Selected English Letters (XV-XIX Centuries)

This anthology has been compiled with rather mixed motives. First, 'all for our delight'--a rule that editors sometimes observe, and occasionally acknowledge; then, with the des...

Some thinck that great age superannuates persons from the vse of physicall meanes, or that at a hundred yeares of age 'tis either a folly or a shame to vse meanes to liue longer...

... God forgive me, I was as near laughing yesterday where I should not: would you believe that I had the grace to go to hear a sermon upon a week-day? In earnest, 'tis true, an...

I am greatly owing to your Lordship for your last favour at St. John's, and did, till now, reckon myself under no less a debt to my Ladies for the honour at the same time done m...

I am now as lame as when you writ your letter, and almost as lame as your letter itself, for want of that limb from my lady duchess, which you promised, and without which I wond...

You cannot wonder my thoughts are scarce consistent, when I tell you how they are distracted. Every hour of my life my mind is strangely divided; this minute perhaps I am above...

I had audience next day of the empress mother, a princess of great virtue and goodness, but who piques herself so much on a violent devotion; she is perpetually performing extra...

She was dressed in a _caftán_ of gold brocade, flowered with silver, very well fitted to her shape, and shewing to advantage the beauty of her bosom, only shaded by the thin gua...

Now that you are going a little more into the world, I will take this occasion to explain my intentions as to your future expenses, that you may know what you have to expect fro...

Do not let such evils overwhelm you as thousands have suffered and thousands have surmounted; but turn your thoughts with vigour to some other plan of life, and keep always in y...

I send you over some of these comic operas by the bearer, with the _Sallon_, a satire. The French comedy, I seldom visit it--they act scarce in anything but tragedies--and the C...

Though I wrote to you so lately, and have certainly nothing new to tell you, I can't help scribbling a line to you to-night, as I am going to Mr. Rigby's for a week or ten days,...

After this confession, I fear you will think I fall short in the words I wish to have substituted for some of yours. If you think them inadequate to the state of the case, as I...

But how ill, my Bob, does it become me to ridicule women with whom I have scarce any correspondence! There are, 'tis certain, handsome women here; and 'tis as certain there are...

... The country around us is much alarmed with apprehensions of fire. Two have happened since that of Olney. One at Hitchin, where the damage is said to amount to eleven thousan...

You must by no means, my dearest Coz, pursue the plan that has suggested itself to you on the supposed loss of your letter. In the first place I choose that my Sundays, like the...

I feel as I ought to do your constant hereditary kindness to me and mine. What you have heard of my illness is far from exaggerated. I am, thank God, alive, and that is all. Has...

The world has not spoiled you, Mary, I do believe: now it has me. I have been absorbed in its mighty vortex, and gone into the midst of its greatness, and joined in its festivit...

Abraham Shackleton has the melancholy satisfaction of perusing dear Edmund Burke's account of his poor state of health. He hopes (trusts) that a quiet resting place is prepared...

Though I am to see you so soon, I cannot but write a word or two, to thank you for the interest you take in my poems, as evinced by your solicitude about their immediate recepti...

Now, to go from one important subject to another, I must account for my own laziness, which I do by referring you to a small anonymous sort of a novel, in three volumes, _Waverl...

As to what regards yourself, I approve altogether of your abandoning what you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man called by sorrow and anguish and a strange desolatio...

I bought at Bruges a French History of Brazil, just published by M. Alphonse de Beauchamp, in 3 vols. 8vo. He says, in his Preface, that having finished the first two volumes, h...

The general scope of your letter afforded no indications of insanity, but some particular points raised a scruple. For God's sake don't think any more of 'Independent Tartary'....

_Thursday morning_. The book is come. When I saw it I thought you had sent it back in a _huff_, tired out by my sauciness, and _coldness_, and delays, and were going to keep an...

But perhaps it might be mentioned that I went to prison from all but a sick bed, having been just ordered by the physician _to go to the seaside_, and _ride_ for the benefit of...

The time which has elapsed since the separation has been considerably more than the whole brief period of our union, and the not much longer one of our prior acquaintance. We bo...

I wish I knew always the humour my friends would be in at opening a letter of mine, to suit it to them as nearly as possible. I could always find an egg-shell for melancholy, an...

While I write, there is a strange thing that happened last night impossible to get out of my thoughts. It may give you pain to tell you of it, yet if with the pain come triumpha...

I should have written to you before, if I had had one word of hope to say; but I have not. She grows daily weaker. The physician's opinion was expressed too obscurely to be of u...