’I am now in the sixty seventh Year of my Age, and read you with Approbation; but methinks you do not strike at the Root of the greatest Evil in Life, which is the false Notion of Gallantry in Love.  It is, and has long been, upon a very ill Foot; but I, who have been a Wife Forty Years, and was bred in a way that has made me ever since very happy, see through the Folly of it.  In a Word, Sir, when I was a young Woman, all who avoided the Vices of the Age were very carefully educated, and all fantastical Objects were turned out of our Sight.  The Tapestry Hangings, with the great and venerable Simplicity of the Scripture Stories, had better Effects than now the Loves of Venus and Adonis or Bacchus and Ariadne in your fine present Prints.  The Gentleman I am married to made Love to me in Rapture, but it was the Rapture of a Christian and a Man of Honour, not a Romantick Hero or a Whining Coxcomb:  This put our Life upon a right Basis.  To give you an Idea of our Regard one to another, I inclose to you several of his Letters, writ Forty Years ago, when my Lover; and one writ t’other Day, after so many Years Cohabitation.’

  Your Servant,

  Andromache.

    August 7, 1671.

    Madam,

’If my Vigilance and ten thousand Wishes for your Welfare and Repose could have any force, you last Night slept in Security, and had every good Angel in your Attendance.  To have my Thoughts ever fixed on you, to live in constant Fear of every Accident to which Human Life is liable, and to send up my hourly Prayers to avert ’em from you; I say, Madam, thus to think, and thus to suffer, is what I do for Her who is in Pain at my Approach, and calls all my tender Sorrow Impertinence.  You are now before my Eyes, my Eyes that are ready to flow with Tenderness, but cannot give relief to my gushing Heart, that dictates what I am now Saying, and yearns to tell you all its Achings.  How art thou, oh my Soul, stoln from thy self!  How is all thy Attention broken!  My Books are blank Paper, and my Friends Intruders.  I have no hope of Quiet but from your Pity; To grant it, would make more for your Triumph.  To give Pain is the Tyranny, to make Happy the true Empire of Beauty.  If you would consider aright, you’d find an agreeable Change in dismissing the Attendance of a Slave, to receive the Complaisance of a Companion.  I bear the former in hopes of the latter Condition:  As I live in Chains without murmuring at the Power which inflicts ’em, so I could enjoy Freedom without forgetting the Mercy that gave it.’

    MADAM, I am

    Your most devoted, most obedient Servant_.

  Tho’ I made him no Declarations in his Favour, you see he had Hopes
  of Me when he writ this in the Month following.

    Madam, September 3, 1671.