The Mary Hamilton Papers : Letter from William Napier, 7th Lord Napier, to Mary Hamilton

Napier, William, 7th Lord

The Mary Hamilton Papers

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Letter from William Napier [later 7th Lord Napier] to Mary Hamilton, on a philosophical subject. He thanks her for her definition of friendship but doubts her claim that it is ‘in the union of Soul & Body our Creator [who] has given the ascendancy in few cases to the former’. He believes that it is us; that we are born with free will and are taught good from evil and ‘yet too often, if not almost always, we prefer the evil to the good as the pleasures of the body are instantan[e]ous those of the Soul at a distance & not to be expected in this World’. So it is the individual who gives the ascendancy to the body. Napier continues on this subject before acknowledging that his letter is getting more serious than intended, and if it got into others' hands they would not believe that it was addressed to a young Lady of eighteen but rather to ‘an old antiquated virgin of Seventy at least’, or else that the writer himself is very old and in his ‘second Childhood’.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Napier continues on the 7th Dragoons (see HAM/1/19/21), suggesting that their appearance in Hamilton’s town should furnish him with a long letter from a young lady, unless she keeps such correspondence for her female friends. This leads him to extended speculation about ‘the Kitten’ [Ann Litchfield]. He admonishes Hamilton for sending him short letters in reply to his long ones.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dated at Canterbury.</p>