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

reason for her jealousy and vigilance. And Lovelace will tell the sex, as he does in Letter 220, that the woman who resents not initiatory freedoms, must be lost. Love is an encroacher, says he: loves never goes backward. Nothing but the highest act of love can satisfy an indulged love.

But the reader perhaps is too apt to form a judgment of Clarissa’s conduct in critical cases by Lovelace’s complaints of her coldness; not considering his views upon her; and that she is proposed as an example; and therefore in her trials and distresses must not be allowed to dispense with those rules which perhaps some others of the sex, in her delicate situation, would not have thought themselves so strictly bound to observe; although, if she had not observed them, a Lovelace would have carried all his points. ↩

See Letter 175. ↩

See Letter 171. ↩

See Letter 110. ↩

See Letter 58. ↩

See Letter 177. ↩

See Letter 188. ↩

See Letter 188. ↩

See Letter 156. ↩

See Letter 164. ↩

See Letter 166. ↩

See Letter 177. ↩

See Letter 183. ↩

See Letter 188. ↩

She tells Miss Howe, that she saw this motion in the pier-glass. See Letter 187. ↩

See Letter 196. ↩

See Letter 164, Parag. 2. ↩

See Letter 41. ↩

Within these few years past, a passage has been made from the prison to the sessions-house, whereby malefactors are carried into court without going through the street. Lovelace’s triumph on their supposed march shows the wisdom of this alteration. ↩

Pliny gives this account, putting the number of men slain at 1,100,092. See also Lipsius de Constandia. ↩

See Letter 183. ↩

See Letter 196. ↩

See Letter 188. ↩

See Letter 12. ↩

See Letter 173, & seq. ↩

See Letters 177 and 183. ↩

See Letter 204. ↩

See Letter 173. See also Mr. Lovelace’s own confession of the delight he takes in a woman’s tears, in different parts of his letters. ↩

That the Lady judges rightly of him in this place, see Letter 34 where, giving the motive for his generosity to his Rosebud, he says⁠—“As I make it my rule, whenever I have committed a very capital enormity, to do some good by way of atonement; and as I believe I am a pretty deal indebted on that score; I intend to join an hundred pounds to Johnny’s aunt’s hundred pounds, to make one innocent couple happy.”⁠—Besides which motive, he had a further view in answer in that instance of his generosity; as may be seen in Letters 70, 71, 72. See also note 40.

To show the consistence of his actions, as they now appear, with his views and principles, as he lays them down in his first letters, it may be not amiss to refer the reader to his letters, 34, 35.

See also Letter 30⁠—and Letter 40 for Clarissa’s early opinion of Mr. Lovelace.⁠—Whence the coldness and indifference to him, which he so repeatedly accuses her of, will be accounted for, more to her glory, than to his honour. ↩

See Letter 159. ↩

See Letter 159. ↩

As this letter of the Lady to Miss Howe contains no new matter, but what may be collected from one of those of Mr. Lovelace, it is omitted. ↩

See Letter 31. ↩

In Pamela, Letter 124 these reasons are given, and are worthy of every parent’s consideration, as is the whole Letter, which contains the debate between Mr. B. and his Pamela, on the important subject of mothers being nurses to their own children. ↩

See Letter 161 ↩

See Letter 202. ↩

See Letter 110. ↩

See Letter 110. See also Letters 108 and 109. ↩

See Letter 131. ↩

See Letter 108. ↩

See Letter 64. ↩

See Letter 64. ↩

See Letter 110. ↩

See Letter 140. ↩

See Letter 177. ↩

See Letter 201. ↩

See Letter 110. ↩

See Letter 125. ↩

See Letter 177. ↩

See Letter 200. ↩

Letters 130 and 131. ↩

See Letter 148, paragraph 12, and Letter 150, paragraph 12.⁠—Where the reader will observe, that the proposal came from herself; which, as it was also mentioned by Mr. Lovelace, (towards the end of Letter 155). She may be presumed to have forgotten. So that Clarissa had a double inducement for acquiescing with the proposed method of carrying on the correspondence between Miss Howe and herself by Wilson’s conveyance, and by the name of Laetitia Beaumont. ↩

See Letter 178. ↩

He means the freedom Mr. Lovelace took with her before the fire-plot. See Letter 220. When Miss Howe wrote this letter she could not know of that.