Clarissa Harlowe Samuel Richardson (most important books to read TXT) 📖

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 of 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, etc. 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 an 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 profession 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 as 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.144 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 has 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 skinned 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 had given