at it, that I could not help writing the minute I got home. Believe me, much more than I am my own, Yours.

LETTER XXXI.

TO MRS. TERESA BLOUNT.

I TAKE it kindly whenever you command any thing of me: I shall not want the horses all day, being to have our party with Mrs. Lepell. I wish to God I were as fit to keep you company as those who love you far less. Nothing could be so bitter to a tender mind, as to displease most, where he would (and ought in gratitude) to please best. I am faithfully yours: unhappy enough to want a great deal of indulgence; but sensible I deserve it less and less from my disagreeable carriage. I am truly grateful to you for pardoning it so often, not able to know when I can overcome it, and only able to wish you could bear me better.

LETTER XXXII.

TO MARTHA AND TERESA BLOUNT.

DEAR LADIES,

Sept. 17.

I AM in the case which many a man is in with your sex, not knowing where to have you : so I direct this with great respect to the most dis

creet of servitors, whom I dare hardly call George,* even within the folds of this letter. I hope, if you are in London, that you find company; if you are in the country, that you do not want it. I heartily wish you luck at cards; not only as it is said to be a token of luck in better things, but as it doth really and effectually save money, and sometimes get it. I also wish you good husbands, and think Mr. Caryll, who has the interest of our Catholic religion at heart, ought, if possible, to strengthen it, by allying to some of the supports thereof two such lovely branches as yourselves. Pray tell him so from me, and let me advise you in your ear. It is full as well to marry in the country as in the town, provided you can bring your husbands up with you afterwards, and make them stay as long as you will. These two considerations every wise virgin should have in her head, not forgetting the third, which is,—a separate allowance. O Pin-money! dear, desirable Pinmoney! in thee are included all the blessings of woman! In thee are comprised fine clothes, fine lodgings, fine operas, fine masquerades, fine fellows. Foh! says Mrs. Teresa, at this last article --and so I hold my tongue.

Are you really of opinion you are an inconvenient part at present of my friend's family? Do ye fancy the best man in England is so very good,

* Perhaps George Arbuthnot, the solicitor, who was much in the confidence of Pope and M. Blount. C. Bowles.

as not to be fond of ye? Why, St. Austin himself would have kissed ye-St. Jerome would have shaved against your coming-St. Peter would have dried his eyes at the sight of you-and St. Thomas would have been for touching and trying you. If you fancy yourselves troublesome at Grinstead,* you are too humble indeed; you need not talk of wanting to be humbled! Every place will be proud of you; except Gotham, and the wise men of Gotham. May the Devil take every one that thinks you should be humbled! For me, I sincerely wish to see you exalted, when it shall please heaven, above the cherubims; but first, upon earth, above six horses in a handsome coach.

After all, if it be wholesome for you both to be humbled, ladies, let me try to do it. I will freely tell you two or three of your faults.

First, if you are handsome, you know it. This people have unluckily given you to understand, by praising you every day of your lives. The world has abundance of those indiscreet persons who admire you; and the mischief of it is, you can go no where but you meet with them.

Secondly, you are the greatest self-lovers alive. For ever since you were children, it was preached to you, that you should know yourselves. You have complied with this idle advice, and, upon examining, find a great many qualities, which

* West-Grinstead in Sussex: Mr. Caryll's residence was here. C.

Bowles.

those who possess cannot but like themselves the better for and it is your misfortune to have them all!

Thirdly, it is insupportable impudence and lying in you, to pretend, as you do, to have no passion or tendency to love and good-nature. For can any thing be so preposterous, as to say you care for nobody, at the same time that you oblige and please every body?

For these, and all other your grievous offences, the Lord afford you his mercy, as I do heartily absolve you. In nomine, &c.

Mr. Gay was your servant yesterday: I believe to-day he may be Mrs. Lepell's.

LETTER XXXIII.

TO MARTHA AND TERESA BLOUNT.

DEAR LADIES,

(1716.)

THE minute I find there is no hope of you, I fly to the wood. It is as fit for me to leave the world, as for you to stay in it; and to prefer a wood to any acquaintance or company, as for you to prefer any cousin, even the gravest relation you have, to a wood. Perhaps you may think your visit as melancholy as my retirement: if you have not as much time to think as I shall have, you will have more to pray, which some think as

melancholy. What I shall gather from thence I know not, except nuts, which I believe Gay and I shall oftener crack, than jokes. But you shall hear more of our life there, when we have experienced it longer.

I send this letter to answer a few friendly questions you have made. My mother is, and has been, in as good health as I have known her these many years. She is mighty well acquainted with all Lord Harcourt's family-children and all. I shall not leave her seven days together, whatever excursions I make. I have felt my arm more within these three days than I did when I left you. I have gone a good way in Homer every day I was at Stanton-Harcourt. I will shortly send you a particular description of that place. It was no small grief to me that the fine nectarines there were not ripe enough by a fortnight to send you Should any thing keep you longer in town than a week, or bring you back in three, I could accommodate you with very good ones upon the least hint. I have not forgot the strong beer. I writ to Mr. Caryll some posts ago, and told him he ought to treat you like the husbandman in the Scripture, give you as much as those who came earliest, since you had borne the sweat and labour of the whole summer for his sake. I write very dully. I must send a better letter next; but I snatch a quarter of an hour for this, just while our horses bait before our journey. It was time for me to get away a-while, for all Oxford was