I have obey’d my _Sylvia_’. dear commands, and the dictates of my own impatient soul; as soon as I receiv’d them, I immediately took horse for _Bellfont_, though I knew I should not see my adorable _Sylvia_ ’.ill eight or nine at night; but oh ‘tis wondrous pleasure to be so much more near my eternal joy; I wait at _Dorillus_’. cottage the tedious approaching night that must shelter me in its kind shades, and conduct me to a pleasure I faint but with imagining; ‘tis now, my lovely charmer, three o’clock, and oh how many tedious hours I am to languish here before the blessed one arrive! I know you love, my _Sylvia_, and therefore must guess at some part of my torment, which yet is mix’d with a certain trembling joy, not to be imagin’d by any but _Sylvia_, who surely loves _Philander_; if there be truth in beauty, faith in youth, she surely loves him much; and much more above her sex she is capable of love, by how much more her soul is form’d of a softer and more delicate composition; by how much more her wit’s refin’d and elevated above her duller sex, and by how much more she is oblig’d; if passion can claim passion in return, sure no beauty was ever so much indebted to a slave, as _Sylvia_ to _Philander_; none ever lov’d like me: judge then my pains of love, my joys, my fears, my impatience and desires; and call me to your sacred presence with all the speed of love, and as soon as it is duskish, imagine me in the meadow behind the grove, ‘till when think me employed in eternal thoughts of _Sylvia_, restless, and talking to the trees of _Sylvia_, sighing her charming name, circling with folded arms my panting heart, (that beats and trembles the more, the nearer it approaches the happy _Bellfont_) and fortifying the feeble trembler against a sight so ravishing and surprising; I fear to be sustain’d with life; but if I faint in _Sylvia_’. arms, it will be happier far than all the glories of life without her. Send, my angel, something from you to make the hours less tedious: consider me, love me, and be as impatient as I, that you may the sooner find at your feet your everlasting lover, PHILANDER. _From _Dorillus_’. cottage._ * * * * * _To_ PHILANDER.