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

my beloved an ungenerous diffidence of me. That she is so mother-sick and father-fond, that she had rather return to Harlowe-place than marry. That she is even apprehensive that the step she has taken of going off with me will make the ladies of a family of such rank and honour as ours think slightly of her. That therefore I desire his Lordship (though this hint, I tell him, must be very delicately touched) to write me such a letter as I can show her; (let him treat me in it ever so freely, I shall not take it amiss, I tell him, because I know his Lordship takes pleasure in writing to me in a corrective style). That he may make what offers he pleases on the marriage. That I desire his presence at the ceremony; that I may take from his hand the greatest blessing that mortal man can give me.”

I have not absolutely told the lady that I would write to his Lordship to this effect; yet have given her reason to think I will. So that without the last necessity I shall not produce the answer I expect from him: for I am very loth, I own, to make use of any of my family’s names for the furthering of my designs. And yet I must make all secure, before I pull off the mask. Was not this my motive for bringing her hither?

Thus thou seest that the old peer’s letter came very seasonably. I thank thee for that. But as to his sentences, they cannot possibly do me good. I was early suffocated with his wisdom of nations. When a boy, I never asked anything of him, but out flew a proverb; and if the tendency of that was to deny me, I never could obtain the least favour. This gave me so great an aversion to the very word, that, when a child, I made it a condition with my tutor, who was an honest parson, that I would not read my Bible at all, if he would not excuse me one of the wisest books in it: to which, however, I had no other objection, than that it was called The Proverbs. And as for Solomon, he was then a hated character with me, not because of his polygamy, but because I had conceived him to be such another musty old fellow as my uncle.

Well, but let us leave old saws to old me. What signifies thy tedious whining over thy departing relation? Is it not generally agreed that he cannot recover? Will it not be kind in thee to put him out of his misery? I hear that he is pestered still with visits from doctors, and apothecaries, and surgeons; that they cannot cut so deep as the mortification has gone; and that in every visit, in every scarification, inevitable death is pronounced upon him. Why then do they keep tormenting him? Is it not to take away more of his living fleece than of his dead flesh?⁠—When a man is given over, the fee should surely be refused. Are they not now robbing his heirs?⁠—What has thou to do, if the will be as thou’dst have it?⁠—He sent for thee (did he not?) to close his eyes. He is but an uncle, is he?

Let me see, if I mistake not, it is in the Bible, or some other good book: can it be in Herodotus?⁠—O I believe it is in Josephus, a half-sacred, and half-profane author. He tells us of a king of Syria put out of his pain by his prime minister, or one who deserved to be so for his contrivance. The story says, if I am right, that he spread a wet cloth over his face, which killing him, he reigned in his place. A notable fellow! Perhaps this wet cloth in the original, is what we now call laudanum; a potion that overspreads the faculties, as the wet cloth did the face of the royal patient; and the translator knew not how to render it.

But how like forlorn varlet thou subscribest, “Thy melancholy friend, J. Belford!” Melancholy! For what? To stand by, and see fair play between an old man and death? I thought thou hadst been more of a man; that thou art not afraid of an acute death, a sword’s point, to be so plaugily hip’d at the consequences of a chronical one!⁠—What though the scarificators work upon him day by day? It’s only upon a caput mortuum: and pr’ythee go to, to use the stylum veterum, and learn of the royal butchers; who, for sport, (an hundred times worse men than thy Lovelace), widow ten thousand at a brush, and make twice as many fatherless⁠—learn of them, I say, how to support a single death.

But art thou sure, Jack, it is a mortification?⁠—My uncle once gave promises of such a root-and-branch distemper: but, alas! it turned to a smart gout-fit; and I had the mortification instead of him.⁠—I have heard that bark, in proper doses, will arrest a mortification in its progress, and at last cure it. Let thy uncle’s surgeon know, that it is worth more than his ears, if he prescribe one grain of the bark.

I wish my uncle had given me the opportunity of setting thee a better example: thou shouldst have seen what a brave fellow I had been. And had I had occasion to write, my conclusion would have been this:

“I hope the old Trojan’s happy. In that hope, I am so; and

“Thy rejoicing friend,

“R. Lovelace.”

Dwell not always, Jack, upon one subject. Let me have poor Belton’s story. The sooner the better. If I can be of service to him, tell him he may command me either in purse or person. Yet the former with a freer will than the latter; for how can I leave my goddess? But I’ll issue my commands to my other vassals to attend