Adieu, Jack, I am preparing to be with you. I charge you, as you value my life or your own, do not oppose me in any thing relating to my Clarissa Lovelace.
My temper is entirely altered. I know not what it is to laugh, or smile, or be pleasant. I am grown choleric and impatient, and will not be controuled.
I write this in characters as I used to do, that nobody but you should know what I write. For never was any man plagued with impertinents as I am.
R. LOVELACE. IN A SEPARATE PAPER ENCLOSED IN THE ABOVE.
Let me tell thee, in characters still, that I am in a dreadful way just now. My brain is all boiling like a cauldron over a fiery furnace. What a devil is the matter with me, I wonder! I never was so strange in my life.
In truth, Jack, I have been a most execrable villain. And when I consider all my actions to the angel of a woman, and in her the piety, the charity, the wit, the beauty, I have helped to destroy, and the good to the world I have thereby been a mean of frustrating, I can pronounce d——n——n upon myself. How then can I expect mercy any where else?
I believe I shall have no patience with you when I see you. Your d——d stings and reflections have almost turned my brain.
But here Lord M. they tell me, is come!—D——n him, and those who sent for him!
I know not what I have written. But her dear heart and a lock of her hair I will have, let who will be the gainsayers! For is she not mine? Whose else can she be? She has no father nor mother, no sister, no brother, no relations but me. And my beloved is mine, and I am her's— and that's enough.—But Oh!—
She's out. The damp of death has quench'd her quite!
Those spicy doors, her lips, are shut, close lock'd,
Which never gale of life shall open more!