LETTER XXIII MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. [IN ANSWER TO LETTER XXI. OF THIS VOLUME.] M. HALL, WED. NIGHT, JULY 19.
You might well apprehend that I should think you were playing me booty in communicating my letter to the lady.
You ask, Who would think you might not read to her the least exceptionable parts of a letter written in my own defence?--I'll tell you who--the man who, in the same letter that he asks this question, tells the friend whom he exposes to her resentment, 'That there is such an air of levity runs through his most serious letters, that those of this are least fit to be seen which ought to be most to his credit:' And now what thinkest thou of thyself-condemned folly? Be, however, I charge thee, more circumspect for the future, that so this clumsy error may stand singly by itself.
'It is painful to her to think of me!' 'Libertine froth!' 'So pernicious and so despicable a plotter!' 'A man whose friendship is no credit to any body!' 'Hardened wretch!' 'The devil's counterpart!' 'A wicked, wicked man!'--But did she, could she, dared she, to say, or imply all this?--and say it to a man whom she praises for humanity, and prefers to myself for that virtue; when all the humanity he shows, and she knows it too, is by my direction--so robs me of the credit of my own works; admirably entitled, all this shows her, to thy refinement upon the words resentment and revenge. But thou wert always aiming and blundering at some thing thou never couldst make out.
The praise thou givest to her ingenuousness, is another of thy peculiars. I think not as thou dost, of her tell-tale recapitulations and exclamations:--what end can they answer?--only that thou hast a holy love for her, [the devil fetch thee for thy oddity!] or it is extremely provoking to suppose one sees such a charming creature stand upright before a libertine, and talk of the sin against her, that cannot be forgiven!--I wish, at my heart, that these chaste ladies would have a little modesty in their anger!--It would sound very strange, if I Robert Lovelace should pretend to have more true delicacy, in a point that requires the utmost, than Miss Clarissa Harlowe.
I think I will put it into the head of her nurse Norton, and her Miss Howe, by some one of my agents, to chide the dear novice for her proclamations.
But to be serious: let me tell thee, that, severe as she is, and saucy, in asking so contemptuously, 'What a man is your friend, Sir, to set himself to punish guilty people!' I will never forgive the cursed woman, who could commit this last horrid violence on so excellent a creature.
The barbarous insults of the two nymphs, in their visits to her; the choice of the most execrable den that could be found out, in order, no doubt, to induce her to go back to theirs; and the still more execrable attempt, to propose to her a man who would pay the debt; a snare, I make no question, laid for her despairing and resenting heart by that devilish Sally, (thinking her, no doubt, a woman,) in order to ruin her with me; and to provoke me, in a fury, to give her up to their remorseless cruelty; are outrages, that, to express myself in her style, I never can, never will forgive.
But as to thy opinion, and the two women's at Smith's, that her heart is broken! that is the true women's language: I wonder how thou camest into it: thou who hast seen and heard of so many female deaths and revivals.