Dear Sir,

Your most faithful friend and servant,

M.

[Mr Lovelace having not returned an answer to Mr Belford's expostulatory letter so soon as Mr Belford expected, he wrote to him, expressing his apprehension that he had disobliged him by his honest freedom. Among other things, he says,]

I pass my time here at Watford, attending my dying uncle, very heavily. I cannot, therefore, by any means, dispense with thy correspondence. And why shouldst thou punish me for having more conscience and more remorse than thyself? Thou who never thoughtest either conscience or remorse an honour to thee. And I have, besides, a melancholy story to tell thee in relation to Belton and his Thomasine; and which may afford a lesson to all the keepingclass.

I have a letter from each of our three companions in the time. They have all the wickedness that thou hast, but not the wit. Some new rogueries do two of them boast of, which, I think, if completed, deserve the gallows.

I am far from hating intrigue upon principle. But to have awkward fellows plot, and commit their plots to paper, destitute of the seasonings, of the acumen, which is thy talent, how extremely shocking must their letters be!-But do thou, Lovelace, whether thou art, or art not, determined upon thy measures with regard to the fine lady in thy power, enliven my heavy heart by thy communications; and thou wilt oblige

Thy melancholy friend,

J. BELFORD.

LETTER XCVIII.

MR LOVELACE TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

Friday Night, May 19. WHEN I have opened my views to thee so amply as I have done in my former letters, and have told thee that my principal design is but to bring virtue to a trial, that, if virtue, it need not be afraid of; and that the reward of it will be marriage, (that is to say, if, after I have carried my point, I cannot prevail upon her to live with me the life of honour,* for that thou knowest is the wish of my heart;) I am amazed at the repetition of thy wambling nonsense.

I am of opinion with thee, that some time hence, when I am grown wiser, I shall conclude, that there is nothing but vanity, conceit, and non

this saying, but that I must be first wiser?

I do not intend to let this matchless creature slide through my fingers.

Art thou able to say half the things in her praise that I have said, and am continually saying or writing?

Her gloomy father cursed the sweet creature, because she put it out of his wicked power to compel her to have the man she hated. Thou

knowest how little merit she has with me on this score. And shall I not try the virtue I intended, upon full proof, to reward, because her father is a tyrant?-Why art thou thus eternally reflecting upon so excellent a woman, as if thou wert assured she would fail in the trial? Nay, thou declarest, every time thou writest on the subject, that she will, that she must yield, entangled as she is; and yet makest her virtue the pretence of thy solicitude for her.

An instrument of the vile James Harlowe, dost thou call me ?-O Jack! how could I curse thee!-I an instrument of that brother! of that sister!-But mark the end, and thou shalt see what will become of that brother, and that sister!

Play not against me my own acknowledged sensibilities, I desire thee. Sensibilities which, at the same time that they contradict thy charge of an adamantine heart in thy friend, thou hadst known nothing of, had I not communicated them to thee.

If I ruin such a virtue, sayest thou !—Eternal monotonist!-Again; the most immaculate virtue may be ruined by men who have no regard to their honour, and who make a jest of the most solemn oaths, &c. What must be the virtue that will be ruined without oaths? Is not the world full of these deceptions? And are not lovers' oaths a jest of hundreds of years standing? And are not cautions against the perfidy of our sex a necessary part of the female education?

I do intend to endeavour to overcome myself, but I must first try if I cannot overcome this lady. Have I not said, that the honour of her sex is concerned that I should try?

Whenever thou meetest with a woman of but half her perfections, thou wilt marry-Do, Jack. Can a girl be degraded by trials, who is not overcome?

I am glad that thou takest crime to thyself, for not endeavouring to convert the poor wretches whom others have ruined. I will not recriminate upon thee, Belford, as I might, when thou flatterest thyself that thou never ruinedst the morals of any young creature, who otherwise would not have been corrupted-the palliating consolation of a Hottentot heart, determined rather to gluttonize on the garbage of other foul feeders, than to reform.—But tell me,

Jack, wouldst thou have spared such a girl as my Rosebud, had I not, by my example, engaged thy generosity? 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.

The women know this as well as the men. They love to be addressed with spirit;

And therefore 'tis their golden fruit they guard With so much care, to make possession hard.

Whence, for a by-reflection, the ardent, the complaisant gallant, is so often preferred to the cold, the unadoring husband. And yet the sex do not consider, that variety and novelty give the ardour and the obsequiousness; and that, were the rake as much used to them as the husband is, he would be [and is to his own wife, if married as indifferent to their favours as their husbands are; and the husband, in his turn, would, to another woman, be the rake. Let the women, upon the whole, take this lesson from a Lovelace "Always to endeavour to make themselves as new to a husband, and to appear as elegant and obliging to him, as they are desirous to appear to a lover, and actually were to him as such; and then the rake, which all women love, will last longer in the husband than it generally does."

But to return:-If I have not sufficiently cleared my conduct to thee in the above, I refer thee once more to mine of the 13th of last month.* And pr'ythee, Jack, lay me not under a necessity to repeat the same things so often. I hope thou readest what I write more than once. I am not displeased that thou art so apprehensive of my resentment, that I cannot miss a day without making thee uneasy. Thy conscience, 'tis plain, tells thee, that thou hast deserved my displeasure; and if it has convinced thee of that, it will make thee afraid of repeating thy fault. See that this be the consequence. Else, now that thou hast told me how I can punish thee, it is very likely that I do punish thee by my silence, although I have as much pleasure in writing on this charming subject, as thou canst have in reading what I write.

When a boy, if a dog ran away from me through fear, I generally looked about for a stone, or a stick; and if neither offered to my hand, I skimmed my hat after him to make him afraid for something. What signifies power, if we do not exert it?

Let my Lord know, that thou hast scribbled to me. But give him not the contents of thy

epistle. Though a parcel of crude stuff, he would think there was something in it. Poor arguments will do, when brought in favour of what we like. But the stupid peer little thinks that this lady is a rebel to Love. On the contrary, not only he, but all the world believe her to be a volunteer in his service. So I shall incur blame, and she will be pitied, if anything happen amiss.

Since my

Lord's heart is set upon this match, I have written already to let him know, That my unhappy character has given my beloved an ungenerous diffidence of me. That she is so mother-sick and father-fond, that she had rather return to Harlowe-Place than marry. That she is even apprehensive that the step she has taken of going off with me will make the ladies of a family of such rank and honour as ours think slightly of her. That therefore I desire his lordship (though thishint, I tell him, must be very delicately touched) to write me such a letter as I can shew her; (let him treat me in it ever so freely, I shall not take it amiss, I tell him, because I know his lordship takes pleasure in writing to me in a corrective style.) That he may make what offers he pleases on the marriage. That I desire his presence at the ceremony; that I may take from his hand the greatest blessing that mortal man can give me.

I have not absolutely told the lady that I would write to his lordship to this effect; yet have given her reason to think I will. So that without the last necessity I shall not produce the answer I expect from him; for I am very loath, I own, to make use of any of my family's names for the furthering of my designs. And yet I must make all secure, before I pull off the mask. Was not this my motive for bringing her hither?

Thus thou seest that the old peer's letter came very seasonably. I thank thee for it. But as to his sentences, they cannot possibly do me good. I was early suffocated with his wisdom of nations. When a boy, I never asked anything of him, but out flew a proverb; and if the tendency of that was to deny me, I never could obtain the least favour. This gave me so great an aversion to the very word, that, when a child, I made it a condition with my tutor, who was an honest parson, that I would not read my bible at all, if he would not excuse me one of the wisest books in it; to which, however, I had no other objection, than that it was called The Proverbs. And as for Solomon, he was then a hated character with me, not because of his polygamy, but because I had conceived him to be such another musty old fellow as my uncle.

Well, but let us leave old saws to old men. What signifies thy tedious whining over thy departing relation? Is it not generally agreed that

he cannot recover? Will it not be kind in thee to put him out of his misery? I hear that he is pestered still with visits from doctors, and apothecaries, and surgeons; that they cannot cut so deep as the mortification has gone; and that in every visit, in every scarification, inevitable death is pronounced upon him. Why then do they keep tormenting him? Is it not to take away more of his living fleece than of his dead flesh? When a man is given over, the fee should surely be refused. Are they not now robbing his heirs?—What hast thou to do, if the will be as thou'dst have it?-He sent for thee [did he not? to close his eyes. He is but an uncle, is he?

Let me see, if I mistake not, it is in the Bible, or some other good book; can it be in Herodotus ?-O! I believe it is in Josephus, a halfsacred and half-profane author. He tells us of a king of Syria put out of his pain by his prime minister, or one who deserved to be so for his contrivance. The story says, if I am right, that he spread a wet cloth over his face, which kill ing him, he reigned in his place. A notable fellow! Perhaps this wet cloth in the original, is what we now call laudanum; a potion that overspreads the faculties, as the wet cloth did the face of the royal patient; and the translator knew not how to render it.

But how like a forlorn varlet thou subscribest, "Thy melancholy friend, J. BELFORD!" Melancholy! For what? To stand by, and see fair play between an old man and death? I thought thou hadst been more of a man; thou that art not afraid of an acute death, a sword's point, to be so plaguily hip'd at the consequences of a chronical one!-What though the scarificators work upon him day by day? It's only upon a caput mortuum; and pr'ythee go to, to use the stylum veterum, and learn of the royal butchers; who, for sport, (an hundred times worse men than thy Lovelace,) widow ten thousand at a brush, and make twice as many fatherless-learn of them, I say, how to support a single death.

But art thou sure, Jack, it is a mortification? -My uncle once gave promises of such a rootand-branch distemper; but, alas! it turned to a smart gout-fit; and I had the mortification instead of him.-I have heard that bark in proper doses, will arrest a mortification in its progress, and at last cure it. Let thy uncle's surgeon know, that it is worth more than his ears, if he prescribe one grain of the bark.

I wish my uncle had given me the opportunity of setting thee a better example; thou shouldst have seen what a brave fellow I had been. And had I had occasion to write, my con

clusion would have been this: "I hope the old Trojan's happy. In that hope, I am so; and "Thy rejoicing friend,

"R. LOVELACE."

Dwell not always, Jack, upon one subject. Let me have poor Belton's story. The sooner the better. If I can be of service to him, tell him he may command me either in purse or person. Yet the former with a freer will than the latter; for how can I leave my goddess? But I'll issue my commands to my other vassals to attend thy summons.

If ye want head, let me know. If not, my quota, on this occasion, is money.

LETTER XCIX.

MR BELFORD TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.

Saturday, May 20.

NOT one word will I reply to such an aban doned wretch, as thou hast shewn thyself to be in thine of last night. I will leave the lady to the protection of that Power who only can work miracles; and to her own merits. Still I have hopes that these will save her.

I will proceed, as thou desirest, to poor Belton's case; and the rather, as it has thrown me into such a train of thinking upon our past lives, our present courses, and our future views, as may be of service to both, if I can give due weight to the reflections that arise from it.

The poor man made me a visit on Thursday, in this my melancholy attendance. He began with complaints of his ill health and spirits, his hectic cough, and his increased malady of spitting blood; and then led to his story.

A confounded one it is; and which highly aggravates his other maladies; for it has come out, that his Thomasine (who, truly, would be new christened, you know, that her name might be nearer in sound to the christian name of the man whom she pretended to dote upon) has for many years carried on an intrigue with a fellow who had been hostler to her father (an innkeeper at Darking); of whom, at the expense of poor Belton, she has made a gentleman; and managed it so, that having the art to make herself his cashier, she has been unable to account for large sums, which he thought forthcoming at demand, and had trusted to her custody, in order to pay off a mortgage upon his parental estate in Kent, which his heart had run upon leaving clear, but which cannot now be done, and will soon be foreclosed. And yet she has so long passed for his wife, that he knows not what to resolve upon about her; nor about the two boys he was so fond of, supposing them to be his; whereas now he begins to doubt his share in them.

So KEEPING don't do, Lovelace. 'Tis not the eligible life. "A man may keep a woman, said the poor fellow to me, but not his estate! -Two interests!-Then, my tottering fabric!" pointing to his emaciated carcase.

We do well to value ourselves upon our liber ty, or, to speak more properly, upon the liberties we take! We had need to run down matrimony as we do, and to make that state the subject of our frothy jests; when we frequently render ourselves (for this of Tom's is not a singular case) the dupes and tools of women who generally govern us (by arts our wise heads penetrate not) more absolutely than a wife would attempt to do.

Let us consider this point a little; and that upon our own principles, as libertines, setting aside what is exacted from us by the laws of our country, and its customs; which, nevertheless, we cannot get over, till we have got over almost all moral obligations, as members of society.

In the first place, let us consider (we, who are in possession of estates by legal descent) how we should have liked to have been such naked destitute varlets, as we must have been, had our fathers been as wise as ourselves; and despised matrimony as we do-and then let us ask our selves, If we ought not to have the same regard for our posterity, as we are glad our fathers had for theirs?

But this, perhaps, is too moral a consideration. To proceed, therefore, to those considerations which will be more striking to us: How can we reasonably expect economy or frugality (or anything, indeed, but riot and waste) from creatures who have an interest, and must therefore have views, different from our own?

They know the uncertain tenure (our fickle humours) by which they hold: And is it to be wondered at, supposing them to be provident harlots, that they should endeavour, if they have the power, to lay up against a rainy day? or, if they have not the power, that they should squander all they can come at, when they are sure of nothing but the present hour; and when the life they live, and the sacrifices they have made, put conscience and honour out of the question?

Whereas a wife, having the same family-interest with her husband, lies not under either the same apprehensions or temptations; and has not broken through (of necessity, at least, has not) those restraints which education has fastened upon her; and if she make a private purse, which, we are told by anti-matrimonialists, all wives love to do, and have children, it goes all into the same family at the long-run.

Then as to the great article of fidelity to your bed-Are not women of family, who are welleducated, under greater restraints, than creatures, who, if they ever had reputation, sacrifice it to sordid interest, or to more sordid appetite, the moment they give up to you? Does not the example you furnish, of having succeeded with her, give encouragement for others to attempt her likewise? For with all her blandishments, can any man be so credulous, or so vain, as to

VOL. VII.

believe, that the woman he could persuade, an◄ other may not prevail upon ?

Adultery is so capital a guilt, that even rakes and libertines, if not wholly abandoned, and, as I may say, invited by a woman's levity, disavow and condemn it; but here, in a state of KEEPING, a woman is in no danger of incurring (legally, at least) that guilt; and you yourself have broken through and overthrown in her all the fences and boundaries of moral honesty, and the modesty and reserves of her sex: And what tie shall hold her against inclination, or interest? And what shall deter an attempter?

While a husband has this security from legal sanctions, that if his wife be detected in a criminal conversation with a man of fortune, (the most likely by bribes to seduce her,) he may recover very great damages, and procure a divorce besides; which, to say nothing of the ignominy, is a consideration that must have some force upon both parties. And a wife must be vicious indeed, and a reflection upon a man's own choice, who, for the sake of change, and where there are no qualities to seduce, nor affluence to corrupt, will run so many hazards to injure her husband in the tenderest of all points.

But there are difficulties in procuring a divorce-[and so there ought]-and none, says the rake, in parting with a mistress whenever you suspect her; or whenever you are weary of her, and have a mind to change her for another.

But must not the man be a brute indeed, who can cast off a woman whom he has seduced, [if he take her from the town, that's another thing,] without some flagrant reason; something that will better justify him to himself, as well as to her, and to the world, than mere power, and no◄ velty?

But I don't see, if we judge by fact, and by the practice of all we have been acquainted with of the keeping-class, that we know how to part with them when we have them.

That we know we can if we will, is all we have for it; and this leads us to bear many things from a mistress, which we would not from a wife. But, if we are good-natured and humane; if the woman has art; [and what woman wants it, who has fallen by art? and to whose precarious situation art is so necessary? if you have given her the credit of being called by your name; if you have a settled place of abode, and have received and paid visits in her company, as your wife; if she has brought you children-you will allow that these are strong obligations upon you in the world's eye, as well as to your own heart, against tearing yourself from such close connexions. She will stick to you as your skin; and it will be next to flaying yourself to cast her off.

Even if there be cause for it, by infidelity, she will have managed ill, if she have not her defenders. Nor did I ever know a cause or a

M

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person so bad, as to want advocates, either from ill-will to the one, or pity to the other; and you will then be thought a hard-hearted miscreant; and even were she to go off without credit to herself, she will leave you as little; especially with all those whose good opinion a man would wish to cultivate.

Well, then, shall this poor privilege, that we may part with a woman if we will, be deemed a balance for the other inconveniences? Shall it be thought by us, who are men of family and fortune, an equivalent for giving up equality of degree; and taking for the partner of our bed, and very probably more than the partner in our estates, (to the breach of all family-rule and order,) a low-born, a low-educated creature, who has not brought anything into the common stock; and can possibly make no returns for the solid benefits she receives, but those libidinous ones, which a man cannot boast of, but to his disgrace, nor think of, but to the shame of both?

Moreover, as the man advances in years, the fury of his libertinism will go off. He will have different aims and pursuits, which will diminish his appetite to ranging, and make such a regular life as the matrimonial and family life, palatable to him, and every day more palatable.

If he has children, and has reason to think them his, and if his lewd courses have left him any estate, he will have cause to regret the restraint his boasted liberty has laid him under, and the valuable privilege it has deprived him of; when he finds that it must descend to some relation, for whom, whether near or distant, he cares not one farthing; and who perhaps (if a man of virtue) has held him in the utmost contempt for his dissolute life.

And were we to suppose his estate in his power to bequeath as he pleases; why should a man resolve, for the gratifying of his foolish humour only, to bastardize his race? Why should he wish to expose his children to the scorn and insults of the rest of the world? Why should he, whether they are sons or daughters, lay them under the necessity of complying with proposals of marriage, either inferior as to fortune, or unequal as to age? Why should he deprive children he loves, who themselves may be guilty of no fault, of the respect they would wish to have, and to deserve; and of the opportunity of associating themselves with proper, that is to say, with reputable company? and why should he make them think themselves under obligation to every person of character, who will vouchsafe to visit them? What little reason, in a word, would such children have to bless their father's obstinate defiance of the laws and customs of his country; and for giving them a mother, of whom they could not think with honour; to whose crime it was that they owed their very beings, and whose example it was their duty to shun! If the education and morals of these children are left to chance, as too generally they are, (for

the man who has humanity and a feeling heart, and who is capable of fondness for his offspring, I take it for granted, will marry,) the case is still worse: his crime is perpetuated, as I may say, by his children: and the sea, the army, perhaps the highway, for the boys; the common for the girls; too often point out the way to a worse catastrophe.

What therefore, upon the whole, do we get by treading in these crooked paths, but danger, disgrace, and a too-late repentance ?

And after all, do we not frequently become the cullies of our own libertinism; sliding into the very state with those half-worn-out doxies, which perhaps we might have entered into with their ladies; at least with their superiors both in degree and fortune? and all the time lived handsomely like ourselves; not sneaking into holes and corners; and, when we crept abroad with our women, looking about us, and at every one that passed us, as if we were confessedly accountable to the censures of all honest people?

My cousin Tony Jenyns, thou knewest. He had not the actively mischievous spirit, that thou, Belton, Mowbray, Tourville, and myself, have; but he imbibed the same notions we do, and carried them into practice.

How did he prate against wedlock! How did he strut about as a wit and a smart! And what a wit and a smart did all the boys and girls of our family (myself among the rest, then an urchin) think him, for the airs he gave himself! Marry! No, not for the world; what man of sense would bear the insolences, the petulances, the expensiveness of a wife! He could not for the heart of him think it tolerable, that a woman of equal rank and fortune, and, as it might happen, superior talents to his own, should look upon herself to have a right to share the benefit of that fortune which she brought him.

So, after he had fluttered about the town for two or three years, in all which time he had a better opinion of himself than anybody else had, what does he do, but enter upon an affair with his fencing-master's daughter?

He succeeds; takes private lodgings for her at Hackney; visits her by stealth; both of them tender of reputations that were extremely tender, but which neither had quite given up; for rakes of either sex are always the last to condemn or cry down themselves: visited by nobody, nor visiting: the life of a thief, or of a man beset by creditors, afraid to look out of his own house, or to be seen abroad with her. And thus went on for twelve years, and, though he had a good estate, hardly making both ends meet; for though no glare, there was no economy; and, beside, he had every year a child, and very fond of his children was he. But none of them lived above three years. And being now, on the death of the dozenth, grown as dully sober, as if he had been a real husband, his good Mrs Thomas (for he had not permitted her to take his own name)