of good sense in other things can make their happiness consist in the opinions of others, and sacrifice every thing in the desire of appearing in fashion.  I call all people who fall in love with furniture, clothes, and equipage, of this number, and I look upon them as no less in the wrong than when they were five years old, and doated on shells, pebbles, and hobby-horses:  I believe you will expect this letter to be dated from the other world, for sure I am you never heard an inhabitant of this talk so before.  I suppose you expect, too, I should conclude with begging pardon for this extreme tedious and very nonsensical letter; quite contrary, I think you will be obliged to me for it.  I could not better show my great concern for your reproaching me with neglect I knew myself innocent of, than proving myself mad in three pages.”

“August 21, 1709.

“I am infinitely obliged to you, my dear Mrs. Wortley, for the wit, beauty, and other fine qualities, you so generously bestow upon me.  Next to receiving them from Heaven, you are the person from whom I would chuse to receive gifts and graces:  I am very well satisfied to owe them to your own delicacy of imagination, which represents to you the idea of a fine lady, and you have good nature enough to fancy I am she.  All this is mighty well, but you do not stop there; imagination is boundless.  After giving me imaginary wit and beauty, you give me imaginary passions, and you tell me I’m in love:  if I am, ’tis a perfect sin of ignorance, for I don’t so much as know the man’s name:  I have been studying these three hours, and cannot guess who you mean.  I passed the days of Nottingham races, [at] Thoresby, without seeing or even wishing to see one of the sex.  Now, if I am in love, I have very hard fortune to conceal it so industriously from my own knowledge, and yet discover it so much to other people.  ’Tis against all form to have such a passion as that, without giving one sigh for the matter.  Pray tell me the name of him I love, that I may (according to the laudable custom of lovers) sigh to the woods and groves hereabouts, and teach it to the echo.  You see, being I am [sic] in love, I am willing to be so in order and rule:  I have been turning over God knows how many books to look for precedents.  Recommend an example to me; and, above all, let me know whether ’tis most proper to walk in the woods, encreasing the winds with my sighs, or to sit by a purling stream, swelling the rivulet with my tears; may be, both may do well in their turns:—­but to be a minute serious, what do you mean by this reproach of inconstancy?  I confess you give me several good qualities I have not, and I am ready to thank you for them, but then you must not take away those few I have.  No, I will never exchange them; take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me, leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy and my plain dealing; ’tis all I have to recommend me to