the bad news of my cousin your wife's indisposition ; which yet I hope will not continue. I am sure, if care and love will contribute to her health, she will want neither from so tender a husband as you are and indeed you are both worthy of each other. You have been pleas'd, each of you, to be kind to my sonn and me, your poor relations, without any merit on our side, unless you will let our gratitude pass for our desert. And now you are pleas'd to invite another trouble on your self, which our bad company may possibly draw upon you next year, if I have life and health to come into Northamptonshyre; and that you will please not to make so much a stranger of me another time.-I intend my wife shall tast the plover you did me the favour to send me. If either your lady or you shall at any time honour me with a letter, my house is in Gerard-street, the fifth door on the left hand, comeing from Newport-street. I pray GoD I may hear better news of both your healths, and of my good cousin Creed's," and my cousin Dorothy,' than I have had while I was in to Cotterstock, and passed four or five weeks there: and this letter seems to have been written after his return to Tichmarsh, just as he was setting out for London, and in consequence of a present of some wild fowl. • His eldest son, Charles, who returned from Italy to England about the middle of the year 1698. Mrs. Steward's father, Mr. John Creed, who appears from the next Letter to have been indisposed at this time. He died in 1701, and was buried at Tichmarsh. Miss, or in the language of that day, Mistress, Dorothy Creed, second daughter of John Creed, Esq., and sister this country. I shall languish till you send me word; and I assure you I write this without poetry, who am, from the bottome of my heart, My honour'd Cousin's most obliged, Humble Servant, JOHN DRYDEN. My sonn and I kiss my Cousin Steward's hand, and give our service to your sister and pretty Miss Betty. For my Honour'd Cousin, Elmes Steward, Esq., Att Cotterstock. LETTER XXVII. TO MRS. STEWARD. MADAM, Nov. 23d, 1698. To take acknowledgments of favours for favours done you, is onely yours. I am always on the receiving hand; and you who have been pleas'd to be troubled so long with my bad company, in stead of forgiveing, which is all I could expect, will turn it to a kindness on my side. If your house be aften so molested, you will have reason to be weary of it, before the ending of the year and wish Cotterstock were planted in a desart, an hundred miles off from any poet.-After I had lost the to Mrs. Steward. Miss, however, which about twenty years before was only applied to women of the town, was at this time used in speaking of very young girls. So below," pretty Miss Betty," (afterwards Mrs. Gwillim); who was then under six years old. but the happiness of your company, I could expect no other than the loss of my health, which follow'd, according to the proverb, that misfortunes seldome come alone. I had no woman to visite parson's wife; and she, who was intended by nature as a help meet for a deaf husband, was somewhat of the loudest for my conversation; and for other things, I will say no more then that she is just your contrary, and an epitome of her own country. My journey to London was yet more unpleasant than my abode at Tichmarsh; for the coach was crowded up with an old woman, fatter than of any my hostesses on the rode. Her weight made the horses travel very heavily; but, to give them a breathing time, she would often stop us, and plead some, necessity of nature, and tell us we were all flesh and blood: but she did this so frequently, that at last we conspir'd against her; and that she might not be inconvenienc'd by staying in the coach, turn'd her out in a very dirty place, where she was to wade up to the ankles, before she cou'd reach the next hedge. When I was ridd of her, I came sick home, and kept my house for three weeks together; but, * At Tichmarsh, after his return from Cotterstock. The reader who may here be disposed to charge our author with indelicacy, should consider, that the manners of the last age were much grosser, or, shall I saysimpler, than they are at present; and that even in the highest circles, and in the company of the most elegant women, many things were said, without giving offence to the most fastidious, which would now be thought by advice of my Doctour, takeing twice the bitter draught, with sena in it, and looseing at least twelve ounces of blood, by cupping on my neck, I am. just well enough to go abroad in the afternoon; but am much afflicted that I have you a companion of my sickness: though I 'scap'd with one cold fit of an ague, and yours, I feare, is an intermitting feavour. Since I heard nothing of your father, whom I left ill, I hope he is recover'd of his reall sickness, and that your sister is well of hers, which was onely in imagination. My wife and sonn return you their most humble service, and I give mine to my cousin Steward.—Madam, Your most obliged and most obedient Servant, [The superscription has not been preserved.] LETTER XXVIII. MADAM, TO MRS. STEWARD. Dec. 12th.-98. ALL my letters being nothing but acknowledgments of your favours to me, 'tis no wonder if they indelicate and improper. When Shakspeare wrote the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia, in which he has been accused of coarseness and indelicacy, there are very good grounds for believing that he only made the Prince of Denmark talk to the daughter of Polonius in the same style in which his patron, Lord Southampton, addressed the fair Mrs. Vernon, whom he married. are all alike for they can but express the same Your most oblig'd obedient Servant, Cotterstock is situated near the river Nyne, and, I believe, in a low wet country. |