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 believe according to the Prophet, that you have none; if so, show me that which comes next to a soul, you may easily put it upon a poor ignorant Christian for a soul and please him as well with it—I mean your heart—Mohammed I think allows you hearts; which (together with fine eyes and other agreeable equivalents) are with all the souls on the other side of the world.

But if I must be content with seeing your body only, God send it come quickly. I honor it more than the diamond casket that held Homer's Iliads; for in the very twinkle of one eye of it there is more wit, and in the very dimple of one cheek of it there is more meaning, than all the souls that were carefully put into woman since God had the making of them.

I have a mind to fill the rest of this paper with an accident that has happened just under my eyes, and has made a great impression on me. I have just passed part of the summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord Harcourt's which he lent me. It overlooks a commonfield, where, under the shade of the haycock, sat two lovers as constant as ever were found in romance, beneath a spreading beech. The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet; of the other, Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man of about five and twenty, Sarah a brown woman of eighteen. John had for several months borne the labor of the day in the same field with Sarah; when she milked it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows to her pail.

Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighborhood; for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he had obtained her parent's consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the interval of their work, they were talking about their wedding clothes, and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field flowers to her complexion to make her a present of knots for the day.

While they are thus employed (it was in the last of July) a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the laborers to what shelter the trees or hedge afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath, sunk on a haycock, and John (who was never separated from her) sate by her side, having raked two or three heaps together to secure her. Immediately there was heard so loud a crash as if heaven were burst asunder. The laborers, all solicitous for each other's safety, called to one another. Those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stept to the place where they lay; they first saw a little smoke and after this the faithful pair—John with one arm about his Sarah's neck, and the other held over her face as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discoloring on their bodies, only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little singed and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried the next day in one grave, in the parish of Stanton Harcourt, in Oxfordshire; where my lord Harcourt, at my request, has erected a monument over them....

Upon the whole, I can't think these people unhappy. The greatest happiness, next to living as they would have done, was to die as they did. The greatest honor people of their low degree could have was to be remembered on a little monument; unless you will give them another—that of being honored with a tear from the finest eyes in the world. I know you have tenderness; you must have it; it is the very emanation of good sense and virtue; the finest minds like the finest metals dissolve the easiest.

But when you are reflecting upon objects of pity, pray do not forget one, who had no sooner found out an object of the highest esteem than he was separated from it; and who is so very unhappy as not to be susceptible of consolation from others, by being so miserable in the right as to think other women what they really are. Such a one can't but be desperately fond of any creature that is quite different from these. If the Circassian be utterly void of such honor as these have, and such virtue as these boast of, I am content. I have detested the sound of honest woman, and loving spouse, ever since I heard the pretty name of Odaliche.

Dear Madam, I am forever yours,

My most humble services to Mr. Wortley.[10] Pray let me hear from you soon, tho I shall very soon write again. I am confident half our letters are lost.