part with her clothes, though for a song. Dost think she is not a little touched at times? I am afraid she is. A little spice of that insanity, I doubt, runs through her, that she had in a stronger degree, in the first week of my operations. Her contempt of life; her proclamations; her refusal of matrimony; and now of money from her most intimate friends; are sprinklings of this kind, and no other way, I think, to be accounted for. Her apothecary is a good honest fellow. I like him much. But the silly dear's harping so continually upon one string, dying, dying, dy ing, is what I have no patience with. I hope all this melancholy jargon is owing entirely to the way I would have her to be in. And it be ing as new to her, as the Bible beauties to thee,* no wonder she knows not what to make of herself; and so fancies she is breeding death, when the event will turn out quite the contrary. Thou art a sorry fellow in thy remarks on the education and qualification of smarts and beaux of the rakish order; if by thy we's and us's thou meanest thyself or me:† for I pretend to say, that the picture has no resemblance of us, who have read and conversed as we have done. It may indeed, and I believe it does, resemble the generality of the fops and coxcombs about town. But that let them look to; for, if it affects not me, to what purpose thy random shot?-If indeed thou findest, by the new light darted in upon thee, since thou hast had the honour of conversing with this admirable creature, that the cap fits thy own head, why then, according to the qui capit rule, e'en take and clap it on; and I will add a string of bells to it, to complete thee for the fore-horse of the idiot team. Although I just now said a kind thing or two for this fellow Hickman; yet I can tell thee, I could (to use one of my noble peer's humble phrases) eat him up without a corn of salt, when I think of his impudence to salute my charmer twice at parting: And have still less patience with the lady herself for presuming to offer her cheek or lip thou sayest not which to him, and to press his clumsy fist between her charming hands. An honour worth a king's ransom; and what I would give-what would I not give? -to have!-And then he, in return, to press her, as thou sayest he did, to his stupid heart; at that time, no doubt, more sensible than ever it was before! By thy description of their parting, I see thou wilt be a delicate fellow in time. My mortification in this lady's displeasure, will be thy exaltation from her conversation. I envy thee as well for thy opportunities, as for thy improvements; and such an impression has thy conclu • See Letter CCLXXI. of this Volume. VOL. VII. ding paragraphs made upon me, that I wish I do not get into a reformation-humour as well as thou; and then what a couple of lamentable puppies shall we make, howling in recitative to each other's discordant music! Let me improve upon the thought, and imagine that, turned hermits, we have opened the two old caves at Hornsey, or dug new ones; and in each of our cells set up a death's-head, and an hour-glass, for objects of contemplation-I have seen such a picture; but then, Jack, had not the old penitent fornicator a suffocating long gray beard? What figures would a couple of brocaded or laced-waistcoated toupets make with their sour, screwed-up, half-cocked faces, and more than half-shut eyes, in a kneeling attitude, recapitulating their respective rogueries? This scheme, were we only to make trial of it, and return afterwards to our old ways, might serve to better purpose by far, than Horner's in the Country Wife, to bring the pretty wenches to us. Let me see; the author of Hudibras has somewhere a description that would suit us, when met in one of our caves, and comparing our dismal notes together. This is it. Suppose me described -He sat upon his rump, His head like one in doleful dump; I know thou wilt think me too ludicrous. I think myself so. It is truly, to be ingenuous, a forced put; for my passions are so wound up, that I am obliged either to laugh or cry. Like honest drunken Jack Daventry, [poor fellow! What an unhappy end was his!-thou knowest, I used to observe, that whenever he rose from an entertainment, which he never did sober, it was his way, as soon as he got to the door, to look round him like a carrier pigeon just thrown up, in order to spy out his course; and then, taking to his heels, he would run all the way home, though it were a mile or two, when he could hardly stand, and must have tumbled on his nose if he had attempted to walk moderately. This then be my excuse, in this my unconverted estate, for a conclusion so unworthy of the conclusion to thy third letter. What a length have I run!-Thou wilt own, that, if I pay thee not in quality, I do in quantity; and yet I leave a multitude of things unobserved upon. Indeed, I hardly at this present know what to do with myself but scribble. Tired with Lord M., who, in his recovery, has played upon me the fable of the nurse, the crying child, and the wolf-tired with my cousins Montague, though charming girls, were they not so near of kin-tired with Mowbray and Tourville, and their everlasting identity-tired with the country-tired of myself—longing for what I have not-I must go to town; and there have an interview with the charmer of my soul; for desperate diseases must have desperate remedies; and I only wait to know my doom from Miss Howe! and then, if it be rejection, I will try my fate and receive my sentence at her feet. -But I will apprize thee of it beforehand, as I told thee, that thou mayest keep thy parole with the lady in the best manner thou canst. LETTER CCLXXIX. MISS HOWE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE. [In answer to hers of July 27, see Letters CCLXXV. and CCLXXVI.] Friday Night, July 28. I WILL now, my dearest friend, write to you all my mind, without reserve, on your resolution not to have this vilest of men. You gave me, in yours of Sunday the 23d, reasons so worthy of the pure mind of my Clarissa, in support of this your resolution, that nothing but selflove, lest I should lose my ever-amiable friend, could have prevailed upon me to wish you to alter it. Indeed, I thought it was impossible there could be (however desirable) so noble an instance given by any of our sex, of a passion conquered, when there were so many inducements to give way to it. And, therefore, I was willing to urge you once more to overcome your just indignation, and to be prevailed upon by the solicitations of his friends, before you carried your resentments to so great a height, that it would be more difficult for you, and less to your honour to comply, than if you had complied at first. But now, my dear, that I see you fixed in your noble resolution; and that it is impossible for your pure mind to join itself with that of so perjured a miscreant; I congratulate you most heartily upon it; and beg your pardon for but seeming to doubt that theory and practice were not the same thing with my beloved Clarissa. I have only one thing that saddens my heart on this occasion; and that is, the bad state of health Mr Hickman (unwillingly) owns you are in. Hitherto you have well observed the doctrine you always laid down to me, That a censured person should first seek to be justified to herself, and give but a second place to the world's opinion of her; and, in all cases where the two could not be reconciled, have preferred the first to the last; and are, of consequence, well justified to your own heart, as well as to your Anna Howe. Let me, therefore, beseech you to endeavour, by all possible means, to re cover your health and spirits; and this, as what, if it can be effected, will crown the work, and shew the world, that you were indeed got above the base wretch; and, though put out of your course for a little while, could resume it again, and go on blessing all within your knowledge, as well by your example as by your precepts. For Heaven's sake, then, for the world's sake, for the honour of our sex, and for my sake, once more I beseech you, try to overcome this shock; 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; but, my dear, when your mind is fully settled, as, (now you are so absolutely determined in it, with regard to this wretch,) I hope it will soon be, I shall expect you with us, or near us; and then you shall chalk out every path that I will set my foot in; nor will I turn aside either to the right hand or to the left. You wish I had not mediated for you to your friends. I wish so too; because my mediation was ineffectual; because it may give new ground for the malice of some of them to work upon; and because you are angry with me for doing so. But how, as I said in my former, could I sit down in quiet, when I knew how uneasy their implacableness made you?-But I will tear myself from the subject; for I see I shall be warm again and displease you-and there is not one thing in the world that I would do, however agreeable to myself, if I thought it would disoblige you; nor any one that I would omit to do, if I knew it would give you pleasure. And indeed, my dear half-severe friend, I will try if I cannot avoid the fault as willingly as I would the rebuke. For this reason, I forbear saying anything on so nice a subject as your letter to your sister. It must be right, because you think it so-and, if it be taken as it ought, that will shew you that it is. But, if it beget insults and revilings, as it is but too likely, I find you don't intend to let me know it. You were always so ready to accuse yourself for other people's faults, and to suspect your own conduct rather than the judgment of your relations, that I have often told you I cannot imitate you in this. It is not a necessary point of belief with me, that all people in years are therefore wise; or that all young people are therefore rash and headstrong; it may be generally the case, as far as I know; and possibly it may be so in the case of my mother and her girl; but I will venture to say that it has not yet appeared to be so between the principals of HarlowePlace and their second daughter. You are for excusing them beforehand for their expected cruelty, as not knowing what you have suffered, nor how ill you are; they have heard of the former, and are not sorry for it; of the latter they have been told, and I have most reason to know how they have taken it—but I shall be far from avoiding the fault, and as surely shall incur the rebuke, if I say any more upon this subject. I will therefore only add at present, That your reasonings in their behalf shew you to be all excellence; their returns to you that they are all-Do, my dear, let me end with a little bit of spiteful justice-but you won't, I know—so I have done, quite done, however reluctantly; yet if you think of the word I would have said, don't doubt the justice of it, and fill up the blank with it. You intimate that were I actually married, and Mr Hickman to desire it, you would think of obliging me with a visit on the occasion; and that, perhaps, when with me, it would be difficult for you to remove far from me. Lord, my dear, what a stress do you seem to lay upon Mr Hickman's desiring it!-To be sure he does and would of all things desire to have you near us, and with us, if we might be so favoured-policy, as well as veneration for you, would undoubtedly make the man, if not a fool, desire this. But let me tell you, that if Mr Hickman after marriage should pretend to dispute with me my friendships, as I hope I am not quite a fool, I should let him know how far his own quiet was concerned in such an impertinence; especially if they were such friendships as were contracted before I knew him. I know I always differed from you on this subject; for you think more highly of a husband's prerogative than most people do of the royal one. These notions, my dear, from a person of your sense and judgment, are no way advantageous to us; inasmuch as they justify that assuming sex in their insolence; when hardly one out of ten of them, their opportunities considered, deserves any prerogative at all. Look through all the families we know ; and we shall not find one-third of them have half the sense of their wives. And yet these are to be vested with prerogatives! And a woman of twice their sense has nothing to do but to hear, tremble, and obey-and for conscience-sake too, I warrant! But Mr Hickman and I may perhaps have a little discourse upon these sort of subjects, before I suffer him to talk of the day; and then I shall let him know what he has to trust to; as he will me, if he be a sincere man, what he pretends to expect from me. But let me tell you, my dear, that it is more in your power than, perhaps, you think it, to hasten the day so much pressed for by my mother, as well as wished for by you-for the very day that you can assure me that you are in a tolerable state of health, and have discharged your doctor and apothecary, at their own motions, on that accountSome day in a month from that desirable news shall be it. So, my dear, make haste and be well, and then this matter will be brought to effect in a manner more agreeable to your Anna Howe than it otherwise ever can. I sent this day, by a particular hand, to the Misses Montague, your letter of just reprobation of the greatest profligate in the kingdom ; and hope I shall not have done amiss that I transcribe some of the paragraphs of your letter of the 23d, and send them with it, as you at first intended should be done. You are, it seems, (and that too much for your health,) employed in writing. I hope it is in penning down the particulars of your tragical story. And my mother has put me in mind to press you to it, with a view that one day, if it might be published under feigned names, it would be of as much use as honour to the sex. My mother says she cannot help admiring you for the propriety of your resentment in your refusal of the wretch; and she would be extremely glad to have her advice of penning your sad story complied with. And then, she says, your noble conduct throughout your trials and calamities will afford not only a shining example to your sex, but at the same time, (those calamities befalling SUCH a person,) a fearful warning to the inconsiderate young creatures of it. On Monday we shall set out on our journey; and I hope to be back in a fortnight, and on my return will have one pull more with my mother for a London journey; and, if the pretence must be the buying of clothes, the principal motive will be that of seeing once more my dear friend, while I can say I have not finally given consent to the change of a visitor into a relation, and so can call myself my own, as well as DEAR LADIES, Saturday, July 29. I HAVE not been wanting to use all my interest with my beloved friend, to induce her to forgive and be reconciled to your kinsman, (though he has so ill deserved it;) and have even repeated my earnest advice to her on this head. This repetition, and the waiting for her answer, having taken up time, have been the cause that I could not sooner do myself the honour of writing to you on this subject. You will see, by the enclosed, her immovable resolution, grounded on noble and high-souled motives, which I cannot but regret and applaud at the same time; applaud, for the justice of her determination, which will confirm all your worthy house in the opinion you had conceived of her unequalled merit; and regret, because I have but too much reason to apprehend, as well by that, as by the report of a gentleman just come from her, that she is in such a declining way, as to her health, that her thoughts are very differently employed than on a continuance here. The enclosed letter she thought fit to send to me unsealed, that, after I had perused it, I might forward it to you; and this is the reason it is superscribed by myself, and sealed with my seal. It is very full and peremptory; but as she had been pleased, in a letter to me, dated the 23d instant, (as soon as she could hold a pen,) to give me more ample reasons why she could not comply with your pressing requests, as well as mine, I will transcribe some of the passages in that letter, which will give one of the wickedest men in the world (if he sees them,) reason to think himself one of the most unhappy, in the loss of so incomparable a wife as he might have gloried in, had he not been so superlatively wicked. These are the passages. [See, for these passages, Miss Harlowe's Letter, No. CCLXVI., dated July 23, marked with turned commas, thus ".] AND now, ladies, you have before you my beloved friend's reasons for her refusal of a man unworthy of the relation he bears to so many excellent persons; and I will add, [for I cannot help it, that the merit and rank of the person considered, and the vile manner of his proceedings, there never was a greater villainy committed; and since she thinks her first and only fault cannot be expiated but by death, I pray to God daily, and will hourly from the moment I shall hear of that sad catastrophe, that He will be pleased to make him the subject of His vengeance, in some such way, as that all who know of his perfidious crime, may see the hand of Heaven in the punishment of it! You will forgive me, ladies; I love not mine own soul better than I do Miss Clarissa Harlowe. And the distresses she has gone through; the persecution she suffers from all her friends; the curse she lies under, for his sake, from her implacable father; her reduced health and circumstances, from high health and affluence; and that execrable arrest and confinement, which have deepened all her other calamities, [and which must be laid at his door, as it was the act of his vile agents, that, whether from his immediate orders or not, naturally flowed from his preceding baseness; the sex dishonoured in the eye of the world, in the person of one of the greatest ornaments of it; the unmanly methods, whatever they were, [for I know not all as yet, by which he compassed her ruin; all these considerations join to justify my warmth, and my execrations of a man whom I think excluded by his crimes from the benefit even of Christian forgiveness-and were you to see all she writes, and to know the admirable talents she is mistress of, you yourselves would join with me to admire her, and execrate him. Believe me to be, with a high sense of your merits, Dear Ladies, Your most obedient humble servant, LETTER CCLXXXI. MRS NORTON TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE. Friday, July 28. MY DEAREST YOUNG LADY, I HAVE the consolation to tell you, that my son is once again in a hopeful way, as to his health. He desires his duty to you. He is very low and weak. And so am I. But this is the first time that I have been able, for several days past, to sit up to write, or I would not have been so long silent. Your letter to your sister is received and answered. You have the answer by this time, I suppose. I wish it may be to your satisfaction; but am afraid it will not; for, by Betty Barnes, I find they were in a great ferment on receiving yours, and much divided whether it should be answered or not. They will not yet believe that you are so ill, as [to my infinite concern I find you are. What passed between Miss Harlowe and Miss Howe, has been, as I feared it would be, an aggravation. I shewed Betty two or three passages in your letter to me; and she seemed moved, and said, She would report them favourably, and would procure me a visit from Miss Harlowe, if I would promise to shew the same to her. But I have heard no more of that. Methinks, I am sorry you refuse the wicked man; but doubt not, nevertheless, that your motives for doing so are more commendable than my wishes that you would not. But as you would be resolved, as I may say, on life, if you gave way to such a thought; and as I have so much interest in your recovery; I cannot forbear shewing this regard to myself; and to ask you, If you cannot get over your just resentments?-But I dare say no more on this subject. What a dreadful thing, indeed, was it for my dearest tender young lady to be arrested in the streets of London !-How does my heart go over again for you, what yours must have suffered at that time!-Yet this, to such a mind as yours, must be light, compared to what you had suffered before. O my dearest Miss Clary, how shall we know what to pray for, when we pray, that God's will may be done, and that we may be resigned to it! -When at nine years old, and afterwards at eleven, you had a dangerous fever, how incessantly did we grieve, and pray, and put up our vows to the Throne of Grace, for your recovery! -For all our lives were bound up in your life -yet now, my dear, as it has proved, especially if we are soon to lose you, what a much more desirable event, both for you and for us, would it have been, had we then lost you! A sad thing to say! But as it is in pure love to you that I say it, and in full conviction that we are not always fit to be our own choosers, I hope it may be excusable; and the rather, as the same reflection will naturally lead both you and me to acquiesce under the present dispensation; since we are assured that nothing happens by chance; and that the greatest good may, for aught we know, be produced from the heaviest evils. I am glad you are with such honest people; and that you have all your effects restored. How dreadfully have you been used, that one should be glad of such a poor piece of justice as that! Your talent at moving the passions is always hinted at; and this Betty of your sister's never comes near me that she is not full of it. But, as you say, whom has it moved, that you wish to move? Yet, were it not for this unhappy notion, I am sure your mother would relent. Forgive me, my dear Miss Clary; for I must try one way to be convinced if my opinion be not just. But I will not tell you what that is, unless it succeeds. I will try, in pure duty and love to them, as to you. May Heaven be your support in all your trials, is the constant prayer, my dearest young lady, of Your ever affectionate friend and servant, LETTER CCLXXXII. MRS NORTON TO MRS HARLOWE. Friday, July 28. HONOURED MADAM, BEING forbidden (without leave) to send you anything I might happen to receive from my beloved Miss Clary, and so ill, that I cannot attend to ask your leave, I give you this trouble, to let you know that I have received a letter from her; which, I think, I should hereafter be held inexcusable, as things may happen, if I did not desire permission to communicate to you, and that as soon as possible. Applications have been made to the dear young lady from Lord M., from the two ladies his sisters, and from both his nieces, and from the wicked man himself, to forgive and marry him. This, in noble indignation for the usage she has received from him, she has absolutely refused. And perhaps, madam, if you and the honoured family should be of opinion that to comply with their wishes is now the properest measure that can be taken, the circumstances of things may require your authority or advice, to induce her to change her mind. I have reason to believe that one motive for her refusal is her full conviction that she shall not long be a trouble to anybody; and so she would not give a husband a right to interfere with her family, in relation to the estate her grandfather devised to her. But of this, however, I have not the least intimation from her. Nor would she, I dare say, mention it as a reason, having still stronger reasons, from his vile treatment of her, to refuse him. The letter I have received will shew how truly penitent the dear creature is; and, if I have your permission, I will send it sealed up, with a copy of mine, to which it is an answer. But, as I resolve upon this step without her knowledge, Cand indeed I do, I will not acquaint her with it, unless it be attended with desirable effects; because, otherwise, besides making me incur her displeasure, it might quite break her already half-broken heart. I am, Honoured Madam, Every one is of opinion that the dear naughty creature is working about to be forgiven and received; and for this reason it is that Betty has been forbidden, [not by me, you may be assured! to mention any more of her letters; for she did speak to my Bella of some moving passages you read to her. This will convince you that nothing will be heard in her favour. To what purpose then should I mention anything about her?-But you may be sure that I will, if I can have but one second. However, that is not at all likely, until we see what the consequences of her crime will be. And who can tell that ?-She may-How can I speak it, and my once darling daughter unmarried! She may be with child! This would perpetuate her stain. Her brother may come to some harm; which God forbid!-One child's ruin, I hope, will not be followed by another's murder. As to her grief, and her present misery, whatever it be, she must bear with it; and it must be short of what I hourly bear for her! Indeed I am afraid nothing but her being at the |