, or sensible, or good-tempered? either

would

do—I scratch out the

will

. I don't ask as to her beauty—that I see; but my circumstances are mending, and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife, and that should be the woman, had I a chance. I do not yet know her much, but better than I did.

I want to get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war.

[They]

had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word—"nay, an they'll mouth, I'll rant as well as they."

[2]

Now, what are you doing?—writing, we all hope, for our own sakes. Remember you must edit my posthumous works, with a Life of the Author, for which I will send you Confessions, dated "Lazaretto," Smyrna, Malta, or Palermo—one can die any where.