainly come some day of judgment to uncover every soul of us. We shall then see how the prudes of this world owed all their fine figure only to their being a little straighter laced, and that they were naturally as arrant squabs as those that went more loose, nay, as those that never girded their loins at all.

But a particular reason to 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 express their opinion of you, it falls very short of mine, and I am sure, at the same time, theirs is such as you would think sufficiently in your favour.

You may easily imagine how desirous I must be of a

correspondence with a person who had taught me long ago, that it was as possible to esteem at first sight as to love; and who has since ruined me for all the conversation of one sex, and almost all the friendship of the other. I am but too sensible, through your means, that the company of men wants a certain softness to recommend it, and that of women wants everything else. How often have I been quietly going to take possession 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 too! 1 Books have lost their effect upon me; and I was convinced, since I saw you, that there is something more powerful than philosophy, and, since I heard you, that there is one alive wiser than all the sages. A plague of female wisdom! It makes a man ten times more uneasy than his own! What is very strange, Virtue herself, when you have the dressing her, is too amiable for one's repose. What a world of good might you have done in your time, if you had allowed half the fine gentlemen who have seen you, to have but conversed with you! They would have been strangely caught, while they thought only to fall in love with a fair face, 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 punctilious restrictions and decorums that oftentimes in nearer conversation prejudice truth to save good breeding. I may now hear of my faults, and

So, seven years later, Pope wrote to Judith Cowper, afterwards Mrs. Madan, and aunt of the poet Cowper: "You have spoiled him [Pope himself] for a solitaire and a book all the days of his life; and put him into such a condition that he thinks of nothing and enquires of nothing, but after a person who has nothing to say to him, and has left him for ever," &c.-T.

2 In this passage, on its first publication, the word "bit" was substituted for "caught,” probably a sly allusion to his couplet—

"Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit;

or, as originally written,

66 Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit,
And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit."-T.

you of your good qualities, without a blush on either side. We converse upon such unfortunate generous terms, as exclude the regards of fear, shame, or design in either of And methinks it would be as ungenerous a part to impose even in a single thought upon each other, in this state of separation, as for spirits of a different sphere, who have so little intercourse with us, to employ that little (as some would make us think they do) in putting tricks and delusions upon poor mortals.

us.

Let me begin, then, madam, by asking you a question, which may enable me to judge better of my own conduct than most instances of my life. In what manner did I behave the last hour I saw you? What degree of concern did I discover when I felt a misfortune, which I hope you never will 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 since pass by the house but with the same sort of melancholy that we feel upon seeing the tomb of a friend, which only serves to put us in mind of what we have lost. I reflect upon the circumstances of your departure, your behaviour in what I may call your last moments, and I indulge a gloomy kind of satisfaction in thinking you gave some of those last moments to me. I would fain imagine this was not accidental, but proceeded from a penetration which I know you have in finding out the truth of people's sentiments, and that you were not unwilling the last man that would have parted with you should be the last that did. I really looked upon you then, as the friends of Curtius might have done upon that hero in the instant he was devoting himself to glory, and running to be lost, out of genorosity. I was obliged to admire your resolution in as great a degree as I deplored it; and could only wish that Heaven would reward so much merit as was to be taken

1

1 "I reflect upon the circumstances of your departure, which I was there a witness 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," &c., "and that you are willing the last man," &c.-Pope's published version.-T.

from us, with all the felicity it could enjoy elsewhere.' May that person for whom you have left all the world, be so just as to prefer you to all the world. I believe his good understanding has engaged him to do so hitherto, and I think his gratitude must for the future. May you continue to think him worthy of whatever you have done; may you ever look upon him with the eyes of a first lover, nay, if possible, with all the unreasonable happy fondness of an unexperienced one, surrounded with all the enchantments and ideas of romance and poetry. In a word, may you receive from him as many pleasures and gratifications as even I think you can give. I wish this from my heart, and while I examine what passes there in regard to you, I cannot but glory in my own heart that it is capable of so much generosity. I am, with all unalterable esteem and sincerity,

Madam,

Your most faithful obedient humble servant.

FROM POPE.

[August 20, 1716].

MADAM,-You will find me more troublesome than ever Brutus did his evil genius. I shall meet you in more places than one, and often refresh your memory of me before you arrive at your Philippi. These shadows of me, my letters, will be haunting you from time to time, and putting you in mind of the man who has really suffered by you, and whom you have robbed of the most valuable of his enjoyments, your conversation. The advantage of learning your sentiments by discovering mine was what I always thought a great one, and even worth the risk I run of manifesting my own indiscretion. You then rewarded my trust in you the moment it was given, and was sure to please or inform me the minute you answered. I must now be contented with more slow returns; however, 'tis some pleasure that your thoughts upon paper will be more

1 All the remainder of the letter was omitted in Pope's published version.-T.

durable, and that I shall no longer have cause to complain of a loss I have so often regretted, that of any thing you said which I happened to forget. In earnest, madam, if I were to write to you as often as I think of you, it must be every day of my life. I attend you in spirit through all your ways, I follow in books of travels through every stage, I wish for you and fear for you through whole folios. You make me shrink at the past dangers of dead travellers, and when I read of a delightful place or agreeable prospect, I hope it yet subsists to give you pleasure. I enquire the roads, the amusements, the company of every town and country you pass through, with as much diligence as if I were to set out next week to overtake you. In a word, no one can have you more constantly in mind, not even your guardian angel (if you have one), and I am willing to indulge so much popery as to imagine some being takes care of you, who knows your value better than you do yourself. I am willing to think Heaven never gave so much self-neglect and resolution to a woman to occasion her calamity; but have the piety to believe those qualities must be intended to conduce to her benefit and her glory. Your first short letter only serves to show me you are living. It puts be in mind of the first dove that returned to Noah, and just made him know it had found no rest abroad. There is nothing in it that can please me, but when you say you had no sea-sickness. I beg your next may give me all the pleasure it can; that is, tell me any that you receive; nothing that regards the countries you pass through engages so much of my curiosity or concern as what relates purely to yourself. You can make no discoveries that will be half so valuable to me as those of your own mind, temper, and thoughts; and your welfare, to say truth, is more at my heart than that of Christendom. I am sure I may defend the truth, though perhaps not the virtue, of this declaration. One is ignorant, or at best doubtful, of the merits of differing religions and governments; but private virtue one can be sure of. I can therefore judge what particular person deserves to be happier than others, but not what nation deserves to conquer another. You'll say I am not public spirited. Let it be so; I may have too many tendernesses, particular regards,