Rachel Cowley.
P.S. I admire Seneca; but what was his age when he turned philosopher? In the name of good sense I implore you to ask your father how long a term he gives to infancy. I am now an infant of twenty years and twelve days, and I am a better philosopher than Seneca. Is it not astonishing that your father does not yet know Rachel Cowley! I pray every day for him, and with patient hope, trust he will one day repent of his cruelty, and see with his own clear-sighted understanding, instead of the borrowed light of a squint-eyed worldly prudence.
LETTER XVI.
From the same to the same.
You cannot, I think, have forgotten, my dear Lucy, how often in the pride of my heart I have blessed nature for having compounded my character of better materials than those which our poet has inimitably given to a species of beings, who, in my opinion, only encumber the space allotted to mortals!
"Yet Cloe sure was form'd without a spot;
Nature in her then err'd not, but forgot;
With every pleasing, every prudent part,
Say, what does Cloe want? She wants a heart.
She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought,
But never, never reach'd one generous thought."
So much for those who want hearts. Now for those who have too much of this useful, but combustible commodity; and who, proudly relying on its impulses, drive on without knowing the course they steer, till they are surprised to find themselves ingulphed in the worst of all the deadly sins, which old Hannah, your cook, used to tell us St. Anthony quitted when he forsook the world for a cowl. I mean spite and rancour of spirit: and into this whirl-pool have I, for some time, been speeding, at the instigation of my good friend, a warm heart. How truly may I apply Pope's lines to myself!
"Oft in the passions' wild rotation tost,
The spring of action to myself is lost."
But confession is the best road to repentence, according to Hannah's creed; and you will not be a worse confessor for the knowledge you have of your present penitent's abhorrence of hypocrisy.