f shut eyes, in a
kneeling attitude, recapitulating their respective rogueries? This
scheme, were we only to make trial of it, and return afterwards to our
old ways, might serve to better purpose by far, than Horner's in the
Country Wife, to bring the pretty wenches to us.

Let me see; the author of Hudibras has somewhere a description that would
suit us, when met in one of our caves, and comparing our dismal notes
together. This is it. Suppose me described--

--He sat upon his rump,
His head like one in doleful dump:
Betwixt his knees his hands apply'd
Unto his cheeks, on either side:
And by him, in another hole,
Sat stupid Belford, cheek by jowl.

I know thou wilt think me too ludicrous. I think myself so. It is
truly, to be ingenuous, a forced put: for my passions are so wound up,
that I am obliged either to laugh or cry. Like honest drunken Jack
Daventry, [poor fellow!--What an unhappy end was his!]--thou knowest, I
used to observe, that whenever he rose from an entertainment, which he
never did sober, it was his way, as soon as he got to the door, to look
round him like a carrier pigeon just thrown up, in order to spy out his
course; and then, taking to his heels, he would run all the way home,
though it were a mile or two, when he could hardly stand, and must have
tumbled on his nose if he had attempted to walk moderately. This then
must be my excuse, in this my unconverted estate, for a conclusion so
unworthy of the conclusion to thy third letter.

What a length have I run!--Thou wilt own, that if I pay thee not in
quality, I do in quantity: and yet I leave a multitude of things
unobserved upon. Indeed I hardly at this present know what to do with
myself but scribble. Tired with Lord M. who, in his recovery, has played
upon me the fable of the nurse, the crying child, and the wolf--tired
with my cousins Montague, though charming girls, were they not so near of
kin--tired with Mowbray and Tourville, and their everlasting identity--
tired with the country--tired of myself--longing for what I have not--I
must go to town; and there have an interview with the charmer of my soul:
for desperate diseases must have desperate remedies; and I only wait to
know my doom from Miss Howe! and then, if it be rejection, I will try my
fate, and receive my sentence at her feet.--But I will apprize thee of it
beforehand, as I told thee, that thou mayest keep thy parole with the