Ver. 3 If a woman vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father’s house in her youth
;
4. And her father hear her vow, and her bond wherewith she hath bound her soul, and her father shall hold his peace at her; then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand
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5. But if her father disallow her in the day that he heareth; not any of her vows or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul shall stand: and the Lord shall forgive her, because her father disallowed her
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The same in the case of a wife, as said above. See ver. 6, 7, 8, etc.—All is thus solemnly closed:
Ver. 16. These are the statutes which the Lord commanded Moses between a man and his wife, between the father and his daughter, being yet in her youth in her father’s house
. ↩
Ecclesiasticus 37:13, 14.
Ecclesiasticus is a book originally included within the King James Bible, but now regarded as part of the Apocrypha. —Editor ↩
It is easy for such of the readers as have been attentive to Mr. Lovelace’s manner of working, to suppose, from this hint of Miss Hervey’s, that he had instructed his double-faced agent to put his sweetheart Betty upon alarming Miss Hervey, in hopes she would alarm her beloved cousin, (as we see she does), in order to keep her steady to her appointment with him. ↩
See Letter 113. ↩
Clarissa has been censured as behaving to Mr. Lovelace, in their first conversation at St. Alban’s, and afterwards, with too much reserve, and even with haughtiness. Surely those, who have thought her to blame on this account, have not paid a due attention to the story. How early, as above, and in what immediately follows, does he remind her of the terms of distance which she had prescribed to him, before she was in his power, in hopes to leave the door open for a reconciliation with her friends, which her heart was set upon? And how artfully does he (unrequired) promise to observe the conditions in which she in her present circumstances and situation (in pursuance of Miss Howe’s advice) would gladly have dispensed with?—To say nothing of the resentment she was under a necessity to show, at the manner of his getting her away, in order to justify to him the sincerity of her refusal to go off with him. See, in her subsequent Letter to Miss Howe, Letter 101, her own sense upon the subject. ↩
This will be farther explained in Letter 113. ↩
Mr. Lovelace might have spared this caution on this occasion, since many of the sex (we mention it with regret) who on the first publication had read thus far, and even to the lady’s first escape, have been readier to censure her for over-niceness, as we have observed in a former note, [note 57], than him for artifices and exultations not less cruel and ungrateful, than ungenerous and unmanly. ↩
The particular attention of such of the fair sex, as are more apt to read for the sake of amusement than instruction, is requested to this letter of Mr. Lovelace. ↩
The story tells us, that whoever drank of this cup, if his wife were chaste, could drink without spilling; if otherwise, the contrary. ↩
This word, whenever used by any of these gentlemen, was agreed to imply an inviolable secret. ↩
See his Letter to Joseph Leman, Letter 95, towards the end, where he tells him, he would contrive for him a letter of this nature to copy. ↩
Mr. Lovelace is as much out in his conjecture of Solomon, as of Socrates. The passage is in Ecclesiasticus, chap. 25.
Ecclesiasticus is a book originally included within the King James Bible, but now regarded as part of the Apocrypha. —Editor ↩
See his reasons for proposing Windsor, Letter 117—and her Hannah, Letter 118. ↩
That he proposes one day to reform, and that he has sometimes good motions, see Letter 34. ↩
He had said, Letter 110, that he would make reformation his stalking-horse, etc. ↩
This letter Mrs. Greme (with no bad design on her part) was put upon writing by Mr. Lovelace himself, as will be seen in Letter 127. ↩
This inference of the Lady
