He has promised me a copy of the lines; and then I shall judge better of their merit; and so shall you. The tendency of them was, “That, since sickness only gave him a proper train of thinking, and that his restored health brought with it a return to his evil habits, he was ready to renounce those gifts of nature for those of contemplation.”
He farther declared, that although these good motions went off (as he had owned) on his recovery, yet he had better hopes now, from the influence of my example, and from the reward before him, if he persevered: and that he was the more hopeful that he should, as his present resolution was made in a full tide of health and spirits; and when he had nothing to wish for but perseverance, to entitle himself to my favour.
I will not throw cold water, Mr. Lovelace, said I, on a rising flame: but look to it! for I shall endeavour to keep you up to this spirit. I shall measure your value of me by this test: and I would have you bear those charming lines of Mr. Rowe forever in your mind; you, who have, by your own confession, so much to repent of; and as the scar, indeed, you showed me, will, in one instance, remind you to your dying day.
The lines, my dear, are from the poet’s Ulysses; you have heard me often admire them; and I repeated them to him:
Habitual evils change not on a sudden:
But many days must pass, and many sorrows;
Conscious remorse and anguish must be felt,
To curb desire, to break the stubborn will,
And work a second nature in the soul,
Ere Virtue can resume the place she lost:
’Tis else dissimulation—
He had often read these lines, he said; but never tasted them before.—By his soul, (the unmortified creature swore), and as he hoped to be saved
, he was now in earnest in his good resolutions. He had said, before I repeated those lines from Rowe, that habitual evils could not be changed on a sudden: but he hoped he should not be thought a dissembler, if he were not enabled to hold his good purposes; since ingratitude and dissimulation were vices that of all others he abhorred.
May you ever abhor them, said I. They are the most odious of all vices.
I hope, my dear Miss Howe, I shall not have occasion, in my future letters, to contradict these promising appearances. Should I have nothing on his side to combat with, I shall be very far from being happy, from the sense of my fault, and the indignation of all my relations. So shall not fail of condign punishment for it, from my inward remorse on account of my forfeited character. But the least ray of hope could not dart in upon me, without my being willing to lay hold of the very first opportunity to communicate it to you, who take so generous a share in all my concerns.
Nevertheless, you may depend upon it, my dear, that these agreeable assurances, and hopes of his begun reformation, shall not make me forget my caution. Not that I think, at worst, any more than you, that he dare to harbour a thought injurious to my honour: but he is very various, and there is an apparent, and even an acknowledged unfixedness in his temper, which at times gives me uneasiness. I am resolved therefore to keep him at a distance from my person and my thoughts, as much as I can: for whether all men are or are not encroachers, I am sure Mr. Lovelace is one.
Hence it is that I have always cast about, and will continue to cast about, what ends he may have in view from this proposal, or from that report. In a word, though hopeful of the best, I will always be fearful of the worst, in everything that admits of doubt. For it is better, in such a situation as mine, to apprehend without cause, than to subject myself to surprise for want of forethought.
Mr. Lovelace is gone to Windsor, having left two servants to attend me. He purposes to be back tomorrow.
I have written to my aunt Hervey, to supplicate her interest in my behalf, for my clothes, books, and money; signifying to her, “That, if I may be restored to the favour of my family, and allowed a negative only, as to any man who may be proposed to me, and be used like a daughter, a niece, and a sister, I will stand by my offer to live single, and submit, as I ought, to a negative from my father.” Intimating, nevertheless, “That it were perhaps better, after the usage I have received from my brother and sister, that I may be allowed to be distant from them, as well for their sakes as for my own,” (meaning, as I suppose it will be taken, at my Dairy-house)—offering, “to take my father’s directions as to the manner I shall live in, the servants I shall have, and in everything that shall show the dutiful subordination to which I am willing to conform.”
My aunt will know by my letter to my sister how to direct to me, if she be permitted to favour me with a line.
I am equally earnest with her in this letter, as I was with my sister in that I wrote to her, to obtain for me a speedy reconciliation, that I not be further precipitated; intimating, “That, by a timely lenity, all may pass for a misunderstanding only, which, otherwise, will be thought equally disgraceful to them, and to me; appealing to her for the necessity I was under to do what I did.”—
Had I owned that I was overreached, and forced away against my intention, might they not, as a
