But, notwithstanding all, you may let her know from me that I will not molest her, since my visits would be so shocking to her:  and I hope she will take this into her consideration as a piece of generosity which she could hardly expect after the deception she has put upon me.  And let her farther know, that if there be any thing in my power, that will contribute either to her ease or honour, I will obey her, at the very first intimation, however disgraceful or detrimental to myself.  All this, to make her unapprehensive, and that she may have nothing to pull her back.

If her cursed relations could be brought as cheerfully to perform their parts, I’d answer life for life for her recovery.

But who, that has so many ludicrous images raised in his mind by the awkward penitence, can forbear laughing at thee?  Spare, I beseech thee, dear Belford, for the future, all thine own aspirations, if thou wouldst not dishonour those of an angel indeed.

When I came to that passage, where thou sayest that thou considerest her* as one sent from Heaven to draw thee after her—­for the heart of me I could not for an hour put thee out of my head, in the attitude of dame Elizabeth Carteret, on her monument in Westminster Abbey.  If thou never observedst it, go thither on purpose:  and there wilt thou see this dame in effigy, with uplifted head and hand, the latter taken hold of by a cupid every inch of stone, one clumsy foot lifted up also, aiming, as the sculptor designed it, to ascend; but so executed, as would rather make one imagine that the figure (without shoe or stocking, as it is, though the rest of the body is robed) was looking up to its corn-cutter:  the other riveted to its native earth, bemired, like thee (immersed thou callest it) beyond the possibility of unsticking itself.  Both figures, thou wilt find, seem to be in a contention, the bigger, whether it should pull down the lesser about its ears—­the lesser (a chubby fat little varlet, of a fourth part of the other’s bigness, with wings not much larger than those of a butterfly) whether it should raise the larger to a Heaven it points to, hardly big enough to contain the great toes of either.

* See Letter XXXVII. of this volume.

Thou wilt say, perhaps, that the dame’s figure in stone may do credit, in the comparison, to thine, both in grain and shape, wooden as thou art all over:  but that the lady, who, in every thing but in the trick she has played me so lately, is truly an angel, is but sorrily represented by the fat-flanked cupid.  This I allow thee.  But yet there is enough in thy aspirations to strike my mind with a resemblance of thee and the lady to the figures on the wretched monument; for thou oughtest to remember, that, prepared as she may be to mount to her native skies, it is impossible for her to draw after her a heavy fellow who has so much to repent of as thou hast.

But now, to be serious once more, let me tell you, Belford, that, if the lady be really so ill as you write she is, it will become you [no Roman style here!] in a case so very affecting, to be a little less pointed and sarcastic in your reflections.  For, upon my soul, the matter begins to grate me most confoundedly.