Clarissa quotes

If anything unhappy should fall out from the violence of such spirits as you have to deal with, your account of all things previous to it will be your best justification.

You see what you draw upon yourself by excelling all your sex.

Every individual of it who knows you, or has heard of you, seems to think you answerable to her for your conduct in points so very delicate and concerning.

and received still greater incivilities from my two uncles, who happened to be both there. My father also was held by force from going to him with his sword in his hand, although he had the gout upon him.

I fainted away with terror, seeing everyone so violent, and hearing Mr. Lovelace swear that he would not depart till he had made my uncles ask his pardon for the indignities he had received at their hands; a door being held fast locked between him and them.

My mother all the time was praying and struggling to withhold my father in the great parlour. Meanwhile my sister, who had treated Mr. Lovelace with virulence, came in to me, and insulted me as fast as I recovered. But when Mr.

The bearer, if suspected and examined, is to produce that as the only one he carries.

How do needless watchfulness and undue restraint produce artifice and contrivance!

I should abhor these clandestine correspondences, were they not forced upon me. They have so mean, so low an appearance to myself, that I think I ought not to expect that you should take part in them.

What odd heads some people have!⁠—Miss Clarissa Harlowe to be sacrificed in marriage to Mr. Roger Solmes!⁠—Astonishing!

I must not, you say, give my advice in favour of this man!—You now convince me, my dear, that you are nearer of kin than I thought you, to the family that could think of so preposterous a match, or you would never have had …

that’s one thing. Another is, Because she has a younger sister. Pray, my dear, be so good as to tell me, What man of a great and clear estate would think of that eldest sister, while the younger were single?

You are all too rich to be happy, child.

For must not each of you, by the constitutions of your family, marry to be still richer?

… truth?—Because I think myself as well as I am—were it but for this reason, that had I twenty brother James’s, and twenty sister Bell’s, not one of them, nor all of them joined together, would dare to treat me as yours presume to treat you.

The person who will bear much shall have much to bear all the world through; it is your own sentiment

, grounded upon the strongest instance that can be given in your own family; though you have so little improved by it.

But surely they will yield—Indeed I cannot.

I believe the gentlest spirits when provoked (causelessly and cruelly provoked) are the most determined.

The reason may be, that not taking up resolutions lightly—their very deliberation makes them the more immovable.—And then when a point is clear and self-evident, how can one with patience think of entering into an argument or contention upon it?—

There will be no resisting such baits as he has thrown out. O, my dear, my beloved friend! and are such charming qualities, is such exalted merit, to be sunk in such a marriage!—You must not, your uncle tells your mother, dispute their authority.

Authority! what a full word is that in the mouth of a narrow-minded person, who happened to be born thirty years before one!

—Of your uncles I speak; for as to the paternal authority, that ought to be sacred.—But should not parents have reason for what they do?

but you have not told me, that still she loves him of all men.

Bell has a meanness in her very pride; that meanness rises with her pride, and goes hand in hand with it; and no one is so proud as Bell.

She has owned her love, her uneasy days, and sleepless nights, and her revenge grafted upon her love, to her favourite Betty Barnes—To lay herself in the power of a servant’s tongue!

But on this one quarter of an hour depends the peace of my future life, the satisfaction of all the family, and your own security from a man of violence: and I charge you besides, on my blessing, that you think of being Mrs. Solmes.

There went the dagger to my heart, and down I sunk

: and when I recovered, found myself in the arms of my Hannah, my sister’s Betty holding open my reluctantly-opened palm, my laces cut, my linen scented with hartshorn; and my mother gone.

I was silent. To say the truth, I was just then sullenly silent. My heart was too big. I thought it was hard to be thus given up by my mother; and that she should make a will so uncontrolable as my brother’s, her will.—

My mother, my dear, though I must not say so, was not obliged to marry against her liking. My mother loved my father.

My silence availed me still less.

Mr. Harlowe talks of dining out today, I think, at my brother Antony’s—

Mr. Harlowe!⁠—Not my father!⁠—Have I not then a father!⁠—thought I.

Sit down when I bid you.

I thought, by the glass before me, I saw the mother in her softened eye cast towards me. But her words confirmed not the hoped-for tenderness.

One of the most provoking things in this world is, to have people cry for what they can help!

I wish to heaven I could, Madam!—And I sobbed again.

Tears of penitence and sobs of perverseness are mighty well suited!—You may go up to your chamber. I shall talk with you by-and-by.

Mock me not with outward gestures of respect. The heart, Clary, is what I want.

Indeed, Madam, you have it. It is not so much mine as my Mamma’s!

She turned to me with benigner rays—

You have my love! You have my pity! But, O my dearest girl⁠—I have not yours.

Indeed, indeed, Madam, you have: and all my reverence, all my gratitude, you have!—But in this one point—Cannot I be this once obliged?—Will no expedient be accepted? Have I not made a very fair proposal as to Mr. Lovelace?

I only looked at her, and turning to my mother, Permit me, Madam, said I, to repeat my request.

I have no brother, no sister!⁠—If I ever lose my mamma’s favour, I am lost forever!

Mr. Solmes removed to his first seat, and fell to gnawing the head of his hazel; a carved head, almost as ugly as his own—I did not think the man was so sensible.

This was the contemptuous answer: “Tell her, that her request will be taken into consideration tomorrow.”

My request to go to church today to be taken into consideration tomorrow!

Patience will be the fittest return I can make to such an insult. But this method will not do with me; indeed it will not!

The neighbours you are so solicitous to appear well with, already know, that you defy that. So, Miss, if you have a real value for your reputation, show it as you ought. It is yet in your own power to establish or impair it.

Thus, my dear Miss Howe, has my brother got me into his snares; and I, like a poor silly bird, the more I struggle, am the more entangled.

It must have long been a mortification to them (set disappointed love on her side, and avarice on his, out of the question) to be so much eclipsed by a younger sister.

Such a sun in a family, where there are none but faint twinklers, how could they bear it!

Why, my dear, they must look upon you as a prodigy among them: and prodigies, you know, though they obtain our admiration, never attract our love. The distance between you and them is immense. Their eyes ache to look up at you.

“

What a dreadful thing must even the love of such a husband be!

For my part, were I his wife! (But what have I done to myself, to make such a supposition?) I should never have comfort but in his absence, or when I was quarreling with him.

I have desired him to inquire after Lovelace’s life and conversation in town. If he has not inquired, I shall be very angry with him. Don’t expect a very good account of either. He is certainly an intriguing wretch, and full of inventions.

Upon my word, I most heartily despise that sex!

I wish they would let our fathers and mothers alone; teasing them to tease us with their golden promises, and protestations and settlements, and the rest of their ostentatious nonsense.

I checked myself, and leaving the first three lines of the following of Dryden to the family of whiners, find the workings of the passion in my stormy soul better expressed by the three last:

Love various minds does variously inspire:

He stirs in gentle natures gentle fires; Like that of incense on the altar laid.

take care, O thou most exalted of female minds, and loveliest of persons, how thou debasest thyself by encouraging such a competition as thy sordid relations have set on foot in mere malice to me!—Thou wilt say I rave. And so I do:

Perdition catch my soul, but I do love her.

Else, could I hear the perpetual revilings of her implacable family?—Else, could I basely creep about—not her proud father’s house—but his paddock and garden walls?—Yet (a quarter of a mile distance between us) not hoping to behold the least glimpse of her shadow?—Else, should I …

Nor let the supposition of matrimonial differences frighten you: honeymoon lasts not nowadays above a fortnight; and Dunmow Flitch, as I have been informed, was never claimed; though some say once it was.

Marriage is a queer state, Child, whether paired by the parties or by their friends.

Out of three brothers of us, you know, there was but one had courage to marry. And why was it, do you think? We were wise by other people’s experience.

though some say once it was. Marriage is a queer state, Child, whether paired by the parties or by their friends. Out of three brothers of us, you know, there was but one had courage to marry. And why was it, do you think?

We were wise by other people’s experience.

Don’t despise money so much: you may come to know the value of it: that is a piece of instruction that you are to learn; and which, according to your own notions, Mr. Solmes will be able to teach you.

And I am one: mind that. And if it behoves you to speak out, Miss, it behoves us not to speak in.

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: take that in your thought too.

I humbly apprehend, that Mr. Solmes has the spirit of a man, and a gentleman. I would admonish you therefore not to provoke it. He pities you as much as he loves you.

and, only that he knows I am a man of honour; and that my alliance will do credit to the family; and after prejudices are overcome, everybody will think so; or he would not for the world act the part he does.

There never was a rogue, who had not a salvo to himself for being so.

—What a praise to honesty, that every man pretends to it, even at the instant that he knows he is pursuing the methods that will perhaps prove him a knave to the whole world, as well as to his own conscience!

In the same point of time that I saw him, he besought me not to be frighted: and, still nearer approaching me, threw open a horseman’s coat: And who should it be but Mr. Lovelace!—

I could not scream out (yet attempted to scream, the moment I saw a man; and again, when I saw who it was); for I had no voice

: and had I not caught hold of a prop which supported the old roof, I should have sunk.

… from my family, with the thoughts of having so little interest in my favour, that he could not promise himself that his patience and forbearance would be attended with any other issue than to lose me forever, and be triumphed over and insulted upon it.

This man, you know, has very ready knees.

You have said, that he ought, in small points, frequently to offend, on purpose to show what an address he is master of.

But to what purpose his appeal, when I am debarred from seeing that good man, or anyone who would advise me what to do in my present difficult situation!

I fancy, my dear, however, that there would hardly be a guilty person in the world, were each suspected or accused person to tell his or her own story, and be allowed any degree of credit.

I have written a very long letter.

What, O what, do parents do, when they endeavour to force a child’s inclination, but make her think better than otherwise she would think of a man obnoxious to themselves, and perhaps whose character will not stand examination?

I have said, that I think Mr. Lovelace a vindictive man: upon my word, I have sometimes doubted, whether his perseverance in his addresses to me has not been the more obstinate, since he has found himself so disagreeable to my friends.

From that time I verily think he has been the more fervent in them; yet courts them not, but sets them at defiance. For this indeed he pleads disinterestedness (I am sure he cannot politeness);

As to his behaviour at church, the Sunday before last, I lay no stress upon that, because I doubt there was too much outward pride in his intentional humility, or Shorey, who is not his enemy, could not have mistaken it.

I do not think him so deeply learned in human nature, or in ethics, as some have thought him.

Don’t you remember how he stared at the following trite observations, which every moralist could have furnished him with? Complaining as he did, in a half-menacing strain, of the obloquies raised against him—“That if he were innocent, he should despise the obloquy:

curling, like a serpent about your mamma; and making her cry to deny you anything your little obstinate heart was set upon—!

Obstinate heart, Bella!

Yes, obstinate heart! For did you ever give up anything? Had you not the art to make them think all was right you asked, though my brother and I were frequently refused favours of no greater import!

There’s a brother!—There’s flaming duty to a father, and mother, and uncles!—

But he sees himself valued, and made of consequence; and he gives himself airs accordingly!

—Nevertheless, as I said above, I will hope better things from those who have not the interest my brother has to keep open these unhappy differences.

Pretty mopsy-eyed soul!—was her expression!—And was it willing to think it had still a brother and sister? And why don’t you go on, Clary? (mocking my half-weeping accent) I thought

I had a father, and mother, two uncles, and an aunt: but I am mis⁠—taken, that’s all

—come, Clary, say this, and it will in part be true, because you have thrown off all their authority, and because you respect one vile wretch more than them all.

What can I do, my dearest Aunt Hervey? What can I do? Were I capable of giving a hope I meant not to enlarge, then could I say, I would consider of your kind advice.

But I would rather be thought perverse than insincere.

Is there, however, no medium? Can nothing be thought of? Will nothing do, but to have a man who is the more disgustful to me, because he is unjust in the very articles he offers?

while, as I have heard a reptile brag, he would in a winter-morning spit upon his thumbs, and spread his own with it, that he might keep it all to himself.

Hickman, a great overgrown, lank-haired, chubby boy, who would be hunched and punched by everybody; and go home with his finger in his eye, and tell his mother.

While Lovelace I have supposed a curl-pated villain, full of fire, fancy, and mischief; an orchard-robber, a wall-climber, a horse-rider without saddle or bridle, neck or nothing:

while he went on to do more mischief, and if not to get, to deserve, broken bones. And the same dispositions have grown up with them, and distinguish them as men, with no very material alteration.

Only that all men are monkeys more or less, or else that you and I should have such baboons as these to choose out of, is a mortifying thing, my dear.

I am sensible that I am a little out of season in treating thus ludicrously the subject I am upon, while you are so unhappy;

since (as they will tell it to your father and brother) the declaration must needs give advantage to spirits who have so little of that generosity for which you are so much distinguished.

There never was a spirit in the world that would insult where it dared, but it would creep and cringe where it dared not.

Let me remind you of a sentence of your own, the occasion for which I have forgotten: “That little spirits will always accommodate themselves to the temper of those they would work upon: will fawn upon a sturdy-tempered person:

He is not my brother. Can you say, he is yours?—So, for your life, if you are just, you can’t be angry with me: For would you side with a false brother against a true friend?

A brother may not be a friend: but a friend will always be a brother

—mind that, as your uncle Tony says!

So here is the masterstroke of my brother’s policy!

Called upon to consent to go to my uncle Antony’s avowedly to receive Mr. Solmes’s visits!

—A chapel! A moated-house!—Deprived of the opportunity of corresponding with you!—or of any possibility of escape, should violence be used to compel me to be that odious man’s!

… half of mankind tormenting the other, and being tormented themselves in tormenting!—For here is this my particular case, my relations cannot be happy, though they make me unhappy!—Except my brother and sister, indeed—and they seem to take delight in and enjoy the mischief they make.

But it is time to lay down my pen, since my ink runs nothing but gall.

What can I advise you to do, my noble creature?

Your merit is your crime.

You can no more change your nature, than your persecutors can theirs. Your distress is owing to the vast disparity between you and them. What would you have of them? Do they not act in character?—And to whom? To an alien.

How soothing a thing is praise from those we love!

—Whether conscious or not of deserving it, it cannot but give us great delight, to see ourselves stand high in the opinion of those whose favour we are ambitious to cultivate.

Betty has told me all these fine things. One desires to be excused, it seems: another chooses not to have anything to say to me: another has enough of me: and of writing to so ready a scribbler, there will be no end.

Thus are those imputed qualifications, which used so lately to gain me applause, now become my crimes: so much do disgust and anger alter the property of things.

The result of their debate, I suppose, will somehow or other be communicated to me by-and-by. But let me tell you, my dear, that I am made so desperate, that I am afraid to open Mr.

The one is to the purpose we are speaking of:

Poverty is the mother of health.

And let me tell you, Betty, if I had a better appetite, and were to encourage it, with so little rest, and so much distress and persecution, I don’t think I should be able to preserve my reason.

while I always saw something to divert myself on the side of the chariot where the honest man was not, were it but old Robin at a distance, on his roan Keffel.

Our courtship-days, they say, are our best days. Favour destroys courtship. Distance increases it. Its essence is distance.

And, to see how familiar these men-wretches grow upon a smile, what an awe they are struck into when we frown; who would not make them stand off? Who would not enjoy a power, that is to be short-lived?

What workman loves not a sharp tool to work with? But is there not more danger from a sharp tool than from a blunt one? And what workman will throw away a sharp tool, because it may cut his fingers?

Wit may be likened to a sharp tool.

And there is something very pretty in wit, let me tell you. Often and often have I been forced to smile at her arch turns upon me, when I could have beat her for them.

Does it not, moreover, manifest a firmness of mind, in an unhappy person, to keep hope alive?

To hope for better days, is half to deserve them: for could we have just ground for such a hope, if we did not resolve to deserve what that hope bids us aspire to?

—Then who shall befriend a person who forsakes herself?

When I was entrusted with the family-management, I always found it right, as well in policy as generosity, to repose a trust in them.

Not to seem to expect or depend upon justice from them, is in a manner to bid them to take opportunities, whenever they offer, to be unjust.

Mr. Solmes, (to expatiate on this low, but not unuseful subject), in his more trifling solicitudes, would have had a sorry key-keeper in me.

These more capital artifices I branch out into lesser ones, without number. Yet all have not only the face of truth, but are real truths; although not my principal motive.

How prompt a thing is will!⁠—What impediments does dislike furnish!⁠—How swiftly, through every difficulty, do we move with the one!⁠—how tardily with the other!

—every trifling obstruction weighing us down, as if lead were fastened to our feet!

But what, my dear, will become of us now?—

Lovelace not only reformed, but turned preacher!

—What will become of us now?—Why, my sweet friend, your generosity is now engaged in his favour!—Fie upon this generosity!

Older! saucy little fool!—And away she flung.

What a captious old woman will my sister make, if she lives to be one!⁠—demanding the reverence, perhaps, yet not aiming at the merit; and ashamed of the years that can only entitle her to the reverence.

It is plain, from what I have related, that they think they have got me at some advantage by obtaining my consent to the interview: but if it were not, Betty’s impertinence just now would make it evident. She has been complimenting me upon it;

Yet Mr. Lovelace, the least of any man whose letters I have seen, runs into those elevated absurdities. I should be apt to despise him for it, if he did.

Such language looks always to me, as if the flatterer thought to find a woman a fool, or hoped to make her one.

“He regrets my indifference to him; which puts all the hope he has in my favour upon the shocking usage I receive from my friends.

and, when she returned, drank my water; and finding no hope presently of a quieter heart, I sent her down, and followed her with precipitation; trembling so, that, had I not hurried, I question if I could have got down at all.—

Oh my dear, what a poor, passive machine is the body when the mind is disordered!

There are two doors to my parlour, as I used to call it. As I entered one, my friends hurried out the other. I just saw the gown of my sister, the last who slid away. My uncle Antony went out with them:

This gave me a little more presence of mind.

Cowardice in a foe begets courage in one’s self⁠—I see that plainly now⁠—yet perhaps, at bottom, the new-made bravo is a greater coward than the other.

I turned from him, and seated myself in one of the fireside chairs, fanning myself. I have since recollected, that I must have looked very saucily. Could I have had any thoughts of the man, I should have despised myself for it.

For God’s sake, dearest Madam, said Mr. Solmes, folding his hands—And there he stopped.

For God’s sake, what, Sir?⁠—How came God’s sake, and your sake, I pray you, to be the same?

This silenced him. My uncle could only be angry; and that he was before.

My uncle put his handkerchief to his eyes. Mr. Solmes made a still more grievous face than he had before. But my brother’s marble heart was untouched.

I will not stir from my knees, continued I, without admission; at this door I beg it!⁠—Oh! let it be the door of mercy! and open it to me, honoured Sir, I beseech you!⁠—But this once, this once! although you were afterwards to shut it against me forever!

The door was endeavoured to be opened on the inside, which made my brother let go the key on a sudden; and I pressing against it, (all the time remaining on my knees), fell flat on my face into the other parlour;

Mr. Lovelace may have vices you have not. You may have others, which he has not. I speak not this to defend him, or to accuse you.

No man is bad, no one is good, in everything.

Mr. Lovelace, for example, is said to be implacable, and to hate my friends: that does not make me value him the more: but give me leave to say, that they hate him as much. Mr. Solmes has his antipathies, likewise;

Solmes’s reasons. It concerns not me to know them: but the world, even the impartial part of it, accuses him. If the world is unjust or rash, in one man’s case, why may it not be so in another’s? That’s all I mean by it.

Nor can there by a greater sign of want of merit, than where a man seeks to pull down another’s character, in order to build up his own.

The poor man’s face was all this time overspread with confusion, twisted, as it were, and all awry, neither mouth nor nose standing in the middle of it. He looked as if he were ready to cry:

and between his violence on one hand, and that of my relations on the other, I find myself in danger from both.

O my dear! what is worldly wisdom but the height of folly!

—I, the meanest, at least youngest, of my father’s family, to thrust myself in the gap between such uncontrollable spirits!—To the intercepting perhaps of the designs of Providence, which may intend to make those hostile spirits their own punishers.—If so, what presumption!—Indeed, my dear friend, …

We have just now had another pull. Upon my word, she is excessively—what shall I say?—unpersuadable—I must let her off with that soft word.

Who was the old Greek, that said, he governed Athens; his wife, him; and his son, her?

It was not my mother’s fault (I am writing to you, you know) that she did not govern my father.

But how palliate? How seem to compromise? You would not have me endeavour to make them believe, that I will consent to what I never intended to consent to! You would not have me to gain time, with a view to deceive!

To do evil, that good may come of it, is forbidden: And shall I do evil, yet know not whether good may come of it or not?

Forbid it, heaven! that Clarissa Harlowe should have it in her thought to serve, or even to save herself at the expense of her sincerity, and by a studied deceit!

And then, to my great terror, she drew some parchments form her handkerchief, which she had kept, (unobserved by me), under her apron; and rising, put them in the opposite window.

Had she produced a serpent, I could not have been more frightened.

Oh!

You’ll see as to the slur upon my reputation, about which I am so apprehensive, how boldly he argues.” Generously enough, indeed, were I to be his; and had given him to believe that I would.—But that I have not done.

How one step brings on another with this encroaching sex; how soon a young creature, who gives a man the least encouragement, be carried beyond her intentions, and out of her own power!

You would imagine, by what he writes, that I have given him reason to think that my aversion to Mr. Solmes is all owing to my favour for him.

I was in the ivy summerhouse, and came out shivering with cold, as if aguishly affected. Betty observed this, and reported it.—“O no matter!—Let her shiver on!—

Cold cannot hurt her. Obstinacy will defend her from harm.

Perverseness is a bracer to a lovesick girl, and more effectual than the cold bath to make hardy, although the constitution be ever so tender.”

My aunt mentioned Mr. Lovelace’s boasting behaviour to his servants: perhaps he may be so mean. But as to my brother, he always took a pride in making himself appear to be a man of parts and learning to our servants.

Pride and meanness, I have often thought, are as nearly allied, and as close borderers upon each other, as the poet tells us wit and madness are.

But why do I trouble you (and myself, at such a crisis) with these impertinences?—Yet I would forget, if I could, the nearest evil, the interview;

and then he will have too much advantage over me, as he will have seeming reason to reproach me with change of resolution.

The upbraider, you know, my dear, is in some sense a superior; while the upbraided, if with reason upbraided, must make a figure as spiritless as conscious.

I know that this wretch will, if he can, be his own judge, and mine too. But the latter he shall not be.

especially as I had so much reason to be displeased with him for not having taken away my letter.

On what a point of time may one’s worldly happiness depend!

Had I but two hours more to consider of the matter, and to attend to and improve upon these new lights, as I may call them—but even then, perhaps, I might have given him a meeting.—Fool that I was!

what had I to do to give him hope that I would personally acquaint him with the reason for my change of mind, if I did change it?

O my dear! an obliging temper is a very dangerous temper!⁠—By endeavouring to gratify others, it is evermore disobliging itself!

When the bell rang to call the servants to dinner, Betty came to me and asked, if I had any commands before she went to hers; repeating her hint, that she should be employed;

nothing else can attract me. If personal considerations had principal weight with me, either in Solmes’s disfavour, or in your favour, I shall despise myself: if you value yourself upon them, in preference to the person of the poor Solmes, I shall despise you!

You may glory in your fancied merits in getting me away: but the cause of your glory, I tell you plainly, is my shame.

Make to yourself a title to my regard, which I can better approve of; or else you will not have so much merit with me, as you have with yourself.

I have not the better opinion of Mr. Lovelace for his extravagant volubility. He is too full of professions. He says too many fine things of me, and to me.

True respect, true value, I think, lies not in words: words cannot express it: the silent awe, the humble, the doubting eye, and even the hesitating voice, better show it by much

, than, as our beloved Shakespeare says,

… private corner of the garden, to be out of her way.—Lord help these mothers!—Do they think they can prevent a daughter’s writing, or doing anything she has a mind to do, by suspicion, watchfulness, and scolding?—They had better place a confidence in one by half—

A generous mind scorns to abuse a generous confidence.

You have a nice, a very nice part to act with this wretch—who yet has, I think, but one plain path before him. I pity you—but you must make the best of the lot you have been forced to draw.

If anything occur that you would tell me of if I were present, fail not to put it down in writing, although from your natural diffidence, it should not appear to you altogether so worthy of your pen, or my knowing.

A stander-by may see more of the game than one that plays.

Great consequences, like great folks, generally owe their greatness to small causes, and little incidents.

A stander-by may see more of the game than one that plays.

Great consequences, like great folks, generally owe their greatness to small causes, and little incidents.

Upon the whole, I do not now think it is in your power to dismiss him when you please. I apprised you beforehand, that it would not. I repeat, therefore, that were I you, I would at least seem to place some confidence in him.

In my power, or out of my power, all one to this lady.—So, Belford, my poor vows are crammed down my throat, before they can well rise to my lips.

And what can a lover say to his mistress, if she will neither let him lie nor swear?

One little piece of artifice I had recourse to: When she pushed so hard for me to leave her, I made a request to her, upon a condition she could not refuse;

… thee, Belford, that that single pressure (as modestly put too, as if I were as much a virgin as herself, that she might not be afraid of me another time) delighted me more than ever I was delighted by the ultimatum with any other woman.—

So precious do awe, reverence, and apprehended prohibition, make a favour!

And now, Belford, I am only afraid that I shall be too cunning; for she does not at present talk enough for me. I hardly know what to make of the dear creature yet.

But now I think of it, will not this comparison do as well for the entangled girls, as for the tame spirits?—Better o’ my conscience!—’Tis but comparing the spider to us brave fellows, and it quadrates.

Whatever our hearts are in, our heads will follow. Begin with spiders, with flies, with what we will, girl is the centre of gravity, and we all naturally tend to it.

Nevertheless, to recur; I cannot but observe, that these tame spirits stand a poor chance in a fairly offensive war with such of us mad fellows as are above all law, and scorn to skulk behind the hypocritical screen of reputation.

since, like a paltry fellow as thou wert, thou assertedst that all women are alike.

Thou knowest nothing, Jack, of the delicacies of intrigue: nothing of the glory of outwitting the witty and the watchful

: of the joys that fill the mind of the inventive or contriving genius, ruminating which to use of the different webs that offer to him for the entanglement of a haughty charmer, who in her day has given him unnumbered torments.

And will not the reflections upon that wrong (what though it may be construed in my favour?) make me unhappy, when novelty has lost its charms, and when, mind and person, she is all my own?

Libertines are nicer, if at all nice, than other men.

They seldom meet with the stand of virtue in the women whom they attempt. And, by the frailty of those they have triumphed over, they judge of all the rest.

But is not that pride abated? What may not both men and women be brought to do in a mortified state? What mind is superior to calamity?

Pride is perhaps the principal bulwark of female virtue.

Humble a woman, and may she not be effectually humbled?

But is not that pride abated? What may not both men and women be brought to do in a mortified state? What mind is superior to calamity? Pride is perhaps the principal bulwark of female virtue.

Humble a woman, and may she not be effectually humbled?

Then who says Miss Clarissa Harlowe is the paragon of virtue?—Is virtue itself?

“And has then a Clarissa (herself her judge) failed?—In such great points failed?—And may she not further fail?—

Fail in the greatest point, to which all the other points, in which she has failed, have but a natural tendency?

”

And what was the reason he gave for it?—It was this, (though a rake himself, as I have said), and only this—The wife of Caesar must not be suspected!—

Caesar was not a prouder man than Lovelace.

Go to then, Jack; nor say, nor let anybody say, in thy hearing, that Lovelace, a man valuing himself upon his ancestry, is singular in his expectations of a wife’s purity, though not pure himself.

To my point—“

What must that virtue be which will not stand a trial?

—What that woman who would wish to shun it?”

I had no patience with him. I told him so. I see, Sir, said I, I see, what a man I am with.

Your rattle warns me of the snake.

—And away I flung: leaving him seemingly vexed, and in confusion.

Then Mrs. Greme corresponds by pen-and-ink with her farmer-sister where we are: something may possibly arise that way, either of a convenient nature, which I may pursue; or of an inconvenient nature, which I may avoid.

Always be careful of back doors, is a maxim with me in all my exploits.

Whoever knows me, knows that I am no proud man. I can talk as familiarly to servants as to principals, when I have a mind to make it worth their while to oblige me in anything.

one; the real pleasure I should have in the accommodating of the haughty maid; and to think there was something near her, and upon her, that I could call mine: the other, in order to abate her severity and humble her a little.

Nothing more effectually brings down a proud spirit, than a sense of lying under pecuniary obligations.

This has always made me solicitous to avoid laying myself under any such: yet, sometimes, formerly, have I been put to it, and cursed the tardy resolution of the quarterly periods. And yet I ever made shift to avoid anticipation:

Forgive me, my dear, and love me as you used to do.

For although my fortunes are changed, my heart is not

: Nor ever will, while it bids my pen tell you, that it must cease to bear, when it is not as much yours as

… begun, or, having begun, not continued a correspondence with one who thought it not worth his while to clear his own character for my sake, or to submit to my father for his own, in a point wherein every father ought to have an option—

Darkness, light; light, darkness; by my soul;⁠—just as you please to have it.

O charmer of my heart! snatching my hand, and pressing it between both of his, to his lips, in a strange wild way, take me, take me to yourself: mould me as you please: I am wax in your hands; give me your own impression;

light, darkness; by my soul;—just as you please to have it. O charmer of my heart! snatching my hand, and pressing it between both of his, to his lips, in a strange wild way, take me, take me to yourself: mould me as you please:

I am wax in your hands; give me your own impression; and seal me forever yours

—we were born for each other!—You to make me happy, and save a soul—I am all error, all crime. I see what I ought to have done.

nay, if I seem to contradict what I said in the same letter: for he is a perfect chameleon; or rather more variable than the chameleon; for that, it is said, cannot assume the red and the white; but this man can.

And though black seems to be his natural colour, yet has he taken great pains to make me think him nothing but white.

But you shall judge of him as I proceed. Only, if I anywhere appear to you to be credulous, I beg you to set me right: for you are a stander-by, as you say in a former—Would to Heaven I were not to play!

As he had several times proposed London to me, I expected that he would eagerly have embraced that motion from me. But he took not ready hold of it: yet I thought his eye approved of it.

We are both great watchers of each other’s eyes; and, indeed, seem to be more than half afraid of each other.

He then made a grateful proposal to me: “that I would send for my Norton to attend me.”

After mentioning his proposal to her that she would borrow a servant from Miss Howe, till Hannah could come, he writes as follows:]

Thou seest, Belford, that my charmer has no notion that Miss Howe herself is but a puppet danced upon my wires at second or third hand.

To outwit, and impel, as I please, two such girls as these, who think they know everything;

I work but with their materials. They, if left to their own wicked direction, would perhaps express their revenge by fire and faggot; that is to say, by the private dagger, or by Lord Chief Justices’ warrants, by law, and so forth:

I only point the lightning, and teach it where to dart, without the thunder.

In other words, I only guide the effects: the cause is in their malignant hearts: and while I am doing a little mischief, I prevent a great deal.

But, upon my conscience, I very much doubt whether a little intermingled insolence is not requisite from them, to keep up that interest, when once it has got footing. Men must not let us see, that we can make fools of them. And

I think, that smooth love; that is to say, a passion without rubs; in other words, a passion without passion; is like a sleepy stream that is hardly seen to give motion to a straw.

So that, sometimes to make us fear, and even, for a short space, to hate the wretch, is productive of the contrary extreme.

But to see the charmer so far satisfied with my contrivance as to borrow my friend’s letter, in order to satisfy Miss Howe likewise—!

Silly little rogues! to walk out into bye-paths on the strength of their own judgment!

—When nothing but experience can enable them to disappoint us, and teach them grandmother-wisdom! When they have it indeed, then may they sit down, like so many Cassandras, and preach caution to others;

Our likings and dislikings, as I have often thought, are seldom governed by prudence, or with a view to happiness.

The eye, my dear, the wicked eye, has such a strict alliance with the heart⁠—and both have such enmity to the judgment!

—What an unequal union, the mind and body! All the senses, like the family at Harlowe-place, in a confederacy against that which would animate, and give honour to the whole, were it allowed its proper precedence.

But one observation I will add, that were your character, and my character, to be truly drawn, mine would be allowed to be the most natural.

Shades and lights are equally necessary in a fine picture.

Yours would be surrounded with such a flood of brightness, with such a glory, that it would indeed dazzle; but leave one heartless to imitate it.

I should indeed be inexcusable to open my lips by way of contradiction to my mother, had I such a fine spirit as yours to deal with.

Truth is truth, my dear! Why should narrowness run away with the praises due to a noble expansion of heart?

If everybody would speak out, as I do, (that is to say, give praise where only praise is due; dispraise where due likewise), shame, if not principle, would mend the world—nay, shame would introduce principle in a generation or two. Very true, my dear.

dispraise where due likewise), shame, if not principle, would mend the world—nay, shame would introduce principle in a generation or two. Very true, my dear. Do you apply. I dare not.—For

I fear you, almost as much as I love you.

I will give you an instance, nevertheless, which will anew demonstrate, that none but very generous and noble-minded people ought to be implicitly obeyed. You know what I said above, that truth is truth.

I love your jesting.

Jesting better becomes a poor man than qualms.

I love to have you jest. All we say, all we do, all we wish for, is a jest. He that makes life itself not so is a sad fellow, and has the worst of it.

But enough of dear Miss Betterton.—

Dear, I say; for death endears.

—Rest to her worthy soul!—There, Joseph, off went a deep sigh to the memory of Miss Betterton!

for I was always careful of what I promised. You know, Joseph, that I have gone beyond my promises to you. I do to everybody; and why? because it is the best way of showing that I have no grudging or narrow spirit.

A promise is an obligation. A just man will keep his promise, a generous man will go beyond it.

—This is my rule.

And let me know your progress with Lovelace, and what he says to this diabolical curse. So far you may enter into this hateful subject. I expect that this will aptly introduce the grand topic between you, without needing a mediator.

Come, my dear, when things are at worst they will mend.

Good often comes when evil is expected.—But if you despond, there can be no hopes of cure. Don’t let them break your heart; for that is plain to me, is now what some people have in view for you to do.

Your letter, my beloved Miss Howe, gives me great comfort.

How sweetly do I experience the truth of the wise man’s observation, That a faithful friend is the medicine of life!

Your messenger finds me just setting out for London: the chaise at the door. Already I have taken leave of the good widow, who has obliged me with the company of her eldest daughter, at Mr. Lovelace’s request, while he rides by us.

Do not, do not, my dear friend, again be so very melancholy a decliner as to prefer a shroud, when the matter you wish for is in your power; and when, as you have justly said heretofore, persons cannot die when they will.

But it is a strange perverseness in human nature that we slight that when near us which at a distance we wish for.

You have now but one point to pursue: that is marriage: let that be solemnized. Leave the rest to Providence, and, to use your own words in a former letter, follow as that leads. You will have a handsome man, a genteel man;

But I am not angry with thee, Jack. I love opposition.

As gold is tried by fire, and virtue by temptation, so is sterling wit by opposition.

Have I not, before thou settest out as an advocate for my fair-one, often brought thee in, as making objections to my proceedings, for no other reason than to exalt myself by proving thee a man of straw?

For, are we not devils to each other?—They tempt us—we tempt them. Because we men cannot resist temptation, is that a reason that women ought not, when the whole of their education is caution and warning against our attempts?

Do not their grandmothers give them one easy rule⁠—Men are to ask⁠—Women are to deny?

Well, but to return to my principal subject; let me observe, that, be my future resolutions what they will, as to this lady, the contents of the violent letter she has received have set me at least a month forward with her.

… the reflection, that, with mingled compassion, and augmented love, arose to my mind, when I beheld the charmer reposing her lovely face upon the bosom of the widow Sorlings, from a recovered fit, as I entered soon after she had received her execrable sister’s letter.

How lovely in her tears!

—And as I entered, her uplifted face significantly bespeaking my protection, as I thought. And can I be a villain to such an angel!—I hope not—But why, Belford, why, once more, puttest thou me in mind, that she may be overcome?

But I dare say, if I had, she would not. People who will be dealing in contradiction ought to pay for it. And to be punished by the consequences of our own choice—what a moral lies there!—

What a deal of good may I not be the occasion of from a little evil!

Dorcas is a neat creature, both in person and dress; her continuance not vulgar. And I am in hopes, as I hinted above, that her lady will accept of her for her bedfellow, in a strange house, for a week or so.

My approbation of his tender behaviour in the midst of my grief, has given him a right, as he seems to think, of addressing me with all the freedom of an approved lover.

I see by this man, that when once a woman embarks with this sex, there is no receding.

One concession is but the prelude to another with them. He has been ever since Sunday last continually complaining of the distance I keep him at; and thinks himself entitled now to call in question my value for him;

But this I resolve, that he shall not have my consent to stay a night under this roof. He has now given me a stronger reason for this determination than I had before.

Alas! my dear, how vain a thing to say, what we will, or what we will not do, when we have put ourselves into the power of this sex!

—He went down to the people below, on my desiring to be left to myself; and stayed till their supper was just ready;

I am more and more displeased with Mr. Lovelace, on reflection, for his boldness in hoping to make me, though but passively, as I may say, testify to his great untruth.

And I shall like him still less for it, if his view in it does not come out to be the hope of accelerating my resolution in his favour, by the difficulty it will lay me under as to my behaviour to him.

She may doubt. She may fear. The wise in all important cases will doubt, and will fear, till they are sure. But her apparent willingness to think well of a spirit so inventive, and so machinating, is a happy prognostic for me.

O these reasoning ladies!⁠—How I love these reasoning ladies!

—’Tis all over with them, when once love has crept into their hearts: for then will they employ all their reasoning powers to excuse rather than to blame the conduct of the doubted lover, let appearances against him be ever so strong.

Be sure to instruct the rest, and do thou thyself remember, not to talk obscenely. You know I never permitted any of you to talk obscenely.

Time enough for that, when ye grow old, and can only talk.

Besides, ye must consider Prisc.’s affected character, my goddess’s real one. Far from obscenity, therefore, do not so much as touch upon the double entendre. What! as I have often said, cannot you touch a lady’s heart without wounding her ear?

Time enough for that, when ye grow old, and can only talk. Besides, ye must consider Prisc.’s affected character, my goddess’s real one. Far from obscenity, therefore, do not so much as touch upon the double entendre.

What! as I have often said, cannot you touch a lady’s heart without wounding her ear?

It is necessary that ye should appear worse men than myself. You cannot help appearing so, you’ll say.

And let me add, that you must attend to every minute circumstance, whether you think there be reason for it, or not.

Deep, like golden ore, frequently lies my meaning, and richly worth digging for.

The hint of least moment, as you may imagine it, is often pregnant with events of the greatest. Be implicit. Am I not your general?

for I was exceedingly attentive to the discourse, and very ready in the auditor’s part of the service.—Eyes did not much wander. How could they, when the loveliest object, infinitely the loveliest in the whole church, was in my view!

Dear creature! how fervent, how amiable, in her devotions! I have got her to own that she prayed for me.

I hope a prayer from so excellent a mind will not be made in vain.

Dear creature! how fervent, how amiable, in her devotions! I have got her to own that she prayed for me. I hope a prayer from so excellent a mind will not be made in vain.

There is, after all, something beautifully solemn in devotion.

The Sabbath is a charming institution to keep the heart right, when it is right. One day in seven, how reasonable!—I think I’ll go to church once a day often. I fancy it will go a great way towards making me a reformed man.

Have I conversed with them so freely as I have done, and learnt nothing of them? Didst thou ever know that a woman’s denial of any favour, whether the least or the greatest, that my heart was set upon, stood her in any stead?

The more perverse she, the more steady I⁠—that is my rule.

But the point thus so much against her will carried, I doubt thou will see in her more of a sullen than of an obliging charmer: for, when Miss Partington was withdrawn, “What was Miss Partington to her?

In every real excellence she surpasses all her sex. But in the article thou seekest to subdue her for, a mere sensualist, a Partington, a Horton, a Martin, would make a sensualist a thousand times happier than she either will or can.

Sweet are the joys that come with willingness.

And wouldst thou make her unhappy for her whole life, and thyself not happy for a single moment?

I will illustrate what I have said by the simile of a bird new caught. We begin, when boys, with birds; and when grown up, go on to women; and both perhaps, in turn, experience our sportive cruelty.

Hast thou not observed, the charming gradations by which the ensnared volatile has been brought to bear with its new condition?

how, at first, refusing all sustenance, it beats and bruises itself against its wires, till it makes its gay plumage fly about, and overspread its well-secured cage. Now it gets out its head; sticking only at its beautiful shoulders:

But never did I meet with a woman who was so silly.—Yet have I heard the dear souls most vehemently threaten their own lives on such an occasion.

But it is saying nothing in a woman’s favour, if we do not allow her to have more sense than a bird.

And yet we must all own, that it is more difficult to catch a bird than a lady.

The man who is fond of being thought more or better than he is, as I have often observed, but provokes a scrutiny into his pretensions; and that generally produces contempt.

For pride, as I believe I have heretofore said, is an infallible sign of weakness; of something wrong in the head or in both.

He that exalts himself insults his neighbour; who is provoked to question in him even that merit, which, were he modest, would perhaps be allowed to be his due.

and that generally produces contempt. For pride, as I believe I have heretofore said, is an infallible sign of weakness; of something wrong in the head or in both.

He that exalts himself insults his neighbour; who is provoked to question in him even that merit, which, were he modest, would perhaps be allowed to be his due.

You will say that I am very grave: and so I am. Mr. Lovelace is extremely sunk in my opinion since Monday night: nor see I before me anything that can afford me a pleasing hope.

To serve one’s self, and punish a villain at the same time, is serving public and private.

The law was not made for such a man as me.

And I must come at correspondences so disobediently carried on.

But how shall I find this out; since her Dorcas knows no more of her dressing and undressing than her Lovelace? For she is dressed for the day before she appears even to her servant. Vilely suspicious!

Upon my soul, Jack, a suspicious temper is a punishable temper.

If a woman suspects a rogue in an honest man, is it not enough to make the honest man who knows it a rogue?

But didst ever hear who was the wisest woman? I want a comparison for this lady. Cunning women and witches we read of without number. But I fancy wisdom never entered into the character of a woman. It is not a requisite of the sex.

Women, indeed, make better sovereigns than men: but why is that?⁠—because the women-sovereigns are governed by men; the men-sovereigns by women.

—Charming, by my soul! For hence we guess at the rudder by which both are steered.

Joseph, honest Joseph, as I call him, may hang himself. I have played him off enough, and have very little further use for him. No need to wear one plot to the stumps, when I can find new ones every hour.

Nor blame me for the use I make of my talents. Who, that hath such, will let ’em be idle?

Well, then, I will find a Singleton; that’s all I have to do.

But now I hear the rusty hinges of my beloved’s door give me creaking invitation.

My heart creaks and throbs with respondent trepidations: Whimsical enough though! for what relation has a lover’s heart to a rusty pair of hinges?

But they are the hinges that open and shut the door of my beloved’s bedchamber. Relation enough in that.

Let this evermore be my caution to individuals of my sex—

Guard your eye: ’twill ever be in a combination against your judgment.

If there are two parts to be taken, it will be forever, traitor as it is, taking the wrong one.

You pity her mother—so do not I! I pity no mother that puts it out of her power to show maternal love, and humanity, in order to patch up for herself a precarious and sorry quiet, which every blast of wind shall disturb.

I hate tyrants in every form and shape: but paternal and maternal tyrants are the worst of all: for they can have no bowels.

I repeat, that I pity none of them. Our beloved friend only deserves pity. She had never been in the hands of this man, but for them. She is quite blameless. You don’t know all her story.

Yet think me not impenetrable by a proper contrition and remorse—

But what a torment is it to have a will without a power!

Adieu! adieu! God give us both comfort; and to the once dear—the ever-dear creature (for can a mother forget her child?) repentance, deep repentance! and as little suffering as may befit his blessed will, and her grievous fault, prays

Yet write you should, I think, if you cannot speak. But speaking is certainly best: for words leave no traces; they pass as breath; and mingle with air; and may be explained with latitude.

But the pen is a witness on record.

I know the gentleness of your spirit; I know the laudable pride of your heart; and the just notion you have of the dignity of our sex in these delicate points. But once more, all this in nothing now:

He asked me then, if I would so far permit him to touch upon the happy day, as to request the presence of Lord M. on the occasion, and to be my father?

Father had a sweet and venerable sound with it, I said. I should be glad to have a father who would own me!

Was not this plain speaking, think you, my dear? Yet it rather, I must own, appears so to me on reflection, than was designed freely at the time. For I then, with a sigh from the bottom of my heart, thought of my own father;

an irresolution that will be owing to awe, to reverence, to profound veneration; and that will have more eloquence in it than words can have. Speak out then, love, and spare not.

Hard-heartedness, as it is called, is an essential of the libertine’s character.

Familiarized to the distresses he occasions, he is seldom betrayed by tenderness into a complaisant weakness unworthy of himself.

Let him laugh at them, if he pleases: you and I know better things, Mr. Belford—

Though you have kept company with a wolf, you have not learnt to howl of him.

But nevertheless, you must not let him know that I have written to you on this subject. I am ashamed to say it; but he has ever treated me as if I were a man of very common understanding;

I am ashamed to say it; but he has ever treated me as if I were a man of very common understanding; and would, perhaps, think never the better of the best advice in the world for coming from me.

Those, Mr. Belford, who most love, are least set by.⁠—But who would expect velvet to be made out of a sow’s ear?

I am sure he has no reason however to slight me as he does. He may and will be the better for me, if he outlives me; though he once told me to my face, that I might do as I would with my estate;

and I have been but too indulgent to him since. A fine grateful disposition, you’ll say, to return evil for good! but that was always his way. It is a good saying, and which was verified by him with a witness—

Children when little, make their parents fools; when great, mad.

Had his parents lived to see what I have seen of him, they would have been mad indeed.

Excellent as she is, she ought not to depend on her merits with such a changeable fellow, and such a profest marriage-hater, as he has been.

Desert and reward, I can assure her, seldom keep company together.

But let him remember, that vengeance though it comes with leaden feet, strikes with iron hands. If he behaves ill in this case, he may find it so.

Nor was my Rosebud the only girl I spared:—When my power was acknowledged, who more merciful than thy friend?

It is resistance that inflames desire, Sharpens the darts of love, and blows its fire.

Love is disarm’d that meets with too much ease; He languishes, and does not care to please.

Indeed, I was always of opinion that a person was entitled to that, and not to ill usage, because he had a respect for me. And so I have often and often told my daughter.

A woman I think makes but a poor figure in a man’s eye afterwards, and does no reputation to her sex neither, when she behaves like a tyrant to him beforehand.

To be sure, Sir, if I were to change my condition, I know not a gentleman whose proposal could be more agreeable. Your nephew and your nieces have enough without you:

… at so early an age, with a constitution so firm, health so blooming, eyes so sparkling, expectations therefore so lively, and hope so predominating, could not be absolutely, and from her own vigilance, so guarded, and so apprehensive, as I have found her to be.

Sparkling eyes, Jack, when the poetical tribe have said all they can for them, are an infallible sign of a rogue, or room for a rogue, in the heart.

Thou mayest go on with thy preachments, and Lord M. with his wisdom of nations, I am now more assured of her than ever. And now my revenge is up, and joined with my love, all resistance must fall before it.

and repeats his vows of revenge; especially for these words; “That should he attempt anything that would make him obnoxious to the laws of society, she might have a fair riddance of him, either by flight or the gallows, no matter which.” He then adds)—

’Tis my pride to subdue girls who know too much to doubt their knowledge; and to convince them, that they know too little, to defend themselves from the inconveniencies of knowing too much.

How passion drives a man on! [proceeds he].—I have written a prodigious quantity in a very few hours! Now my resentments are warm, I will see, and perhaps will punish, this proud, this double-armed beauty.

I cast myself at her feet.—Begone, Mr. Lovelace, said she, with a rejecting motion, her fan in her hand; for your own sake leave me!—

My soul is above thee, man!

with both her hands pushing me from her!—Urge me not to tell thee, how sincerely I think my soul above thee!—Thou hast, in mine, a proud, a too proud heart to contend with!—Leave me, and leave me forever!—Thou has a proud heart to contend with!

A strange apprehensive creature! Her terror is too great for the occasion.

Evils are often greater in apprehension than in reality.

Hast thou never observed, that the terrors of a bird caught, and actually in the hand, bear no comparison to what we might have supposed those terrors would be, were we to have formed a judgment of the same bird by its shyness before it …

But I know every tittle thou canst say upon it. Spare therefore thy wambling nonsense, I desire thee; and leave this sweet excellence and me to our fate: that will determine for us, as it shall please itself: for as Cowley says,

An unseen hand makes all our moves:

And some are great, and some are small; Some climb to good, some from great fortunes fall: Some wise men, and some fools we call: Figures, alas! of speech!—For destiny plays us all.

But yet, how dost thou propose to subdue thy sweet enemy!—

Abhorred be force, be the necessity of force, if that can be avoided! There is no triumph in force⁠—no conquest over the will⁠—no prevailing by gentle degrees over the gentle passions!⁠—force is the devil!

My cursed character, as I have often said, was against me at setting out—Yet is she not a woman? Cannot I find one yielding or but half-yielding moment, if she do not absolutely hate me?

No wonder a girl’s stomach should plague her. A single woman; that’s it. When she has a man to plague, it will have something besides itself to prey upon.

Knowest thou not moreover, that man is the woman’s sun; woman is the man’s earth?

—How dreary, how desolate, the earth, that the suns shines not upon!

It is a long lane that has no turning.

—Do not despise me for my proverbs—you know I was always fond of them; and if you had been so too, it would have been the better for you, let me tell you.

Good!—But how wilt thou manage to bring up blood, and not hurt thyself?

Foolish fellow! Are there no pigeons and chickens in every poulterer’s shop?

But then I will be persuaded by Mrs. Sinclair, that I have of late confined myself too much; and so will have a chair called, and be carried to the Park; where I will try to walk half the length of the Mall, or so;

Next to prostration lowly bowed the Captain. O how the sweet creature smiled her approbation of him! Reverence from one begets reverence from another.

Men are more of monkeys in imitation than they think themselves.

—Involuntarily, in a manner, I bent my knee—My dearest life—and made a very fine speech on presenting the Captain to her. No title myself, to her lip or cheek, ’tis well he attempted not either.

To be sure, Jack, she means to do great despite to his Satanic majesty in her hopes of reforming me. No wonder, therefore, if he exerts himself to prevent her, and to be revenged. But how came this in!—

I am ever of party against myself.

—One day, I fancy, I shall hate myself on recollecting what I am about at this instant. But I must stay till then. We must all of us do something to repent of.

But how came this in!—I am ever of party against myself.—One day, I fancy, I shall hate myself on recollecting what I am about at this instant. But I must stay till then.

We must all of us do something to repent of.

The reconciliation-prospect was enlarged upon. If her uncle Harlowe will but pave the way to it, and if it can be brought about, she shall be happy.—Happy, with a sigh, as it is now possible she can be!

I had need, thou wilt say, to have some good qualities.

Great faults and great virtues are often found in the same person.

In nothing very bad, but as to women: and did not one of them begin with me.

But as if she cared not to trust thee with the subject, referring to the same author as for his more positive decision, she thus, with the same harmony of voice and accent, emphatically decided upon it.

Wit, like a luxurious vine, Unless to virtue’s prop it join,

Firm and erect, tow’rd heaven bound, Though it with beauteous leaves and pleasant fruit be crown’d, It lies deform’d, and rotting on the ground.

If, Lovelace, thou laughest at me, thy ridicule will be more conformable to thy actions than to thy belief.—

Devils believe and tremble. Canst thou be more abandoned than they?

And here let me add, with regard to my poor old man, that I often wish thee present but for one half hour in a day, to see the dregs of a gay life running off in the most excruciating tortures that the cholic, the …

What of uncommon would there be in this case, but for her watchfulness!—As well as I love intrigue and stratagem, dost think that I had not rather have gained my end with less trouble and less guilt?

The man, let me tell thee, who is as wicked as he can be, is a worse man than I am.

Let me ask any rake in England, if, resolving to carry his point, he would have been so long about it? or have had so much compunction as I have had?

Silly fellow!—

Did ever any man, thinkest thou, deceive a woman, but at the expense of his veracity; how, otherwise, can he be said to deceive?

As to the means, thou dost not imagine that I expect a direct consent. My main hope is but in a yielding reluctance; without which I will be sworn, whatever rapes have been attempted, none ever were committed, one person to one person.

and most particularly of those who have only kept their secret better than I have kept, or wish to keep, mine. Were those exceptions to take place, perhaps, Jack, I should have ten to acquit to one that should condemn me.

Have I not often said, that human nature is a rogue?

I threatened above to refrain writing to thee. But take it not to heart, Jack—I must write on, and cannot help it.

What—What—What now!—Bounding villain! wouldst thou choke me?—

I was speaking to my heart, Jack!⁠—It was then at my throat.

—And what is all this for?—These shy women, how, when a man thinks himself near the mark, do they tempest him!

Thursday Morning, Five o’clock, (June 8).

Now is my reformation secure; for I never shall love any other woman!

Oh! she is all variety! She must ever be new to me! Imagination cannot form; much less can the pencil paint; nor can the soul of painting, poetry, describe an angel so exquisitely, so elegantly lovely!—But I will not by anticipation pacify thy impatience.

Oh! no!—And yet you are!—And again I was her dear Lovelace!—her hands again clasped over her charming bosom:—

Kill me! kill me!⁠—if I am odious enough in your eyes to deserve this treatment: and I will thank you!

—Too long, much too long has my life been a burden to me!—Or, (wildly looking all round her), give me but the means, and I will instantly convince you that my honour is dearer to me than my life!

It were better to herself, as well as for me, that she had not made so much ado about nothing. I must keep my anger alive, lest it sink into compassion.

Love and compassion, be the provocation ever so great, are hard to be separated: while anger converts what would be pity, without it, into resentment.

Nothing can be lovely in a man’s eye with which he is thoroughly displeased.

O for a curse to kill with!⁠—Ruined! Undone! Outwitted! Tricked!⁠—Zounds, man, the lady has gone off!⁠—Absolutely gone off! Escaped!⁠—

Thou knowest not, nor canst conceive, the pangs that wring my heart!—What can I do!—O Lord, O Lord, O Lord!

I have heard her story!—Art, damn’d, confounded, wicked, unpardonable art, is a woman of her character—But show me a woman, and I’ll show thee a plotter!—

This plaguey sex is art itself: every individual of it is a plotter by nature.

This is the substance of the old wretch’s account.

So, I thank my stars, we are upon a par at last, as to this point, which is a great ease to my conscience, thou must believe. And if what Hudibras tells us is true, the dear fugitive has also abundance of pleasure to come.

Doubtless the pleasure is as great In being cheated, as to cheat.

As lookers-on find most delight, Who least perceive the juggler’s sleight; And still the less they understand, The more admire the slight of hand.

But had she only a garret to let, I would have liked it; and been a poor author afraid of arrests, and made that my place of refuge; yet would have made shift to pay beforehand for what I had.

I can suit myself to any condition, that’s my comfort.

The widow Moore returned! say you?—Down, down, flutterer!—This impertinent heart is more troublesome to me than my conscience, I think.—I shall be obliged to hoarsen my voice, and roughen my character, to keep up with its puppily dancings.

I unbuttoned therefore my cape, I pulled off my flapt slouched hat; I threw open my great coat, and, like the devil in Milton (an odd comparison though!)—

I started up in my own form divine, Touch’d by the beam of her celestial eye, More potent than Ithuriel’s spear!

—

I looked upon the women, and upon her by turns, with a pitying eye; and they shook their wise heads, and besought me to retire, and her to lie down to compose herself.

This hurricane, like other hurricanes, was presently allayed by a shower.

She threw herself once more into her armed chair, and begged pardon of the women for her passionate excess; but not of me: yet I was in hopes, that when compliments were stirring, I should have come in for a share.

They both simpered, and looked upon one another.

These subjects always make women simper, at least.

No need but of the most delicate hints to them. A man who is gross in a woman’s company, ought to be knocked down with a club:

Yet what can be expected of an angel under twenty?—She has a world of knowledge:—knowledge speculative, as I may say, but no experience.—How should she?—

Knowledge by theory only is a vague, uncertain light: a Will o’ the Wisp, which as often misleads the doubting mind, as puts it right.

There are many things in the world, could a moralizer say, that would afford inexpressible pleasure to a reflecting mind, were it not for the mixture they come to us with.

I will now give thee the substance of the dialogue that passed between the two women and the lady.

Wonder not, that a perverse wife makes a listening husband.

The event, however, as thou wilt find, justified the old observation, That listners seldom hear good of themselves. Conscious of their own demerits, if I may guess by myself, (There’s ingenuousness, Jack!) and fearful of censure, they seldom find themselves disappointed.

the fatigues she might endure; a lady of her appearance, unguarded, unprotected. On the other hand they dwelt upon my declared contrition, and on my promises; for the performance of which they offered to be bound. So much had my kneeling humility affected them.

Women, Jack, tacitly acknowledge the inferiority of their sex, in the pride they take to behold a kneeling lover at their feet.

She turned from me, and threw herself into a chair.

How valiant this made me look to the women!—

The sex love us mettled fellows at their hearts.

Be that as it would, I should never love any of the family but my spouse; and wanting nothing from them, I would not, but for her sake, have gone so far as I had gone towards a reconciliation.

now stroking his shining chin, now turning his hat upon his thumb! then leering in my face, flourishing with his head—O Christ! now-and-then cried the rascal—

What joy has this dog in mischief!

—More than I can have in the completion of my most favourite purposes!—These fellows are ever happier than their masters.

What joy has this dog in mischief!—More than I can have in the completion of my most favourite purposes!—

These fellows are ever happier than their masters.

I was once thinking to rumple up this billet till I had broken the seal. Young families (Miss Howe’s is not an ancient one) love ostentatious sealings: and it might have been supposed to have been squeezed in pieces in old Grimes’s breeches-pocket.

These tender doves know not, till put to it, what they can bear; especially when engaged in love affairs; and their attention wholly engrossed. But the sex love busy scenes. Still life is their aversion.

A woman will create a storm, rather than be without one.

So that they can preside in the whirlwind, and direct it, they are happy.—But my beloved’s misfortune is, that she must live in tumult; yet neither raise them herself, nor be able to control them.

Cl.

That cause must be well tried, where the offender takes his seat upon the same bench with the judge.

—I submit not mine to men—nor, give me leave to say, to you, Captain Tomlinson, though I am willing to have a good opinion of you.

Cl.

No man ought to be impatient at imputations he is not ashamed to deserve.

An innocent man will not be outrageous upon such imputations. A guilty man ought not. (Most excellently would this charming creature cap sentences with Lord M.!) But I am not now trying you, Sir, (to me), on the foot of your merits.

I was full of hope now. Severe as her expressions were, I saw she was afraid that I should think of what she had written. And, indeed, her letter is violence itself.—

Angry people, Jack, should never write while their passion holds.

Lovel. The severity you have shown me, Madam, whether by pen or by speech, shall never have place in my remembrance, but for your honor. In the light you have taken things, all is deserved, and but the natural result of virtuous resentment;

As to Tomlinson, it looks as if poverty had made him the wicked fellow he is; as plenty and wantonness have made us what we are.

Necessity, after all, is the test of principle.

But what is there in this dull word, or thing, called honesty, that even I, who cannot in my present views be served by it, cannot help thinking even the accidental emanations of it amiable in Tomlinson, though demonstrated in a female case;

A charming expedient! cried the widow. They were all three ready to clap their hands for joy upon it.

Women love to be married twice at least, Jack; though not indeed to the same man.

And all blessed the reconciliatory scheme and the proposer of it; and, supposing it came from the Captain, they looked at him with pleasure, while his face shined with the applause implied.

Her whole person was informed by her sentiments. She seemed to be taller than before.

How the God within her exalted her, not only above me, but above herself!

Divine creature! (as I thought her), I called her. I acknowledged the superiority of her mind; and was proceeding—but she interrupted me—All human excellence, said she, is comparative only. My mind, I believe, is indeed superior to yours, debased as yours is by evil habits:

Divine creature! (as I thought her), I called her. I acknowledged the superiority of her mind; and was proceeding—but she interrupted me—

All human excellence, said she, is comparative only.

My mind, I believe, is indeed superior to yours, debased as yours is by evil habits: but I had not known it to be so, if you had not taken pains to convince me of the inferiority of yours.

How great, how sublimely great, this creature!—

By my soul I cannot forgive her for her virtues!

There is no bearing the consciousness of the infinite inferiority she charged me with.—But why will she break from me, when good resolutions are taking place? The red-hot iron she refuses to strike—O why will she suffer the yielding wax to harden?

If it be not that, (and yet what power should her guardian angel have over me?) I don’t know what it is that gives a check to my revenge, whenever I meditate treason against so sovereign a virtue.

Conscience is dead and gone, as I told thee; so it cannot be that.

A young conscience growing up, like the phoenix, from the ashes of the old one, it cannot be, surely. But if it were, it would be hard, if I could not overlay a young conscience.

The fellow told the maid, that, by what he discovered of the young lady’s face, it looked very rosy to what he took it to be; and he thought her a good deal fatter, as she lay, and not so tall.

All women are born to intrigue, Jack; and practise it more or less, as fathers, guardians, governesses, from dear experience, can tell; and in love affairs are naturally expert, and quicker in their wits by half than men.

This ready, though raw wench, gave an instance of this, and improved on the dropsical hint I had given her. The lady’s seeming plumpness was owing to a dropsical disorder, and to the round posture she lay in—very likely, truly.

Very hard, Belford, that credits cannot be set against debits, and a balance struck in a rake’s favour, as well as in that of every common man!—

But he, from whom no good is expected, is not allowed the merit of the good he does.

I ought to have been a little more attentive to character than I have been. For, notwithstanding that the measures of right and wrong are said to be so manifest, let me tell thee, that character biases and runs away with all mankind.

I ought to have been a little more attentive to character than I have been. For, notwithstanding that the measures of right and wrong are said to be so manifest, let me tell thee, that character biases and runs away with all mankind.

Let a man or woman once establish themselves in the world’s opinion, and all that either of them do will be sanctified.

Nay, in the very courts of justice, does not character acquit or condemn as often as facts, and sometimes even in spite of facts?—Yet, (impolitic that I have been and am!)

But well said the honest corregidor at Madrid, (a saying with which I encroached Lord M.’s collection)—

Good actions are remembered but for a day: bad ones for many years after the life of the guilty.

Such is the relish that the world has for scandal. In other words, such is the desire which everyone has to exculpate himself by blackening his neighbour.

But well said the honest corregidor at Madrid, (a saying with which I encroached Lord M.’s collection)—Good actions are remembered but for a day: bad ones for many years after the life of the guilty.

Such is the relish that the world has for scandal.

In other words, such is the desire which everyone has to exculpate himself by blackening his neighbour. You and I, Belford, have been very kind to the world, in furnishing it with opportunities to gratify its devil.

But thinkest thou, (and yet I think thou dost), that there is anything in these high flights among the sex?—

Verily, Jack, these vehement friendships are nothing but chaff and stubble, liable to be blown away by the very wind that raises them.

Apes, mere apes of us! they think the word friendship has a pretty sound with it; and it is much talked of—a fashionable word.

This charming creature’s presence, thought I, awes us both. And I wished her absence, though any other woman were present, that I might try the differences in Miss Howe’s behaviour before her friend’s face, or behind her back.

Delicate women make delicate women, as well as decent men.

With all Miss Howe’s fire and spirit, it was easy to see, by her very eye, that she watched for lessons and feared reproof from the penetrating eye of her milder dispositioned friend;

Miss Howe thinks I may be diverted from pursuing my charmer, by some new-started villany. Villany is a word that she is extremely fond of. But I can tell her, that it is impossible I should, till the end of this villany be obtained.

Difficulty is a stimulus with such a spirit as mine.

I thought Miss Howe knew me better. Were she to offer herself, person for person, in the romancing zeal of her friendship, to save her friend, it should not do, while the dear creature is on this side the moon.

Don’t tell me that virtue and principle are her guides on this occasion!—’Tis pride, a greater pride than my own, that governs her. Love, she has none, thou seest; nor ever had; at least not in a superior degree.

Love, that deserves the name, never was under the dominion of prudence, or of any reasoning power.

She cannot bear to be thought a woman, I warrant! And if, in the last attempt, I find her not one, what will she be the worse for the trial?—No one is to blame for suffering an evil he cannot shun or avoid.

who, as well as all other married tyrants, must have been upon good behaviour from year to year.

A termagant wife, if such a law were to pass, would be a phoenix.

The churches would be the only marketplace for the fair sex; and domestic excellence the capital recommendation.

Devil take you!—Less arrogance. You are got into airs of young quality. Be less sensible of your new condition.

People born to dignity command respect without needing to require it.

Now for your part, Cousin Charlotte!—

A stranger, as I hope to be saved, to the principal arts of your sex!—

Once more, what a devil has your heart to do in your eyes?

Have I not told you, that my beloved is a great observer of the eyes? She once quoted upon me a text, which showed me how she came by her knowledge—Dorcas’s were found guilty of treason the first moment she saw her.

But too low, too low Lady Betty, for your years and your quality. The common fault of your sex will be your danger: aiming to be young too long!—The devil’s in you all, when you judge of yourselves by your wishes, and by your vanity!

Fifty, in that case, is never more than fifteen.

Graceful ease, conscious dignity, like that of my charmer, Oh! how hard to hit!

You penetrated my proud heart with the jealousy of an elder sister’s searching eye.

You knew me better than I knew myself.

Hence your upbraidings and your chidings, when I began to totter.

Thou fell blight, thou eastern blast, thou overspreading mildew, that destroyest the early promises of the shining year! that mockest the laborious toil, and blastest the joyful hopes, of the painful husbandman!

Thou fretting moth, that corruptest the fairest garment!

Thou eating cankerworm, that preyest upon the opening bud, and turnest the damask-rose into livid yellowness!

What you, or Mrs. Sinclair, or somebody (I cannot tell who) have done to my poor head, you best know: but I shall never be what I was. My head is gone.

I have wept away all my brain, I believe; for I can weep no more.

Indeed I have had my full share; so it is no matter.

What would I say!—I forget what I was going to say.

O Lovelace, you are Satan himself; or he helps you out in everything; and that’s as bad!

But have you really and truly sold yourself to him? And for how long? What duration is your reign to have?

Ruined you, Madam—the world need not—I knew not what to say.

Ruined me in my own eyes; and that is the same to me as if all the world knew it

—hinder me not from going whither my mysterious destiny shall lead me.

There is certainly a good deal in the observation, that it costs a man ten times more pains to be wicked, than it would cost him to be good.

What a confounded number of contrivances have I had recourse to, in order to carry my point with this charming creature; and yet after all, how have I puzzled myself by it;

By my soul, Belford, this dear girl gives the lie to all our rakish maxims. There must be something more than a name in virtue!—I now see that there is!—

Once subdued, always subdued⁠—’Tis an egregious falsehood!

—But, O Jack, she never was subdued. What have I obtained but an increase of shame and confusion!—While her glory has been established by her sufferings!

By my soul, Belford, this dear girl gives the lie to all our rakish maxims. There must be something more than a name in virtue!—I now see that there is!—Once subdued, always subdued—’Tis an egregious falsehood!—

But, O Jack, she never was subdued. What have I obtained but an increase of shame and confusion!⁠—While her glory has been established by her sufferings!

This one merit is, however, left me, that I have laid all her sex under obligation to me, by putting this noble creature to trials, which, so gloriously supported, have done honour to them all.

This, thou wilt own, was a princely offer. And I was resolved to be as good as my word. I thought I had killed my conscience, as I told thee, Belford, some time ago.

But conscience, I find, though it may be temporarily stifled, cannot die, and, when it dare not speak aloud, will whisper.

And at this instant I thought I felt the revived varletess (on but a slight retrograde motion) writhing round my pericardium like a serpent;

And imaginest thou, fairest, thought I, that this will go down with a Lovelace?

Thou oughtest to have known that free-livers, like ministers of state, never part with a power put into their hands, without an equivalent of twice the value.

I pleaded, that if we joined hands this morning, (if not, tomorrow; if not, on Thursday, her uncle’s birthday, and in his presence); and afterwards, as I had proposed, set out for Berks.; we should, of course, quit this house;

She was visibly affrighted: and upstairs she hastened.

A bad woman is certainly, Jack, more terrible to her own sex than even a bad man.

I followed her up. She rushed by her own apartment into the dining-room: no terror can make her forget her punctilio.

She would have spoken, but could not, looking down my guilt into confusion.

A mouse might have been heard passing over the floor: her own light feet and rustling silks could not have prevented it; for she seemed to tread air, and to be all soul.

She passed backwards and forwards, now towards me, now towards the door several times, before speech could get the better of indignation;

They could not laugh at the poor figure I made.—Lord! how every devil, conscience-shaken, trembled!—

What a dejection must ever fall to the lot of guilt, were it given to innocence always thus to exert itself!

“And as for thee, thou vile Dorcas! Thou double deceiver!—whining out thy pretended love for me!—Begone, wretch!—Nobody will hurt thee!—Begone, I say!—thou has too well acted thy part to be blamed by any here but myself—thou art safe:

The Captain shall give her away, as proxy for her uncle. My Lord will die. My fortune will help my will, and set me above everything and everybody.

But here is the curse⁠—she despises me, Jack!⁠—What man, as I have heretofore said, can bear to be despised⁠—especially by his wife!

—O Lord!—O Lord! What a hand, what a cursed hand, have I made of this plot!—And here ends

But here is the curse—she despises me, Jack!—What man, as I have heretofore said, can bear to be despised—especially by his wife!—O Lord!—O Lord!

What a hand, what a cursed hand, have I made of this plot!

—And here ends

You are not in love with her as I am. Fly out, if she doubt your honour. Spirits naturally soft may be beat out of their play and borne down (though ever so much raised) by higher anger.

All women are cowards at bottom; only violent where they may.

I have often stormed a girl out of her mistrust, and made her yield (before she knew where she was) to the point indignantly mistrusted; and that to make up with me, though I was the aggressor.

And had thy picture been drawn, would she have forgiven the painter, had he not expressed so exactly thy lineaments, as that everyone should have discerned the likeness? The handsome likeness is all that is wished for.

Ugliness made familiar to us, with the partiality natural to fond parents, will be beauty all the world over.

—Do thou apply.

For dost thou think I could have held my purpose against such an angel as this, had I ever before met with a woman so much in earnest to defend her honour against the unwearied artifices and perseverance of the man she loved?

Why then were there not more examples of a virtue so immovable? Or, why was this singular one to fall to my lot? except indeed to double my guilt; and at the same time to convince all that should hear her story, that there are angels as well as devils in the flesh?

So much for confession; and for the sake of humouring my conscience; with a view likewise to disarm thy malice by acknowledgement: since no one shall say worse of me, than I will of myself on this occasion.

… Charles II, as honest White Kennet tells us, had half exhausted Blackwell-hall of its sables—an indication, as the historian would insinuate, that the monarch was to be poisoned, and the ambassador in the secret.—And yet, fool that I was, I could not take the hint—

What the devil does a man read history for, if he cannot profit by the examples he find in it?

But thus, Jack, is an observation of the old Peer’s verified, that one misfortune seldom comes alone: and so concludes

It is not the least aggravation of my fault, nor of my regrets, that with such inclinations as God has given me, I have put it our of my power to do the good I once pleased myself to think I was born to do.

It is a sad thing, my dearest Mrs. Nortin, to render useless to ourselves and the world, by our own rashness, the talents which Providence has entrusted to us, for the service of both.

But these reflections are now too late; and perhaps I ought to have kept them to myself. Let me, however, hope that you love me still. Pray let me hope that you do.

I once had a good deal of influence over her kind heart, and she made all I said a law to her. But people in calamity have little weight in anything, or with anybody.

Prosperity and independence are charming things on this account, that they give force to the counsels of a friendly heart; while it is thought insolence in the miserable to advise, or so much as to remonstrate.

Yet is Miss Howe an invaluable person: And is it to be expected that she should preserve the same regard for my judgment that she had before I forfeited all title to discretion?

… and earnestness escaped), and after such an attempt as he had made, you would have been prevailed upon not only to forgive him, but (without being married too) to return with him to that horrid house!—A house I had given you such an account of!—Surprising!—

What an intoxicating thing is this love?

—I always feared, that you, even you, were not proof against its inconsistent effects.

Oh! return, return, thou only charmer of my soul! return to thy adoring Lovelace! What is the light, what the air, what the town, what the country, what’s anything, without thee?

Light, air, joy, harmony, in my notion, are but parts of thee; and could they be all expressed in one word, that word would be Clarissa.

O my beloved Clarissa, return thou then; once more return to bless thy Lovelace, who now, by the loss of thee, knows the value of the jewel he has slighted; and rises every morning but to curse the sun that shines upon everybody but him!

Ay, Belford, applauders, repeat I; for although these girls pretend to blame me sometimes for the facts, they praise my manner, my invention, my intrepidity.—Besides, what other people call blame, that call I praise:

I ever did; and so I very early discharged shame, that cold-water damper to an enterprising spirit.

These are smart girls; they have life and wit; and yesterday, upon Charlotte’s raving against me upon a related enterprise, I told her, that I had had in debate several times, whether she were or were not too near of kin to me:

It was some pleasure to me, to observe the placability of these ladies of my own family, had they, any or either of them, met with a Lovelace.

But ’twould be hard upon us honest fellows, Jack, if all women were Clarissas.

Here I am obliged to break off.

and endeavour to engage her interest to forward the desired reconciliation. And if this can be done, I make no question but all may be happily accommodated; for everybody knows the love there is between Miss Harlowe and Miss Howe.

Marriage, with these women, thou seest, Jack, is an atonement for all we can do to them. A true dramatic recompense!

This motion was highly approved of; and I gave my honour, as desired, in the fullest manner they could wish.

for he has been a busy fellow, and I have long wished to have a slap at him!—The lady’s case desperate with her friends too; and likely to be so, while single, and her character exposed to censure.

A husband is a charming cloak, a fig-leaved apron for a wife

: and for a lady to be protected in liberties, in diversions, which her heart pants after—and all her faults, even the most criminal, were she to be detected, to be thrown upon the husband, and the ridicule too; a charming privilege for a wife!

and if that friend bears to be present at them without check or bashfulness, will show a sagacious fellow that she can bear as much herself, at proper time and place.

Chastity, Jack, like piety, is an uniform thing.

If in look, if in speech, a girl give way to undue levity, depend upon it the devil has got one of his cloven feet in her heart already—so, Hickman, take care of thyself, I advise thee, whether I marry or not.

They showed it. Is your name Clarissa Harlowe, Madam? said he.

Yes, yes, indeed, ready to sink, my name was Clarissa Harlowe:⁠—but it is now Wretchedness!

—Lord be merciful to me, what is to come next?

Dorcas was also there; but came not in her sight. Sally, as a favour, offered to carry her to her former lodgings: but she declared they should carry her thither a corpse, if they did.

Very gentle usage the women boast of: so would a vulture, could it speak, with the entrails of its prey upon its rapacious talons.

Of this you’ll judge from what I have to recite.

I have ordered pen, ink, and paper, to be brought you, Miss Harlowe. There they are. I know you love writing. You may write to whom you please. Your friend, Miss Howe, will expect to hear from you.

I have no friend, said she, I deserve none.

Rowland, for that’s the officer’s name, told her, she had friends enough to pay the debt, if she would write.

Should you like to be at liberty?

I am miserable!⁠—What is liberty to the miserable, but to be more miserable.

How miserable, Miss?—You may make yourself as happy as you please.

As you deserve, Miss Harlowe. Pride will have a fall.

Better fall, with what you call pride, than stand with meanness.

I had once a better opinion of you, Miss Horton!—Indeed you should not insult the miserable.

She believed, if not too much undervalued, those, and her few valuables, would answer everything. She wished for no surplus but to discharge the last expenses; and forty shillings would do as well for those as forty pounds. “

Let my ruin, said she, lifting up her eyes, be large! Let it be complete, in this life!

—For a composition, let it be complete.”—And there she stopped.

… a dark nook stood an old broken-bottomed cane couch, without a squab, or coverlid, sunk at one corner, and unmortised by the failing of one of its worm-eater legs, which lay in two pieces under the wretched piece of furniture it could no longer support.

And this, thou horrid Lovelace, was the bedchamber of the divine Clarissa!!!

I had leisure to cast my eye on these things: for, going up softly, the poor lady turned not about at our entrance; nor, till I spoke, moved her head.

By the great God of Heaven!—

Nay, Sir, if you swear, I must doubt you!⁠—If you yourself think your word insufficient, what reliance can I have on your oath!

—O that this my experience had not cost me so dear! but were I to live a thousand years, I would always suspect the veracity of a swearer. Excuse me, Sir;

I offered to plead for my sincerity; and mentioned the word politeness; and would have distinguished between that and flattery.

Nothing can be polite, said she, that is not just: whatever I may have had; I have now no vanity to gratify.

I disclaimed all intentions of compliment: all I had said, and what I should say, was, and should be, the effect of sincere veneration. My unhappy friend’s account of her had entitled her to that.

She has so much true dignity in her manner, without pride or arrogance, (which, in those who have either, one is tempted to mortify), such a piercing eye, yet softened so sweetly with rays of benignity, that she commands all one’s reverence.

Methinks I have a kind of holy love for this angel of a woman; and it is matter of astonishment to me, that thou couldst converse with her a quarter of an hour together, and hold thy devilish purposes.

Guarded as she was by piety, prudence, virtue, dignity, family, fortune, and a purity of heart that never woman before her boasted, what a real devil must he be (yet I doubt I shall make thee proud!)

A man in ill health, and crop-sick, cannot play with these solemn things as thou canst, and be neither better nor worse for them.—

Repentance, Jack, I have a notion, should be set about while a man is in health and spirits.

What’s a man fit for, (not to begin a new work, surely!) when he is not himself, nor master of his faculties?—Hence, as I apprehend, it is that a deathbed repentance is supposed to be such a precarious and ineffectual thing.

and I am highly in conceit with myself, greatly as I used to value thine, for being able, spontaneously as I may say, to make this preference.

It is, after all, a devilish life we have lived.

And to consider how it all ends in a very few years—to see to what a state of ill health this poor fellow is so soon reduced—and then to observe how every one of ye run away from the unhappy being, as rats from a …

Revenge and obstinacy, Mr. Hickman, will make women, the best of them, do very unaccountable things.

Rather than not put out both eyes of a man they are offended with, they will give up one of their own.

I don’t know what to say to this, Sir: but sure she cannot encourage any other person’s address!—So soon too—Why, Sir, she is, as we are told, so ill, and so weak—

But I presume to hope that I have a mind that cannot be debased, in essential instances, by temporal calamities.

Little do those poor wretches know of the force of innate principles, (forgive my own implied vanity, was her word), who imagine, that a prison, or penury, can bring a right-turned mind to be guilty of a wilful baseness, in order to avoid such short-lived evils.

She then turned from me towards the window, with a dignity suitable to her words; and such as showed her to be more of soul than of body at that instant.

The charming creature sighed, and shook her head.—

Wedding-day, repeated she!⁠—I wish you, Mrs. Smith, many happy wedding-days!⁠—But you will excuse me.

Mr. Smith came up with the same request. They both applied to me.

and repeating, that they had an angel in their house.—I thought they had; and that as assuredly as there is a devil under the roof of good Lord M.

I hate thee heartily!⁠—by my faith I do!⁠—every hour I hate thee more than the former!⁠—

The people of the house where I am are courteous and honest. There is a widow who lodges in it (have I not said so formerly?) a good woman; who is the better for having been a proficient in the school of affliction.

An excellent school! my dear Mrs. Norton, in which we are taught to know ourselves, to be able to compassionate and bear with one another, and to look up to a better hope.

I have as humane a physician, (whose fees are his least regard), and as worthy an apothecary, as ever patient was visited by. My nurse is diligent, obliging, silent, and sober. So I am not unhappy without: and within—I hope, my dear Mrs.

Poor fellow! he is most horribly low spirited; mopes about; and nothing diverts him. I pity him at my heart; but can do him no good.—What consolation can I give him, either from his past life, or from his future prospects?

Our friendships and intimacies, Lovelace, are only calculated for strong life and health. When sickness comes, we look round us, and upon one another, like frighted birds, at the sight of a kite ready to souse upon them.

Then, with all our bravery, what miserable wretches are we!

Thou tellest me that thou seest reformation is coming swiftly upon me. I hope it is.

I see so much difference in the behaviour of this admirable woman in her illness, and that of poor Belton in his, that it is plain to me the sinner is the real coward, and the saint the true hero

; and, sooner or later, we shall all find it to be so, if we are not cut off suddenly.

I may be warm. I know I am—too warm. Yet warmth in friendship, surely, cannot be a crime; especially when our friend has great merit, labours under oppression, and is struggling with undeserved calamity.

I have no opinion of coolness in friendship, be it dignified or distinguished by the name of prudence, or what it will.

You may excuse your relations. It was ever your way to do so. But, my dear, other people must be allowed to judge as they please. I am not their daughter, nor the sister of your brother and sister—I thank Heaven, I am not.

He heard, he said, you were not so well as he wished you to be, and as you deserved to be.

O Mr. Lovelace, said she, what have you to answer for on that young lady’s account, if all be true that I have heard.

I have a great deal to answer for, said the unblushing villain: but that dear lady has so many excellencies, and so much delicacy, that little sins are great ones in her eye.

O Mr. Lovelace, said she, what have you to answer for on that young lady’s account, if all be true that I have heard.

I have a great deal to answer for, said the unblushing villain: but that dear lady has so many excellencies, and so much delicacy, that little sins are great ones in her eye.

Little sins! replied Miss D’Oily: Mr. Lovelace’s character is so well known, that nobody believes he can commit little sins.

Excuse me, Madam! his very breath—Unhand me, Sir!

He sighed and looked⁠—O how the practised villain sighed and looked!

He then let go my hand, with such a reverence in his manner, as brought blame upon me from some, that I would not hear him.—And this incensed me the more. O my dear, this man is a devil!

This man, this Mr. Hickman, my dear, is too meek for a man. Indeed he is.—But my patient mother twits me, that her passionate daughter ought to like him the better for that.

But meek men abroad are not always meek at home.

I have observed that in more instances than one: and if they were, I should not, I verily think, like them the better for being so.

who were full of their whispering admirations of him, qualified with if’s and but’s, and what pity’s, and such sort of stuff, that showed in their very dispraises too much liking.

Well may our sex be the sport and ridicule of such libertines! Unthinking eye-governed creatures!

—Would not a little reflection teach us, that a man of merit must be a man of modesty, because a diffident one?

I have no patience with such a devil—man he cannot be called. To be sure he would behave in the same manner anywhere, or in any presence, even at the altar itself, if a woman were with him there.

It shall ever be a rule with me, that he who does not regard a woman with some degree of reverence, will look upon her and occasionally treat her with contempt.

He had the confidence to offer to take me out; but I absolutely refused him, and shunned him all I could, putting on the most contemptuous airs; but nothing could mortify him.

… at all, after I am told that he had the intrepidity to go there, knowing who were invited and expected.—Only this, my dear, I really wonder at, that Miss Howe could imagine that I could have a thought of such a man for a husband.

Poor wretch! I pity him, to see him fluttering about; abusing talents that were given him for excellent purposes; taking in consideration for courage; and dancing, fearless of danger, on the edge of a precipice!

But indeed his threatening to see me most sensibly alarms and shocks me. I cannot but hope that I never, never more shall see him in this world.

and she saw no end of it: but all was darkness and apprehension before her. Moreover, has she it not in her power to disappoint, as much as she has been disappointed?

Revenge, Jack, has induced many a woman to cherish a life, to which grief and despair would otherwise have put an end.

And, after all, death is no such eligible thing, as Job in his calamities, makes it. And a death desired merely from worldly disappointments shows not a right mind, let me tell this lady, whatever she may think of it.

and, if you can overcome it, I shall then be as happy as I wish to be; for

I cannot, indeed I cannot, think of parting with you, for many, many years to come.

The reasons you give for discouraging my wishes to have you near us are so convincing, that I ought at present to acquiesce in them:

And as everybody values you here, I advise you not to interest yourself too warmly in her favour, especially before my Bella’s Betty, till I can let you know a proper time. Yet to forbid you to love the dear naughty creature, who can?

O my Norton! you must love her!⁠—And so must I!

I send you five guineas, to help you in your present illness, and your son’s; for it must have lain heavy upon you.

It was with some little relief (the occasion given) to write to you, who must, in so particular a manner, share my affliction.

A mother, Mrs. Norton, cannot forget her child, though that child could abandon her mother; and, in so doing, run away with all her mother’s comforts!

—As I truly say is the case of

I do not, I cannot expect that. Nor, as I have often said, should I, if they would receive me, bear to live in the eye of those dear friends whom I have so grievously offended.

’Tis only, simply, a blessing I ask: a blessing to die with; not to live with.

—Do they know that? and do they know that their unkindness will perhaps shorten my date; so that their favour, if ever they intend to grant it, may come too late?

How does she sink me, even in my own eyes!—“Her heart sincerely repulses me, she says, for my meanness!”—Yet she intends to reap the benefit of what she calls so!—Curse upon her haughtiness, and her meanness, at the same time!—

Her haughtiness to me, and her meanness to her own relations; more unworthy of kindred with her, than I can be, or I am mean indeed.

Yet who but must admire, who but must adore her; Oh! that cursed, cursed house! But for the women of that!—Then their d⸺d potions!

It is a cruel alternative to be either forced to see you, or to write to you.

But a will of my own has been long denied me; and to avoid a greater evil, nay, now I may say, the greatest, I write.

I am very much tired and fatigued—with—I don’t know what—with writing, I think—but most with myself, and with a situation I cannot help aspiring to get out of, and above!

O my dear, the world we live in is a sad, a very sad world!⁠—While under our parents’ protecting wings, we know nothing at all of it.

Book-learned and a scribbler, and looking at people as I saw them as visitors or visiting, I thought I knew a great deal of it. Pitiable ignorance!—Alas! I knew nothing at all!

Now will you wish you had not written pertly. Your sister’s severities!—

Never, girl, say that is severe that is deserved.

You know the meaning of words. Nobody better. Would to the Lord you had acted up but to one half of what you know! then had we not been disappointed and grieved, as we all have been: and nobody more than him who was

Why will ye break a leaf driven to and fro? Why will ye pursue the dry stubble? Why will ye write bitter words against me, and make me possess the iniquities of my youth?

Mercy is seasonable in the time of affliction, as clouds of rain in the time of drought.

Are not my days few? Cease then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little—before I go whence I shall not return; even to the land of darkness, and shadow of death!

What an unmerciful fellow art thou! A man has no need of a conscience, who has such an impertinent monitor. But if Nic. Rowe wrote a play that answers not his title, am I to be reflected upon for that?—

I have sinned; I repent; I would repair⁠—she forgives my sin: she accepts my repentance: but she won’t let me repair⁠—What wouldst thou have me do?

But get thee gone to Belton, as soon as thou canst. Yet whether thou goest or not, up I must go, and see what I can do with the sweet oddity myself. The moment these prescribing varlets will let me, depend upon it, I go.

Then turning to the poor sick man, Tears, my dear Belton, are no signs of an unmanly, but, contrarily of a humane nature; they ease the overcharged heart, which would burst but for that kindly and natural relief.

Give sorrow words (says Shakespeare) —The grief that does not speak, Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

I know, my dear Belton, thou usedst to take pleasure in repetitions from the poets; but thou must be tasteless of their beauties now: yet be not discountenanced by this uncouth and unreflecting Mowbray, for, as Juvenal says, Tears are the prerogative of manhood.

Then follows, what I repeated,

Death could not a more sad retinue find, Sickness and pain before, and darkness all behind.

Alas!

Mr. Pomfret, in his Prospect of Death, which I dipped into last night from a collection in your closet, which I put into my pocket, says, (and I turned to the place)

Merely to die, no man of reason fears;

For certainly we must, As we are born, return to dust; ’Tis the last point of many ling’ring years; But whither then we go, Whither, we fain would know; But human understanding cannot show. This makes us tremble—

See whom, see what, my dear Belton!

O lay me upon the bed again, cried he!⁠—Let me not die upon the floor!

—Lay me down gently; and stand by me!—Leave me not!—All, all will soon be over!

The poor man has been in convulsions, terrible convulsions! for an hour past.

O Lord! Lovelace, death is a shocking thing! by my faith it is!

—I wish thou wert present on this occasion. It is not merely the concern a man has for his friend; but, as death is the common lot, we see, in his agonies, how it will be one day with ourselves.

and although she would sooner die than deserve that her modesty should be drawn into question; yet she will think no truth immodest that is to be uttered in the vindicated cause of innocence and chastity.

Little, very little difference is there, my dear young lady, between a suppressed evidence, and a false one.

It is a terrible circumstance, I once more own, for a young lady of your delicacy to be under the obligation of telling so shocking a story in public court:

I have renounced him. The man whom once I could have loved, I have been enabled to despise: And shall not charity complete my triumph? and shall I not enjoy it?—And where would be my triumph if he deserved my forgiveness?—

Poor man! he has had a loss in losing me! I have the pride to think so, because I think I know my own heart. I have had none in losing him.

But I have another plea to make, which alone would have been enough (as I presume) to answer the contents of your very kind and friendly letter.

Write to me, my hard-hearted Sister, in what manner you please, I shall always be thankful to you for your notice. But (think what you will of me) I cannot see Mr. Ackland and the counselor on such a business as you mention.

The Lord have mercy upon me indeed! for none else will.

Surely I am believed to a creature past all shame, or it could not be thought of sending two gentlemen to me on such an errand.

But, if it will not, don’t be concerned for me, my dear. I shall be happy. Nay, I am more so already than of late I thought I could ever be in this life.—

Yet how this body clings!⁠—How it encumbers!

I could not send this letter away with so melancholy an ending, as you would have thought it. So I deferred closing it, till I saw how I should be on my return from my airing:

Lovick—pray for me, Mrs. Smith, that I may—I have great need of your prayers.—This cruel man has discomposed me. His persecutions have given me a pain just here, (putting her hand to her heart). What a step has he made me take to avoid him!—

Who can touch pitch, and not be defiled?

He had made a bad spirit take possession of me, I think—broken in upon all my duties—and will not yet, I doubt, let me be at rest. Indeed he is very cruel—but this is one of my trials, I believe.

Lord M. Indeed, Colonel, I thought you did, by your taking fire so quickly. I am glad to hear you say you did not.

How soon a little spark kindles into a flame; especially when it meets with such combustible spirits!

Col. If I had had the least thought of proceeding to extremities, I am sure Mr. Lovelace would have given me the honour of a meeting where I should have been less an intruder: but I came with an amicable intention;

Lord M. Well, well, well, well, gentlemen, this is somewhat like.

Angry men make to themselves beds of nettles, and, when they lie down in them, are uneasy with everybody.

But I hope you are friends. Let me hear you say you are. I am persuaded, Colonel, that you don’t know all this unhappy story. You don’t know how desirous my kinsman is, as well as all of us, to have this matter end happily.

and I can refer to your kind offices, and to those of Miss Howe, the justice that will be done to my memory among my friends. There is a good and a bad light in which everything that befalls us may be taken.

If the human mind will busy itself to make the worst of every disagreeable occurrence, it will never want woe.

This letter, affecting as the subject of it is to my reputation, gives me more pleasure than pain, because I can gather from it, that had not my friends been prepossessed by misinformed or rash and officious persons, who are always at hand to flatter …

I must own to you, that I have been apt sometimes myself to think them not only severe but cruel.

Suffering minds will be partial to their own cause and merits.

Knowing their own hearts, if sincere, they are apt to murmur when harshly treated: But, if they are not believed to be innocent, by persons who have a right to decide upon their conduct according to their own judgments, how can it be helped?

… awful receptacle), “believe what at this instant I feel to be most true, That there is such a vast superiority of weight and importance in the thought of death, and its hoped-for happy consequences, that it in a manner annihilates all other considerations and concerns.

Believe me, my good friends, it does what nothing else can do: it teaches me, by strengthening in me the force of the divinest example, to forgive the injuries I have received; and shuts out the remembrance of past evils from my soul.

”

This was the support of the divine Socrates, as thou hast read. When led to execution, his wife lamenting that he should suffer being innocent,

Thou fool, said he, wouldst thou wish me to be guilty!

She’ll persuade herself, at this rate, that she has nothing to do, when all is ready, but to lie down, and go to sleep: and such a lively fancy as hers will make a reality of a jest at any time.

A jest I call all that has passed between her and me; a mere jest to die for

—For has not her triumph over me, from first to last, been infinitely greater than her sufferings from me?

Indeed it is to this deep concern, that my levity is owing: for

I struggle and struggle, and try to buffet down my cruel reflections as they rise; and when I cannot, I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry

; for one or other I must do:

If she should die, how will all my pertnesses to her fly in my face!—

Why, why, did I ever vex her? She says I have been all duty and obedience!⁠—She kindly forgets all my faults, and remembers everything I have been so happy as to oblige her in. And this cuts me to the heart.

I see, I see, my dear, that you are very bad—and I cannot bear it. Do, my beloved Miss Harlowe, if you can be better, do, for my sake, be better; and send me word of it. Let the bearer bring me a line.

For who is it that will not infer, that if a person of your fortune, character, and merit, could not escape ruin, after she had put herself into the power of her hyaena, what can a thoughtless, fond, giddy creature expect?

Every man, they will say, is not a Lovelace⁠—True: but then, neither is every woman a Clarissa.

And allow for the one and for the other the example must be of general use.

Must bold creatures, and forward spirits, forever, and by the best and wisest of us, as well as by the indiscreetest, be the most kindly treated?

My dear friends know not that I have actually suffered within less than an inch of my life.

Poor Mr. Brand! he meant well, I believe. I am afraid all will turn heavily upon him, when he probably imagined that he was taking the best method to oblige. But were he not to have been so light of belief, and so weakly officious;

Do not, my dear friend, be concerned that I call it my last stage;

For what is even the long life which in high health we wish for? What, but, as we go along, a life of apprehension, sometimes for our friends, oftener for ourselves?

And at last, when arrived at the old age we covet, one heavy loss or deprivation having succeeded another, we see ourselves stripped, as I may say, of everyone we loved;

and what perhaps ought not to be wished for, if by a wish one could give one’s friend such an exemption; since we are not to live here always.

We must not, in short, expect that our roses will grow without thorns: but then they are useful and instructive thorns: which, by pricking the fingers of the too-hasty plucker, teach future caution.

And who knows not that difficulty gives poignancy to our enjoyments; which are apt to lose their relish with us when they are over easily obtained?

We must not, in short, expect that our roses will grow without thorns: but then they are useful and instructive thorns: which, by pricking the fingers of the too-hasty plucker, teach future caution.

And who knows not that difficulty gives poignancy to our enjoyments; which are apt to lose their relish with us when they are over easily obtained?

God forever bless you, and all you love and honour, and reward you here and hereafter for your kindness to

Then again rubbing her eyes, which she said were misty, and looked more intently round upon each, particularly on me—God bless you all! said she; how kindly are you concerned for me!—

Who says I am friendless? Who says I am abandoned, and among strangers?

—Good Mr. Belford, don’t be so generously humane!—Indeed (putting her handkerchief to her charming eyes), you will make me less happy, than I am sure you wish me to be.

A few things which made the strongest impression upon me, as well from the sentiments themselves as from her manner of uttering them, I remember. She introduced them thus:

I am thinking, said she, what a gradual and happy death God Almighty (blessed be his name) affords me!

Who would have thought, that, suffering what I have suffered, and abandoned as I have been, with such a tender education as I have had, I should be so long a dying!—But see now by little and little it had come to this.

O Mr. Belford! This is a poor transitory life in the best enjoyments.

We flutter about here and there, with all our vanities about us, like painted butterflies, for a gay, but a very short season, till at last we lay ourselves down in a quiescent state, and turn into vile worms: And who knows in what form, or to what condition we shall rise again?

I wish you would permit me, a young creature, just turned of nineteen years of age, blooming and healthy as I was a few months ago, now nipped by the cold hand of death, to influence you, in these my last hours, to a life …

… Miss Howe know, that by the time you will receive this, and she your signification of the contents of it, will, in all probability, be too late for her to do me the inestimable favour, as I should once have thought it, to see me.

God will have no rivals in the hearts of those he sanctifies.

By various methods he deadens all other sensations, or rather absorbs them all in the love of him.

for Miss Howe had great sense, fine judgment, and exalted generosity; and can such a one be ungrateful or easy under those obligations which his assiduity and obligingness (when he shall be so happy as to call her his) will lay her under to him?

As for me, never bride was so ready as I am. My wedding garments are bought

—and though not fine or gawdy to the sight, though not adorned with jewels, and set off with gold and silver, (for I have no beholders’ eyes to wish to glitter in), yet will they be the easiest, the happiest suit, that ever bridal maiden …

He has ordered her, as for some time past, only some little cordials to take when ready to faint. She seemed disappointed, when he told her she might yet live two or three days; and said, she longed for dismission!—

Life was not so easily extinguished, she saw, as some imagined.

—Death from grief, was, she believed, the slowest of deaths. But God’s will must be done!—Her only prayer was now for submission to it:

The divine creature then turning aside her head—Poor man, said she! I once could have loved him. This is saying more than ever I could say of any other man out of my own family!

Would he have permitted me to have been an humble instrument to have made him good, I think I could have made him happy!

But tell him not this if he be really penitent—it may too much affect him!—There she paused.—

The divine creature then turning aside her head—

Poor man, said she! I once could have loved him.

This is saying more than ever I could say of any other man out of my own family! Would he have permitted me to have been an humble instrument to have made him good, I think I could have made him happy!

… all), is obliged to me for pointing out to him many beauties of the authors I quote, which otherwise would lie concealed from him, as they must from every common observer.—But this (too) inter nos—for he would not take it well to have it known—

Jays (you know, old schoolfellow, jays, you know) will strut in peacock’s feathers.

But whither am I running? I never know where to end, when I get upon learned topics. And albeit I cannot compliment you with the name of a learned man, yet are you a sensible man;

If this be dying, said she, there is nothing at all shocking in it. My body hardly sensible of pain, my mind at ease, my intellects clear and perfect as ever.

What a good and gracious God have I!⁠—For this is what I always prayed for.

I told her it was not so serene with you.

Like Aesop’s traveller, thou blowest hot and cold, life and death, in the same breath, with a view, no doubt, to distract me. How familiarly dost thou use the words, dying, dimness, tremor?

Never did any mortal ring so many changes on so few bells.

Thy true father, I dare swear, was a butcher, or an undertaker, by the delight thou seemest to take in scenes of death and horror. Thy barbarous reflection, that thou losest her not by thy own fault, is never to be forgiven.

But after all, if she recovers not, this reflection must be my comfort; and it is truth; that her departure will be owing rather to wilfulness, to downright female wilfulness, than to any other cause.

It is difficult for people, who pursue the dictates of a violent resentment, to stop where first they designed to stop.

I have the charity to believe, that even James and Arabella Harlowe, at first, intended no more by the confederacy they formed against this their angel sister, than to disgrace and keep her down, lest (sordid wretches!)

How unlike poor Belton’s last hours hers!

See the infinite differences in the effects, on the same awful and affecting occasion, between a good and a bad conscience!

This moment a man is come from Miss Howe with a letter. Perhaps I shall be able to send you the contents.

This is a friend, said the divine lady, (taking the letter in her hand, and kissing it), worth wishing to live for.—O my dear Anna Howe! how uninterruptedly sweet and noble has been our friendship!—

But we shall one day meet, (and this hope must comfort us both), never to part again! Then, divested of the shades of body, shall be all light and all mind!

—Then how unalloyed, how perfect, will be our friendship! Our love then will have one and the same adorable object, and we shall enjoy it and each other to all eternity!

He will carry this to you in his way back, and be your director. Hie away in a coach, or anyhow. Your being with him may save either his or a servant’s life. See the blessed effects of triumphant libertinism!

Sooner or later it comes home to us, and all concludes in gall and bitterness!

Then resuming, My dearest Cousin, said she, be comforted—what is dying but the common lot?—The mortal frame may seem to labour—but that is all!—It is not so hard to die as I believed it to be!—

The preparation is the difficulty

—I bless God, I have had time for that—the rest is worse to beholders, than to me!—I am all blessed hope—hope itself. She looked what she said, a sweet smile beaming over her countenance.

She was silent for a few moments, lifting up her eyes, and the hand her cousin held not between his.

Then, O Death! said she, where is thy sting!

(the words I remember to have heard in the burial-service read over my uncle and poor Belton). And after a pause—It is good for me that I was afflicted! Words of scripture, I suppose.

She departed exactly at forty minutes after six o’clock, as by her watch on the table.

And thus died Miss Clarissa Harlowe, in the blossom of her youth and beauty

: and who, her tender years considered, had not left behind her her superior in extensive knowledge and watchful prudence; nor hardly her equal for unblemished virtue, exemplary piety, sweetness of manners, discreet generosity, and true Christian charity:

This task, then, I leave to thee: but now I can write no more, only that

I am a sympathizer in every part of thy distress, except (and yet it is cruel to say it) in that which arises from thy guilt.

You will be received with open arms. Everyone longs to see you. All the servants please themselves that they shall be permitted to kiss your hands. The pert Betty’s note is already changed; and she now runs over in your just praises.

What friends does prosperity make! What enemies adversity!

It always was, and always will be so, in every state of life, from the throne to the cottage.—But let all be forgotten now on this jubilee change: and may you, my dearest Miss, be capable of rejoicing in this good news;

Leave then the poor wretch to the divine justice. Let your sister’s fault die with her. At least, let it not be revived in blood.

Life is a short stage where longest.

A little time hence, the now-green head will be grey, if it lives this little time: and if Heaven will afford him time for repentance, why should not you?

Seek not then, I beseech you, to extend the evil consequences of your sister’s error.

His conscience, when it shall please God to touch it, will be sharper than your sword.

I have still another motive for writing to you in this solemn manner: it is, to entreat you to watch over your passions.

What can they mean by this usage? Sure all the world is run mad but myself. They treat me as they ought every one of themselves to be treated.

The whole world is but one great bedlam!

—God confound it, and everything in it, since now my beloved Clarissa Lovelace—no more Harlowe—Curse upon that name, and everyone called by it!

None at all!—

I never saw, and never shall see, so blessed a departure

: and no wonder; for I never heard of such a preparation. Every hour, for weeks together, were taken up in it. Let this be our comfort:

She is a fine, graceful young lady. A fixed melancholy on her whole aspect, overclouded a vivacity and fire, which, nevertheless, darted now-and-then through the awful gloom. I shall ever respect her for her love to my dear cousin.

Never did I think, said she, as she gave me her hand, to enter more these doors: but, living or dead, Clarissa brings me after her anywhere!

She entered with me the little parlour; and seeing the coffin, withdrew her hand from mine, and with impatience pushed aside the lid. As impatiently she removed the face-cloth. In a wild air, she clasped her uplifted hands together;

I told her that her executor would order both; and would also send her a copy of her last will; in which she would find the most grateful remembrances of her love for her, whom she calls The sister of her heart.

Justly, said she, does she call me so; for we had but one heart, but one soul, between us; and now my better half is torn from me⁠—What shall I do?

But looking round her, on a servant’s stepping by the door, as if again she had apprehended it was some of the family—Once more, said she, a solemn, an everlasting adieu!—Alas for me! a solemn, an everlasting adieu!

The two uncles, and Mr. Hervey, came in at the same time, and prevailed upon the afflicted father to retire with them to his—both giving up all thoughts of ever seeing more the child whose death was so deservedly regretted by them.

Time only, Mr. Belford, can combat with advantage such a heavy deprivation as this.

Advice will not do, while the loss is recent. Nature will have way given to it, (and so it ought), till sorrow has in a manner exhausted itself;

I have the same obligations to the kind and skilful Mr. Goddard, who attended me as my apothecary. His very moderate bill I have discharged down to yesterday.

I have always thought it incumbent upon testators to shorten all they can the trouble of their executors.

I know I underrate the value of Mr. Goddard’s attendances, when over and above what may accrue from yesterday, to the hour that will finish all, I desire fifteen guineas for a ring may be presented to him.

But curses upon the accursed man were a refuge to which they often resorted to exonerate themselves.

How wounding a thing, Mr. Belford, is a generous and well-distinguished forgiveness!

What revenge can be more effectual, and more noble, were revenge intended, and were it wished to strike remorse into a guilty or ungrateful heart! But my dear cousin’s motives were all duty and love.

But my dear cousin’s motives were all duty and love. She seems indeed to have been, as much as a mortal could be, love itself.

Love sublimed by a purity, by a true delicacy, that hardly any woman before her could boast of.

O Mr. Belford, what an example would she have given in every station of life, (as wife, mother, mistress, friend), had her lot fallen upon a man blessed with a mind like her own!

So, Sir, though no thanks to your intention, you have done me real service; and, in return, I wish you happy. But such has been your life hitherto, that you can have no time to lose in setting about your repentance.

Repentance to such as have lived only carelessly, and in the omission of their regular duties, and who never aimed to draw any poor creatures into evil, is not so easy a task, nor so much in our own power, as some imagine.

How difficult a grace then to be obtained, where the guilt is premeditated, wilful, and complicated!

Nor have I yet, as you will see by the pains I take, on this solemn occasion, to awaken you out of your sensual dream, given over all hopes of this nature.

Hear me, therefore, O Lovelace! as one speaking from the dead.

—Lose no time—set about your repentance instantly—be no longer the instrument of Satan, to draw poor souls into those subtle snares, which at last shall entangle your own feet.

A fire not blown shall consume him. The heaven shall reveal his iniquity, and the earth shall rise up against him. The worm shall feed sweetly on him. He shall be no more remembered.—This is the fate of him that knoweth not God.”

Whenever you shall be inclined to consult the sacred oracles from whence the above threatenings are extracted, you will find doctrines and texts which a truly penitent and contrite heart may lay hold of for its consolation.

May yours, Mr. Lovelace, become such! and may you be enabled to escape the fate denounced against the abandoned man, and be entitled to the mercies of a long suffering and gracious God, is the sincere prayer of

Nor, I verily think, can thy own penitence and reformation hold.

Strong habits are not so easily rooted out.

Old Satan has had too much benefit from thy faithful services, for a series of years, to let thee so easily get out of his clutches. He knows what will do with thee.

And if thou dost, thou wilt become the scoff of men, and the triumph of devils.—Then how will I laugh at thee! For this warning is not from principle. Perhaps I wish it were: but

I never lied to man, and hardly ever said truth to woman.

The first is what all free-livers cannot say: the second what everyone can.

Then for improving an hint, thou wert always a true Englishman.

I never started a roguery, that did not come out of thy forge in a manner ready anvilled and hammered for execution

, when I have sometimes been at a loss to make anything of it myself.

… to you, in this solemn manner, is, to beg of you, which I do with the utmost earnestness, that when you come to hear the particulars of my story, you will not suffer active resentment to take place in your generous breast on my account.

Remember, my dear Cousin, that vengeance is God’s province, and he has undertaken to repay it

; nor will you, I hope, invade that province:—especially as there is no necessity for you to attempt to vindicate my fame;

but will not the forfeiture of his life, and the probable loss of his soul, be a dreadful expiation for having made me miserable for a few months only, and through that misery, by the Divine favour, happy to all eternity?

In such a case, my Cousin, where shall the evil stop?⁠—And who shall avenge on you?⁠—And who on your avenger?

Let the poor man’s conscience, then, dear Sir, avenge me. He will one day find punishment more than enough from that. Leave him to the chance of repentance.

In such a case, my Cousin, where shall the evil stop?—And who shall avenge on you?—And who on your avenger?

Let the poor man’s conscience, then, dear Sir, avenge me.

He will one day find punishment more than enough from that. Leave him to the chance of repentance. If the Almighty will give him time for it, who should you deny it him?—Let him still be the guilty aggressor;

or, in the case of yours, (which Heaven avert!) that her fault, instead of being buried in her grave, is perpetuated, and aggravated, by a loss far greater than that of herself.

Often, Sir, has the more guilty been the vanquisher of the less.

An Earl of Shrewsbury, in the reign of Charles II as I have read, endeavouring to revenge the greatest injury that man can do to man, met with his death at Barn-Elms, from the hand of the ignoble Duke who had vilely dishonoured him.

… hear more of her praises, and weep again—they even encouraging the servants to repeat how they used to be stopped by strangers to ask after her, and by those who knew her, to be told of some new instances to her honour—how aggravating all this!

In dreams they see her, and desire to see her; always an angel, and accompanied by angels; always clad in robes of light; always endeavouring to comfort them, who declare, that they shall never more know comfort!

What an example she set! How she indited! How she drew! How she wrought! How she talked! How she sung! How she played! Her voice music! Her accent harmony!

Her conversation how instructive! how sought after! The delight of persons of all ages, of both sexes, of all ranks! Yet how humble, how condescending!

Never were dignity and humility so illustriously mingled!

At other times, how generous, how noble, how charitable, how judicious in her charities! In every action laudable! In every attitude attractive! In every appearance, whether full-dressed, or in the housewife’s more humble garb, equally elegant, and equally lovely!

There never was a firmer or nobler friendship in women, than between my dear cousin and Miss Howe, to which this wretched man had given a period.

Friendship, generally speaking, Mr. Belford, is too fervent a flame for female minds to manage: a light that but in few of their hands burns steady, and often hurries the sex into flight and absurdity.

Like other extremes, it is hardly ever durable. Marriage, which is the highest state of friendship, generally absorbs the most vehement friendships of female to female; and that whether the wedlock be happy, or not.

Yet once she praised her daughter to me with so much warmth for the generosity of her spirit, that had I not known the old lady’s character, I should have thought her generous herself.

And yet I have always observed, that people of narrow tempers are ready to praise generous ones:⁠—and thus have I accounted for it⁠—that such persons generally find it to their purpose, that all the world should be open-minded but themselves.

The old lady applied herself to me, to urge to the young one the contents of the will, in order to hasten her to fix a day for her marriage; but desired that I would not let Miss Howe know that she did.

I shall follow the dear creature’s example, and give my reasons for every article, that there may be no room for after-contention.

What but a fear of death, a fear unworthy of a creature who knows that he must one day as surely die as he was born, can hinder anyone from making such a disposition?

I hope soon to pay my respects to you in town. Meantime, I am, with great respect, dear Sir,

But what a letter is that of the infernal man’s! I cannot observe upon it. Neither can I, for very different reasons, upon my dear creature’s posthumous letters; particularly on that to him.

O Mr. Belford! what numberless perfections died, when my Clarissa drew her last breath!

If decency be observed in his letters, for I have not yet had patience to read above two or three of them, (besides this horrid one, which I return to you enclosed), I may some time hence be curious to look, by their means, into …

Mr. Hickman, like the rest of his sex, would grow upon indulgence. One distinction from me would make him pay two to himself.

Insolent creepers, or encroachers all of you! To show any of you a favour today, you would expect it as a right tomorrow.

I am, as you see, very open and sincere with you;

and yet I am aware that such of my sex as will not assume some little dignity, and exact respect from yours, will render themselves cheap; and, perhaps, for their modesty and diffidence, be repaid with scorn and insult.

But the scorn I will endeavour not to deserve; and the insult I will not bear.

In some of the dear creature’s papers which you have had in your possession, and must again have, in order to get transcribed, you will find several friendly, but severe reprehensions of me, on account of a natural, or, at least, an habitual, warmth of …

… that I think there is not one man in an hundred whom a woman of sense and spirit can either honour or obey, though you make us promise both, in that solemn form of words which unites or rather binds us to you in marriage?

When I look round upon all the married people of my acquaintance, and see how they live, and what they bear who live best, I am confirmed in my dislike to the state.

Well do your sex contrive to bring us up fools and idiots, in order to make us bear the yoke you lay upon our shoulders;

When I look round upon all the married people of my acquaintance, and see how they live, and what they bear who live best, I am confirmed in my dislike to the state.

Well do your sex contrive to bring us up fools and idiots, in order to make us bear the yoke you lay upon our shoulders; and that we may not despise you from our hearts, (as we certainly should, if we were brought up as you are), for your ignorance, as much as you often make us do (as it is) for your insolence.

These, Sir, are some of my notions. And, with these notions, let me repeat my question, Do you think I ought to marry at all?