No admittance yet to my charmer! she is very ill—in a violent fever, Dorcas thinks. Yet will have no advice.
Dorcas tells her how much I am concerned at it.
But again let me ask, Does this lady do right to make herself ill, when she is not ill? For my own part, libertine as people think me, when I had occasion to be sick, I took a dose of ipecacuanha, that I might not be guilty of a falsehood; and most heartily sick was I; as she, who then pitied me, full well knew. But here to pretend to be very ill, only to get an opportunity to run away, in order to avoid forgiving a man who has offended her, how unchristian!—If good folks allow themselves in these breaches of a known duty, and in these presumptuous contrivances to deceive, who, Belford, shall blame us?
I have a strange notion that the matronly lady will be certainly at the grocer’s shop at the hour of nine tomorrow morning: for Dorcas heard me tell Mrs. Sinclair, that I should go out at eight precisely; and then she is to try for a coach: and if the dowager’s chariot should happen to be there, how lucky will it be for my charmer! how strangely will my dream be made out!
I have just received a letter from Captain Tomlinson. Is it not wonderful? for that was part of my dream.
I shall always have a prodigious regard to dreams henceforward. I know not but I may write a book upon that subject; for my own experience will furnish out a great part of it. ‘Glanville of Witches,’ ‘Baxter’s History of Spirits and Apparitions,’ and the ‘Royal Pedant’s Demonology,’ will be nothing at all to Lovelace’s Reveries.
The letter is just what I dreamed it to be. I am only concerned that uncle John’s anniversary did not happen three or four days sooner; for should any new misfortune befal my charmer, she may not be able to support her spirits so long as till Thursday in the next week. Yet it will give me the more time for new expedients, should my present contrivance fail; which I cannot however suppose.
TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ. MONDAY, JUNE 19.
Dear Sir,