I know, you are too just to imagine me capable of giving any other Opinion than my best-weigh’d and true one. But, because it is fit you should have Reasons, in Support of a Judgment that can neither deserve nor expect an implicit Reception, I will run over the Anonymous Letter I herewith return you; and note with what Lightness even Men of good-natur’d Intention fall into Mistakes, by Neglect in too hasty Perusals, which their Benevolence wou’d take Pleasure in blushing at, when they discover their Weakness, in a cooler Revisal.
The Writer of this Letter is for having the Style rais’d, after Pamela’s Advance in her Fortune. But surely, This was hasty Advice: because, as the Letters are writ to her Parents, it wou’d have look’d like forgetting, and, in some sort, insulting, the Lowliness of their inferior Condition, to have assum’d a new Air in her Language, in Place of retaining a steady Humility. But, here, it must not be pass’d unobserv’d, that in her Reports of Conversations that follow’d her Marriage, she does, aptly and beautifully, heighten her Style, and her Phrases: still returning however to her decent Simplicity, in her Addresses to her Father and Mother.
I am against giving a Gentleman (who has ennobled himself, by reforming his Vices, and rewarding the Worth of the Friendless) the unnecessary new Toy of a Title. It is all strong in Nature, as it stands in the Letters: and I don’t see how Greatness, from Titles, can add Likeness or Power, to the Passions. So complete a Resemblance of Truth stands in need of no borrow’d Pretensions.
The Only of this Writer’s Objections, which, I think, carries Weight, is That, which advises some little Contraction of the Prayers, and Appeals to the Deity. I say little Contraction: for they are nobly and sincerely pathetic. And I say it only in Fear, lest, if fansied too long, by the fashionably Averse to the Subject, Minds, which most want the purpos’d Impression, might hazard the Loss of its Benefit, by passing over those pious Reflections, which, if shorter, would catch their Attention.
Certainly, the Gentleman’s Objection against the Persecution that Pamela suffers from lady Davers, in respect to the Relation this Madwoman bears to the Brother, is the rashest of All his Advices! And when he thinks she ought rather to have assum’d the Protection of her Servants, he seems unaware of the probable Consequence; where there was a Puppy, of Quality, in the Case, who had, even without Provocation, drawn his Sword on the poor passive Pamela. Far from bearing a Thought of exciting an abler Resentment, to the Danger of a Quarrel with so worthless a Coxcomb, how charmingly natural, apprehensive, and generous, is her Silence (during the Recital she makes of her Sufferings) with regard to this masculine Part of the Insult! as also her Prevention of Mrs. Jewkes’s less delicate Bluntness, when she was beginning to complain of the whelp Lord’s Impertinence!
If I were not afraid of a Pun, I shou’d tell the anonymous Letter-writer, that he made a too tight-laced Objection, where he quarrels with the spann’d Waist of Pamela. What, in the Name of Unshapeliness! cou’d he find, to complain of, in a beautiful Girl of Sixteen, who was born out of Germany, and had not, yet, reach’d ungraspable Roundness!——These are wonderful Sinkings from Purpose, where a Man is considering such mental, and passionate Beauties, as this Gentleman profess’d to be touch’d by!
But, when he goes on, to object against the Word naughty, (as apply’d in the Phrase naughty Master) I grow mortified, in Fear for our human Sufficiency, compar’d with our Aptness to blunder! For, here, ’tis plain, this Director of Another’s Discernment is quite blind, Himself, to an Elegance, one wou’d have thought it impossible not to be struck by?---Faulty, wicked, abominable, scandalous, (which are the angry Adjectives, he prefers to that sweet one) wou’d have carried Marks of her Rage, not Affliction—whereas naughty contains, in One single significant Petulance, twenty thousand inexpressible Delicacies!---It insinuates, at once, all the beautiful Struggle, between her Contempt of his Purpose, and tender Regard for his Person; her Gratitude to Himself and his Family; her Recollection of his superior Condition.—There is in the elegant Choice of this half-kind, half-peevish, Word, a never-enough to be prais’d speaking Picture of the Conflict betwixt her Disdain, and her Reverence! See, Sir, the Reason I had, for apprehending some Danger that the refin’d Generosity in many of the most charming of the Sentiments wou’d be lost, upon the too coarse Conception of some, for whose Use the Author intended them.
It is the same Case again, in foolish Thing that I am! which this nice, un-nice, Gentleman wou’d advise you to change, into foolish that I am! He does not seem to have tasted the pretty Contempt of Herself, the submissive Diminutive, so distant from Vanity, yet allayed by the gentle Reluctance in Self-condemnation ;---and the other fine Touches of Nature: which wou’d All have been lost, in the grave, sober Sound of his Dutch Emendation.
As to his Paragraph in Postscript, I shall say the less of it, because the Gentleman’s own good Sense seems to confess, by the Place he has chosen to rank it in, that it ought to be turn’d out of Doors, as too dirty for the rest of his Letter.—— In the Occasions he is pleas’d to discover for Jokes, I either find not, that he has any Signification at all, or such vulgar, coarse-tasted Allusions to loose low-life Idioms, that not to understand what he means, is both the cleanliest, and prudentest Way of confuting him.
And now, Sir, you will easily gather how far I am from thinking it needful to change any thing in Pamela. I would not scratch such a beautiful Face, for the Indies!