earth my own? Yet it may seem some alleviation, that when the wisest thing I can do is to leave my country, what was most agreeable in it should first be snatched away from it.

I could overtake you with pleasure in Italy, and make that tour in your company. Every reasonable entertainment and beautiful view would be doubly engaging when you partook of it. I should at least attend you to the sea-coasts, and cast a last look after the sails that transported you. But perhaps I might care as little to stay behind you; and be full as uneasy to live in a country where I saw others persecuted by the rogues of my own religion, as where I was persecuted myself by the rogues of yours. And it is not impossible I might run into Asia in search of liberty; for who would not rather live a freeman among a nation of slaves, than a slave among a nation of freemen?

In good earnest, if I knew your motions, and your exact time, I verily think I should be once more happy in a sight of you next spring.

I will conclude with a wish, God send you with us, or me with you.

LETTER VIII.*

TO LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.

THE more I examine my own mind, the more romantic I find myself. Methinks it is a noble * In the editions of Dr. Warton and Mr. Bowles this letter is VOL. IX.

D

spirit of contradiction to fate and fortune, not to give up those that are snatched from us, but follow them with warmer zeal, the farther they are removed from the sense of it. Sure flattery never travelled so far as three thousand miles; it is now only for truth, which overtakes all things, to reach you at this distance. It is a generous piece of popery that pursues even those who are to be eternally absent, into another world; let it be right or wrong, the very extravagance is a sort of piety. I cannot be satisfied with strewing flowers over you, and barely honouring you as a thing lost; but must consider you as a glorious, though remote being, and be sending addresses and prayers after you. You have carried away so much of my esteem, that what remains of it is daily languishing and dying over my acquaintance here; and, I believe, in three or four months more, I shall think Aurat-bassar as good a place as Covent-garden. You may imagine this but raillery, but I am really so far gone as to take pleasure in reveries of this kind. Let them say I am romantic; so is every one said to be that either admires a fine thing, or praises one: it is no wonder such people are thought mad, for they are as much out

given twice, without any reference from one to the other, viz. 1, under the head of "Letters to Lady M. W. Montagu," No. V. and 2/under that of "Letters to several Ladies," No. X. There are, however, considerable variations in the copies, the former having been published by Dr. Warton from the copy as actually sent to Lady Mary, the latter being printed from the original draught as retained by Pope, on which account it is here subjoined.

of the way of common understanding as if they were mad, because they are in the right. On my conscience, as the world goes, it is never worth any body's while to do a noble thing for the honour of it glory, the only pay of generous actions, is now as ill paid as other just debts are; and neither Mrs. Macfarland for immolating her lover, nor Lady Mary for sacrificing herself, must hope to be ever compared with Lucretia or Portia.

I write this in some anger; for, having frequented those people most, since you went, who seemed most in your favour, I heard nothing that concerned you talked of so often, as that you went away in a black full-bottom; which I did but assert to be a bob, and was answered,-love is blind. I am persuaded your wig had never suffered this criticism, but on the score of your head, and the two fine eyes that are in it.

For God's sake, Madam, when you write to me, talk of yourself; there is nothing I so much desire to hear of: talk a great deal of yourself, that she who I always thought talked best, may speak upon the best subject. The shrines and reliques you tell me of, no way engage my curiosity; I had ten times rather go on pilgrimage to see your face, than St. John Baptist's head. I wish you had not only all those fine statues you talk of, but even the golden image which Nebuchadnezzar set up, provided you were to travel no further than you could carry it.

The court of Vienna is really very edifying:

the ladies, with respect to their husbands, seem to understand that text very literally, that commands us to bear one another's burthens: but I fancy many a man there is, like Issachar, an ass between two burthens. I shall look upon you no longer as a Christian, when you pass from that charitable court to the land of jealousy, where the unhappy women converse with none but eunuchs, and where the very cucumbers are brought to them cut. I expect to hear an exact account how, and at what places, you leave one article of faith after another, as you approach nearer to Turkey. Pray, how far are you gone already? Amidst the charms of high-mass, and the ravishing trills of a Sunday-opera, what think you of the doctrine and discipline of the church of England? Have you from your heart a reverence for Sternhold and Hopkins? How do your Christian virtues hold out in so long a voyage? You have already (without passing the bounds of Christendom) out-travelled the sin of fornication, and are happily arrived at the free region of adultery in a little time you will look upon some other sins with more impartiality than the ladies here are capable of. I reckon you will time it so well as to make your faith serve out just to the last verge of Christendom; that you may discharge your chaplain (as humanity requires) in a place where he may find some business, and not be out of the way of all trade.

I doubt not but I shall 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 believers. At this town, they will say, she practised to sit on the sofa; at that village she learned to fold the turban; here she was bathed and anointed; and there she parted with her black full-bottom: at every Christian virtue you lost, and at every Christian habit you quitted, it will be decent for me to fetch a holy sigh; but still I shall proceed to follow you. How happy will 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 shall hear at Belgrade, how the good Basha received the fair convert with tears of joy; how he was charmed with her pretty manner of pronouncing the words Allah and Muhammed; and how earnestly you joined with him in exhorting Mr. Wortley to be circumcised; but he satisfies you, by demonstrating, how, in that condition, he could not properly represent his Britannic Majesty. Lastly, I shall hear, how, the very first night you lay at Pera, you had a vision of Mahomet's paradise, and happily awaked without a soul; from which blessed instant, the beautiful body was left to perform all the agreeable functions it was made for. But if my fate be such, that this body of mine (which is as ill matched to my mind as any wife to her husband) be left behind in the journey, let the epitaph of Tibullus be set over it: