Note 84 — BOOK III. (continued 4)

The original pues presente pocas vezes lo bazía, signifies, ‘Since while I was present she did it very seldom.’ This at first sight appears a solecism, and the petulant critick will exclaim, ‘What occasion had she to write to her lover who was present, unless she had lost the faculty of speech!’ But the seeming absurdity will vanish, when we reflect that by present, he means, in the same city with his mistress; to whom, however, according to the custom of Spain, he had little or no access but by a literary correspondence.