You have been already found fault with for the shocking description Jack Belford gives of that levy of damsels who attended mother Sinclair on her death-bed, such a scene must certainly be shocking enough, yet could not be near so much on the part of the ladies as is represented; but it must be remembered, that Jackey had then got into his Horribles, as Bob terms it, and, as Bays has it, he rounded it off egad. I have one great objection to all such descriptions which is implied in the verses above cited from Mr. Pope, but there is another and a greater against this, that it is contrary to truth. Few, or none of our English ladies of pleasure exercise the mystery of painting, and bating the odoriferous particles of gin, which sometimes exhale from their breaths, there are many of them, without any disparagement, as little slatternly in their persons, as most other fine ladies in a morning; indeed, if such descriptions had the same effect on the minds of youth, that raw-head and bloody-bones have upon children, to frighten them from the objects they ought to shun they might be of some service, but when upon trial they find them better than they have been taught to believe them, they are apt to imagine them not so bad as they really are.
Let us now return to the dear flighty creature, and the sentence which she passes upon the Poets. She has a fling at Homer, whom the beauteous Harriet, in her dispute with the university pedant, had before criticized upon in a masterly manner, and like a good Englishwoman, from the authority of her godfather Deane, concluded, that our Milton has excelled him in the sublimity of his images, this, is a controversy which I shall not enter into, with so lovely a disputant, whose eyes, whatever her lips may be, are always in the right. We are asked, would Alexander, madman as he was, have been so much a madman, had it not been for Homer, of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the Epic poets been the occasion, by propagating false honour, false glory, and false Religion? These remarks are, I suppose, occasioned by the great veneration which the Macedonian hero professed for Homer’s writings, and by his famous imitation, or rather improvement, on the cruelty of Achilles, in dragging round the walls of a conquered city its brave defender. But may it not be asked with equal, if not greater propriety, would many profligate and abandoned, as they naturally are, be so very profligate and abandoned, were it not for Richardson? And, of what rapes, violences, and debaucheries, have not the Romance writers been the occasion, by propagating false love, false chastity, and false, I shall not add religion, ’till you, who are so well qualified, have demonstrated which is the true one? If Alexander exceeded Achilles in cruelty, may not many go beyond Lovelace in that, as well as in debauchery? None but such as Alexander have ever proposed to imitate Achilles, but every man of a moderate fortune may set up Lovelace for a pattern, by whom to model his conduct. Should it be said, that in Lovelace, Richardson gives the example of a man, who brought ruin and destruction on himself by his vices, and that he constantly expresses the utmost abhorrence of his bad morals, with equal, nay, with greater justice, must not the same be said of Homer? Nay, as it happens, he expresses in his own person a thing not usual with him, his disapprobation in the strongest terms, of Achilles’s barbarous usage of Heistor’s dead Body, that piece of cruelty which Alexander particularly imitated.
Ἑκτορα διον αεικεα μηδετο εργα are his words, when he introduces the narration of that event. No doubt Homer’s writings have been, and may be abused, and so may the best and most useful of all human inventions; religion itself has not escaped, and its abuse has been ever attended with the most pernicious and destructive consequences. But surely they are not so liable to be abused as your compositions; Homer, indeed, describes vicious characters, but all their viciousness consists in the natural passions being carried to a blameable excess, he paints no improvement, no refinement, no elaborate contrivance in villany, this is what you excell in, above all the authors antient or modern, I remember to have read. The anger of Achilles was raised by a most provoking insult which he received from Agamemnon. He thus expresses himself:
My maid, my black-ey’d maid he forc’d away,
Due to the toils of many a dreadful Day,
From me he forc’d her, me, the bold and brave,
Disgrac’d, dishonour’d, like the vilest slave.
What could be more natural than a resentment on such an occasion? And what could be more natural, than for a man of Achilles’s temper to carry that resentment too far? Both he and Agamemnon suffer severely for the errors they commit; and what renders the fable still more beautiful, and the moral still more instructive, is this consideration, that their sufferings appear to be the unavoidable and necessary consequences of their errors; of course, nothing can more effectually deter others in similar circumstances from being guilty of the like faults for the future. But the oeconomy of your plot, and the disposition of your characters, are entirely different. Lovelace determines on the ruin of Clarissa, from motives and passions altogether unnatural, which could subsist no where, but in a heart debauched of itself, initiated in all the mysteries of villany, and regularly educated in an academy of wickedness; his motives and passions are an aversion to marriage, a resentment against Clarissa’s family, an infamous resolution to wreak his revenge on the only person in it, who loved him; a ridiculous doubt of her virtue, and a vain-glorious pride, in having a reputation for intrigue, and adding an honourable name to a list, which it seems he kept, of the credulous fools he had already ruined, and the tricks which he put in practice, to bring about that diabolical end, are all uniformly of a piece with the motives and passions which inspired them; nor is the matter in the least mended by the catastrophe which ensues; for it is not the necessary and unavoidable consequence of his committed crimes, you are at the greatest pains to let us know so much out of his own mouth: Who could have thought it, says he to his friend Belford, I have said it a thousand times, surely there never can be such another woman; thus, you must be sensible you have entirely destroyed the moral, and any good effect that could be expected from the example; for, if there never can be such another woman as Clarissa, and such a catastrophe is not again to be dreaded, there is nothing to deter another Rake from putting in practice the same infamous schemes, upon any other woman he may happen to have in his power.
Thus far, Sir, have I carried the parallel between Homer and you, with respect to the moral tendency of your works, a parallel in any other view, you yourself must be sensible would be ridiculous. Were I to extend it farther, it would still conclude more to your disadvantage, but I think enough is said to convince any impartial person, that if the one, with the smallest appearance of justice, was denied an admission into the Platonic commonwealth, the other would have been kick’d out of it with shame and disgrace; yet, you have very pleasantly contrived to find a place there for yourself, in Homer’s room. You have adopted and inserted in your Clarissa the four following verses, of a poetical encomium which was made upon it.
Even Plato in Lyceum’s awful shade,