***

The chariot at the door!—I come! I come!

I attend you, good Captain—

Indeed, Sir—

Pray, Sir—civility is not ceremony.

And now, dressed as a bridegroom, my heart elated beyond that of the most desiring one, (attended by a footman whom my beloved never saw,) I am already at Hampstead!

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

LETTER XXIII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. UPPER-FLASK, HAMPSTEAD. FRI. MORN. 7 O'CLOCK. (JUNE 9.)

I am now here, and here have been this hour and half.—What an industrious spirit have I!—Nobody can say that I eat the bread of idleness. I take true pains for all the pleasure I enjoy. I cannot but admire myself strangely; for certainly, with this active soul, I should have made a very great figure in whatever station I had filled. But had I been a prince, (to be sure I should have made a most noble prince!) I should have led up a military dance equal to that of the great Macedonian. I should have added kingdom to kingdom, and despoiled all my neighbour sovereigns, in order to have obtained the name of Robert the Great! And I would have gone to war with the Great Turk, and the Persian, and Mogul, for the seraglios; for not one of those eastern monarchs should have had a pretty woman to bless himself with till I had done with her.