THE WAYFARER'S LIBRARY

LETTERS
from
DOROTHY OSBORNE
to
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE
(1652-54)

Edited by
Edward Abbott Parry

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

TO
MY DAUGHTER
HELEN
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
EXEMPLI GRATIA

CONTENTS

LETTERS OF
DOROTHY OSBORNE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

"AN editor," says Dr. Johnson, is "he that revises or prepares any work for publication;" and this definition of an editor's duty seems wholly right and satisfactory. But now that the revision of these letters is apparently complete, one may not be overstepping the modest and Johnsonian limits of an editor's office, when the writing of a short introduction is included among the duties of preparation.

Dorothy Osborne was the wife of the famous Sir William Temple, and apology for her biography will be found in her own letters. Some of these were printed in a Life of Sir William Temple, by the Right Honourable Thomas Peregrine Courtenay, a man better known to the Tory politician of fifty years ago than to any world of letters in that day or this. Forty-two extracts from these letters did Courtenay transfer to an Appendix, without arrangement or any form of editing, as he candidly confesses; but not without misgivings as to how they would be received by a people thirsting to read the details of the negotiations which took place in connection with the Triple Alliance. If Courtenay lived to learn that the world had other things to do than pore over dull excerpts from inhuman State papers, we may pity his awakening; but we can never quite forgive the apologetic paragraph with which he relegates Dorothy Osborne's letters to the mouldy obscurity of an Appendix.

When Macaulay was reviewing Courtenay's book in the Edinburgh Review, he took occasion to write a short but living sketch of the early history of Sir William Temple and Dorothy Osborne. And with this account so admirably written, ready at hand, it becomes the clear duty of the Editor to quote rather than to rewrite; which he does with the greater pleasure, remembering that it was this very passage that first led him to read the letters of Dorothy Osborne.

"William Temple, Sir John's eldest son, was born in London in the year 1628. He received his early education under his maternal uncle, was subsequently sent to school at Bishop-Stortford, and, at seventeen, began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where the celebrated Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not favourable to study. The Civil War disturbed even the quiet cloisters and bowling-greens of Cambridge, produced violent revolutions in the government and discipline of the colleges, and unsettled the minds of the students. Temple forgot at Emmanuel all the little Greek which he had brought from Bishop-Stortford, and never retrieved the loss; a circumstance which would hardly be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact, that fifty years later he was so absurd as to set up his own authority against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and philology. He made no proficiency, either in the old philosophy which still lingered in the schools of Cambridge, or in the new philosophy of which Lord Bacon was the founder. But to the end of his life he continued to speak of the former with ignorant admiration, and of the latter with equally ignorant contempt.

"After residing at Cambridge two years, he departed without taking a degree, and set out upon his travels. He seems to have been then a lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not by any means deeply read, but versed in all the superficial accomplishments of a gentleman, and acceptable in all polite societies. In politics he professed himself a Royalist. His opinions on religious subjects seem to have been such as might be expected from a young man of quick parts, who had received a rambling education, who had not thought deeply, who had been disgusted by the morose austerity of the Puritans, and who, surrounded from childhood by the hubbub of conflicting sects, might easily learn to feel an impartial contempt for them all.

"On his road to France, he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the young people were, like their father, warm for the Royal cause. At an inn where they stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself with inscribing on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. For this instance of malignancy the whole party were arrested and brought before the Governor. The sister, trusting to the tenderness which, even in those troubled times, scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed to show where a woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and was immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers.

"This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple. He was only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said to have been handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she possessed an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the tenderness of her sex. Temple soon became, in the phrase of that time, her servant, and she returned his regard. But difficulties, as great as ever expanded a novel to the fifth volume, opposed their wishes. When the courtship commenced, the father of the hero was sitting in the Long Parliament; the father of the heroine was commanding in Guernsey for King Charles. Even when the war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at Chicksands, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely less gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in view for his son. Dorothy Osborne was in the meantime besieged by as many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of Portia. The most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell. Destitute of the capacity, the energy, the magnanimity of his illustrious father, destitute also of the meek and placid virtues of his elder brother, this young man was perhaps a more formidable rival in love than either of them would have been. Mrs. Hutchinson, speaking the sentiments of the grave and aged, describes him as an 'insolent foole,' and a 'debauched ungodly cavalier.' These expressions probably mean that he was one who, among young and dissipated people, would pass for a fine gentleman. Dorothy was fond of dogs, of larger and more formidable breed than those which lie on modern hearthrugs; and Henry Cromwell promised that the highest functionaries at Dublin should be set to work to procure her a fine Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his attentions as very flattering, though his father was then only Lord General, and not yet Protector. Love, however, triumphed over ambition, and the young lady appears never to have regretted her decision; though, in a letter written just at the time when all England was ringing with the news of the violent dissolution of the Long Parliament, she could not refrain from reminding Temple with pardonable vanity, 'how great she might have been, if she had been so wise as to have taken hold of the offer of H.C.'

"Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread. The relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike, and spoke of him as an unprincipled adventurer, without honour or religion, ready to render service to any party for the sake of preferment. This is, indeed, a very distorted view of Temple's character. Yet a character, even in the most distorted view taken of it by the most angry and prejudiced minds, generally retains something of its outline. No caricaturist ever represented Mr. Pitt as a Falstaff, or Mr. Fox as a skeleton; nor did any libeller ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or profusion to Marlborough. It must be allowed that the turn of mind which the eulogists of Temple have dignified with the appellation of philosophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be in an old and experienced statesman, has a somewhat ungraceful appearance in youth, might easily appear shocking to a family who were ready to fight or to suffer martyrdom for their exiled King and their persecuted Church. The poor girl was exceedingly hurt and irritated by these imputations on her lover, defended him warmly behind his back, and addressed to himself some very tender and anxious admonitions, mingled with assurances of her confidence in his honour and virtue. On one occasion she was most highly provoked by the way in which one of her brothers spoke of Temple. 'We talked ourselves weary,' she says; 'he renounced me, and I defied him.'

"Near seven years did this arduous wooing continue. We are not accurately informed respecting Temple's movements during that time. But he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the Continent, sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in London. He made himself master of the French and Spanish languages, and amused himself by writing essays and romances, an employment which at least served the purpose of forming his style. The specimen which Mr. Courtenay has preserved of these early compositions is by no means contemptible: indeed, there is one passage on Like and Dislike, which could have been produced only by a mind habituated carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds us of the best things in Montaigne.

"Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with his mistress. His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved; and many of them appear in these volumes. Mr. Courtenay expresses some doubt whether his readers will think him justified in inserting so large a number of these epistles. We only wish that there were twice as many. Very little indeed of the diplomatic correspondence of that generation is so well worth reading."

Here Macaulay indulges in an eloquent but lengthy philippic against that "vile phrase" the "dignity of history," which we may omit–taking up the thread of his discourse where he recurs to the affairs of our two lovers. "Thinking thus"–concerning the "dignity of history,"–"we are glad to learn so much, and would willingly learn more about the loves of Sir William and his mistress. In the seventeenth century to be sure, Louis the Fourteenth was a much more important person than Temple's sweetheart. But death and time equalise all things. Neither the great King nor the beauty of Bedfordshire, neither the gorgeous paradise of Marli nor Mistress Osborne's favourite walk 'in the common that lay hard by the house, where a great many young wenches used to keep sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads,' is anything to us. Louis and Dorothy are alike dust. A cotton-mill stands on the ruins of Marli; and the Osbornes have ceased to dwell under the ancient roof of Chicksands. But of that information, for the sake of which alone it is worth while to study remote events, we find so much in the love letters which Mr. Courtenay has published, that we would gladly purchase equally interesting billets with ten times their weight in State papers taken at random. To us surely it is as useful to know how the young ladies of England employed themselves a hundred and eighty years ago, how far their minds were cultivated, what were their favourite studies, what degree of liberty was allowed to them, what use they made of that liberty, what accomplishments they most valued in men, and what proofs of tenderness delicacy permitted them to give to favoured suitors, as to know all about the seizure of Franche-Comté and the Treaty of Nimeguen. The mutual relations of the two sexes seem to us to be at least as important as the mutual relations of any two Governments in the world; and a series of letters written by a virtuous, amiable, and sensible girl, and intended for the eye of her lover alone, can scarcely fail to throw some light on the relations of the sexes; whereas it is perfectly possible, as all who have made any historical researches can attest, to read bale after bale of despatches and protocols, without catching one glimpse of light about the relations of Governments.

"Mr. Courtenay proclaims that he is one of Dorothy Osborne's devoted servants, and expresses a hope that the publication of her letters will add to the number. We must declare ourselves his rivals. She really seems to have been a very charming young woman, modest, generous, affectionate, intelligent, and sprightly; a Royalist, as was to be expected from her connections, without any of that political asperity which is as unwomanly as a long beard; religious, and occasionally gliding into a very pretty and endearing sort of preaching, yet not too good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the melancholy rule of the Puritans, or to giggle a little at a ridiculous sermon from a divine who was thought to be. one of the great lights of the Assembly at Westminster; with a little turn for coquetry, which was yet perfectly compatible with warm and disinterested attachment, and a little turn for satire, which yet seldom passed the bounds of good nature. She loved reading; but her studies were not those of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey. She read the verses of Cowley and Lord Broghill, French Memoirs recommended by her lover, and the Travels of Fernando Mendez Pinto. But her favourite books were those ponderous French romances which modern readers know chiefly from the pleasant satire of Charlotte Lennox. She could not, however, help laughing at the vile English into which they were translated. Her own style is very agreeable; nor are her letters at all the worse for some passages in which raillery and tenderness are mixed in a very engaging namby-pamby.

"When at last the constancy of the lovers had triumphed over all the obstacles which kinsmen and rivals could oppose to their union, a yet more serious calamity befell them. Poor Mistress Osborne fell ill of the small-pox, and, though she escaped with life, lost her beauty. To this most severe trial the affection and honour of the lovers of that age was not unfrequently subjected. Our readers probably remember what Mrs. Hutchinson tells us of herself. The lofty Cornelia-like spirit of the aged matron seems to melt into a long forgotten softness when she relates how her beloved Colonel 'married her as soon as she was able to quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw her were affrighted to look on her. But God,' she adds, with a not ungraceful vanity, 'recompensed his justice and constancy by restoring her as well as before.' Temple showed on this occasion the same justice and constancy which did so much honour to Colonel Hutchinson. The date of the marriage is not exactly known, but Mr. Courtenay supposes it to have taken place about the end of the year 1654. (See Appendix I.) From this time we lose sight of Dorothy, and are reduced to form our opinion of the terms on which she and her husband were, from very slight indications which may easily mislead us."

When an editor is in the pleasant position of being able to retain an historian of the eminence of Macaulay to write a large portion of his introduction, it would ill become him to alter and correct his statements wherever there was a petty inaccuracy; still it is necessary to say, once for all, that there are occasional errors in the passage–as where Macaulay mentions that Chicksands is no longer the property of the Osbornes–though happily not one of these errors is in itself important. To our thinking, too, in the character that he draws of our heroine, Macaulay hardly appears to be sufficiently aware of the sympathetic womanly nature of Dorothy, and the dignity of her disposition; so that he is persuaded to speak of her too constantly from the position of a man of the world praising with patronising emphasis the pretty qualities of a school-girl. But we must remember, that in forming our estimate of her character, we have an extended series of letters before us; and from these the reader can draw his own conclusions as to the accuracy of Macaulay's description, and the importance of Dorothy's character.

It was this passage from Macaulay that led the Editor to Courtenay's Appendix, and it was the literary and human charm of the letters themselves that suggested the idea of stringing them together into a connected story or sketch of the love affairs of Dorothy Osborne. This was published in April, 1886, in the English Illustrated Magazine, and happened, by good luck, to fall into the hands of an admirer of Dorothy, who, having had access to the original letters, had made faithful and loving copies of each one–accurate even to the old-world spelling. These labours had been followed up by much patient research, the fruits of which were now to be generously offered to the present Editor on condition that he would prepare the letters for the press. The owner of the letters having courteously expressed his acquiescence, nothing remained but to give to the task that patient care that it is easy to give to a labour of love.

A few words of explanation as to the arrangement of the letters. Although few of them were dated, it was found possible, by minute analysis of their contents, to place them in approximately correct order, and assign groups of letters to specific months or seasons of the year. The fact that New Year's day was at this period March 25–a fact sometimes ignored by antiquarians of high repute–adds greatly to the difficulty of ascertaining exact dates, and as an instance of this we find in different chronicles of authority Sir Peter Osborne's death correctly, yet differently, given as happening in March, 1653, and March, 1654. Throughout this volume the ordinary New Year's day has been retained. The further revision and preparation that the letters have undergone is shortly this. The spelling has been modernised, the letters punctuated and arranged in paragraphs, and names indicated by initials have been, wherever it was possible, written in full. A note has been prefixed to each letter, printed in smaller type than the letter itself and dealing with all the allusions contained in it. This system is very fit to be applied to Dorothy's letters, because, by its use, Dorothy is left to tell her own story without the constant and irritating references to footnotes or Appendix notes that other arrangements necessitate. The Editor has a holy horror of the footnote, and would have it relegated to those biblia-a-biblia from which class he is sure Elia would cheerfully except Dorothy's letters. In the notes themselves the endeavour has been to obtain, where it was possible, parallel references, to letters, diaries, or memoirs, and the Editor can only regret that his researches, through both MSS. and printed records, have been so little successful. In the case of well-known men like Algernon Sydney, Lord Manchester, and Edmund Waller, no attempt has been made to write a complete note–their lives and works being sufficiently well known; but in the case of more obscure persons–as, for instance, Dorothy's brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Peyton–all the known details of their history have been carefully collected. Yet in spite of patience, toil, and the kindness of learned friends, the Editor is bound to acknowledge that some names remain mere words to him, and but too many allusions are mysteriously dim.

The division of the letters into chapters, at first sight an arbitrary arrangement, really follows their natural grouping. The letters were written in the years 1653 and 1654, and form a clear and connected story of the love affairs of the young couple during that time. The most important group of letters, both from the number of letters contained in it and the contents of the letters themselves, is that entitled "Life at Chicksands, 1653." The Editor regards this group as the very mainland of the epistolary archipelago that we are exploring. For it is in this chapter that a clear idea of the domestic social life of these troublous times is obtainable, none the less valuable in that it does not tally altogether with our preconceived and too romantic notions. Here, too, we find what Macaulay longed for–those social domestic trivialities which the historians have at length begun to value rightly. Here are, indeed, many things of no value to Dryasdust and his friends, but of moment to us, who look for and find true details of life and character in nearly every line. And above all things, here is a living presentment of a beautiful woman, pure in dissolute days, passing quiet hours of domestic life amongst her own family, where we may all visit her and hear her voice, even in the very tones in which she spoke to her lover.

And now the Editor feels he must augment Macaulay's sketch of Dorothy Osborne with some account of the Osborne family, of whom it consisted, what part it took in the struggle of the day, and what was the past position of Dorothy's ancestors. All that can be promised is, that such account shall be as concise as may be consistent with clearness and accuracy, and that it shall contain nothing but ascertained facts.

There were Osbornes–before there were Osbornes of Chicksands–who, coming out of the north, settled at Purleigh, in Essex, where we find them in the year 1442. From this date, passing lightly over a hundred troubled years, we find Peter Osborne, Dorothy's great-grandfather, born in 1521. He was Keeper of the Purse to Edward VI., and was twice married, his second wife being Alice, sister of Sir John Cheke, a family we read of in Dorothy's letters. One of his daughters, named Catharine–he had a well-balanced family of eleven sons and eleven daughters–afterwards married Sir Thomas Cheke. Peter Osborne died in 1592; and Sir John Osborne, Peter's son and Dorothy's grandfather, was the first Osborne of Chicksands. It was he who settled at Chicksands, in Bedfordshire, and purchased the neighbouring rectory at Hawnes, to restore it to that Church of which he and his family were in truth militant members; and having generously built and furnished a parsonage house, he presented it in the first place to the celebrated preacher Thomas Brightman, who died there in 1607. It is this rectory that in 1653-54 is in the hands of the Rev. Edward Gibson, who appears from time to time in Dorothy's letters, and who was on occasions the medium through which Temple's letters reached their destination, and avoided falling into the hands of Dorothy's jealous brother. Sir John Osborne married Dorothy Barlee, grand-daughter of Richard Lord Rich, Lord Chancellor of England in the reign of Henry VIII. Sir John was Treasurer's Remembrancer in the Exchequer for many years during the reign of James I., and was also a Commissioner of the Navy. He died November 2nd, 1628, and was buried in Campton Church–Chicksands lies between the village of Hawnes and Campton–where a tablet to his memory still exists.

Sir John had five sons; Peter, the eldest, Dorothy's father, who succeeded him in his hereditary office of Treasurer's Remembrancer; Christopher, Thomas, Richard, and Francis–Francis Osborne may be mentioned as having taken the side of the Parliament in the Civil Wars. He was Master of the Horse to the Earl of Pembroke, and is noticeable to us as the only known relation of Dorothy who published a book. He was the author of an Advice to his Son, in two parts, and some historical memoirs and tracts published between 1652 and 1659. ¹

Of Sir Peter himself we have now a full account in the Appendix at the end of the volume. He was an ardent Loyalist. In his obstinate flesh and blood devotion to the house of Stuart he was as sincere and thorough as Sir Henry Lee, Sir Geoffrey Peveril, or Kentish Sir Byng. He was the incarnation of the malignant of latter-day fiction.

"King Charles, and who'll do him right now?
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now?
Give a rouse; here's in hell's despite now,
King Charles."

To this text his life wrote the comment.

In 1649 Sir Peter returned to England, and probably through the intervention of his father-in-law, Sir John Danvers, his house and a portion of his estates at Chicksands were restored to him. To these he retired, disappointed in spirit, feeble in health, soon to be bereft of the company of his wife, who died towards the end of 1650, and, but for the constant ministering of his daughter Dorothy, living lonely and forgotten, to see the cause for which he had fought discredited and dead. He died in March, 1654, after a long, weary illness. The parish register of Campton describes him as "a friend to the poor, a lover of learning, a maintainer of divine exercises." There is still an inscription to his memory on a marble monument on the north side of the chancel in Campton church.

Sir Peter had seven sons and five daughters. There were only three sons living in 1653; the others died young, one laying down his life for the King at Hartland in Devonshire, in some skirmish, we must now suppose, of which no trace remains. Of those living, Sir John, the eldest son and the first baronet, married his cousin Eleanor Danvers, and lived in Gloucestershire during his father's life. Henry, afterwards knighted, was probably the jealous brother who lived at Chicksands with Dorothy and her father, with whom she had many skirmishes, and who wished in his kind fraternal way to see his sister well–that is to say, wealthily–married. Henry kept a diary, which is at Chicksands. This volume was kindly lent by the late Sir George Osborn to my fellow-servant and myself some years ago. This has curiously confirmed the arrangement of the letters and helped to make it more perfect. Robert is a younger brother, a year older than Dorothy, who died in September, 1653, and who did not apparently live at Chicksands. Dorothy herself was born in 1627; where, it is impossible to say. Sir Peter was presumably at Castle Cornet at that date, but it is doubtful if Lady Osborne ever stayed there, the accommodation within its walls being straitened and primitive even for that day. Dorothy was probably born in England, maybe at Chicksands. Her other sisters had married and settled in various parts of England before 1653. Her eldest sister (not Anne, as Wotton conjectures) married one Sir Thomas Peyton, a Kentish Royalist of some note. What little could be gleaned of his actions from amongst Kentish antiquities and history, and such letters of his as lie entombed in the MSS. of the British Museum, is set down hereafter. He appears to have acted, after her father's death, as Dorothy's guardian, and his name occurs more than once in the pages of her letters.

So much for the Osbornes of Chicksands; an obstinate, sturdy, quick-witted race of Cavaliers; linked by marriage to the great families of the land; aristocrats in blood and in spirit, of whom Dorothy was a worthy descendant. Let us try now and picture for ourselves their home. Chixon, Chikesonds, or Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, as it now stands–what a pleasing various art was spelling in olden time–was, in the reign of Edward III., a nunnery, situated then, as now, on a slight eminence, with gently rising hills at a short distance behind, and a brook running to join the river Ivel, thence the German Ocean, along the valley in front of the house.

The Priory is a low-built sacro-secular edifice, well fitted for its former service. Its priestly denizens were turned out in Henry VIII.'s monk-hunting reign (1538). To the joy or sorrow of the neighbourhood who knows now? Granted then to one Richard Snow, of whom the records are silent; by him sold, in Elizabeth's reign, to Sir John Osborne, Knt., thus becoming the ancestral home of our Dorothy. There is a crisp etching of the house in Thomas Fisher's Collections of Bedfordshire. This is dated December 26th, 1816. The very exterior of it is Catholic, unpuritanical; no methodism about the square windows, set here and there at undecided intervals wheresoever they may be wanted. Six attic windows jut out from the low-tiled roof. At the corner of the house is a high pinnacled buttress rising the full height of the wall; five buttresses flank the side wall, built so that they shade the lower windows from the morning sun–in one place reaching to the sill of an upper window. At the further end of the wall are two Gothic windows, claustral remnants, lighting now perhaps the dining-hall where cousin Molle and Dorothy sat in state, or the saloon where the latter received her servants. There are still cloisters attached to the house, at the other side of it maybe.

Temple, too, claims the consideration at our hands of a few words concerning his near relatives and their position in the country. As Macaulay tells us, he was born in 1628, the place of his birth being Blackfriars in London.

Sir John Temple, his father, was Master of the Rolls and a Privy Councillor in Ireland; he was in the confidence of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Algernon Sydney, the Earl's son, was well known to Temple, and perhaps to Dorothy. Sir John Temple, like his son in after life, refused to look on politics as a game in which it was always advisable to play on the winning side, and thus we find him opposing the Duke of Ormond in Ireland in 1643, and suffering imprisonment as a partisan of the Parliament. In England, in 1648, when he was member for Chichester, he concurred with the Presbyterian vote, thereby causing the more advanced section to look askance at him, and he was turned out of the House, or secluded, to use the elegant parliamentary language of the day. From that time he lived in retirement in London until 1654, when, as we read in Dorothy's letters, he and his son go over to Ireland. He resumed his office of Master of the Rolls, and in August of that year was elected to the Irish Parliament as one of the members for Leitrim, Sligo, and Roscommon.

Temple's mother was a sister of Dr. Hammond, to whom one Dr. John Collop, a poetaster unknown in these days even by name, begins an ode:

"Seraphic Doctor, bright evangelist."

The "seraphic Doctor" was rector of Penshurst, near Tunbridge Wells, the seat of the Sydneys. From Hammond, who was a zealous adherent of Charles I., Temple received much of his early education. When the Parliament drove Dr. Hammond from his living, Temple was sent to school at Bishop-Stortford; and the rest of his early life, with an account of his meeting with Dorothy, has been already set down for us by Macaulay.

Anno Domini sixteen hundred and fifty-three;–let us look round through historic mist for land-marks, so that we may know our whereabouts. The narrow streets of Worcester had been but lately stained by the blood of heaped corpses. Cromwell was meditating an abolition of the Parliament, and a practical coronation of himself. The world had ceased to wonder at English democracy giving laws to their quondam rulers, and the democracy was beginning to be a little tired of itself, to disbelieve in its own irksome discipline, and to sigh for the flesh-pots of a modified Presbyterian monarchy. Cromwell, indeed, was at the height of his glory, his honours lie thick upon him, and now, if ever, he is the regal Cromwell that Victor Hugo has portrayed, the uncrowned King of England, trampling under foot that sacred liberty, the baseless ideal for which so many had fought and bled. He is soon to be Lord Protector. He is second to none upon earth. England is again at peace with herself, and takes her position as one of the great Powers of Europe; Cromwell is England's king. So much for our rulers and politics. Now let us remember our friends, those whom we love on account of the work they have done for us and bequeathed to us, through which we have learned to know them. One of the best beloved and gentlest of these, who by the satire of heaven was born into England in these troublous times, was now wandering by brook and stream, scarcely annoyed by the uproar and confusion of the factions around him. And what he knew of England in these days he has left in perhaps the gentlest and most peaceful volume the world has ever read. I speak of Master Izaak Walton, who in this year, 1653, published the first edition of his Compleat Angler, and left a comrade for the idle hours of all future ages. Other friends we have, then living, but none so intimate or well beloved. Mr. Waller, whom Dorothy may have known, Mr. Cowley, Sir Peter Lely–who painted our heroine's portrait,–and Dr. Jeremy Taylor; very courtly and superior persons are some of these, and far removed from our world. Milton is too sublime to be called our friend, but he was Cromwell's friend at this time. Evelyn, too, is already making notes in his journal at Paris and elsewhere; but little prattling Pepys has not yet begun diary-making. Other names will come to the mind of every reader, but many of these are "people we know by name," as the phrase runs, mere acquaintances–not friends. Nevertheless even these leave us some indirect description of their time, from which we can look back through the mind's eye to this year of grace 1653, in which Dorothy was living and writing. Yes, if we cannot actually visualise the past, these letters will at least convince us that the past did exist, a past not wholly unlike the present; and if we would realise the significance of it, we have the word of one of our historians, that there is no lamp by which to study the history of this period that gives a brighter and more searching light than contemporary letters. Thus he recommends their study, and we may apply his words to the letters before us: "A man intent to force for himself some path through that gloomy chaos called History of the Seventeenth Century, and to look face to face upon the same, may perhaps try it by this method as hopefully as by another. Here is an irregular row of beacon fires, once all luminous as suns; and with a certain inextinguishable erubescence still, in the abysses of the dead deep Night. Let us look here. In shadowy outlines, in dimmer and dimmer crowding forms, the very figure of the old dead Time itself may perhaps be faintly discernible here."

With this, I feel that I may cast off some of the forms and solemnities necessary to an editorial introduction, and assuming a simpler and more personal pronoun, ask the reader who shall feel the full charm of Dorothy's bright wit and tender womanly sympathy, to remember the thanks due to my fellow-servant, whose patient, single-hearted toil has placed these letters within our reach. And when the reader shall close this volume, let it not be without a feeling of gratitude to the unknown, whose modesty alone prevents me from changing the title of fellow-servant to that of fellow-editor.

¹ A full account of Francis Osborne appears in the Introduction to my edition of The Advice to his Son, David Nutt, 1896.

CHAPTER II

EARLY LETTERS. WINTER, 1652-3

IN the original edition I made no effort to date each letter, but as I now propose to attempt this task it is perhaps well to set out the principle upon which the letters are now dated and arranged. Mr. Courtenay, in his Life of Temple, wrote that it was "much to be lamented that the almost entire absence of dates, and of references that might indicate a date, makes it impossible to trace historically the circumstances under which the letters were written." The arrangement of the letters in the volume I originally published was a work of considerable difficulty, but that I had managed to put them into something like their real order has been acknowledged, and I was pleased to find that the authorities of the MSS. department of the British Museum had adopted my arrangement when they purchased the letters. Having now a printed book to work upon the task of reviewing this arrangement has been an easier one, and as I have made several alterations, I think some readers will like to follow the reasons which have led me to place the letters in their present order. It appears that whilst Dorothy was at Chicksands she wrote once a week and sent her letter by carrier. The Bedfordshire carriers came out of London early on Thursday morning, and Dorothy having received Temple's letter on Thursday evening or Friday morning, wrote her reply for the next carrier who seems, if we turn to Letter 45, to have left Bedfordshire on Monday. If we assume that she wrote her letter on a Sunday we can assign a date to nearly every letter written at Chicksands, and I propose in this edition fixing an assumed Sunday as a date to each undated letter, and stating shortly at the beginning of the notes, some of my reasons for placing each letter in its present position. I do not for a moment suppose that every assumed date is accurate, but I believe the reader of the letters will find them approximately correct, and a useful assistance in following the course of events.

LETTER 1

Dated "December ye 24th." Assumed date Friday, December 24th, 1652. There is very little doubt that this is the earliest letter of the series, and was written in 1652. Temple was now twenty-four and Dorothy a year older. He is said to have passed two years travelling in France and visiting Italy, Holland, Flanders and Germany. There was already an understanding between them that in their own eyes must have amounted to an engagement. Lady Giffard, Temple's sister, writing in after years says: "The accidents for seven years of that amour might make a history and the letters that passed between them a volume." There was possibly an earlier correspondence broken off by Temple's travels. He has now written from abroad to say he is returning to England; the letter comes down by the Thursday carrier, and Dorothy writes her reply on a Friday though it cannot go until next week. I think there is no doubt "my old servant" is Temple himself, and the "ten pound" a lover's wager against her constancy, which she rightly calls a "desperate debt." This is now explained in the new letter where Dorothy speaks of the £10 she is to pay Temple when she marries. The letter is "to be kept till it be called for," as Temple is not yet arrived in England, but, as we read in the next letter, has written announcing his return through a Mr. Metcalf.

December 24th.

SIR,–You may please to let my old servant (as you call him) know that I confess I owe much to his merits and the many obligations his kindness and civilities has laid upon me; but for the ten pound he claims, it is not yet due, and I think you may do well to persuade him (as a friend) to put it in the number of his desperate debts, for 'tis a very uncertain one. In all things else, pray say I am his servant. And now, sir, let me tell you that I am extremely glad (whosoever gave you the occasion) to hear from you, since (without compliment) there are very few persons in the world I am more concerned in. To find that you have overcome your long journey, that you are well and in a place where it is possible for me to see you, is such a satisfaction as I, who have not been used to many, may be allowed to doubt of. Yet I will hope my eyes do not deceive me, and that I have not forgot to read; but if you please to confirm it to me by another, you know how to direct it, for I am where I was, still the same, and always

Your humble servant,
D. OSBORNE.

FOR MRS. PAINTER,
      IN COVENT GARDEN.
(Keep this letter till it be called for.)

LETTER 2

Dated "Jan ye 2d 1652." This, bearing in mind that New Year's Day was on March 25th, becomes in our phraseology Sunday, January 2nd, 1653. Temple has received the last letter at Mrs. Painter's. Breda, in Holland, is where Temple seems to have written from on his way home.

Sir Thomas is Sir Thomas Osborne, her cousin, a note of whose career will be found attached to the next letter.

January 2nd, 1653.

SIR,–If there were anything in my letter that pleased you I am extremely glad on't, 'twas all due to you, and made it but an equal return for the satisfaction yours gave me. And whatsoever you may believe, I shall never repent the good opinion I have with so much reason taken up. But I forget myself; I meant to chide, and I think this is nothing towards it. Is it possible you came so near me as Bedford and would not see me? Seriously, I should not have believed it from another; would your horse had lost all his legs instead of a hoof, that he might not have been able to carry you further, and you, something that you valued extremely, and could not hope to find anywhere but at Chicksands. I could wish you a thousand little mischances, I am so angry with you; for my life I could not imagine how I had lost you, or why you should call that a silence of six or eight weeks which you intended so much longer. And when I had wearied myself with thinking of all the unpleasant accidents that might cause it, I at length sat down with a resolution to choose the best to believe, which was that at the end of one journey you had begun another (which I had heard you say you intended), and that your haste, or something else, had hindered you from letting me know it. In this ignorance your letter from Breda found me, which, by the way, Sir Thomas never saw. 'Tis true I told him I had a letter from you, one day that he extremely lamented he knew not what was become of you, and fell into so earnest commendations of you that I cannot expect less from him who have the honour to be his kinswoman. But to leave him to his mistress who perhaps has spoilt his memory–let me assure you that I was never so in love with an old man in my life, as I was with Mr. Metcalf for sending me that letter (though there is one not far off that says he will have me when his wife dies). I writ so kindly to him the next post, and he that would not be in my debt sends me word again that you were coming over. But yours kept me from believing that and made me think you in Italy when you were in England, though I was not displeased to find myself deceived. But for God sake let me ask you what you have done all this while you have been away; what you have met with in Holland that could keep you there so long; why you went no further; and why I was not to know you went so far? You may do well to satisfy me in all these. I shall so persecute you with questions else, when I see you, that you will be glad to go thither again to avoid me; though when that will be I cannot certainly say, for my father has so small a proportion of health left him since my mother's death, that I am in continual fear of him, and dare not often make use of the leave he gives me to be from home, lest he should at some time want such little services as I am able to render him. Yet I think to be in London in the next term, and am sure I shall desire it because you are there.

Sir, your humble servant.

LETTER 3

Undated. Assumed date Sunday, January 9th, 1653. This seems to be the third letter. Temple has asked for longer letters than the first two and has given a full account of himself since their parting at Goring House. Dorothy now does the same. The letters continue from this point to be longer and more full of her life and works.

Goring House where Dorothy and Temple had met and parted was the town house of George Goring, Baron Goring, and Earl of Norwich, a strong Royalist. He was in exile with Charles II. at this period, and who was in possession of the house is not clear. It occupied, according to Wheatley, "the site of part of the Mulberry Garden, and Buckingham Palace stands exactly where it stood." In 1646 it was appointed by the House of Commons for the reception of the French Ambassador. In 1665 it was the town house of Mr. Secretary Bennet, afterwards Lord Arlington. Evelyn speaks of it as an ill-built house but capable of being made a pretty villa. It was burnt in 1674.

Dorothy's mother died on October 15th, 1650, and the aunt, who thereupon commanded her to come to London, was probably the wife of Sir John Danvers, the Regicide, her mother's brother. He had married–a third time–Grace, daughter of Thomas Hughes, of Kimerton. Sir John, to whom Dorothy refers in a later letter as "my precious uncle," was a remarkable man. At first a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Charles I., he afterwards became the centre of plots against Church and State. His first wife was the widow of Richard Herbert, of Montgomery Castle, the mother of Lord Herbert, of Cherbury. His second wife was Elizabeth Dauntsey, with whom he obtained the rich manor of West Lavington, in Wiltshire. She dying in 1636, he did not marry again until 1648, when he married the lady whom Dorothy calls "my aunt." His house at Chelsea was famous and is thus described in Dr. Macnamara's Memorials of the Danvers Family. It stood "close to the river near to the old Chelsea Church and to the mansion once inhabited by Sir Thomas More. The house, a very sumptuous one enriched with marbles, was surrounded by fine gardens laid out after the Italian method. Aubrey, in his letters, tells us that the chimney piece of Sir John's chamber was formerly that of Sir Thomas More." Lord Bacon is said to have frequently visited the house. Here I think Dorothy had stayed when she last met Temple in London.

The elderly man who proposed to Dorothy was Sir Justinian Isham, Bart., of Lamport, in Northamptonshire. He himself was about forty-two years of age at this time, and had, in 1638, lost his first wife Jane, daughter of Sir John Gerrard, by whom he had one son and four daughters. The Rev. W. Betham, with that optimism which is characteristic of compilers of peerages, thinks "that he was esteemed one of the most accomplished persons of the time, being a gentleman, not only of fine learning, but famed for his piety and exemplary life." Dorothy thinks otherwise, and writes of him as "the vainest, impertinent, self-conceited learned coxcomb that ever yet I saw." Peerages in Dorothy's style would perhaps be unprofitable writing. He was an ardent Loyalist, and had lent money to the King and been fined by the Parliament. The "Emperor," as Dorothy calls him in writing to Temple, may feel thankful that his epitaph was in other hands than hers. He appears to have proposed to her more than once, and evidently had her brother's good offices, which I fear were not much in his favour with Dorothy. He ultimately married Vere, daughter of Thomas Lord Leigh, of Stoneleigh, sometime in the following year, a fact duly chronicled by Dorothy in a later letter.

Lord Coleraine was Hugh Hare, scholar, traveller and landscape gardener, a passionate admirer of chivalry and an ardent Royalist. He was a man of wealth and a favourite at Court. King Charles I. raised him to the Irish peerage as Baron Coleraine, in 1625. His losses in the Civil War were said to amount to £40,000. He married in 1632, and lived at Totteridge in Hertfordshire. I cannot find any account of his daughters.

"Sir Thomas" is a cousin of Dorothy, his mother being Elizabeth Danvers, sister of Dorothy Danvers, our Dorothy's mother. Sir Thomas Osborne, Yorkshire baronet, afterwards Earl of Danby, is a name not unknown in history. He was at this date about twenty-one, having been born in 1631. He had succeeded to the family estates on his father's death in 1647. He afterwards married Lady Bridget Bertie, the Earl of Lindsey's daughter, and the marriage is mentioned in due course, with Dorothy's comments. His leadership of the "Country Party," when the reins of government were taken from the discredited Cabal, is not matter for these pages, neither are we much concerned to know that he was greedy of wealth and honours, corrupt himself, and a corrupter of others. This is the conventional character of all statesmen of all dates and in all ages, reflected in the mirror of envious opposition; no one believes the description to be true. Judged by the moral standard of his contemporaries, he seems to have been at least of average height. How near was Dorothy to the high places of the State when this man and Henry Cromwell were among her suitors! Had she been an ambitious woman, illustrious historians would have striven to do justice to her character in brilliant periods, and there would be no need at this day for her to claim her place among the celebrated women of England.

Dr. Judson Bury has kindly explained to me the meaning of the word "spleen" as the name of a disorder. "Physicians of the seventeenth century," he writes, "were well acquainted with the anatomy of the spleen, but knew very little regarding its functions. They were in the habit of ascribing many general conditions of ill-health to disturbances of the functions of the spleen, conditions which are now known to depend on disease elsewhere." There is reason to believe that functional disturbances of the system were then as commonly put down to "the spleen" as now-a-days they are assigned by the laity to "the liver" or "the nerves." Sir William Temple in his Essay of Health and Long Life has the following interesting passage on the subject.

"To what I have said in another place of the Spleen, I shall only add here, that whatever the Spleen is; whether a disease of the part so called, or of people that ail something, but they know not what: It is certainly a very ill ingredient into any other disease, and very often dangerous. For as hope is the sovereign balsam of life, and the best cordial in all distempers both of body or mind; so fear, and regret, and melancholy apprehensions, which are the usual effects of the Spleen, with the destractions, disquiets, or at least intranquillity they occasion, are the worst accidents that can attend any diseases; and make them often mortal, which would otherwise pass, and have had but a common course. I have known the most busy ministers of state, most fortunate courtiers, most vigorous youths, most beautiful virgins in the strength or flower of their age, sink under common distempers, by the force of such weights, and the cruel damps and disturbances thereby given their spirits and their blood. 'Tis no matter what is made the occasion if well improved by Spleen and melancholy apprehensions; a disappointed hope, a blot of honour, a strain of conscience, an unfortunate love, an aking jealousy, a repining grief, will serve the turn, and all alike.

"I remember an ingenious Physician, who told me in the fanatick times, he found most of his patients so disturbed by troubles of conscience, that he was forced to play the Divine with them, before he could begin the Physician: whose greatest skill, perhaps, often lies in the infusing of hopes, and inducing some composure and tranquillity of mind, before they enter upon the other operations of their art: And this ought to be the first endeavour of the patient too; without which, all other medicines may lose their virtue."

When Dorothy says that she has been "drinking the waters," I think she means at Epsom. The Diary tells us she was at Epsom from August 16th to September 4th, 1652. So the matter seems now beyond doubt. I have retained the accounts of the other "waters," as they are elsewhere referred to. At Barnet there was a calcareous spring with a small portion of sea salt in it, which had been but recently discovered. This spring was afterwards, in the year 1677, endowed by one John Owen, who left the sum of £1 to keep the well in repair "as long as it should be of service to the parish." Towards the end of last century, Lyson mentions that the well was in decay and little used. One wonders what has become of John Owen's legacy. The Epsom spring had been discovered earlier in the century. It was the first of its kind found in England. The town was already a place of fashionable resort on account of its mineral waters; they are mentioned as of European celebrity; and as early as 1609 a ball-room was erected, avenues were planted, and neither Bath nor Tunbridge could rival Epsom in the splendour of their appointments. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, the waters gradually lost their reputation. Tunbridge Wells, the last of the three watering-places that Dorothy may have visited, is still flourishing and fashionable. Its springs are said to have been discovered by Lord North in 1606; and the fortunes of the place were firmly established by a visit paid to the springs by Queen Henrietta Maria, acting under medical advice, in 1630, shortly after the birth of Prince Charles. At this date there was no adequate accommodation for the royal party, and Her Majesty had to live in tents on the banks of the spring. An interesting account of the early legends and gradual growth of Tunbridge Wells is to be found in a guide-book of 1768, edited by one Mr. J. Sprange.

SIR,–There is nothing moves my charity like gratitude; and when a beggar 's thankful for a small relief, I always repent it was not more. But seriously, this place will not afford much towards the enlarging of a letter, and I am grown so dull with living in't (for I am not willing to confess that I was always so) as to need all helps. Yet you shall see I will endeavour to satisfy you, upon condition you will tell me why you quarrelled so at your last letter. I cannot guess at it, unless it were that you repented you told me so much of your story, which I am not apt to believe neither, because it would not become our friendship, a great part of it consisting (as I have been taught) in a mutual confidence. And to let you see that I believe it so, I will give you an account of myself, and begin my story, as you did yours, from our parting at Goring House.

I came down hither not half so well pleased as I went up, with an engagement upon me that I had little hope of ever shaking off, for I had made use of all the liberty my friends would allow me to preserve my own, and 'twould not do; he was so weary of his, that he would part with't upon any terms. As my last refuge I got my brother to go down with him to see his house, who, when he came back, made the relation I wished. He said the seat was as ill as so good a country would permit, and the house so ruined for want of living in't, as it would ask a good proportion of time and money to make it fit for a woman to confine herself to. This (though it were not much) I was willing to take hold of, and made it considerable enough to break the engagement. I had no quarrel to his person or his fortune, but was in love with neither, and much out of love with a thing called marriage; and have since thanked God I was so, for 'tis not long since one of my brothers writ me word of him that he was killed in a duel, though since I hear that 'twas the other that was killed, and he is fled upon 't, which does not mend the matter much. Both made me glad I had 'scaped him, and sorry for his misfortune, which in earnest was the least return his many civilities to me could deserve.

Presently, after this was at an end, my mother died, and I was left at liberty to mourn her loss awhile. At length my aunt (with whom I was when you last saw me) commanded me to wait on her at London; and when I came, she told me how much I was in her care, how well she loved me for my mother's sake, and something for my own, and drew out a long set speech which ended in a good motion (as she called it); and truly I saw no harm in't, for by what I had heard of the gentleman I guessed he expected a better fortune than mine. And it proved so. Yet he protested he liked me so well, that he was very angry my father would not be persuaded to give a £1,000 more with me; and I him so ill, that I vowed if I had £1,000 less I should have thought it too much for him. And so we parted. Since, he has made a story with a new mistress that is worth your knowing, but too long for a letter. I'll keep it for you.

After this, some friends that had observed a gravity in my face which might become an elderly man's wife (as they term'd it) and a mother-in-law, proposed a widower to me, that had four daughters, all old enough to be my sisters; but he had a great estate, was as fine a gentleman as ever England bred, and the very pattern of wisdom. I that knew how much I wanted it, thought this the safest place for me to engage in, and was mightily pleased to think I had met with one at last that had wit enough for himself and me too. But shall I tell you what I thought when I knew him (you will say nothing on't): 'twas the vainest, impertinent,, self-conceited learned coxcomb that ever yet I saw; to say more were to spoil his marriage, which I hear he is towards with a daughter of my Lord of Coleraine's; but for his sake I shall take heed of a fine gentleman as long as I live.

Before I had quite ended with him, coming to town about that and some other occasions of my own, I fell in Sir Thomas's way; and what humour took him I cannot imagine, but he made very formal addresses to me, and engaged his mother and my brother to appear in't. This bred a story pleasanter than any I have told you yet, but so long a one that I must reserve it till we meet, or make it a letter of itself. Only by this you may see 'twas not for nothing he commended me, though to speak seriously, it was because it was to you. Otherwise I might have missed of his praises for we have hardly been cousins since the breaking up of that business.

The next thing I desired to be rid on was a scurvy spleen that I had ever been subject to, and to that purpose was advised to drink the waters. There I spent the latter end of the summer, and at my coming home found that a gentleman (who has some estate in this country) had been treating with my brother, and it yet goes on fair and softly. I do not know him so well as to give you much of his character: 'tis a modest, melancholy, reserved man, whose head is so taken up with little philosophical studies, that I admire how I found a room there. 'Twas sure by chance; and unless he is pleased with that part of my humour which other people think worst, 'tis very possible the next new experiment may crowd me out again. Thus you have all my late adventures, and almost as much as this paper will hold. The rest shall be employed in telling you how sorry I am you have got such a cold. I am the more sensible of your trouble by my own, for I have newly got one myself. But I will send you that which used to cure me. 'Tis like the rest of my medicines: if it do no good, 'twill be sure to do no harm, and 'twill be no great trouble to you to eat a little on't now and then; for the taste, as it is not excellent, so 'tis not very ill. One thing more I must tell you, which is that you are not to take it ill that I mistook your age by my computation of your journey through this country; for I was persuaded t'other day that I could not be less than thirty years old by one that believed it himself, because he was sure it was a great while since he had heard of such a one in the world

As your humble servant.

LETTER 4

Undated. Assumed date Sunday, January 16th, 1653. The reasons for placing this before the next letter–which is dated–are given in the note attached to Letter 5.

Sir Justinian is the lover here described. He had four daughters, and it is one of Dorothy's favourite jests to offer Temple a mother-in-law's good word if he will pay court to one of them when she has married the "Emperor."

My Lord of Dorchester is Henry Pierrepoint, first Marquis of Dorchester, who took an active part on the King's side, and sat in the Oxford Parliament, for which he was fined £7,467. When the war was over Dorchester returned to his studies. He worked at medicine and law, and was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians, and joined Gray's Inn. Mr. Firth describes him as "a little man with a very violent temper," and tells some curious anecdotes of assault and battery, in which he plays his part, but I cannot find anything of the precepts he gave his wife. Dorothy mentions in Letter 57 a rumour of his connection with a plot against the Protector. I do not find that this is anywhere confirmed.

My Lord of Holland's daughter, Lady Diana Rich, was one of Dorothy's dearest and most intimate friends. Dorothy had a high opinion of her excellent wit and noble character, which she is never tired of repeating. We find allusions to her in many of these letters; she is called "My lady," and her name is always linked to expressions of tenderness and esteem. Her father, Henry Rich, Lord Holland, the second son of the Earl of Warwick, has found place in sterner history than this. He was concerned in a rising in 1648, when the King was in the Isle of Wight, the object of which was to rescue and restore the royal prisoner. This rising, like Sir Thomas Peyton's, miscarried, and he suffered defeat at Kingston-on-Thames, on July 7th of that year. He was pursued, taken prisoner, and kept in the Tower until after the King's execution. Then he was brought to trial, and, in accordance with the forms and ceremonies of justice, adjudged to death. The Earl of Leicester tells us that there were "30 voyces for him and 31 against him; so his life was lost by the small part of one man's breath." His head was struck off before the gate of Westminster Hall one cold March morning in the following year, and by his side died Capel and the Duke of Hamilton. By marriage he acquired Holland House, Kensington, which afterwards passed by purchase into the hands of a very different Lord Holland, and has become famous among the houses of London. Of his daughter, Lady Diana, I can learn nothing but that she died unmarried. She seems to have been of a lively, vivacious temperament, and very popular with the other sex. There is a slight clue to her character in the following scrap of letter-writing still preserved among some old manuscript papers of the Hatton family. She writes to Mr. Hatton to escort her in the Park, adding:–"This, I am sure, you will do, because I am a friend to the tobacco-box, and such, I am sure, Mr. Hatton will have more respect for than for any other account that could be pretended unto by

"Your humble servant."

This, with Dorothy's praise, gives us a cheerful opinion of Lady Diana, of whom we must always wish to know more.

SIR,–Since you are so easy to please, sure I shall not miss it, and if my idle thoughts and dreams will satisfy you, I am to blame if you want long letters. To begin this, let me tell you I had not forgot you in your absence. I always meant you one of my daughters. You should have had your choice, and, trust me, they say some of them are handsome; but since things did not succeed, I thought to have said nothing on't, lest you should imagine I expected thanks for my good intention, or rather lest you should be too much affected with the thought of what you have lost by my imprudence. It would have been a good strengthening to my Party (as you say); but, in earnest, that was not it I aimed at, I only desired to have it in my power to oblige you; and 'tis certain I had proved a most excellent mother-in-law. Oh, my conscience! we should all have joined against him as the common enemy, for those poor young wenches are as weary of his government as I could have been. He gives them such precepts, as they say my Lord of Dorchester gives his wife, and keeps them so much prisoners to a vile house he has in Northamptonshire, that if once I had but let them loose, they and his learning would have been sufficient to have made him mad without my help; but his good fortune would have it otherwise, to which I'll leave him, and proceed to give you some reasons why the other kind motion was not accepted on. The truth is, I had not that longing to ask a mother-in-law's blessing which you say you should have had, for I knew mine too well to think she could make a good one; besides, I was not so certain of his nature as not to doubt whether she might not corrupt it, nor so confident of his kindness as to assure myself it would last longer than other people's of his age and humour. I am sorry to hear he looks ill, though I think there is no great danger of him. 'Tis but a fit of an ague he has got, that the next charm cures, yet he will be apt to fall into it again upon a new occasion, and one knows not how it may work upon his thin body if it comes too often; it spoiled his beauty, sure, before I knew him, for I could never see it, or else (which is as likely) I do not know it when I see it; besides that, I never look for it in men. It was nothing that I expected made me refuse these, but something that I feared; and, seriously, I find I want courage to marry where I do not like. If we should once come to disputes I know who would have the worst on't, and I have not faith enough to believe a doctrine that is often preached, which is, that though at first one has no kindness for them, yet it will grow strangely after marriage. Let them trust to it that think good; for my part, I am clearly of opinion (and shall die in't), that, as the more one sees and knows a person that one likes, one has still the more kindness for them, so, on the other side, one is but the more weary of, and the more averse to, an unpleasant humour for having it perpetually by one. And though I easily believe that to marry one for whom we have already some affection will infinitely increase that kindness, yet I shall never be persuaded that marriage has a charm to raise love out of nothing, much less out of dislike.

This is next to telling you what I dream and when I rise, but you have promised to be content with it. I would now, if I could, tell you when I shall be in town, but I am engaged to my Lady Diana Rich, my Lord of Holland's daughter (who lies at a gentlewoman's hard by me for sore eyes), that I will not leave the country till she does. She is so much a stranger here, and finds so little company, that she is glad of mine till her eyes will give her leave to look out better. They are mending, and she hopes to be at London before the end of this next term; and so do I, though I shall make but a short stay, for all my business there is at an end when I have seen you, and told you my stories. And, indeed, my brother is so perpetually from home, that I can be very little, unless I would leave my father altogether alone, which would not be well. We hear of great disorders at your masks, but no particulars, only they say the Spanish gravity was much discomposed. I shall expect the relation from you at your best leisure, and pray give me an account how my medicine agrees with your cold. This if you can read it, for 'tis strangely scribbled, will be enough to answer yours, which is not very long this week; and I am grown so provident that I will not lay out more than I receive, but I am very just withal, and therefore you know how to make mine longer when you please; though, to speak truth, if I should make this so, you would hardly have it this week, for 'tis a good while since 'twas called for.

Your humble servant.

LETTER 5

Dated "Jan ye 22nd." This is Saturday, January 22nd, 1653.

The allusions to what Temple had written about Lady Holland is a good example of the way the letters can be pieced together. Dorothy writes as news to Temple in Letter 4, Lady Diana Rich "lies at a gentlewoman's hard by me for sore eyes." Temple writes back a pretty compliment about Lady Diana, evidently asking if she is Lord Holland's daughter, and Dorothy in this letter writes and answers his question, telling him "it is that daughter of my Lord of Holland (who makes as you say so many sore eyes with looking at her)." I think the phrase "if you know anybody that is lately come out of Italy" shows that Temple has recently returned from his travels and I have little doubt the correspondence from now onward is practically continuous.

Posies in rings were a common fashion of the time and of an older time. Arber prints in his Garner, I., 611, a MS. collection of Love Posies of 1596.

Lilly is Lilly the astrologer who was visited by Dorothy herself. (See Letter 72.)

The story of the king who renounced the league with his too fortunate friend is told in the third book of Herodotus. Amasis is the king and Polycrates the confederate. Dorothy may have read the story in one of the French translations, either that of Pierre Saliat, a cramped duodecimo published in 1580, or that of P. du Ryer, a magnificent folio published in 1646.

January 22nd.

SIR,–Not to confirm you in your belief of dreams, but to avoid your reproaches, I will tell you a pleasant one of mine. The night before I received your first letter, I dreamt one brought me a packet, and told me 'twas from you. I, that remembered you were by your own appointment to be in Italy at that time, asked the messenger where he had it, who told me my lady, your mother, sent him with it to me; there my memory failed me a little, for I forgot you had told me she was dead, and meant to give her many humble thanks if ever I were so happy as to see her. When I had opened the letter I found in it two rings; one was, as I remember, an emerald doublet, but broken in the carriage, I suppose, as it might well be, coming so far; t'other was plain gold, with the longest and the strangest posy that ever was; half on't was Italian, which for my life I could not guess at, though I spent much time about it; the rest was "there was a Marriage in Cana of Galilee," which, though it was Scripture, I had not that reverence for it in my sleep that I should have had, I think, if I had been awake; for in earnest the oddness on't put me into that violent laughing that I waked myself with it; and as a just punishment upon me from that hour to this I could never learn whom those rings were for, nor what was in the letter besides. This is but as extravagant as yours, for 'tis as likely that your mother should send me letters as that I should make a journey to see poor people hanged, or that your teeth should drop out at this age. And now I am out of your dreaming debt, let me be bold to tell you, I believe you have been with Lilly yourself. Nothing but he could tell you my knight's strange name. I'll swear I could never remember it when I was not concerned in't, and when people asked it me and were not satisfied with truth (for they took my ignorance of a desire to conceal him), I was fain to make names for him, and so instead of one odd servant I had gotten twenty. But, in earnest now, where have you fished him out, for I think he is as little known in the world as I could have wished he should have been if I had married him.

I am sorry you are not satisfied with my exceptions to your friend. I spake in general terms of him and was willing to spare him as much as I could, but everybody is allowed to defend themselves. You may remember a quality that you discovered in him when he told you the story of his being at St. Malo, and in earnest he gave me so many testimonies that it was natural to him, as I could not hope he would ever leave it, and consequently could not believe anything he ever had or should say. If this be not enough I can tell you more hereafter.

And to remove the opinion you have of my niceness, or being hard to please, let me assure you I am so far from desiring my husband should be fond of me at threescore, that I would not have him so at all. 'Tis true I should be glad to have him always kind, and know no reason why he should be wearier of being my master, than he was of being my servant. But it is very possible I may talk ignorantly of marriage; when I come to make sad experiments on it in my own person I shall know more, and say less, for fear of disheartening others (since 'tis no advantage to foreknow a misfortune that cannot be avoided), and for fear of being pitied, which of all things I hate. Lest you should be of the same humour I will not pity you, as lame as you are; and to speak truth, if you did like it, you should not have it, for you do not deserve it. Would any one in the world, but you, make such haste for a new cold before the old had left him: in a year, too, when mere colds kill as many as a plague used to do? Well, seriously, either resolve to have more care of yourself, or I renounce my friendship; and as a certain king (that my learned knight is very well acquainted with), who, seeing one of his confederates in so happy a condition as it was not likely to last, sent his ambassador presently to break off the league betwixt them, lest he should be obliged to mourn the change of his fortune if he continued his friend; so I, with a great deal more reason, do declare that I will no longer be a friend to one that's none to himself, nor apprehend the loss of what you hazard every day at tennis. They had served you well enough if they had crammed a dozen ounces of that precious medicine down your throat to have made you remember a quinzy.

But I have done, and am now at leisure to tell you that it is that daughter of my Lord of Holland (who makes, as you say, so many sore eyes with looking on her) that is here; and if I know her at all, or have any judgment, her beauty is the least of her excellences. And now I speak of her, she has given me the occasion to make a request to you; it will come very seasonably after my chiding, and I have great reason to expect you should be in the humour of doing anything for me. She says that seals are much in fashion, and by showing me some that she has, has set me a-longing for some too; such as are oldest and oddest are most prized, and if you know anybody that is lately come out of Italy, 'tis ten to one but they have store, for they are very common there. I do remember you once sealed a letter to me with as fine a one as I have seen. It was a Neptune, I think, riding upon a dolphin; but I'm afraid it was not yours, for I saw it no more. Any old Roman head is a present for a prince. If such things come in your way, pray remember me. I am sorry my new carrier makes you rise so early, 'tis not good for your cold; how might we do that you might lie a-bed and yet I have your letter? You must use to write before he comes, I think, that it may be sure to be ready against he goes. In earnest consider on't, and take some course that your health and my letters may be both secured, for the loss of either would be very sensible to

Your humble.

LETTER 6

Undated. Assumed date Sunday, January 30th, 1653. This letter prophesies a visit to London on Friday or Saturday sennight. The allusions to the "seals," the "cold mornings," and the names, help us to place the letter.

There seem to have been two carriers bringing letters to Dorothy at this time, Harrold and Collins; we hear something of each of them in the following letters. Those who have seen the present-day carriers in some unawakened market-place in the Midlands–heavy, rumbling, two-horse cars of huge capacity, whose three miles an hour is fast becoming too sluggish for their enfranchised clients; those who have jolted over the frozen ruts of a fen road, behind their comfortable Flemish horses, and heard the gossip of the farmers and their wives, the grunts of the discontented baggage pig, and the encouraging shouts of the carrier; those, in a word, who have travelled in a Lincolnshire carrier's cart, have, I fancy, a more correct idea of Dorothy's postmen and their conveyances than any I could quote from authority or draw from imagination.

In Letter 45 it is said the carrier came home late on Thursday. He seems to have left London in the early morning of that day (see Letter 7) and made the journey in one day. Chicksands is about 42 miles from London. The route was by Islington, Holloway, Highgate, Barnet, Hatfield, Welwyn, Langley, Hitchin, and Shefford, which is 41 miles from London. A turn to the left here off the main road brings you to Chicksands. That Thursday was the Bedfordshire carrier's day is curiously confirmed in a pamphlet printed in 1637, called The Carrier's Cosmography, or a Brief Relation of the Inns, Ordinaries, Hostelries and other Lodgings in and near London where the Carrier's Waggons, Foot posts and Higglers do usually come up, etc. John Taylor, the author of this forerunner of Bradshaw's Guide, met, like all reformers, with great opposition to his project. "In some places," he writes, "I was suspected for a Projector; or one that had devised some trick to bring the Carriers under some new taxation; and sometimes I was held to have been a Man-taker, a Sergeant, a Bailiff to arrest or attack men's goods or beasts. Indeed, I was scarce taken for an honest man amongst the most of them. All which supposition I was enforced oftentimes to wash away with two or three jugs of beer at most of the Inns I came to." He makes many excuses for his book, and concludes his preface: "Reader if thou beest pleased I am satisfied; if thou beest contented I am paid; if thou beest angry I care not for it." We find in this interesting book "that the carriers of Bedford do lodge at the 'Three Horseshoes' in Aldersgate Street. They come on Thursdays." The carriers of Crawley in Bedfordshire also come on the same day. This in 1653 was evidently their day for leaving London.

Lord Lisle was the son of Robert Sydney, Earl of Leicester and brother of the famous Algernon. He sat in the Long Parliament for Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight, and afterwards became a member of the Upper House. Concerning his embassage to Sweden this is again proposed to him in September, 1653, but, as we read in the minutes of the Council, "when he was desired to proceed, finding himself out of health, he desired to be excused, whereupon Council still wishing to send the embassy–the Queen of Sweden being favourably inclined to the Commonwealth–pitched upon Lord Whitelocke, who was willing to go."

To Lady Sunderland and Mr. Smith there are several amusing references in these letters. Lady Sunderland was Lady Dorothy Sydney, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester, and sister of Algernon Sydney. She was born in 1620, and at the age of nineteen married Henry Lord Spencer, who was killed in the battle of Newbury, September 20th, 1643. After her husband's death she retired to Brington, in Northamptonshire, until, wearied with the heavy load of housekeeping, she came to live with her father and mother at Penshurst. In the Earl of Leicester's journal, under date Thursday, July 8th, 1652, we find:–"My daughter Spencer was married to Sir Robert Smith at Penshurst, my wife being present with my daughters Strangford, and Lacy Pelham, Algernon and Robin Sydney, etc.; but I was in London." From this we may imagine the Earl did not greatly approve the match. The ubiquitous Evelyn was there, too, to see "ye marriage of my old fellow collegian Mr. Robt. Smith;" and the place being full of company, he probably enjoyed himself vastly. Mr. Smith was Robert Smith or Smythe, son of Sir John Smith, Knight. His mother was a daughter of Robert Rich the first Earl of Warwick. Lady Sunderland was the Sacharissa of Waller the poet. An interesting account of her life has been written in Sacharissa: Some account of Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland, her family and friends, 1617-1684, by Julia Cartwright, 1893.

Lady Banbury, from whom Mr. Smith escaped, was, I think, Isabella Blount, daughter of the Earl of Newport, who married Nicholas, third Earl of Banbury. She died in March, 1655.

"Lady Painter" is a mock title for Temple's landlady.

SIR,–I am so great a lover of my bed myself that I can easily apprehend the trouble of rising at four o'clock these cold mornings. In earnest, I am troubled that you should be put to it, and have chid the carrier for coming out so soon; he swears to me he never comes out of town before eleven o'clock, and that my Lady Painter's footman (as he calls him) brings her letters two hours sooner than he needs to do. I told him he was gone one day before the letter came; he vows he was not, and that your old friend Collins never brought letters of my Lady Painter's in 's life; and, to speak truth, Collins did not bring me that letter. I had it from this Harrold two hours before Collins came. Yet it is possible all that he says may not be so, for I have known better men than he lie; therefore if Collins be more for your ease or conveniency, make use of him hereafter. I know not whether my letter were kind or not, but I'll swear yours was not, and am sure mine was meant to be so. It is not kind in you to desire an increase of my friendship; that is to doubt it is not as great already as it can be, than which you cannot do me a greater injury. 'Tis my misfortune indeed that it lies not in my power to give you better testimony on't than words, otherwise I should soon convince you that 'tis the best quality I have, and that where I own a friendship, I mean so perfect a one, as time can neither lessen nor increase. If I said nothing of my coming to town, 'twas because I had nothing to say that I thought you would like to hear. The truth is twenty little cross accidents had made it so uncertain as I was more out of humour with them than you could be with the bells. Though I had no reason to expect otherwise, for I do not know that ever I desired anything earnestly in my life, but 'twas denied me, and I am many times afraid to wish a thing merely lest my Fortune should take that occasion to use me ill. She cannot see, and therefore I may venture to write that I intend to be at London if it be possible on Friday or Saturday come sennight. Be sure you do not read it aloud, lest she hear it, and prevent me, or drive you away before I come. It is so like my luck, too, that you should be going I know not whither again; but trust me, I have looked for't ever since I heard you were come home. You will laugh, sure, when I shall tell you that hearing my Lord Lisle was to go ambassador into Sweden, I remember'd your father's acquaintance in that family with an apprehension that he might be in the humour of sending you with him. But for God sake whither is it that you go? I would not willingly be at such a loss again as I was after your Yorkshire journey. If it prove as long a one, I shall not forget you; but in earnest I shall be so possessed with a strong splenetic fancy that I shall never see you more in this world, as all the waters in England will not cure. Well, this is a sad story; we'll have no more on't.

I humbly thank you for your offer of your head; but if you were an emperor, I should not be so bold with you as to claim your promise; you might find twenty better employments for't. Only with your gracious leave, I think I should be a little exalted with remembering that you had been once my friend; 'twould more endanger my growing proud than being Sir Justinian's mistress, and yet he thought me pretty well inclin'd to't then. Lord ! what would I give that I had a Latin letter of his for you, that he writ to a great friend at Oxford, where he gives him a long and learned character of me; 'twould serve you to laugh at this seven year. If I remember what was told me on't, the worst of my faults was a height (he would not call it pride) that was, as he had heard, the humour of my family; and the best of my commendations was, that I was capable of being company and conversation for him. But you do not tell me yet how you found him out. If I had gone about to have concealed him, I had been sweetly served. I shall take heed of you hereafter; because there is no very great likelihood of your being an emperor, or that, if you were, I should have your head.

I have sent into Italy for seals; 'tis to be hoped by that time mine come over, they may be out of fashion again, for 'tis an humour that your old acquaintance Mr. Smith and his lady has brought up; they say she wears twenty strung upon a ribbon, like the nuts boys play withal, and I do not hear of anything else. Mr. Howard presented his mistress but a dozen such seals as are not to be valued as times now go. But à propos de Mons. Smith, what a scape has he made of my Lady Banbury; and who would ere have dreamt he should have had my Lady Sunderland, though he be a very fine gentleman, and does more than deserve her. I think I shall never forgive her one thing she said of him, which was that she married him out of pity; it was the pitifullest saying that ever I heard, and made him so contemptible that I should not have married him for that very reason. This is a strange letter, sure, I have not time to read it over, but I have said anything that came in my head to put you out of your dumps. For God sake be in better humour, and assure yourself I am as much as you can wish,

Your faithful friend and servant.

LETTER 7

Undated. Assumed date Sunday, February 6th, 1653. The allusion to Mr. Howard and the visit to London absolutely place this letter. In Letter 6 she has mentioned a Mr. Howard. Temple replies mistaking him for another Howard, whereupon Dorothy points out that she means Arundel Howard who was Henry, second son of the Earl of Arundel. His father died July 12th, 1652. Dorothy would call him Arundel Howard, to distinguish him from the Earl of Berkshire's family.

The name of Algernon Sydney occurs more than once in these pages, and it is therefore only right to remind the reader of some of the leading facts in his life. He was born in 1622, and was the second son of Robert, Earl of Leicester. He was educated in Paris and Italy, and first served in the army in Ireland. On his recall to England he espoused the popular cause, and fought on that side in the battle of Marston Moor. In 1651 he was elected a member of the Council of State, and in this situation he continued to act until 1653. It is unnecessary to mention his republican sympathies, and after the dismissal of the Parliament, his future actions concern us but little. He was arrested, tried, and executed in 1683, on the pretence of being concerned in the Rye House Plot.

That Dorothy kept her resolution of going up to London is borne out by the entry in her brother's MS. Diary under date February 12th, 1653: "My sister came to London with my Lady Diana Rich and lay at my Aunt Gargraves by Charing Cross, and I lay at Robin's." Robin was his brother who died in September.

SIR,–You have made me so rich as I am able to help my neighbours. There is a little head cut in an onyx that I take to be a very good one, and the dolphin is (as you say) the better for being cut less; the oddness of the figure makes the beauty of these things. If you saw one that my brother sent my Lady Diana last week, you would believe it were meant to fright people withal; 'twas brought out of the Indies, and cut there for an idol's head: they took the devil himself, sure, for their pattern that did it, for in my life I never saw so ugly a thing, and yet she is as fond on't as if it were as lovely as she herself is. Her eyes have not the flames they have had, nor is she like (I am afraid) to recover them here; but were they irrecoverably lost, the beauty of her mind were enough to make her outshine everybody else, and she would still be courted by all that knew how to value her, like la belle aveugle that was Philip the 2nd of France his mistress. I am wholly ignorant of the story you mention, and am confident you are not well informed, for 'tis impossible she should ever have done anything that were unhandsome. If I knew who the person were that is concern'd in't, she allows me so much freedom with her, that I could easily put her upon the discourse, and I do not think she would use much of disguise in it towards me. I should have guessed it Algernon Sydney, but that I cannot see in him that likelihood of a fortune which you seem to imply by saying 'tis not present. But if you should mean by that, that 'tis possible his wit and good parts may raise him to one, you must pardon if I am not of your opinion, for I do not think these are times for anybody to expect preferment in that deserves it, and in the best 'twas ever too uncertain for a wise body to trust to. But I am altogether of your mind, that my Lady Sunderland is not to be followed in her marrying fashion, and that Mr. Smith never appeared less her servant than in desiring it; to speak truth, 'twas convenient for neither of them, and in meaner people had been plain undoing one another, which I cannot understand to be kindness of either side. She has lost by it much of the repute she had gained by keeping herself a widow; it was then believed that wit and discretion were to be reconciled in her person that have so seldom been persuaded to meet in anybody else. But we are all mortal.

I did not mean that Howard. 'Twas Arundel Howard. And the seals were some remainders that showed his father's love to antiquities, and therefore cost him dear enough, if that would make them good. I am sorry I cannot follow your counsel in keeping fair with Fortune. I am not apt to suspect without just cause, but in earnest if I once find anybody faulty towards me, they lose me for ever; I have forsworn being twice deceived by the same person. For God sake do not say she has the spleen, I shall hate it worse than ever I did, nor that 'tis a disease of the wits, I shall think you abuse me, for then I am sure it would not be mine; but were it certain that they went together always, I dare swear there is nobody so proud of their wit as to keep it upon such terms, but would be glad after they had endured it a while to let them both go as they came. I know nothing yet that is likely to alter my resolution of being in town on Saturday next; but I am uncertain where I shall be, and therefore it will be best that I send you word when I am here. I should be glad to see you sooner, but that I do not know myself what company I may have with me. I meant this letter longer when I began it, but an extreme cold that I have taken lies so in my head, and makes it ache so violently, that I hardly see what I do. I'll e'en to bed as soon as I have told you that I am very much

Your faithful friend
and servant,
D. OSBORNE.

CHAPTER III

LIFE AT CHICKSANDS. 1653

DOROTHY returns from London on February 22nd, 1653. Lady Diana, her friend, has also gone from Bedfordshire to London, and Temple is made the medium of communication between Dorothy and "my Lady." The projected journey, the volumes of novels, and the references to climate and current events enable us to arrange the letters in their weekly order in a more or less satisfactory manner. The carriers continue their journeys into Bedfordshire on Thursday, and undated letters receive an assumed date of Sunday, unless there is satisfactory evidence they were written on some other day of the week.

LETTER 8

This letter is undated. The assumed date is Tuesday, February 22nd, 1653. It was a note sent back with the coach in which Dorothy had returned from London. Her brother's Diary says: "We came to Chicksands in a coach of Jack Peters, at thirty-five shillings, and six horses." This entry is dated February 22nd.

SIR,–Though I am very weary after my journey, and not well, having added much to a sufficient cold I had at London, yet guessing at your inclinations by my own, I thought you would be pleased to hear how we got home, and therefore resolved to say something, though it were nonsense, rather than omit the giving you a satisfaction that is in my power. I am so perfectly dosed with my cold and my journey together that all I can say is that I am here, and that I have only so much sense left as to wish you were so too. When that leaves me you may conclude me past all;–till then I'm sure I shall be

Your faithful friend and servant.

CHICKSANDS.

LETTER 9

Undated. Assumed date Sunday, February 27th, 1653. This begins a new weekly series. The beginning of Cléopâtre and the opening sentence of the letter place this, I think, as the second letter after her return from London.

Temple's sister here mentioned was his only sister Martha, who married Sir Thomas Giffard in 1662, and was left a widow within two months of her marriage. She afterwards lived with Temple and his wife, was a great favourite with them, and their confidential friend. Lady Giffard has left a manuscript life of her brother from which the historian Courtenay was able to extract some information, whereby we in turn have benefited. She outlived both her brother and his wife, to carry on a warlike encounter with her brother's amanuensis, Mr. Jonathan Swift, over Temple's literary remains. Esther Johnson, the unfortunate Stella, was Lady Giffard's maid.

Cléopâtre and Le Grand Cyrus appear to have been Dorothy's literary companions at this date. She would read these in the original French; and, as she tells us somewhere, had a scorn of translations. Both these romances were much admired, even by people of taste; a thing difficult to understand, until we remember that Fielding, the first and greatest English novelist, was yet unborn, and novels, as we know them, non-existing. Both the romances found translators; Cyrus, in one mysterious F. G. Gent –the translation was published in this year; Cléopâtre, in Richard Loveday, an elegant letter-writer of this time.

Artamenes, or Le Grand Cyrus, the masterpiece of Mademoiselle Madeleine de Scudéri, is contained in no less than ten volumes, each of which in its turn has many books; it is, in fact, more a collection of romances than a single romance. La Cléopâtre, a similar work, was originally published in twenty-three volumes of twelve parts, each part containing three or four books. It is but a collection of short stories. Its author rejoiced in the romantic title of Gauthier de Costes Chevalier Seigneur de la Calprenede; he published Cléopâtre in 1642; he was the author of other romances, and some tragedies, noted only for their worthlessness. Even Richelieu, "quoiqu' admirateur indulgent de la médiocrité," could not stand Calprenede's tragedies. Reine Marguerite is probably the translation by Robert Codrington of the Memorials of Marguerite de Valois, first wife of Henri IV. Bussy is Bussy d'Amboise, the hero of Dumas's novel, La Dame de Montsoreau. He was an adherent of Marguerite's brother Alençon.

Of Lady Sunderland and Mr. Smith we have already sufficient knowledge. As for Sir Justinian, we are not to think he was already married; the reference to his "new wife" is merely jocular, meaning his new wife when he shall get one; for Sir Justinian is still wife-hunting, and comes back to renew his suit with Dorothy after this date. "Your fellow-servant," who is as often called Jane, appears to have been a friend and companion of Dorothy, in a somewhat lower rank of life. Mrs. Goldsmith, mentioned in a subsequent letter–wife of Daniel Goldsmith, the rector of Campton, in which parish Chicksands was situated,–acted as chaperon or duenna companion to Dorothy, and Jane was, it seems to me, in a similar position; only, being a younger woman than the rector's wife, she was more the companion and less the duenna. In Letter 57 we read, for instance, that Dorothy makes "Mrs. Goldsmith and Jane sit by all the while," to prevent a would-be lover "making discourse" to her. The servants and companions of ladies of that date were themselves gentlewomen of good breeding. Waller writes verses to Mrs. Braughton, servant to Sacharissa, commencing his lines, "Fair fellow-servant." Temple, had he written verse to his mistress, would probably have left us some "Lines to Jane."

There is in Campton Church a tablet erected to Daniel Goldsmith, "Ecclesiæ de Campton Pastor idem et Patronus;" also to Maria Goldsmith, "uxor dilectissima." This is erected by Maria's faithful sister, Jane Wright; and if the astute reader shall think fit to agree with me in believing Temple's "fellow-servant" to be this Jane Wright on such slender evidence and slight thread of argument, he may well do so. Failing this, all search after Jane will, I fear, prove futile at this distant date. There are constant references to Jane in the letters. "Her old woman," in the same passage, is, of course, a jocular allusion to Dorothy herself; and "the old knight" is, I believe, Sir Robert Cook, a Bedfordshire gentleman, of whom nothing is known except that he was knighted at Ampthill, July 21st, 1621. We hear some little more of him from Dorothy.

Note well the signature of this and following letters; it will help us to discover what passed between the friends in London. For my own part, I do not think Dorothy means that she has ceased to be faithful in that she has become "his affectionate friend and servant."

"My old friend, your cousin Hammond," was Colonel Robert Hammond. He and Temple were both grandsons of Dr. John Hammond, physician to James I. His daughter married Sir John Temple, and an elder son was father of Colonel Robert. Dorothy speaks of him as her old friend, for he was from November 13th, 1647, to November 29th, 1648, custodian of the King, in the Isle of Wight. The story is that Dorothy and her brother, travelling towards Guernsey, fell in with William Temple, and the party stopped at an Inn in the Isle of Wight. Here Dorothy's brother foolishly wrote with a diamond on the window pane: "And Hamon was hanged on the gallows they had prepared for Mordecai." This reference to Hammond brought them before him, on a charge of malignancy, when Dorothy, taking the blame on herself, Colonel Robert gallantly set the party free. It is at least likely that his cousinhood with William Temple had something to do with the result; but that is Lady Giffard's story of the first meeting of Dorothy and Temple.

Marguerite de Valois relates in her Memoirs the sad story of her Maid of Honour, Mademoiselle de Tournon, who, when staying at the house of her sister Madame de Balançon, became attached to the Marquis de Varanbon, brother of Monsieur de Balançon. Although destined for the church the young man fell deeply in love with her, but his family opposed the marriage. Madame de Tournon, the young lady's mother, took her daughter home, and being of a harsh disposition, treated her with great severity. The young girl accompanied Marguerite to Namur, where she thought to meet the Marquis, who had not taken orders. He, however, treated her with coldness, and left Namur, where she shortly afterwards died, as Marguerite tells us, of a broken heart.

SIR,–I was so kind as to write to you by the coachman, and let me tell you I think 'twas the greatest testimony of my friendship that I could give you; for, trust me, I was so tired with my journey, so dosed with my cold, and so out of humour with our parting, that I should have done it with great unwillingness to anybody else. I lay abed all next day to recover myself, and rise a Thursday to receive your letter with the more ceremony. I found no fault with the ill writing, 'twas but too easy to read, methought, for I am sure I had done much sooner than I could have wished. But, in earnest, I was heartily troubled to find you in so much disorder. I would not have you so kind to me as to be cruel to yourself, in whom I am more concerned. No; for God sake, let us not make afflictions of such things as these; I am afraid we shall meet with too many real ones.

I am glad your journey holds, because I think 'twill be a good diversion for you this summer; but I admire your father's patience, that lets you rest with so much indifference when there is such a fortune offered. I'll swear I have great scruples of conscience myself in the point, and am much afraid I am not your friend if I am any part of the occasion that hinders you from accepting it. Yet I am sure my intentions towards you are very innocent and good, for you are one of those whose interests I shall ever prefer much above my own; and you are not to thank me for it, since, to speak truth, I secure my own by it; for I defy my ill fortune to make me miserable, unless she does it in the persons of my friends. I wonder how your father came to know I was in town, unless my old friend, your cousin Hammond, should tell him. Pray, for my sake, be a very obedient son; all your faults will be laid to my charge else, and, alas! I have too many of my own.

You say nothing how your sister does, which makes me hope there is no more of danger in her sickness. Pray, when it may be no trouble to her, tell her how much I am her servant; and have a care of yourself this cold weather. I have read your Reine Marguerite, and will return it you when you please. If you will have my opinion of her, I think she had a good deal of wit, and a great deal of patience for a woman of so high a spirit. She speaks with too much indifference of her husband's several amours, and commends Bussy as if she were a little concerned in him. I think her a better sister than a wife, and believe she might have made a better wife to a better husband. But the story of Mademoiselle de Tournon is so sad, that when I had read it I was able to go no further, and was fain to take up something else to divert myself withal. Have you read Cléopâtre? I have six tomes on't here that I can lend you if you have not; there are some stories in't you will like, I believe. But what an ass am I to think you can be idle enough at London to read romances! No, I'll keep them till you come hither; here they may be welcome to you for want of better company. Yet, that you may not imagine we are quite out of the world here, and so be frighted from coming, I can assure you we are seldom without news, such as it is; and at this present we do abound with stories of my Lady Sunderland and Mr. Smith; with what reverence he approaches her, and how like a gracious princess she receives him, that they say 'tis worth one's going twenty miles to see it. All our ladies are mightily pleased with the example, but I do not find that the men intend to follow it, and I'll undertake Sir Solomon Justinian wishes her in the Indies, for fear she should pervert his new wife.

Your fellow-servant kisses your hands, and says, "If you mean to make love to her old woman this is the best time you can take, for she is dying; this cold weather kills her, I think." It has undone me, I am sure, in killing an old knight that I have been waiting for this seven year, and now he dies and will leave me nothing, I believe, but leaves a rich widow for somebody. I think you had best come awooing to her; I have a good interest in her, and it shall be all employed in your service if you think fit to make any addresses there. But to be sober now again, for God sake send me word how your journey goes forward, when you think you shall begin it, and how long it may last, when I may expect your coming this way; and of all things, remember to provide a safe address for your letters when you are abroad. This is a strange, confused one, I believe; for I have been called away twenty times, since I sat down to write it, to my father, who is not very well; but you will pardon it–we are past ceremony, and excuse me if I say no more now that I am toujours la mesme, that is, ever

Your affectionate
friend and servant.

LETTER 10

Undated. Assumed date Sunday, March 6th, 1653. In the brother's diary there is an entry: "My cousin Thorold came to Chicksands Friday; she went away and I went with her the first night to Statton." Cousin Thorold was, I suppose, the widow Dorothy mentions.

The first three volumes of Cléopâtre go up to London. The journey of Lord Lisle again mentioned. These matters, with the proposed visits of the eldest brother and Cousin Molle, date the letter. My Lord Lisle's proposed embassy to Sweden is, we see, still delayed; ultimately Bulstrode Whitelocke is chosen ambassador.

"Cousin Molle," so often mentioned in the letters, is "Mr. Henry Molle, late orator of Cambridge," mentioned in a footnote in Fuller's Church History. From him Fuller had received the remarkable account of his father's imprisonment by the Inquisition. His father, John Molle, of South Molton, in Devonshire, married a sister of Sir Thomas Cheke. This would make Henry Molle cousin to Dorothy and also to the Franklins of Moor Park, and the Earl of Manchester at Kimbolton. John Molle was imprisoned for more than a quarter of a century by the Inquisition at Rome, where he died, in the 81st year of his age, in the year of our Lord 1638. Henry Molle, his son–who also wrote his name Mole,–was a Proctor in 1633, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Carter, in his history of the University, says: "It seems to me he was outed for refusing the engagement which happened to one or two of the masters in 1650." He seems to have been an old bachelor, who spent his time at one country house or another, visiting his friends, and playing the bore not a little, I should fear, with his gossip and imaginary ailments.

Temple's father was at this time trying to arrange a match for him with a certain "Mrs. Cl." Courtenay thought the initials were "Ch.," and supposed the lady to be an heiress named Mrs. Chambers, who ultimately married John Temple, William's elder brother. I cannot now follow that suggestion, as the initials are clearly "Cl."

"Cousin Harry" alluded to again in Letter 26 as "H. Danvers," is the eldest son of Sir John Danvers, by Elizabeth Dauntsey, his second wife. He was very wealthy. He died of small-pox in November or December, 1654, in his twenty-first year, leaving his estate to his sister Anne. He is buried in West Lavington Church. Dorothy's hope that his ten thousand a year will attract "my lady" is mentioned again.

SIR,–Your last letter came like a pardon to one upon the block. I have given over the hopes on't, having received my letters by the other carrier, who uses always to be last. The loss put me hugely out of order, and you would both have pitied and laughed at me if you could have seen how woodenly I entertained the widow, who came hither the day before, and surprised me very much. Not being able to say anything, I got her to cards, and there with a great deal of patience lost my money to her–or rather I gave it as my ransom. In the midst of our play, in comes my blessed boy with your letter, and, in earnest, I was not able to disguise the joy it gave me, though one was by that is not much your friend, and took notice of a blush that for my life I could not keep back. I put up the letter in my pocket, and made what haste I could to lose the money I had left, that I might take occasion to go fetch some more; but I did not make such haste back again, I can assure you. I took time enough to have coined myself some money if I had had the art on't, and left my brother enough to make all his addresses to her if he were so disposed. I know not whether he was pleased or not, but I am sure I was.

You make so reasonable demands that 'tis not fit you should be denied. You ask my thoughts but at one hour; you will think me bountiful, I hope, when I shall tell you that I know no hour when you have them not. No, in earnest, my very dreams are yours, and I have got such a habit of thinking of you that any other thought intrudes and grows uneasy to me. I drink your health every morning in a drench that would poison a horse I believe, and 'tis the only way I have to persuade myself to take it. 'Tis the infusion of steel, and makes me so horribly sick, that every day at ten o'clock I am making my will and taking leave of all my friends. You will believe you are not forgot then. They tell me I must take this ugly drink a fortnight, and then begin another as bad; but unless you say so too, I do not think I shall. 'Tis worse than dying by the half.

I am glad your father is so kind to you. I shall not dispute it with him, because 'tis much more in his power than in mine, but I shall never yield that 'tis more in his desires. Sure he was much pleased with that which was a truth when you told it him, but would have been none if he had asked the question sooner. He thought there was no danger of you since you were more ignorant and less concerned in my being in town than he. If I were Mrs. Cl., he would be more my friend; but, howsoever, I am much his servant as he is your father. I have sent you your book. And since you are at leisure to consider the moon, you may be enough to read Cléopâtre, therefore I have sent you three tomes; when you have done with those you shall have the rest, and I believe they will please. There is a story of Artemise that I will recommend to you; her disposition I like extremely, it has a great deal of gratitude in't; and if you meet with one Brittomart, pray send me word how you like him. I am not displeased that my Lord [Lisle] makes no more haste, for though I am very willing you should go the journey for many reasons, yet two or three months hence, sure, will be soon enough to visit so cold a country, and I would not have you endure two winters in one year. Besides, I look for my eldest brother and my cousin Molle here shortly, and I should be glad to have nobody to entertain but you, whilst you are here. Lord! that you had the invisible ring, or Fortunatus his wishing hat; now, at this instant, you should be here.

My brother is gone to wait upon the widow homewards–she that was born to persecute you and I, I think. She has so tired me with being here but two days, that I do not think I shall accept of the offer she made me of living with her in case my father dies before I have disposed of myself. Yet we are very great [friends,] and for my comfort she says she will come again about the latter end of June and stay longer with me. My aunt is still in town, kept by her business, which I am afraid will not go well, they do so delay it; and my precious uncle does so visit her, and is so kind, that without doubt some mischief will follow. Do you know his son, my cousin Harry? 'Tis a handsome youth, and well-natured, but such a goose; and he has bred him so strangely, that he needs all his ten thousand pound a year. I would fain have him marry my Lady Diana, she was his mistress when he was a boy. He had more wit then than he has now, I think, and I have less wit than he, sure, for spending my paper upon him when I have so little. Here is hardly

room for your affectionate friend and servant.

LETTER 11

Undated. Assumed date Friday, March 18th, 1653. Under this date in the Diary occurs the following entry: "Friday, R. Squire carried Jane to London to go for Guernsey." Jane is Jane Wright, Dorothy's companion. I have not been able to place a letter under date Sunday, March 13th.

SIR,–Your fellow-servant, upon the news you sent her, is going to look out her captain. In earnest now she is going to sea, but 'tis to Guernsey to her friends there. Her going is so sudden that I have not time to say much to you but that I long to hear what you have done, and that I shall hate myself as long as I live if I cause any disorder between your father and you. But if my name can do you any service I shall not scruple to trust you with that, since I make none to trust you with my heart. She will direct you how you may send to me, and for God sake, though this be a short letter, let not yours be so. 'Tis very late and I am able to hold open my eyes no longer. Good-night! If I were not sure to meet you again by-and-bye I would not leave you so soon.

Your

LETTER 12

Dated "March ye 25th." Assumed date "Friday, March 25th, 1653," the New Year's day of 1653, according to the then style.

The journey that Temple is about to take is probably a projected journey with the Swedish Embassy. We read in Whitelocke, under date March 22nd, 1653, that instructions were "debated in the House for the Lord Viscount Lisle to go Ambassador Extraordinary from the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England to the Queen of Sweden." Lord Lisle was the Earl of Leicester's son, and Temple had interest there which no doubt he was using. As a matter of fact Temple stayed in or near London until the spring of 1654, when he went to Ireland with his father, who was then reinstated in his office of Master of the Rolls.

Whether the Mr. Grey here written of made love to one or both of the ladies–Jane Seymour and Anne Percy–it is difficult now to say. I have been able to learn nothing more on the subject than Dorothy tells us. This, however, we know for certain, that they both married elsewhere; Lady Jane Seymour, the Duke of Somerset's daughter, marrying Lord Clifford of Lanesborough and York, son of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork and Burlington, and living to 1679, when she was buried in Westminster Abbey. Poor Lady Anne Percy, daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, and niece of the faithless Lady Carlisle of whom we read in these letters, was already married at this date to Lord Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's heir. She died–probably in childbed–in November of next year (1654), and was buried at Petworth with her infant son.

Lady Anne Wentworth was the daughter of the famous and ill-fated Earl of Strafford. She married Lord Rockingham, but not until November 13th, 1654.

The reader will remember that "my lady" is Lady Diana Rich.

March 25th.

SIR,–I know not how to oblige so civil a person as you are more than by giving you the occasion of serving a fair lady. In sober earnest, I know you will not think it a trouble to let your boy deliver those books and this enclosed letter where it is directed for my lady, whom I would, the fainest in the world, have you acquainted with, that you might judge whether I had not reason to say somebody was to blame. But had you reason to be displeased, that I said a change in you would be much more pardonable than in him? Certainly you had not. I spake it very innocently, and out of a great sense how much she deserves more than anybody else. I shall take heed though hereafter what I write, since you are so good at raising doubts to persecute yourself withal, and shall condemn my own easy faith no more; for sure 'tis a better-natured and a less fault to believe too much than to distrust where there is no cause. If you were not so apt to quarrel, I would tell you that I am glad to hear your journey goes forward, but you would presently imagine that 'tis because I would be glad if you were gone; need I say that 'tis because I prefer your interests much before my own, because I would not have you lose so good a diversion and so pleasing an entertainment (as in all likelihood this voyage will be to you), and because, which is a powerful argument with me, the sooner you go, the sooner I may hope for your return. If it be necessary, I will confess all this, and something more, which is, that notwithstanding all my gallantry and resolution, 'tis much for my credit that my courage is put to no greater a trial than parting with you at this distance. But you are not going yet neither, and therefore we'll leave the discourse on't till then, if you please, for I find no great entertainment in't. And let me ask you whether it be possible that Mr. Grey makes love, they say he does, to my Lady Jane Seymour? If it were expected that one should give a reason for their passions, what could he say for himself? He would not offer, sure, to make us believe my Lady Jane a lovelier person than my Lady Anne Percy. I did not think I should have lived to have seen his frozen heart melted, 'tis the greatest conquest she will ever make; may it be happy to her, but in my opinion he has not a good-natured look. The younger brother was a servant, a great while, to my fair neighbour, but could not be received; and in earnest I could not blame her. I was his confidante and heard him make his addresses; not that I brag of the favour he did me, for anybody might have been so that had been as often there, and he was less scrupulous in that point than one would have been that had had less reason. But in my life I never heard a man say more, nor less to the purpose; and if his brother have not a better gift in courtship, he will owe my lady's favour to his fortune rather than to his address. My Lady Anne Wentworth I hear is marrying, but I cannot learn to whom; nor is it easy to guess who is worthy of her. In my judgment she is, without dispute, the finest lady I know (one always excepted); not that she is at all handsome, but infinitely virtuous and discreet, of a sober and very different humour from most of the young people of these times, but has as much wit and is as good company as anybody that ever I saw. What would you give that I had but the wit to know when to make an end of my letters? Never anybody was persecuted with such long epistles; but you will pardon my unwillingness to leave you, and notwithstanding all your little doubts, believe that I am very much

Your faithful friend
and humble servant,
D. OSBORNE.

LETTER 13

Undated. Assumed date Sunday, April 3rd, 1653.

The spleen, the books sent to Lady Diana, and Temple's suggested match elsewhere, help to place this letter. Battledore and Shuttlecock is a very old game, but it became fashionable for grown persons to play it in the reign of James I. Prince Henry, who was a golfer and a tennis player, was fond of it. "To play at Shuttlecock methinks is the game now," says a character in The Two Maids of More Clacke, written by Robert Armin in 1609.

Almanzor and Alcidiana are probably characters in some Spanish romance. It is curious that in after years Sir William Temple speaks of Almanzor in his essay on "Heroic Virtue" as an illustrious and renowned hero of the Arabian branch of the Saracen Empire, and he devotes the best part of a page to his career. Upon this Mr. Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works, V., 555, says: "I pass over several other mistakes of Sir William Temple's that I may not seem to treat a polite scholar with the critical severity which he justly enough complained of; but I can scarce refrain from smiling at his Almanzor, the most accomplished of the western Caliphs who reigned over Arabia, Egypt, Africa, and Spain; but in fact an imaginary hero of an imaginary empire. Sir William Temple was deceived by some Spanish romances which he took for Arabian History." Certainly at this date Dorothy seems to write of Almanzor as though he were only a romance hero.

It is a curious thing to find the Lord General's son among our loyal Dorothy's servants; and to find, moreover, that he will be as acceptable to Dorothy as any other, if she may not marry Temple. Henry Cromwell was Oliver Cromwell's second son. How Dorothy became acquainted with him it is impossible to say. Perhaps they met in France. He seems to have been entirely unlike his father. Good Mrs. Hutchinson calls him "a debauched ungodly Cavalier," with other similar expressions of Presbyterian abhorrence; from which we need not draw any unkinder conclusion than that he was no solemn puritanical soldier, but a man of the world, brighter and more courteous than the frequenters of his father's Council, and therefore more acceptable to Dorothy. He was born at Huntingdon in 1627, the year of Dorothy's birth. He was captain under Harrison in 1647; colonel in Ireland with his father in 1649; and married at Kensington Church, on May 10th, 1653, to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Francis Russell of Chippenham, Cambridgeshire. He was made Lord-Deputy in Ireland in 1657, but he wearied of the work of transplanting the Irish and planting the new settlers, which, he writes, only brought him disquiet of body and mind. This led to his retirement from public life in 1658. Two years afterwards, at the Restoration, he came to live at Spinney Abbey, near Isham, Cambridgeshire, and died on March 23rd, 1674. These are shortly the facts which remain to us of the life of Henry Cromwell, Dorothy's favoured servant.

SIR,–I am so far from thinking you ill-natured for wishing I might not outlive you, that I should not have thought you at all kind if you had done otherwise; no, in earnest, I was never yet so in love with my life but that I could have parted with it upon a much less occasion than your death, and 'twill be no compliment to you to say it would be very uneasy to me then, since 'tis not very pleasant to me now. Yet you will say I take great pains to preserve it, as ill as I like it; but no, I'll swear 'tis not that I intend in what I do; all that I aim at is but to keep myself from growing a beast. They do so fright me with strange stories of what the spleen will bring me to in time, that I am kept in awe with them like a child; they tell me 'twill not leave me common sense, that I shall hardly be fit company for my own dogs, and that it will end either in a stupidness that will make me incapable of anything, or fill my head with such whims as will make me ridiculous. To prevent this, who would not take steel or anything–though I am partly of your opinion that 'tis an ill kind of physic. Yet I am confident that I take it the safest way, for I do not take the powder, as many do, but only lay a piece of steel in white wine over night and drink the infusion next morning, which one would think were nothing, and yet 'tis not to be imagined how sick it makes me for an hour or two, and, which is the misery, all that time one must be using some kind of exercise. Your fellow-servant has a blessed time on't. I make her play at shuttlecock with me, and she is the veriest bungler at it ever you saw. Then am I ready to beat her with the battledore, and grow so peevish as I grow sick, that I'll undertake she wishes there were no steel in England. But then to recompense the morning, I am in good humour all the day after for joy that I am well again. I am told 'twill do me good, and am content to believe; if it does not, I am but where I was.

I do not use to forget my old acquaintances. Almanzor is as fresh in my memory as if I had visited his tomb but yesterday, though it be at least seven years agone since. You will believe I had not been used to great afflictions when I made his story such a one to me, as I cried an hour together for him, and was so angry with Alcidiana that for my life I could never love her after it. You do not tell me whether you received the books I sent you, but I will hope you did, because you say nothing to the contrary. They are my dear Lady Diana's, and therefore I am much concerned that they should be safe. And now I speak of her, she is acquainted with your aunt, my Lady R., and says all that you say of her. If her niece has so much wit, will you not be persuaded to like her; or say she has not quite so much, may not her fortune make it up? In earnest, I know not what to say, but if your father does not use all his kindness and all his power to make you consider your own advantage, he is not like other fathers. Can you imagine that he that demands £5,000 besides the reversion of an estate will like bare £4,000? Such miracles are seldom seen, and you must prepare to suffer a strange persecution unless you grow conformable; therefore consider what you do, 'tis the part of a friend to advise you. I could say a great deal to this purpose, and tell you that 'tis not discreet to refuse a good offer, nor safe to trust wholly to your own judgment in your disposal. I was never better provided in my life for a grave admonishing discourse. Would you had heard how I have been catechized for you, and seen how soberly I sit and answer to interrogatories. Would you think that upon examination it is found that you are not an indifferent person to me? But the mischief is, that what my intentions or resolutions are, is not to be discovered, though much pains has been taken to collect all scattering circumstances; and all the probable conjectures that can be raised from thence has been urged, to see if anything would be confessed. And all this done with so much ceremony and compliment, so many pardons asked for undertaking to counsel or inquire, and so great kindness and passion for all my interests professed, that I cannot but take it well, though I am very weary on't. You are spoken of with the reverence due to a person that I seem to like, and for as much as they know of you, you do deserve a very good esteem; but your fortune and mine can never agree, and, in plain terms, we forfeit our discretions and run wilfully upon our own ruins if there be such a thought. To all this I make no reply, but that if they will needs have it that I am not without kindness for you, they must conclude withal that 'tis no part of my intention to ruin you, and so the conference breaks up for that time. All this is [from] my friend, that is not yours; and the gentleman that came upstairs in a basket, I could tell him that he spends his breath to very little purpose, and has but his labours for his pains. Without his precepts my own judgment would preserve me from doing any [thing] that might be prejudicial to you or unjustifiable to the world; but if these may be secured, nothing can alter the resolution I have taken of settling my whole stock of happiness upon the affection of a person that is dear to me, whose kindness I shall infinitely prefer before any other consideration whatsoever, and I shall not blush to tell you that you have made the whole world besides so indifferent to me that, if I cannot b