get that lively bird into my cage! How would I make her flutter and fly about!-Till she left a feather upon every wire!

Had I begun there, I am confident, as I have heretofore said*, that I should not have had half the difficulty with her, as I have had with her charming friend. For these passionate girls have high pulses, and a clever fellow may make what sport he pleases with their unevennesses-now too high, now too low, you need only to provoke and appease them by turns; to bear with them, and forbear; to tease and ask pardon; and sometimes to give yourself the merit of a sufferer from them; then catching them in the moment of concession, conscious of their ill usage of you, they are all your

own.

But these sedate contemplative girls, never out of temper but with reason; when that reason is given them, hardly ever pardon, or afford you another opportunity to offend.

It was in part the apprehension that this would be so with my dear Miss Harlowe, that made me carry her to a place where I believed she would be unable to escape me, although I were not to succeed in my first attempts. Else widow Sorlings's would have been as well for me, as widow Sinclair's. For early I saw, that there was no credulity in her to graft upon: no pretending to whine myself into her confidence. She was proof against amorous persuasion. She had reason in her love. Her penetration and good sense made her hate all compliments that had not truth and nature in them. What could I have done with her in any other place? And yet how long, even there, was I kept in awe, in spite of natural incitement and un

* See Vol. V. p. 275.

natural instigations (as I now think them) by the mere force of that native dignity, and obvious purity of mind and manners, which fill every one with reverence, if not with holy love, as thou callest it*, the moment he sees her!-Else thinkest thou not, it was easy for me to be a fine gentleman, and a delicate lover, or, at least, a specious and flattering one?

Lady Sarah and Lady Betty, finding the treaty upon the success of which they have set their foolish hearts, likely to run into length, are about departing to their own seats; having taken from me the best security the nature of the case will admit of, that is to say, my word, to marry the lady, if she will have me.

And after all (methinks thou askest) art thou still resolved to repair, if reparation be put into thy power?

Why, Jack, I must needs own, that my heart has now and then some retrograde motions, upon thinking seriously of the irrevocable ceremony. We do not easily give up the desire of our hearts, and what we imagine essential to our happiness, let the expectation or hope of compassing it be ever so unreasonable or absurd in the opinion of others. Recurrings there will be; hankerings, that will, on every but remotely favourable incident (however before discouraged and beaten back by ill success) pop up, and abate the satisfaction we should otherwise take in contrariant overtures.

'Tis ungentlemanly, Jack, man to man, to lie.But matrimony I do not heartily love-although with a CLARISSA; yet I am in earnest to marry her. But I am often thinking, that if now this dear creature, suffering time and my penitence, my re

* See p. 326.

6

lation's prayers, and Miss Howe's mediation, to soften her resentments [her revenge thou hast prettily* distinguished away] and to recal repulsed inclination, should consent to meet me at the altar -how vain will she then make all thy eloquent periods of execration !-How many charming interjections of her own will she spoil! And what a couple of old patriarchs shall we become, going on in the mill-horse round; getting sons and daughters; providing nurses for them first, governors and governesses next; teaching them lessons their father never practised, nor which their mother, as her parents will say, was much the better for! And at last perhaps, when life shall be turned into the dully sober stillness, and I become desirous to forget all my past rogueries, what comfortable reflections will it afford, to find them all revived, with equal, or probably greater trouble and expense, in the persons and manners of so many young Lovelaces of the boys: and to have the girls run away with varlets perhaps not half so ingenious as myself: clumsy fellows, as it might happen, who could not afford the baggages one excuse for their weakness, besides those disgraceful ones of sex and nature!-O Belford! who can bear to think of these things! Who, at my

time of life especially, and with such a bias for mischief!

Of this I am absolutely convinced, that if a man ever intends to marry, and to enjoy in peace his own reflections; and not be afraid of retribution, or of the consequences of his own example; he should never be a rake.

This looks like conscience; don't it, Belford? But, being in earnest still, as I have said, all I

* See p. 312.

have to do in my present uncertainty, is, to brighten up my faculties, by filing off the rust they have contracted by the town smoke, a long imprisonment in my close attendance to so little purpose on my fair perverse; and to brace up, if I can, the relaxed fibres of my mind, which have been twitched and convulsed like the nerves of some tottering paralytic, by means of the tumults she has excited in it; that so I may be able to present to her a husband as worthy as I can be of her acceptance; or, if she reject me, be in a capacity to resume my usual gaiety of heart, and shew others of the misleading sex, that I am not discouraged by the difficulties I have met with from this sweet individual of it, from endeavouring to make myself as acceptable to them as before.

In this latter case, one tour to France and Italy, I dare say, will do the business. Miss Harlowe will by that time have forgotten all she has suffered from her ungrateful Lovelace: though it will be impossible that her Lovelace should ever forget a woman, whose equal he despairs to meet with, were he to travel from one end of the world to the other.

If thou continuest paying off the heavy debts my long letters, for so many weeks together, have made thee groan under, I will endeavour to restrain myself in the desires I have (importunate as they are) of going to town, to throw myself at the feet of my soul's beloved. Policy and honesty both join to strengthen the restraint my own promise, and thy engagement, have laid me under on this head. I would not afresh provoke; on the contrary, would give time for her resentments to subside, so all that follows may be her own act and deed.

HICKMAN [I have a mortal aversion to that fellow!] has, by a line which I have just now received, requested an interview with me on Friday at Mr. Dormer's, as at a common friend's. Does the business he wants to meet me upon, require that it should be at a common friend's?-A challenge implied: is it not, Belford?-I shall not be civil to him, I doubt. He has been an intermeddler!— Then I envy him on Miss Howe's account: for if I have a right notion of this Hickman, it is impossible that that virago can ever love him.

Every one knows that the mother (saucy as the daughter sometimes is) crams him down her throat. Her mother is one of the most violent-spirited women in England. Her late husband could not stand in the matrimonial contention of Who should? but tipt off the perch in it, neither knowing how to yield, nor how to conquer.

A charming encouragement for a man of intrigue, when he has reason to believe, that the woman he has a view upon has no love for her husband! What good principles must that wife have, who is kept in against temptation by a sense of her duty, and plighted faith, where affection has no hold of her!

Pry'thee let's know, very particularly, how it fares with poor Belton.-'Tis an honest fellow.Something more than his Thomasine seems to stick with him.

Thou hast not been preaching to him conscience and reformation, hast thou?-Thou shouldest not take liberties with him of this sort, unless thou thoughtest him absolutely irrecoverable. 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