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it will be so or not, when wit is joined to it, may prove a fresh question.

Marrying (as our friend the late ambassador hath wittily observed) would certainly cure it; but that is a kind of live pigeons laid to the soles of the feet, a last remedy, and (to say truth) worse than the disease.

But (Jack) I remember I promised you a letter, not a treaty. I now expect you should be just; and as I have shewed you how to get out of love, so you (according to our bargain) should teach me how to get into it. I know you have but one way, and will prescribe me now to look upon Mistress Howard; but for that I must tell you aforehand that it is in love as in antipathy—the capers which will make my Lord of Dorset go from the table, another man will eat up. And (Jack) if you would make a visit to Bedlam, you shall find that there are rarely two there mad for the same thing.

Your humble Servant.

 

III

Though (Madam) I have ever hitherto believed play to be a thing in itself as merely indifferent as religion to a statesman, or love made in a privy-chamber; yet hearing you have resolved it otherwise for me, my faith shall alter without becoming more learned upon it, or once knowing why it should do so. So great and just a sovereignty is that your reason hath above all others, that mine must be a rebel to itself, should it not obey thus easily; and, indeed, all the infallibility of judgment we poor Protestants have, is at this time wholly in your hands.

The loss of a mistress (which kills men only in romances, and is still digested with the first meat we eat after it) had yet in me raised up so much passion, and so just a quarrel (as I thought) to Fortune for it, that I could not but tempt her to do me right upon the first occasion; yet (Madam) has it not made me so desperate, but that I can sit down a loser both of that time and money too, when there shall be the least fear of losing you.

And now, since I know your ladyship is too wise to suppose to yourself impossibilities, and therefore cannot think of such a thing as of making me absolutely good, it will not be without some impatience that I shall attend to know what sin you will be pleased to assign me in the room of this: something that has less danger about it, I conceive it would be; and therefore,