esteem at
first sight, as to love; and who has since ruined me for all the
conversation of one sex and almost all the friendship of the other. I am
but too sensible, through your means, that the company of men, wants a
certain softness to recommend it, and that of women wants everything
else. How often have I been quietly going to take possession of that
tranquility and indolence I had so long found in the country, when one
evening of your conversation has spoiled me for a solitaire too! Books
have lost their effect upon me, and I was convinced since I saw you,
that there is something more powerful than philosophy, and since I heard
you, that there is one alive wiser than all the sages. A plague of
female wisdom! it makes a man ten times more uneasy than his own. What
is very strange, Virtue herself, when you have the dressing of her, is
too amiable for one's repose. What a world of good might you have done
in your time, if you had allowed half the fine gentlemen who have seen
you to have but conversed with you! They would have been strangely
caught, while they thought only to fall in love with a fair face, and
you had bewitched them with reason and virtue, two beauties that the
very fops pretend to have an acquaintance with."

"August 20, 1716.

"Madam,

"You will find me more troublesome than ever Brutus did his evil genius,
I shall meet you in more places than one, and often refreshen your
memory before you arrive at your Philippi. These shadows of me (my
letters) will be haunting you from time to time, and putting you in mind
of the man who has really suffered by you, and whom you have robbed of
the most valuable of his enjoyments, your conversation. The advantage of
learning your sentiments by discovering mine, was what I always thought
a great one, and even with the risk I run of manifesting my own
indiscretion. You then rewarded my trust in you the moment it was given,
for you pleased and informed me the minute you answered. I must now be
contented with slow returns. However, it is some pleasure, that your
thoughts upon paper will be a more lasting possession to me, and that I
shall no longer have cause to complain of a loss I have so often
regretted, that of anything you said, which I happened to forget. In
earnest, Madam, if I were to write you as often as I think of you, it
must be every day of my life. I attend you in spirit through all your
ways, I follow in books of travel through every stage, I wish