Letters

TO SEVERAL EMINENT PERSONS.

LETTER I.

WHEN I receive your lines, my dear Princess, and find there expressions of a passion; though reason and my own immerit tell me, it must not be for me; yet is the cozenage so pleasing to me, that I (brib'd by my own desires) believe them still before the other. Then do I glory that my virgin-love has staid for such an object to fix upon, and think how good the stars were to me, that kept me from quenching those flames (youth or wild love furnish'd me withal) in common and ordinary waters, and reserved me a sacrifice for your eyes. While thought thus smiles and solaces himself within me, cruel remembrance breaks in upon our retirements, and tells so sad a story, that, trust me, I forget all that pleased fancy said before, and turn my thoughts to where I left you. Then I consider that storms neither know courtship nor pity, and that those rude blasts will often make you a prisoner this winter, if they do no worse.

While I here enjoy fresh diversion, you make the sufferings more, by having leisure to consider them; nor have I now any way left me to make mine equal with them, but by often considering that they are not so: for the thought that I cannot be with you to bear my share, is more intolerable to me, than if I had borne more. But I was only born to number hours, and not enjoy them yet can I never think myself unfortunate, while I can write myself,

AGLAURA,

Her humble Servant.

LETTER II.

WHEN I consider, my dear Princess, that I have no other pretence to your favours, than that which all men have to the original of beauty, light; which we enjoy, not that it is the inheritance of our eyes, but because things most excellent cannot restrain themselves, but are ours, as they are diffusively good; then do I find the justness of your quarrel, and cannot but blush to think what I do owe, but much more to think what I do pay, since I have made the principal so great, by sending in so little interest. When you have receiv'd this humble confession, you will not, I hope, conceive me one that would (though upon your bidding) enjoy myself, while there is such a thing in the world,

Before this instant I did not believe Warwickshire the other world, or that Milcot Walks had been the blessed shades. At my arrival here I am saluted by all as risen from the dead, and have had joy given me as preposterously and as impertinently as they give it to men who marry where they do not love. If I should now die in earnest, my friends have nothing to pay me, for they have discharg'd the rites of funeral sorrow beforehand. Nor do I take it ill, that report, which made Richard the Second alive so often after he was dead, should kill me as often when I am alive; the advantage is on my side: the only quarrel I have, is, that they have made use of the whole Book of Martyrs upon me; and without all question the first Christians under the great persecution suffered not, in five hundred years, so many several ways as I have done in six days in this

lewd town. This, Madam, may seem strange unto you now, who know the company I was in; and certainly if at that time I had departed this transitory world, it had been a way they had never thought on; and this epitaph of the Spaniard's (changing the names) would better have become my grave-stone, than any other my friends the poets would have found out for me:

EPITAPH.

HERE LIES DON ALONZO,

SLAIN BY A WOUND RECEIV'D UNDER

HIS LEFT PAP,

THE ORIFICE OF WHICH WAS SO

SMALL, NO CHIRURGEON COULD

DISCOVER IT.

READER,

IF THOU WOULD'ST AVOID SO STRANGE

A DEATH,

LOOK NOT UPON LUCINDA'S EYES.

Now all this discourse of dying, Madam, is but to let you know how dangerous a thing it is to be long from London, especially in a place which is concluded out of the world. If you are not to be frighted hither, I hope you are to be persuaded: and if good sermons, or good plays, new braveries, or fresh wit, revels, Madam, masks that are to be, have any rhetoric about them, here they are, I assure you, in perfection; without asking leave of the provinces beyond seas, or the assent of I write not this, that you should think I value these pleasures above those of Milcot: for I must here protest, I prefer the single tabor and pipe in the great hall far above them: and were there no more belonging to a journey than riding so many miles (would my affairs conspire with my desires) your Ladyship should find there, not at the bottom of a letter,

Madam,

Your humble Servant.

LETTER IV.

SIR,

Since the settling of your family would certainly much conduce to the settling of your mind (the care of the one being the trouble of the other) I cannot but reckon it in the number of my misfortunes, that my affairs deny me the content I should take to serve you in it.

It would be too late now for me, I suppose, to advance or confirm you in those good resolutions I left you in, being confident your own reason has been so just to you, as long before this to have represented a necessity of redeeming time and fame, and of taking a handsome revenge upon yourself for the injuries you would have done yourself.

Change, I confess (to them that think all at once) must needs be strange, and to you hateful, whom first your own nature, and then custom, another nature, have brought to delight in those narrow and uncouth ways we found you in. You must therefore consider that you have entered into one of those near conjunctions of which death is the only honourable divorce; and that you have now to please another as well as yourself; who though she be a woman, and by the patent she hath from nature, hath liberty to do simply; yet can she never be so strongly bribed against herself, as to betray at once all her hopes and ends, and for your sake resolve to live miserably. Examples of such loving folly our times afford but few; and in those there are, you shall find the stock of love to have been greater, and their strengths richer to maintain it, than is to be feared yours can be.

Woman (besides the trouble) has ever been thought a rent-charge, and though, through the vain curiosity of man, it has often been enclosed, yet has it seldom been brought to improve or become profitable; it faring with married men, for the most part, as with those that at great charges wall in grounds, and plant, who cheaper might have eaten melons elsewhere, than in their own gardens cucumbers. The ruins that either time, sickness, or the melancholy you shall give her, shall bring, must all be made up at your cost for that thing, a husband, is but tenant for life in