“ORIGINAL LOVE LETTERS.”
This whole evening I spent tete-a-tete with Mr. Fairly. There is something singular in the perfect trust he seems to have in my discretion, for he speaks to me when we are alone with a frankness unequalled and something very flattering in the apparent relief he seems to find in dedicating what time he has to dispose of to my little parlour. In the long conference of this evening I found him gifted with the justest way of thinking and the most classical taste. I speak that word only as I may presume ‘to judge it by English literature.
“I have another little book,” he said, “here, which I am sure you would like, but it has a title so very silly that nobody reads or names it: ‘Original Love-Letters;[281]—from which you might expect mere nonsense and romance, though, on the contrary, you would find in them nothing but good sense, moral reflections, and refined ideas, clothed in the most expressive and elegant language.”
How I longed to read a book that had such a character!—yet, laughable and prudish as it may seem to you, I could not bring myself to accept the half-offer, or make any other reply than to exclaim against the injudiciousness of the title-page.
Yet, whatever were our subjects, books, life, or persons, all concluded with the same melancholy burthen—speed to his existence here, and welcome to that he is awaiting! I fear he has been unfortunate from his first setting out.’