ith constant accounts of further arrests
troubles the public mind at this time.

The passage of Cowley which Dorothy refers to is in the second book of
Cowley's _Davideis_. It opens with a description of the friendship
between David and Jonathan, and, upon that occasion, a digression
concerning the nature of love. The poem was written by Cowley when a
young man at Cambridge. One can picture Dorothy reading and musing over
lines like these with sympathy and admiration:

What art thou, love, thou great mysterious thing?
From what hid stock does thy strange nature spring?
'Tis thou that mov'st the world through ev'ry part,
And hold'st the vast frame close that nothing start
From the due place and office first ordained,
By thee were all things made and are sustained.
Sometimes we see thee fully and can say
From hence thou took'st thy rise and went'st that way,
But oft'ner the short beams of reason's eye
See only there thou art, not how, nor why.

His lines on love, though overcharged with quaint conceits, are often
noble and true, and end at least with one fine couplet:

Thus dost thou sit (like men e'er sin had framed
A guilty blush), naked but not ashamed.

I promised in my last to write again before I went out of town, and now
I'll be as good as my word. They are all gone this morning, and have
left me much more at liberty than I have been of late, therefore I
believe this will be a long letter; perhaps too long, at least if my
letters are as little entertaining as my company is. I was carried
yesterday abroad to a dinner that was designed for mirth, but it seems
one ill-humoured person in the company is enough to put all the rest out
of tune; for I never saw people perform what they intended worse, and
could not forbear telling them so: but to excuse themselves and silence
my reproaches, they all agreed to say that I spoiled their jollity by
wearing the most unreasonable looks that could be put on for such an
occasion. I told them I knew no remedy but leaving me behind next time,
and could have told them that my looks were suitable to my fortune,
though not to a feast. Fye! I am got into my complaining humour that
tires myself as well as everybody else, and which (as you observe) helps
not at all. Would it would leave me, and then I could believe I shall
not always have occasion for it. But tha