CAROLINE.
{Footnote 1: Hume said, that Parnell’s poems were as fresh at the twentieth reading as at the first.}
LETTER III.
CAROLINE TO JULIA.
On her intended marriage.
Indeed, my dear Julia, I hardly know how to venture to give you my advice upon a subject which ought to depend so much upon your own taste and feelings. My opinion and my wishes I could readily tell you: the idea of seeing you united and attached to my brother is certainly the most agreeable to me; but I am to divest myself of the partiality of a sister, and to consider my brother and Lord V—— as equal candidates for your preference—equal, I mean, in your regard; for you say that “Your heart is not yet decided in its choice.—If that oracle would declare itself in intelligible terms, you would not hesitate a moment to obey its dictates.” But, my dear Julia, is there not another, a safer, I do not say a better oracle, to be consulted—your reason? Whilst the “doubtful beam still nods from side to side,” you may with a steady hand weigh your own motives, and determine what things will be essential to your happiness, and what price you will pay for them; for
“Each pleasure has its price; and they who pay
Too much of pain, but squander life away.”
Do me the justice to believe that I do not quote these lines of Dryden as being the finest poetry he ever wrote; for poets, you know, as Waller wittily observed, never succeed so well in truth as in fiction.
Since we cannot in life expect to realize all our wishes, we must distinguish those which claim the rank of wants. We must separate the fanciful from the real, or at least make the one subservient to the other.