Ruby Gillis wrote a gushing
epistle deploring Anne's absence, assuring her she was horribly missed in everything, asking what the Redmond "fellows" were like, and filling the rest with accounts of her own harrowing experiences with her numerous admirers.
Addison, a real gentleman, disowned the defense, and this, with other slights suffered or imagined by Pope's jealous disposition, led to estrangement and soon to the composition of Pope's very clever and telling satire on Addison as 'Atticus,' which Pope did not publish, however, until he included it in his '
Epistle to Dr.
In the beginning of one of them Alfred says, "There are only a few on this side of the Humber who can understand the Divine Service, or even explain a Latin
epistle in English, and I believe not many on the other side of the Humber either.
Pardon, therefore, what I have said in this
epistle, not only without your consent, but absolutely against it; and give me at least leave, in this public manner, to declare that I am, with the highest respect and gratitude,--
The other was a large square
epistle, resplendent with the terrible arms of his Eminence the cardinal duke.
"The
epistle is laconic," said D'Artagnan; "and if there had not been a postscript, probably I should not have understood it; but happily there is a postscript."
The circumstances amid which he had left Tess were such that though, while on the south of the Equator and just in receipt of her loving
epistle, it had seemed the easiest thing in the world to rush back into her arms the moment he chose to forgive her, now that he had arrived it was not so easy as it had seemed.
From the "Master of Sentences," he had passed to the "Capitularies of Charlemagne;" and he had devoured in succession, in his appetite for science, decretals upon decretals, those of Theodore, Bishop of Hispalus; those of Bouchard, Bishop of Worms; those of Yves, Bishop of Chartres; next the decretal of Gratian, which succeeded the capitularies of Charlemagne; then the collection of Gregory IX.; then the
Epistle of
My mother did not relish this at all, and now made many objections to my accepting the situation; in which my sister warmly supported her: but, unwilling to be balked again, I overruled them all; and, having first obtained the consent of my father (who had, a short time previously, been apprised of these transactions), I wrote a most obliging
epistle to my unknown correspondent, and, finally, the bargain was concluded.
They compose an ardent
epistle, a declaration in fact, and they carry the letter upstairs themselves, so as to elucidate whatever might appear not perfectly intelligible in the letter."
Even the prophets wrote book after book and
epistle after
epistle, yet never once hinted at the existence of a great continent on our side of the water; yet they must have known it was there, I should think.
It is so difficult to become clearly possessed of the contents of almost any letter, in a violent hurry, that I had to read this mysterious
epistle again, twice, before its injunction to me to be secret got mechanically into my mind.