Many a girl has been carried, who never would have been attempted, had she showed a proper resentment, when her ears, or her eyes were first invaded. I have tried a young creature by a bad book, a light quotation, or an indecent picture; and if she has borne that, or only blushed, and not been angry; and more especially if she has leered and smiled; that girl have I, and old Satan, put down for our own. O how I could warn these little rogues, if I would! Perhaps envy, more than virtue, will put me upon setting up beacons for them, when I grow old and joyless.
TUESDAY AFTERNOON.
If you are in London when I get thither, you will see me soon. My charmer is a little better than she was: her eyes show it; and her harmonious voice, hardly audible last time I saw her, now begins to cheer my heart once more. But yet she has no love—no sensibility! There is no addressing her with those meaning, yet innocent freedoms (innocent, at first setting out, they may be called) which soften others of her sex. The more strange this, as she now acknowledges preferable favour for me; and is highly susceptible of grief. Grief mollifies, and enervates. The grieved mind looks round it, silently implores consolation, and loves the soother. Grief is ever an inmate with joy. Though they won't show themselves at the same window at one time; yet they have the whole house in common between them.
LETTER LXII
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. WEDN. APRIL 26.
At last my lucky star has directed us into the desired port, and we are safely landed.—Well says Rowe:—
The wise and active conquer difficulties,
By daring to attempt them. Sloth and folly
Shiver and shrink at sight of toil and hazard,
And make th' impossibility they fear.
But in the midst of my exultation, something, I know not what to call it, checks my joys, and glooms over my brighter prospects: if it be not conscience, it is wondrously like what I thought so, many, many years ago.
Surely, Lovelace, methinks thou sayest, thy good motions are not gone off already! Surely thou wilt not now at last be a villain to this lady!