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

a prostrate adorer, and an admiring world, and up to pleased and rejoicing parents and relations!

Paper VII

Thou pernicious caterpillar, that preyest upon the fair leaf of virgin fame, and poisonest those leaves which thou canst not devour!

Thou fell blight, thou eastern blast, thou overspreading mildew, that destroyest the early promises of the shining year! that mockest the laborious toil, and blastest the joyful hopes, of the painful husbandman!

Thou fretting moth, that corruptest the fairest garment!

Thou eating cankerworm, that preyest upon the opening bud, and turnest the damask-rose into livid yellowness!

If, as religion teaches us, God will judge us, in a great measure, by our benevolent or evil actions to one another⁠—O wretch! bethink thee, in time bethink thee, how great must be thy condemnation!

Paper VIII

At first, I saw something in your air and person that displeased me not. Your birth and fortunes were no small advantages to you.⁠—You acted not ignobly by my passionate brother. Everybody said you were brave: everybody said you were generous: a brave man, I thought, could not be a base man: a generous man, could not, I believed, be ungenerous, where he acknowledged obligation. Thus prepossessed, all the rest that my soul loved and wished for in your reformation I hoped!⁠—I knew not, but by report, any flagrant instances of your vileness. You seemed frank, as well as generous: frankness and generosity ever attracted me: whoever kept up those appearances, I judged of their hearts by my own; and whatever qualities I wished to find in them, I was ready to find; and, when found, I believed them to be natives of the soil.

My fortunes, my rank, my character, I thought a further security. I was in none of those respects unworthy of being the niece of Lord M. and of his two noble sisters.⁠—Your vows, your imprecations⁠—But, Oh! you have barbarously and basely conspired against that honour, which you ought to have protected: and now you have made me⁠—What is it of vile that you have not made me?⁠—

Yet, God knows my heart, I had no culpable inclinations!⁠—I honoured virtue!⁠—I hated vice!⁠—But I knew not, that you were vice itself!

Paper IX

Had the happiness of any of the poorest outcast in the world, whom I had never seen, never known, never before heard of, lain as much in my power, as my happiness did in yours, my benevolent heart would have made me fly to the succour of such a poor distressed⁠—with what pleasure would I have raised the dejected head, and comforted the desponding heart!⁠—But who now shall pity the poor wretch, who has increased, instead of diminished, the number of the miserable!

Paper X

Lead me, where my own thoughts themselves may lose me;
Where I may dose out what I’ve left of life,
Forget myself, and that day’s guile!⁠—
Cruel remembrance!⁠—how shall I appease thee?

Written in the margin

Death only can be dreadful to the bad;
To innocence ’tis like a bugbear dress’d
To frighten children. Pull but off the mask,
And he’ll appear a friend.

—Oh! you have done an act
That blots the face and blush of modesty;
Takes off the rose
From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And makes a blister there!

Then down I laid my head,
Down on cold earth, and for a while was dead;
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled!
Ah! sottish soul! said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
Fool! to resume her broken chain,
And row the galley here again!
Fool! to that body to return,
Where it condemn’d and destin’d is to mourn!

Written in the margin

I could a tale unfold
—Would harrow up thy soul⁠—

O my Miss Howe! if thou hast friendship, help me,
And speak the words of peace to my divided soul,
That wars within me,
And raises ev’ry sense to my confusion.
I’m tott’ring on the brink
Of peace; an thou art all the hold I’ve left!
Assist me⁠—in the pangs of my affliction!
When honour’s lost, ’tis a relief to die:
Death’s but a sure retreat from infamy.

Written in the margin

By swift misfortunes
How I am pursu’d!
Which on each other
Are, like waves, renew’d!

Then farewell, youth,
And all the joys that dwell
With youth and life!
And life itself, farewell!

For life can never be sincerely blest.
Heav’n punishes the bad, and proves the best.

After all, Belford, I have just skimmed over these transcriptions of Dorcas: and I see there are method and good sense in some of them, wild as others of them are; and that her memory, which serves her so well for these poetical flights, is far from being impaired. And this gives me hope, that she will soon recover her charming intellects⁠—though I shall be the sufferer by their restoration, I make no doubt.

But, in the letter she wrote to me, there are yet greater extravagancies; and though I said it was too affecting to give thee a copy of it, yet, after I have let thee see the loose papers enclosed, I think I may throw in a transcript of that. Dorcas therefore shall here transcribe it. I cannot. The reading of it affected me ten times more than the severest reproaches of a regular mind could do.

To Mr. Lovelace

I never intended to write another line to you. I would not see you, if I could help it⁠—O that I never had!

But tell me, of a truth, is Miss Howe really and truly ill?⁠—Very ill?⁠—And is not her illness poison? And don’t you know who gave it to her?

What you, or Mrs. Sinclair, or somebody (I cannot tell who) have done to my poor head, you best know: but I shall never be what I was. My head is gone. I have wept away all my brain, I believe; for I can weep no more. Indeed I have had my full share; so it is no matter.

But, good now, Lovelace, don’t set Mrs. Sinclair upon me again.⁠—I never did her any harm. She so