Samuel Richardson

“ Come, come, Harriet, you shall be Lady Grandison still—Ah! and that sigh too! These love-sick folks have a language that nobody else can talk to them in: and then she affectedly sighed—Is that right, Harriet?—She sighed again—No, it is not: I never knew what a sigh was, but when my father vexed my sister; and that was more for fear he should one day be as cruel to me, than for her sake. We can be very generous for others, Harriet, when we apprehend that one day we may want the same pity ourselves. Our best passions, my dear, have their mixtures of self-love. ”

“ Is it not a sad thing, beloved as I thought myself so lately by every one, that now I have not one person in the world to plead for me, to stand by me, or who would afford me refuge, were I to be under the necessity of asking for it!—I who had the vanity to think I had as many friends as I saw faces, and flattered myself too, that it was not altogether unmerited, because I saw not my Maker's image, either in man, woman, or child, high or low, rich or poor, whom, comparatively, I loved not as myself.—Would to heaven, my dear, that you were married! ”

“ O how you run out in favour of the wretch!—His birth, his education, his person, his understanding, his manners, his air, his fortune—reversions too taken in to augment the surfeiting catalogue! What a fond string of lovesick praises is here! And yet you would live single—Yes, I warrant!—when so many imaginary perfections dance before your dazzled eye!—But no more—I only desire, that you will not, while you seem to have such an opinion of your wit, think every one else a fool; and that you can at pleasure, by your whining flourishes, make us all dance after your lead. ”

“ Who will dare to form plots and stratagems against my wife? That you are not so is the ground of all their foolish attempts, and of their insolent hopes in Solmes's favour.—O be mine!—I beseech you (thus on my knee I beseech you) to be mine. We shall then have all the world with us. And every body will applaud an event that every body expects.
Was the devil in me! I no more intended all this ecstatic nonsense, than I thought the same moment of flying in the air! All power is with this charming creature. It is I, not she, at this rate, that must fail in the arduous trial. ”

“ From death we rose to life: 'tis but the same, Through life to pass again from whence we came. With shame we see our PASSIONS can prevail, Where reason, certainty, and virtue fail. HONOUR, that empty name, can death despise; | SCORN'D LOVE to death, as to a refuge, flies; | And SORROW waits for death with longing eyes. | HOPE triumphs o'er the thoughts of death; and FATE Cheats fools, and flatters the unfortunate. We fear to lose, what a small time must waste, Till life itself grows the disease at last. Begging for life, we beg for more decay, And to be long a dying only pray. ”

“ But I charge you, my dear Mrs. Jervis, whatever you call me before strangers, that when we are by ourselves you call me nothing but your Pamela. For what an ungrateful creature should I be, who have received so many mercies, if I attributed them not to the divine goodness, but assumed to myself insolent airs upon them! No, I hope I shall be, more and more thankful, as I am more and more blest! and more humble, as God, the author of all my happiness, shall more distinguish me.
We went down again to the parlour, to my dear master. Said he, Call Longman in again; he longs to see you, my dear. ”

“ Adieu, Belford!
But return me my last letter—and build nothing upon its contents. I must, I will, I have already, overcome these fruitless gloominess. Every hour my constitution rises stronger and stronger to befriend me; and, except a tributary sigh now-and-then to the memory of my heart's beloved, it gives me hope that I shall quickly be what I was—life, spirit, gaiety, and once more the plague of a sex that has been my plague, and will be every man's plague at one time or other of his life. ”

“ But thinkest thou that, after such a series of contrivance, I will lose this inimitable woman for want of a little more? A rake’s a rake, Jack!—And what rake is withheld by principle from the perpetration of any evil his heart is set upon, and in which he thinks he can succeed?—Besides, am I not in earnest as to marriage?—Will not the generality of the world acquit me, if I do marry? And what is that injury which a church-rite will not at any time repair? Is not the catastrophe of every story that ends in wedlock accounted happy, be the difficulties in the progress of it ever so great. ”

“ I have written all night
*** TO MISS HOWE MY DEAREST CREATURE,
How you have shocked, confounded, surprised, astonished me, by your dreadful communication!—My heart is too weak to bear up against such a stroke as this!—When all hope was with me! When my prospects were so much mended!—But can there be such villany in men, as in this vile principal, and equally vile agent!
I am really ill—very ill—grief and surprise, and, now I will say, despair, have overcome me!—All, all, you have laid down as conjecture, appears to me now to be more than conjecture! ”

“ Lady OLIVIA is really a lovely woman. Her complexion is fine. Her face oval. Every feature of it is delicate. Her hair is black; and, I think, I never saw brighter black eyes in my life: if possible, they are brighter, and shine with a more piercing lustre, than even Sir Charles Grandison's: but yet I give his the preference; for we see in them a benignity, that hers, though a woman's, has not; and a thoughtfulness, as if something lay upon his mind, which nothing but patience could overcome; yet mingled with an air that shews him to be equal to any thing, that can be undertaken by man. ”

“ Nor can we expect in one man every good quality. But he is really a silly fellow, my dear, to trouble his head about me, when he sees how much I despise his whole sex; and must of course make a common man look like a fool, were he not to make himself look like one, by wishing to pitch his tent so oddly. Our likings and dislikings, as I have often thought, are seldom governed by prudence, or with a view to happiness. The eye, my dear, the wicked eye, has such a strict alliance with the heart—and both have such enmity to the judgment!—What an unequal union, the mind and body! ”

“ Children of the same parents, how came they by their cruelty?—Do they get it by travel?—Do they get it by conversation with one another?—Or how do they get it?—Yet my sister, too, is as hard-hearted as any of them. But this may be no exception neither: for she has been thought to be masculine in her air and her spirit. She has then, perhaps, a soul of the other sex in a body of ours. And so, for the honour of our own, will I judge of every woman for the future, who imitating the rougher manners of men, acts unbeseeming the gentleness of her own sex. ”

“ Your goodness, sir, said she, I will for ever acknowledge; and I beg pardon for the wrong step I made in applying to my Lady Davers.—He was so good as to salute her, and said, All is over now, Mrs. Jervis; and I shall not remember you ever disobliged me. I always respected you, and shall now more and more value you, for the sake of that dear good creature, whom, with joy unfeigned, I can call my wife. God bless your honour for ever! said she; and many many happy years may ye live together, the envy and wonder of all who know you!
But where, said my dear master, is honest Longman? ”

“ Can I vow duty to one so wicked, and hazard my salvation by joining myself to so great a profligate, now I know him to be so? Do you think your Clarissa Harlowe so lost, so sunk, at least, as that she could, for the sake of patching up, in the world's eye, a broken reputation, meanly appear indebted to the generosity, or perhaps compassion, of a man, who has, by means so inhuman, robbed her of it? Indeed, my dear, I should not think my penitence for the rash step I took, any thing better than a specious delusion, if I had not got above the least wish to have Mr. Lovelace for my husband. ”

“ O Jack, Jack! thinkest thou that I will take all this roguish pains, and be so often called villain for nothing?
But yet, is it not taking pains to come at the finest creature in the world, not for a transitory moment only, but for one of our lives! The struggle only, Whether I am to have her in my own way, or in her's?
But now I know thou wilt be frightened out of thy wits for me—What, Lovelace! wouldest thou let her have a letter that will inevitably blow thee up; and blow up the mother, and all her nymphs!—yet not intend to reform, nor intend to marry? ”

“ Then, why do good people take upon themselves to censure, as they do, persons less scrupulous than themselves? Is it not because the latter allow themselves in any liberty, in order to carry a point? And can my not doing my duty, warrant another for not doing his?—Thou wilt not say it can.
And how would it sound, to put the case as strongly once more, as my greatest enemy would put it, both as to fact and in words—here has that profligate wretch Lovelace broken his vow with and deceived Miss Clarissa Harlowe.—A vile fellow! would an enemy say: but it is like him. ”

“ Now, Harriet, you never will desert me in a point of delicacy, I am sure. You cannot defend these odious freedoms in a matrimony so young, unless you would be willing to be served so yourself.
You may suppose, that then I let loose my indignation upon him. And he stole out, daring to mutter, and be displeased. The word devil was in his mouth.
Did he call me devil, Jenny?
No, indeed, madam, said the wench—And, Harriet, see the ill example of such a free behaviour before her: she presumed to prate in favour of the man's fit of fondness; yet, at other times, is a prude of a girl. ”

“ As to your young lady, the ever-admirable Miss Clarissa Harlowe, I always courted her for a wife. Others rather expected marriage from the vanity of their own hearts, than from my promises; for I was always careful of what I promised. You know, Joseph, that I have gone beyond my promises to you. I do to every body; and why? because it is the best way of showing that I have no grudging or narrow spirit. A promise is an obligation. A just man will keep his promise, a generous man will go beyond it.—This is my rule.
If you doubt my honour to your young lady, it is more than she does. ”

“ See you, my dear father, said I, what goodness there is in this once naughty master! O pray for him! and pray for me, that I may deserve it!
How long has this happy change been wrought, my dear child?—O, said I, several happy days!—I have written down every thing; and you’ll see, from the depth of misery, what God has done for your happy daughter!
Blessed be his name! said he. But do you say he will marry you? Can it be, that such a brave gentleman will make a lady of the child of such a poor man as I? O the divine goodness! ”

“ What a construction does your lively wit put upon the admiration Mr. Solmes expresses of you!—Passionate as you were yesterday, and contemptuously as you treated him, he dotes upon you for the very severity by which he suffers. He is not so ungenerous a man as you think him: nor has he an unfeeling heart.—Let me prevail upon you, my dear, (as your father and mother expect it of you,) to see him once more, and hear what he has to say to you.
How can I consent to see him again, when yesterday's interview was interpreted by you, Madam, as well as by every other, as an encouragement to him? ”

“ Oh! return, return, thou only charmer of my soul! return to thy adoring Lovelace! What is the light, what the air, what the town, what the country, what's any thing, without thee? Light, air, joy, harmony, in my notion, are but parts of thee; and could they be all expressed in one word, that word would be CLARISSA.
O my beloved CLARISSA, return thou then; once more return to bless thy LOVELACE, who now, by the loss of thee, knows the value of the jewel he has slighted; and rises every morning but to curse the sun that shines upon every body but him! ”