s to me!

*****

Give me, my dearest Miss Howe, your opinion, what I can, what I ought
to do. Not what you would do (pushed as I am pushed) in resentment or
passion--since, so instigated, you tell me, that you should have been
with somebody before now--and steps taken in passion hardly ever fail
of giving cause for repentance: but acquaint me with what you think
cool judgment, and after-reflection, whatever were to be the event, will
justify.

I doubt not your sympathizing love: but yet you cannot possibly feel
indignity and persecution so very sensibly as the immediate sufferer
feels them--are fitter therefore to advise me, than I am myself.

I will here rest my cause. Have I, or have I not, suffered or borne
enough? And if they will still persevere; if that strange persister
against an antipathy so strongly avowed, will still persist; say, What
can I do?--What course pursue?--Shall I fly to London, and endeavour to
hide myself from Lovelace, as well as from all my own relations, till
my cousin Morden arrives? Or shall I embark for Leghorn in my way to my
cousin? Yet, my sex, my youth, considered, how full of danger is this
last measure!--And may not my cousin be set out for England, while I
am getting thither?--What can I do?--Tell me, tell me, my dearest Miss
Howe, [for I dare not trust myself,] tell me, what I can do.

ELEVEN O'CLOCK AT NIGHT.

I have been forced to try to compose my angry passions at my
harpsichord; having first shut close my doors and windows, that I might
not be heard below. As I was closing the shutters of the windows, the
distant whooting of the bird of Minerva, as from the often-visited
woodhouse, gave the subject in that charming Ode to Wisdom, which does
honour to our sex, as it was written by one of it. I made an essay, a
week ago, to set the three last stanzas of it, as not unsuitable to my
unhappy situation; and after I had re-perused the Ode, those were
my lesson; and, I am sure, in the solemn address they contain to the
All-Wise and All-powerful Deity, my heart went with my fingers.

I enclose the Ode, and my effort with it. The subject is solemn; my
circumstances are affecting; and I flatter myself, that I have not been
quite unhappy in the performance. If it obtain your approbation, I shall
be out of doubt, and should be still more assured, could I hear it tried
by your voice and finger.

ODE TO WISDOM BY A LADY

I.
The solitary bird of night
Thro