On Thursday morning she was up very early; and had recourse to the Scriptures to calm her mind, as she told Mrs. Lovick: and, weak as she was, would go in a chair to Lincoln’s-inn chapel, about eleven. She was brought home a little better; and then sat down to write to her uncle. But was obliged to leave off several times—to struggle, as she told Mrs. Lovick, for an humble temper. “My heart, said she to the good woman, is a proud heart, and not yet, I find, enough mortified to my condition; but, do what I can, will be for prescribing resenting things to my pen.”
I arrived in town from Belton’s this Thursday evening; and went directly to Smith’s. She was too ill to receive my visit. But, on sending up my compliments, she sent me down word that she should be glad to see me in the morning.
Mrs. Lovick obliged me with the copy of a meditation collected by the lady from the Scriptures. She has entitled it Poor mortals the cause of their own misery
; so entitled, I presume, with intention to take off the edge of her repinings at hardships so disproportioned to her fault, were her fault even as great as she is inclined to think it. We may see, by this, the method she takes to fortify her mind, and to which she owes, in a great measure, the magnanimity with which she bears her undeserved persecutions.
Meditation
Poor Mortals the Cause of Their Own Misery
Say not thou, it is through the Lord that I fell away; for thou oughtest not to do the thing that he hateth.
Say not thou, he hath caused me to err; for he hath no need of the sinful man.
He himself made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel;
If thou wilt, to keep the commandments, and to perform acceptable faithfulness.
He hath set fire and water before thee: stretch forth thine hand to whither thou wilt.
He hath commanded no man to do wickedly: neither hath he given any man license to sin.
And now, Lord, what is my hope? Truly my hope is only in thee.
Deliver me from all my offences: and make me not a rebuke unto the foolish.
When thou with rebuke dost chasten man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment: every man, therefore, is vanity.
Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart are enlarged. O bring thou me out of my distresses!
Mrs. Smith gave me the following particulars of a conversation that passed between herself and a young clergyman, on Tuesday afternoon, who, as it appears, was employed to make inquiries about the lady by her friends.
He came into the shop in a riding-habit, and asked for some Spanish snuff; and finding only Mrs. Smith there, he desired to have a little talk with her in the back-shop.
He beat about the bush in several distant questions, and at last began to talk more directly about Miss Harlowe.
He said he knew her before her fall
, (that was his impudent word); and gave the substance of the following account of her, as I collected it from Mrs. Smith:
“She was then, he said, the admiration and delight of everybody: he lamented, with great solemnity, her backsliding
; another of his phrases. Mrs. Smith said, he was a fine scholar; for he spoke several things she understood not; and either in Latin or Greek, she could not tell which; but was so good as to give her the English of them without asking. A fine thing, she said, for a scholar to be so condescending!”
He said, “Her going off with so vile a rake had given great scandal and offence to all the neighbouring ladies, as well as to her friends.”
He told Mrs. Smith “how much she used to be followed by everyone’s eye, whenever she went abroad, or to church; and praised and blessed by every tongue, as she passed; especially by the poor: that she gave the fashion to the fashionable, without seeming herself to intend it, or to know she did: that, however, it was pleasant to see ladies imitate her in dress and behaviour, who being unable to come up to her in grace and ease, exposed but their own affectation and awkwardness, at the time that they thought themselves secure of general approbation, because they wore the same things, and put them on in the same manner, that she did, who had everybody’s admiration; little considering, that were her person like their’s, or if she had their defects, she would have brought up a very different fashion; for that nature was her guide in everything, and ease her study; which, joined with a mingled dignity and condescension in her air and manner, whether she received or paid a compliment, distinguished her above all her sex.
“He spoke not, he said, his own sentiments only on this occasion, but those of everybody: for that the praises of Miss Clarissa Harlowe were such a favourite topic, that a person who could not speak well upon any other subject, was sure to speak well upon that; because he could say nothing but what he had heard repeated and applauded twenty times over.”
Hence it was, perhaps, that this novice accounted for the best things he said himself; though I must own that the personal knowledge of the lady, which I am favoured with, made it easy to me to lick into shape what the good woman reported to me, as the character given her by the young Levite: For who, even now, in her decline of health, sees not that all these attributes belong to her?
I suppose he has not been long come from college, and now thinks he has nothing
