After giving me imaginary wit and beauty, you give me imaginary
passions, and you tell me I'm in love: if I am, 'tis a perfect sin of
ignorance, for I don't so much as know the man's name: I have been
studying these three hours, and cannot guess who you mean. I passed the
days of Nottingham races, [at] Thoresby, without seeing or even wishing
to see one of the sex. Now, if I am in love, I have very hard fortune to
conceal it so industriously from my own knowledge, and yet discover it
so much to other people. 'Tis against all form to have such a passion as
that, without giving one sigh for the matter. Pray tell me the name of
him I love, that I may (according to the laudable custom of lovers) sigh
to the woods and groves hereabouts, and teach it to the echo. You see,
being I am _[sic]_ in love, I am willing to be so in order and rule: I
have been turning over God knows how many books to look for precedents.
Recommend an example to me; and, above all, let me know whether 'tis
most proper to walk in the woods, encreasing the winds with my sighs, or
to sit by a purling stream, swelling the rivulet with my tears; may be,
both may do well in their turns:--but to be a minute serious, what do
you mean by this reproach of inconstancy? I confess you give me several
good qualities I have not, and I am ready to thank you for them, but
then you must not take away those few I have. No, I will never exchange
them; take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me, leave me my own
mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity,
my constancy and my plain dealing; 'tis all I have to recommend me to
the esteem either of others or myself. How should I despise myself if I
could think I was capable of either inconstancy or deceit! I know not
how I may appear to other people, nor how much my face may belie my
heart, but I know that I never was or can be guilty of dissimulation or
inconstancy--you will think this vain, but 'tis all that I pique myself
upon. Tell me you believe me and repent of your harsh censure. Tell it
me in pity to my uneasiness, for you are one of those few people about