your Christianity.  They will certainly circumcise you.  Read Sir John Mandeville’s travels to cure you, or come over to England.  There is a Tartar man now exhibiting at Exeter ’Change.  Come and talk with him, and hear what he says first.  Indeed, he is no very favorable specimen of his countrymen!  But perhaps the best thing you can do is to try to get the idea out of your head.  For this purpose repeat to yourself every night, after you have said your prayers, the words “Independent Tartary, Independent Tartary,” two or three times, and associate with them the idea of oblivion (’t is Hartley’s method with obstinate memories); or say “Independent, Independent, have I not already got an independence?” That was a clever way of the old Puritans,—­pun-divinity.  My dear friend, think what a sad pity it would be to bury such parts in heathen countries, among nasty, unconversable, horse-belching, Tartar people!  Some say they are cannibals; and then conceive a Tartar fellow eating my friend, and adding the cool malignity of mustard and vinegar!  I am afraid ’t is the reading of Chaucer has misled you; his foolish stories about Cambuscan and the ring, and the horse of brass.  Believe me, there are no such things,—­’t is all the poet’s invention; but if there were such darling things as old Chaucer sings, I would up behind you on the horse of brass, and frisk off for Prester John’s country.  But these are all tales; a horse of brass never flew, and a king’s daughter never talked with birds!  The Tartars really are a cold, insipid, smouchy set.  You’ll be sadly moped (if you are not eaten) among them.  Pray try and cure yourself.  Take hellebore (the counsel is Horace’s; ’t was none of my thought originally).  Shave yourself oftener.  Eat no saffron, for saffron-eaters contract a terrible Tartar-like yellow.  Pray to avoid the fiend.  Eat nothing that gives the heartburn. Shave the upper lip.  Go about like an European.  Read no book of voyages (they are nothing but lies); only now and then a romance, to keep the fancy under.  Above all, don’t go to any sights of wild beasts.  That has been your ruin.  Accustom yourself to write familiar letters on common subjects to your friends in England, such as are of a moderate understanding.  And think about common things more.  I supped last night with Rickman, and met a merry natural captain, who pleases himself vastly with once having made a pun at Otaheite in the O. language.  ’Tis the same man who said Shakspeare he liked, because he was so much of the gentleman.  Rickman is a man “absolute in all numbers.”  I think I may one day bring you acquainted, if you do not go to Tartary first; for you’ll never come back.  Have a care, my dear friend, of Anthropophagi! their stomachs are always craving.  ’Tis terrible to be weighed out at fivepence a pound.  To sit at table (the reverse of fishes in Holland), not as a guest, but as a meat!