the esteem either of others or myself.  How should I despise myself if I could think I was capable of either inconstancy or deceit!  I know not how I may appear to other people, nor how much my face may belie my heart, but I know that I never was or can be guilty of dissimulation or inconstancy—­you will think this vain, but ’tis all that I pique myself upon.  Tell me you believe me and repent of your harsh censure.  Tell it me in pity to my uneasiness, for you are one of those few people about whose good opinion I am in pain.  I have always took so little care to please the generality of the world, that I am never mortified or delighted by its reports which is a piece of stoicism born with me; but I cannot be one minute easy while you think ill of

“Your faithful—­”

“This letter is a good deal grave, and, like other grave things, dull; but I won’t ask pardon for what I can’t help.”

Was the sentiment expressed in the following letter, written about the same time as that printed above, intended for Anne or her brother, or both?

“When I said it cost nothing to write tenderly, I believe I spoke of another sex; I am sure not of myself:  ’tis not in my power (I would to God it was!) to hide a kindness where I have one, or dissemble it where I have none.  I cannot help answering your letter this minute, and telling you I infinitely love you, though, it may be, you’ll call the one impertinence, and the other dissimulation; but you may think what you please of me, I must eternally think the same things of you.”

Lady Mary was occasionally wearisome owing to the reiteration of the assurance that she believed her letters to be dull, the more so as she certainly was conscious of the skill with which she composed them.  “What do you mean by complaining I never write to you in the quiet situation of mind I do to other people?” she asks Anne Wortley.  “My dear, people never write calmly, but when they write indifferently.”

After a letter dated September 5, 1709, a passage from which has been printed here, there is a break in the (preserved) correspondence.  In the spring of the following year Anne Wortley died, and Lady Mary, on March 28, paid tribute to her departed friend, addressing herself for the first time direct to Montagu.

“Perhaps you’ll be surprized at this letter; I have had many debates with myself before I could resolve on it.  I know it is not acting in form, but I do not look upon you as I do upon the rest of the world, and by what I do for you, you are not to judge my manner of acting with others.  You are brother to a woman I tenderly loved; my protestations of friendship are not like other people’s, I never speak but what I mean, and when I say I love, ’tis for ever.  I had that real concern for Mrs. Wortley, I look with some regard on every one that is related to her.  This and my long acquaintance with you may in some measure excuse what I am now doing.  I am surprized at one of the ‘Tatlers’