Clarissa Harlowe, Samuel Richardson [black authors fiction .txt] 📗

see not when men are so frail without importunity, that so much should be expected from women, daughters of the same fathers and mothers, and made up of the same brittle compounds, (education all the difference), nor where the triumph is in subduing them.

May there not be other Lovelaces, thou askest, who, attracted by her beauty, may endeavour to prevail with her?112

No; there cannot, I answer, be such another man, person, mind, fortune, and thy character, as above given, taken in. If thou imaginest there could, such is thy pride, that thou wouldst think the worse of thyself.

But let me touch upon thy predominant passion, revenge; for love is but second to that, as I have often told thee, though it has set thee into raving at me: what poor pretences for revenge are the difficulties thou hadst in getting her off; allowing that she had run a risk of being Solmes’s wife, had she stayed? If these are other than pretences, why thankest thou not those who, by their persecutions of her, answered thy hopes, and threw her into thy power?⁠—Besides, are not the pretences thou makest for further trial, most ungratefully, as well as contradictorily founded upon the supposition of error in her, occasioned by her favour to thee?

And let me, for the utter confusion of thy poor pleas of this nature, ask thee⁠—Would she, in thy opinion, had she willingly gone off with thee, have been entitled to better quarter?⁠—For a mistress indeed she might: but how wouldst thou for a wife have had cause to like her half so well as now?

Has she not demonstrated, that even the highest provocations were not sufficient to warp her from her duty to her parents, though a native, and, as I may say, an originally involuntary duty, because native? And is not this a charming earnest that she will sacredly observe a still higher duty into which she proposes to enter, when she does enter, by plighted vows, and entirely as a volunteer?

That she loves thee, wicked as thou art, and cruel as a panther, there is no reason to doubt. Yet, what a command has she over herself, that such a penetrating self-flatterer as thyself is sometimes ready to doubt it! Though persecuted on the one hand, as she was, by her own family, and attracted, on the other, by the splendour of thine; every one of whom courts her to rank herself among them!

Thou wilt perhaps think that I have departed from my proposition, and pleaded the lady’s sake more than thine, in the above⁠—but no such thing. All that I have written is more in thy behalf than in hers; since she may make thee happy; but it is next to impossible, I should think, if she preserve her delicacy, that thou canst make her so. What is the love of a rakish heart? There cannot be peculiarity in it. But I need not give my further reasons. Thou wilt have ingenuousness enough, I dare say, were there occasion for it, to subscribe to my opinion.

I plead not for the state from any great liking to it myself. Nor have I, at present, thoughts of entering into it. But, as thou art the last of thy name; as thy family is of note and figure in thy country; and as thou thyself thinkest that thou shalt one day marry: Is it possible, let me ask thee, that thou canst have such another opportunity as thou now hast, if thou lettest this slip? A woman in her family and fortune not unworthy of thine own (though thou art so apt, from pride of ancestry, and pride of heart, to speak slightly of the families thou dislikest); so celebrated for beauty; and so noted at the same time for prudence, for soul, (I will say, instead of sense), and for virtue?

If thou art not so narrow-minded an elf, as to prefer thine own single satisfaction to posterity, thou, who shouldst wish to beget children for duration, wilt not postpone till the rake’s usual time; that is to say, till diseases or years, or both, lay hold of thee; since in that case thou wouldst entitle thyself to the curses of thy legitimate progeny for giving them a being altogether miserable: a being which they will be obliged to hold upon a worse tenure than that tenant-courtesy, which thou callest the worst;113 to wit, upon the Doctor’s courtesy; thy descendants also propagating (if they shall live, and be able to propagate) a wretched race, that shall entail the curse, or the reason for it, upon remote generations.

Wicked as the sober world accounts you and me, we have not yet, it is to be hoped, got over all compunction. Although we find religion against us, we have not yet presumed those who do. And we know better than to be even doubters. In short, we believe a future state of rewards and punishments. But as we have so much youth and health in hand, we hope to have time for repentance. That is to say, in plain English, (nor think thou me too grave, Lovelace: thou art grave sometimes, though not often), we hope to live to sense, as long as sense can relish, and purpose to reform when we can sin no longer.

And shall this admirable woman suffer for her generous endeavours to set on foot thy reformation; and for insisting upon proofs of the sincerity of thy professions before she will be thine?

Upon the whole matter, let me wish thee to consider well what thou art about, before thou goest a step farther in the path which thou hast chalked out for thyself to tread, and art just going to enter upon. Hitherto all is so far right, that if the lady mistrusts thy honour, she has no proofs. Be honest to her, then, in her sense of the word. None of thy companions, thou knowest, will offer to laugh at what