To Mrs. Temple, Pall Mall.
Silleri, May 20.
I confess the fact, my dear; I am, thanks to papa, amazingly
learned, and all that, for a young lady of twenty-two: yet you will
allow I am not the worse; no creature breathing would ever find it out:
envy itself must confess, I talk of lace and blond like another
christian woman.
I have been thinking, Lucy, as indeed my ideas are generally a
little pindaric, how entertaining and improving would be the history of
the human heart, if people spoke all the truth, and painted themselves
as they really are: that is to say, if all the world were as sincere
and honest as I am; for, upon my word, I have such a contempt for
hypocrisy, that, upon the whole, I have always appeared to have fewer
good qualities than I really have.
I am afraid we should find in the best characters, if we withdrew
the veil, a mixture of errors and inconsistencies, which would greatly
lessen our veneration.
Papa has been reading me a wise lecture, this morning, on playing
the fool: I reminded him, that I was now arrived at years of
_indiscretion_; that every body must have their day; and that those
who did not play the fool young, ran a hazard of doing it when it would
not half so well become them.
_A propos_ to playing the fool, I am strongly inclined to
believe I shall marry.
Fitzgerald is so astonishingly pressing--Besides, some how or
other, I don't feel happy without him: the creature has something of a
magnetic virtue; I find myself generally, without knowing it, on the
same side the room with him, and often in the next chair; and lay a
thousand little schemes to be of the same party at cards.
I write pretty sentiments in my pocket-book, and carve his name on
trees when nobody sees me: did you think it possible I could be such an
ideot?