“Then, upon my honour, madam,” said Sophia, “Mr Jones is as entirely indifferent to me, as the gentleman who just now left us.”
“Upon my honour,” said Lady Bellaston, “I believe it. Forgive me, therefore, a little innocent raillery; but I promise you I will never mention his name any more.”
And now the two ladies separated, infinitely more to the delight of Sophia than of Lady Bellaston, who would willingly have tormented her rival a little longer, had not business of more importance called her away. As for Sophia, her mind was not perfectly easy under this first practice of deceit; upon which, when she retired to her chamber, she reflected with the highest uneasiness and conscious shame. Nor could the peculiar hardship of her situation, and the necessity of the case, at all reconcile her mind to her conduct; for the frame of her mind was too delicate to bear the thought of having been guilty of a falsehood, however qualified by circumstances. Nor did this thought once suffer her to close her eyes during the whole succeeding night.
BOOK XIV. — CONTAINING TWO DAYS.
Chapter i. — An essay to prove that an author will write the better for having some knowledge of the subject on which he writes.
As several gentlemen in these times, by the wonderful force of genius only, without the least assistance of learning, perhaps, without being well able to read, have made a considerable figure in the republic of letters; the modern critics, I am told, have lately begun to assert, that all kind of learning is entirely useless to a writer; and, indeed, no other than a kind of fetters on the natural sprightliness and activity of the imagination, which is thus weighed down, and prevented from soaring to those high flights which otherwise it would be able to reach.