Inspires tranquillity divine.’
CHAPTER V.
1813-1816.
TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
Bursledon Lodge, Feb. 7, 1813.
I am very happy to find you once more exerting your powers for our instruction and amusement. The second part of the Cottage Dialogues appears to me worthy of its predecessor; less humorous, perhaps, and less marked by a certain undescribable naïveté, but often pathetic, and always inculcating the purest morality. I could have wished the dialogue on Seduction, and the subsequent death of Thady’s victim, omitted, as it makes the volume less fit for children, to whom it might in so many respects be useful. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it appears to me that it is safest to keep all such events, with whatever purity they may be described, out of the view and the thoughts of children and very young people: and on this principle perhaps Pamela and Clarissa may be considered as highly dangerous works. How the former could ever have been mistaken for a novel of a moral tendency (though I fully believe the author intended it as such), is very surprising. As to Clarissa, a judicious selection from it, with slight alterations, would be a valuable present to the rising generation; one that should wholly conceal the blackest part of Lovelace’s conduct, and make her death proceed from remorse for her elopement, and grief for the implacability of her father, the sorrows of her mother, and the hastiness of her choice,—as she might be supposed to have discovered Lovelace to be unworthy of her in a variety of ways. In this Clarissa for Young Women, as it might be called, all the objectionable details should be omitted; and those parts of her character preserved, which are so well calculated to excite an enthusiastic sense of duty to parents, of charity, of religion, and particularly of the value of time. But all this is idle prate; and perhaps it is best the ‘Young Women’ should never open the book.
I could not but smile at the graceful naïveté and enthusiasm of friendship which sent one of my letters to Mr. Wilkinson, in order to be placed amongst those of ‘eminent persons.’ I feel obliged to make poor Mr. Wilkinson some amends for your thus imposing on him, however unintentionally on your part. I therefore asked Mrs. Barnard, who happened to be present when your letter arrived, to procure me one of the Mr. Windham’s; and I send you for him an Italian sonnet, in the fairy penmanship of Miss Ponsonby, of Llangollen. I believe the sonnet is unpublished.