I am just setting out with a friend for Major Melmoth's, to pay my
compliments to the two ladies: I have no relish for this visit; I hate
misses that are going to be married; they are always so full of the
dear man, that they have not common civility to other people. I am told
however both the ladies are agreeable.
14th. Eight in the evening.
Agreeable, Lucy! she is an angel: 'tis happy for me she is engag'd;
nothing else could secure my heart, of which you know I am very
tenacious: only think of finding beauty, delicacy, sensibility, all
that can charm in woman, hid in a wood in Canada!
You say I am given to be enthusiastic in my approbations, but she is
really charming. I am resolv'd not only to have a friendship for her
myself, but that _you_ shall, and have told her so; she comes to
England as soon as she is married; you are form'd to love each other.
But I must tell you; Major Melmoth kept us a week at his house in
the country, in one continued round of rural amusements; by which I do
not mean hunting and shooting, but such pleasures as the ladies could
share; little rustic balls and parties round the neighbouring country,
in which parties we were joined by all the fine women at Montreal. Mrs.
Melmoth is a very pleasing, genteel brunette, but Emily Montague--you
will say I am in love with her if I describe her, and yet I declare to
you I am not: knowing she loves another, to whom she is soon to be
united, I see her charms with the same kind of pleasure I do yours; a
pleasure, which, tho' extremely lively, is by our situation without the
least mixture of desire.
I have said, she is charming; there are men here who do not think
so, but to me she is loveliness itself. My ideas of beauty are perhaps
a little out of the common road: I hate a woman of whom every man
coldly says, _she is handsome_; I adore beauty, but it is not meer
features or complexion to which I give that name; 'tis life,
'tis spirit, 'tis animation, 'tis--in one word, 'tis Emily
Montague--without being regularly beautiful, she charms every
sensible heart; all other women, however lovely, appear marble statues
near her: fair; pale (a paleness which gives the idea of delicacy
without destroying that of health), with dark hair and eyes, the
latter large and languishing, she seems made to feel to a trembling
excess the passion she cannot fail of inspiring: her elegant form has
an air of softness and languor, which seizes the whole soul in a
moment: her eyes, the most intelligent I ever saw, hold you enchain'd
by their bewitching sensibility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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