his last extremities. I have
found this an excellent place for retirement and study, where no one
who passes by can dream there is an inhabitant, and even anybody that
would visit me dares not venture under my roof. You will not wonder I
have translated a great deal of Homer in this retreat; any one that
sees it will own I could not have chosen a fitter or more likely place
to converse with the dead. As soon as I return to the living, it shall
be to converse with the best of them. I hope, therefore, very speedily
to tell you in person how sincerely and unalterably I am, madam, your
most faithful, obliged, and obedient servant.

I beg Mr. Wortley to believe me his most humble servant.

II

HIS COMPLIMENTS TO LADY MARY[9]

I have been (what I never was till now) in debt to you for a letter
some weeks. I was informed you were at sea, and that 'twas to no
purpose to write till some news had been heard of you somewhere or
other. Besides, I have had a second dangerous illness, from which I
was more diligent to be recovered than from the first, having now some
hopes of seeing you again. If you make any tour in Italy, I shall not
easily forgive you for not acquainting me soon enough to have met you
there. I am very certain I shall never be polite unless I travel with
you, and it is never to be repaired, the loss that Homer has sustained
for want of my translating him in Asia.

You will come here full of criticisms against a man who wanted nothing
to be in the right, but to have kept you company; you have no way of
making me amends but by continuing an Asiatic when you return to me,
whatever English airs you may put on to other people. I prodigiously
long for your sounds, your remarks, your Oriental learning; but I long
for nothing so much as your Oriental self. You must of necessity be
advanced so far back in true nature and simplicity of manners, by
these three years' residence in the East, that I shall look upon you
as so many years younger than you was, so much nearer innocence (that
is truth) and infancy (that is openness). I expect to see your soul as
much thinner drest than your body, and that you have left off as weary
and cumbersome a great many damned European habits. Without offense to
your modesty be it spoken, I have a burning desire to see your soul
stark naked, for I am confident it is the prettiest kind of white soul
in the universe. But I forget whom I am talking to; you may possibly
by this time