Clarissa Harlowe - Samuel Richardson (reading cloud ebooks txt) 📗

and myself. I satisfied myself in a lump-account, as I may call it, if I had nothing greatly wrong to reproach myself, when I looked back on a past week, as she had taught me to do.

For she used indulgently to say, “I do not think all I do necessary for another to do; nor even for myself; but when it is more pleasant for me to keep such an account, than to let it alone, why may I not proceed in my supererogatories?⁠—There can be no harm in it. It keeps up my attention to accounts; which one day may be of use to me in more material instances. Those who will not keep a strict account, seldom long keep any. I neglect not more useful employments for it. And it teaches me to be covetous of time; the only thing of which we can be allowably covetous; since we live but once in this world; and, when gone, are gone from it forever.”

She always reconciled the necessity under which these interventions, as she called them, laid her, of now-and-then breaking into some of her appropriations; saying, “That was good sense, and good manners too, in the common lesson, When at Rome, do as they do at Rome. And that to be easy of persuasion, in matters where one could oblige without endangering virtue, or worthy habits, was an apostolical excellency; since, if a person conformed with a view of making herself an interest in her friend’s affections, in order to be heeded in greater points, it was imitating His example, who became all things to all men, that He might gain some.” Nor is it to be doubted, had life been spared her, that the sweetness of her temper, and her cheerful piety, would have made virtue and religion appear so lovely, that her example would have had no small influence upon the minds and manners of those who would have had the honour of conversing with her.

O Mr. Belford! I can write no further on this subject. For, looking into the account-book for other particulars, I met with a most affecting memorandum; which being written on the extreme edge of the paper, with a fine pen, and in the dear creature’s smallest hand, I saw not before.⁠—This it is; written, I suppose, at some calamitous period after the day named in it⁠—help me to curse, to blast the monster who gave occasion for it!⁠—

April 10. The account concluded! And with it all my worldly hopes and prospects!

I take up my pen; but not to apologize for my execration.⁠—Once more I pray to God to avenge me of him!⁠—Me, I say⁠—for mine is the loss⁠—hers the gain.

O Sir! you did not⁠—you could not know her, as I knew her! Never was such an excellence!⁠—So warm, yet so cool a friend!⁠—So much what I wish to be, but never shall be!⁠—For, alas! my stay, my adviser, my monitress, my directress, is gone!⁠—forever gone!⁠—She honoured me with the title of The Sister of her Heart; but I was only so in the love I bore her, (a love beyond a sister’s⁠—infinitely beyond her sister’s!) in the hatred I have to every mean and sordid action; and in my love of virtue; for, otherwise, I am of a high and haughty temper, as I have acknowledged heretofore, and very violent in my passions.

In short, she was the nearest perfection of any creature I ever knew. She never preached to me lessons which she practised not herself. She lived the life she taught. All humility, meekness, self-accusing, others acquitting, though the shadow of the fault was hardly hers, the substance their’s, whose only honour was their relation to her.

To lose such a friend⁠—such a guide.⁠—If ever my violence was justifiable, it is upon this recollection! For she lived only to make me sensible of my failings, but not long enough to enable me to conquer them; as I was resolved to endeavour to do.

Once more then let me execrate⁠—but now violence and passion again predominate!⁠—And how can it be otherwise?

But I force myself from the subject, having lost the purpose for which I resumed my pen.

A. Howe.

Letter 530 Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford, Esq.

Paris, Oct. 14

⸺⁠Timor & minae
Scandunt eodum quo dominus; neque
Decedit aerata triremi; &
Post equitem sedet atra cura.

In a language so expressive as the English, I hate the pedantry of tagging or prefacing what I write with Latin scraps; and ever was a censurer of the motto-mongers among our weekly and daily scribblers. But these verses of Horace are so applicable to my case, that, whether on shipboard, whether in my post-chaise, or in my inn at night, I am not able to put them out of my head. Dryden once I thought said very well in these bouncing lines:

Man makes his fate according to his mind.
The weak, low spirit, Fortune makes her slave:
But she’s a drudge, when hector’d by the brave.
If Fate weave common thread, I’ll change the doom,
And with new purple weave a nobler loom.

And in these:

Let Fortune empty her whole quiver on me,
I have a soul, that, like an ample shield,
Can take in all, and verge enough for more.
Fate was not mine: nor am I Fate’s⁠—
Souls know no conquerors.⁠—

But in the first quoted lines, considering them closely, there is nothing but blustering absurdity; in the other, the poet says not truth; for conscience is the conqueror of souls; at least it is the conqueror of mine; and who ever thought it a narrow one?⁠—But this is occasioned partly by poring over the affecting will, and posthumous letter. What an army of texts has she drawn up in array against me in the letter!⁠—But yet, Jack, do they not show me, that, two or three thousand years ago, there were as wicked fellows as myself?⁠—They do⁠—and that’s some consolation.

But the generosity of her mind displayed in both, is what stings me most. And the