To Mrs. Pendarves

[July 1734.]

Alas, Aspasia! are you, indeed, convinced that I can be of any service to you? I fear you have not sufficient ground for such a conviction. Experience has shown how far my power is short of my will. For some time I flattered myself with the pleasing hope, but I grow more and more ashamed of having indulged it. You need not the support of so weak an hand. How can I possibly think you do (though that thought tries now and then still to obtrude itself) since you have so long and resolutely thrust it from you? I dare not, there­fore, blame you for so doing. Doubtless you acted upon cool reflection; you declined the trouble of writing, not because it was a trouble, but because it was a needless one. And if so, what injury have you done yourself? As for me, you could do me no injury by your silence. It did, indeed, deprive me of much pleasure, and of a pleasure from which I ought to have received much improvement. But still, as it was one I had no title to but your goodness, to withdraw it was no iniustice. I sincerely thank you for what is past; and may the God of my salvation return it sevenfold into your bosom: and if ever you should please to add to those thousand obliga­tions any new ones, I trust they shall neither be unrewarded by Him nor unworthily received by Aspasia's

Faithful friend and servant, CYRUS.

Araspes, too, hopes you will never have reason to tax him with ingratitude. Adieu!

[A letter given under September 24, 1736, and the Journal Diary for June 16, 1737, show that Wesley still kept up some correspondence with Miss Ann Granville. Miss Hamilton says that at Bulstrode on December 14, 1783 (Auto. and Corr. vi. 175) Mrs. Delany 'told me she had known the two Mr. Wesleys (the Methodist preachers); she knew them when they were young men. They lived near her sister when they were students at Oxford. They were of a serious turn, and associated with such as were so. These brothers joined some other young men at Oxford, and used to meet of a Sunday evening and read the Scriptures, and find out objects of charity to relieve. This was a happy beginning, but the vanity of being singular and growing enthu­siasts made them endeavor to gain proselytes and adopt that system of religious doctrine which many reasonable people thought pernicious.' On June 9, 1743, Mrs. Pendarves was married to Dr. Delany, who in May 1744 became Dean of Down; the deanery was worth £2,500 a year, and he had other preferments. He died at Bath on May 6, 1768, and Mrs. Delany on April 15, 1788. She was buried in a vault of St. James's, Piccadilly, where there is a tablet on one of the columns to her memory. She enjoyed the special friendship of George III and Queen Charlotte, and was described by Edmund Burke as ' the highest-bred woman in the world and the woman of fashion of all ages.' ' She was fond of drawing and painting and was a genuine lover of good music, including that unpopular Italian opera against which her master Hogarth had pointed his sharpest etching-needle.' See Austin Dobson's Side-walk Studies, p. 115; and for Miss Granville, the heading to letter of September 24, 1736.

An exquisite needlework pocket-book made by Mrs. Delany with a letter from Queen Charlotte to her was sold for £40 in December 1927.]