MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. MONDAY MORN. FIVE O’CLOCK (JUNE 19.)
I must write on. Nothing else can divert me: and I think thou canst not have been a dog to me.
I would fain have closed my eyes: but sleep flies me. Well says Horace, as translated by Cowley:
The halcyon sleep will never build his nest
In any stormy breast.
’Tis not enough that he does find
Clouds and darkness in the mind:
Darkness but half his work will do.
’Tis not enough: he must find quiet too.
Now indeed do I from my heart wish that I had never known this lady. But who would have thought there had been such a woman in the world? Of all the sex I have hitherto known, or heard, or read of, it was once subdued, and always subdued. The first struggle was generally the last; or, at least, the subsequent struggles were so much fainter and fainter, that a man would rather have them than be without them. But how know I yet——
It is now near six—the sun for two hours past has been illuminating every thing about me: for that impartial orb shines upon Mother Sinclair’s house as well as upon any other: but nothing within me can it illuminate.
At day-dawn I looked through the key-hole of my beloved’s door. She had declared she would not put off her clothes any more in this house. There I beheld her in a sweet slumber, which I hope will prove refreshing to her disturbed senses; sitting in her elbow-chair, her apron over her head; her head supported by one sweet hand, the other hand hanging down upon her side, in a sleepy lifelessness; half of one pretty foot only visible.
See the difference in our cases! thought I: she, the charming injured, can sweetly sleep, while the varlet injurer cannot close his eyes; and has been trying, to no purpose, the whole night to divert his melancholy, and to fly from himself!
As every vice generally brings on its own punishment, even in this life; if any thing were to tempt me to doubt of future punishment, it would be, that there can hardly be a greater than that in which I at this instant experience in my own remorse.