“Your letter, etc., lay me under great obligations, but the greatest lies in the kind promise you make me that I shall kiss the hands of two fair Pilgrims at Wellwyn. I hope they are too much Protestants to think there is anything sacred in the shrine you speak of. I have too many sins beside, to pretend that I am a Saint. Was I a Saint and could work miracles I would reduce you two ladys to the common level of your sex being jealous for the credit of my own; which has hitherto presum’d to boast an usurp’d superiority in the realms of genius and the letter’d world. For you, Madam, I shall say nothing, for who can say enough? Miss Carter has my high esteem for showing us in so masterly a manner that Christianity has a foil in one of the brightest jewels of Pagan Wisdom, a jewel which you will allow she has set in gold. Might not such an honour from a fair hand, make even an Epictetus proud without being blamed for it? Nor let Miss Carter’s amiable modesty become blameable, by taking offence at the truth, but stand the shock of applause, which she has brought upon herself; for tho’ it pains her, it does credit to the publick, and she should support it patiently, as her Stoical Hero did his broken leg. I rejoice that you are recovered; I too, Madam, have been very ill of late, and stand in no small need of a cordial: hasten therefore your favour, which the sooner it is, will be the kinder to, dear Madam, “Your most obedient and obliged, humble servant, “E. YOUNG.” On April 28 Lord Bath writes to Mrs. Montagu-- “MADAM, “I would sooner have answer’d your letter, and sent you back the enclosed Dialogue, but that I went out to take the air in my chaize. You may depend upon my secrecy, but should it ever be published, it will be known to be yours, because nobody can write like it. I will endeavour to wait on you when you return from Dr. Young’s, unless I go to Ives Place for a day or two. “I am, with the greatest regard and truth, “Your most humble and obedient servant, “BATH.” [Page heading: ANOTHER DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD] [Page heading: BERENICE _V._ CLEOPATRA] [Page heading: THE “WORLD WELL LOST!”] This is the dialogue which I believe has not yet been published:-- “BERENICE AND CLEOPATRA.” _Berenice._ The similitudes and dissimilitudes of our fortune have long made me wish to converse with you, if the charming, the victorious Cleopatra by her lover prefer’d to glory, to empire, to life, will deign to hold converse with the forsaken, the abandon’d, the discarded Berenice. _Cleopatra._ The scorns of Octavius, the bite of the aspic, the waters of Lethe have so subdued my female vanity, that I will own to you I greatly suspect my greater success with my lover did not arise so much from my charms as in my skill of management of them.