"This is thy triumph, celestial friendship! but what is even friendship itself, compared to that perfect union of souls, which connects the most perfect, the most harmonious amity, with ties an hundred times more sacred? where are the men whose ideas, gross as their appetites, represent the passion of love only as a fever in the blood, the effect of brutal instinct? let them come to me, let them observe, let them feel, what passes in my breast; let them view an unhappy lover separated from his beloved object, doubtful whether ever he shall see her more, and hopeless of retrieving his lost happiness; animated, however, by the never dying flame, which, kindled by your beauties, has been nourished by your mental charms, they will see him ready to brave the rigours of adversity; to be deprived even of your lovely self, and to cherish all those virtues that you have inspired, and which embellish that adorable image that shall never be erased from my soul."
Eloisa: Or, a Series of Original Letters [La Nouvelle HÃ©loÃ¯se]
At least ten entries in the ESTC (1761, 1764, 1767, 1769, 1776, 1784, 1795).<br>
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Text from <u>Eloisa: Or, a Series of Original Letters Collected and Published by J.J. Rousseau. Translated from the French.</u> 4 vols. (London: Printed for R. Griffiths and T. Becket, 1761). &lt;<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=XQBEAAAAYAAJ">Link to Vol. I</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=kgBEAAAAYAAJ">Link to Vol. II</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=twBEAAAAYAAJ">Link to Vol. III</a>&gt;&lt;<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=2ABEAAAAYAAJ">Link to Vol. IV</a>&gt;