BC_1740_EMONTAGU_AD_4

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<Q A 1740? TC AD EMONTAGU>
<X ELIZABETH MONTAGU>
 [}ELIZABETH ROBINSON TO ANNE DONNELLAN. 1740? MO 811. INCOMPLETE: LAST PORTION MISSING}]
<P1>
[\ADDED Bulstrode\]
Dear M=rs= Donnellan
   I rather want the privilege of an excuse than the force of a command to make me write to you; I hear you [\want INTO wish\] for a letter for me, I am too desirous of the [\agreable/] consequences of the answer to defer putting in a claim for it immediately.
   I believe our Society shares many [\of your/] good wishes & much of your Rememberance, we are indeed a happy Set of people, we enjoy the delicacies of Life, refin'd friendship, agreable conversation, & rational amusements; we have lost our Divines whose company we should regret, if regret, or any child of chagrin durst enter here; there is great pleasure in conversing with people of such a turn as D=r= Young & D=r= Clarke, for the first there is [\WORD DELETED\] nothing of speculation either in the (\Terra firma\) of Reason, or the visionary province of fancy, into which he does not lead the imagination; in his conversation he examines every thing, determines hardly any thing, but leaves ones judgment at Liberty: the other goes far into a subject & seldom leaves the conclusion of an argument unfinish'd, he seems to me to have an accurate judgment & a very attentive observation of every thing that comes within his view, & thus with the
<P2>
Assistance of a happy memory he has laid up a great stock of knowledge and experience; and he is of a very communicative disposition: The love of talking ought ever to go along with the Power of pleasing and instructing, & it is thus properly disposed with him, but by a weary observation on others, & a mortifying experience in myself, I find there is a love of talking implanted in us distinct from the [\benevolence INTO benevolent\] design of improving our hearers or the vanity of hoping to be admired, for giving pleasure or instruction, and that we are impell'd by a kind of instinct to prate: this seems indeed impertinent in particulars, but Nature (of whose plantation it is) did not do it in impertinence: Providence knew we should be Niggards of speech as we are of other benefits where the communication of them is more for the advantage of others than our own proper pleasures, & as we were design'd for Society, and the bands of Society are but the interests of self love, it has made the first principle of conversation to dwell immediately in the breast of every one: Silent people love Retirement and do not seek one to listen to as a talkative Person does one to talk to, therefore speech which cheifly associates Human kind operates immediately, not by remote influences or distant Causes, nor is not dependant on Education, Custom, virtue, vice,
<P3>
Country, Language or Nation, but is common to all, as [\all INTO people\] love to speak they must seek some other to speak to; I have great pleasure in observing to myself how Providence has dispers'd all things in the Order of the World to help to associate mankind: how it has made the pleasure & safety of men to depend on their association, how their weaknesses tend to their happiness by putting them under that best teacher of Arts Necessity: for this reason he is not arm'd with strength [\to attack his foes/] like a Lion nor against the injuries of weather like a Bear; the Woods are dangerous & the fields uncomfortable to him, even the inclement Seasons of the year force him into Society. Nature then withdraws her Support, & in winter becomes an Enemy who in Summer was his Cateress: his covering is gone, his Sustenance is decay'd, his prospect spoild, even the more gentle inhabitants of the Woods are vanish'd, he has nothing to lose but life, knows no want but hunger, no use of any thing but eating it, he does not therefore fear any Creature to whom he is not a dinner, so he seeks his fellow man, they approach without distrust, (for distrust is the offspring of Deceit which was born in after ages) our Savages understand each other & are glad to express those feelings of pain pleasure &c which they are liable to; different Relations and variety of Circumstances
<P4>
Teach new expressions, and as business and Commerce increase language grows more copious, till at length mix'd circumstances, various arts, multiplicity of Sciences and the medley of affairs have made it what it is: how are the simple wants of Nature divided & enlarged! what fancy'd wants, what supplemental arts, & what language to express them, are sprung from hunger thirst, & heat & cold; strong necessity [\of [\appetite\] /] & violent extreams of weather was all that impress'd a feeling in untaught nature, but necessity supply'd, luxury shaped the overplus into those things we now pursue, and virtue, vice, & praise & blame, happiness and misery, are all sprung from these few Elements
[\FOLD of necessity thus charged by the wantonness of superfluety,\]
Even the Heroes ambition unmeasur'd as it is, & all the fulness of the Orators Eloquence draw their passions & Words from a few wants & those simple words that express'd them; and now Lawgivers grow great by restraining, poets & Orators famous by expressing the passions that were once but for the mere support of life & afforded but one mode of expressing them & plain means of satisfying them, but [\what/] complicated Creatures are we now! what would the first of Mankind who desired but as much meat as he could eat, & as much ground as coud cover with his body have thought of the Avarice of Cresus, or the Ambition of Alexander if he could have been told that such Men would once be? But where have I rambled I have been
[\END OF LETTER MISSING\]