Volume I Part 27 (2/2)

But now am I indeed in love. I can think of nothing, of n.o.body, but the divine Clarissa Harlowe--Harlowe!--How that hated word sticks in my throat--But I shall give her for it the name of Love.*

* Lovelace.

CLARISSA! O there's music in the name, That, soft'ning me to infant tenderness, Makes my heart spring like the first leaps of life!

But couldst thou have believed that I, who think it possible for me to favour as much as I can be favoured; that I, who for this charming creature think of foregoing the life of honour for the life of shackles; could adopt these over-tender lines of Otway?

I checked myself, and leaving the first three lines of the following of Dryden to the family of whiners, find the workings of the pa.s.sion in my stormy soul better expressed by the three last:

Love various minds does variously inspire: He stirs in gentle natures gentle fires; Like that of incense on the alter laid.

But raging flames tempestuous souls invade: A fire which ev'ry windy pa.s.sion blows; With pride it mounts, and with revenge it glows.

And with REVENGE it shall glow!--For, dost thou think, that if it were not from the hope, that this stupid family are all combined to do my work for me, I would bear their insults?--Is it possible to imagine, that I would be braved as I am braved, threatened as I am threatened, by those who are afraid to see me; and by this brutal brother, too, to whom I gave a life; [a life, indeed, not worth my taking!] had I not a greater pride in knowing that by means of his very spy upon me, I am playing him off as I please; cooling or inflaming his violent pa.s.sions as may best suit my purposes; permitting so much to be revealed of my life and actions, and intentions, as may give him such a confidence in his double-faced agent, as shall enable me to dance his employer upon my own wires?

This it is that makes my pride mount above my resentment. By this engine, whose springs I am continually oiling, I play them all off.

The busy old tarpaulin uncle I make but my amba.s.sador to Queen Anabella Howe, to engage her (for example-sake to her princessly daughter) to join in their cause, and to a.s.sert an authority they are resolved, right or wrong, (or I could do nothing,) to maintain.

And what my motive, dost thou ask? No less than this, That my beloved shall find no protection out of my family; for, if I know hers, fly she must, or have the man she hates. This, therefore, if I take my measures right, and my familiar fail me not, will secure her mine, in spite of them all; in spite of her own inflexible heart: mine, without condition; without reformation-promises; without the necessity of a siege of years, perhaps; and to be even then, after wearing the guise of merit-doubting hypocrisy, at an uncertainty, upon a probation unapproved of. Then shall I have all the rascals and rascalesses of the family come creeping to me: I prescribing to them; and bringing that sordidly imperious brother to kneel at the footstool of my throne.

All my fear arises from the little hold I have in the heart of this charming frost-piece: such a constant glow upon her lovely features: eyes so sparkling: limbs so divinely turned: health so florid: youth so blooming: air so animated--to have an heart so impenetrable: and I, the hitherto successful Lovelace, the addresser--How can it be? Yet there are people, and I have talked with some of them, who remember that she was born. Her nurse Norton boasts of her maternal offices in her earliest infancy; and in her education gradatim. So there is full proof, that she came not from above all at once an angel! How then can she be so impenetrable?

But here's her mistake; nor will she be cured of it--She takes the man she calls her father [her mother had been faultless, had she not been her father's wife]; she takes the men she calls her uncles; the fellow she calls her brother; and the poor contemptible she calls her sister; to be her father, to be her uncles, her brother, her sister; and that, as such, she owes to some of them reverence, to others respect, let them treat her ever so cruelly!--Sordid ties!--Mere cradle prejudices!--For had they not been imposed upon her by Nature, when she was in a perverse humour, or could she have chosen her relations, would any of these have been among them?

How my heart rises at her preference of them to me, when she is convinced of their injustice to me! Convinced, that the alliance would do honour to them all--herself excepted; to whom every one owes honour; and from whom the most princely family might receive it. But how much more will my heart rise with indignation against her, if I find she hesitates but one moment (however persecuted) about preferring me to the man she avowedly hates! But she cannot surely be so mean as to purchase her peace with them at so dear a rate. She cannot give a sanction to projects formed in malice, and founded in a selfishness (and that at her own expense) which she has spirit enough to despise in others; and ought to disavow, that we may not think her a Harlowe.

By this incoherent ramble thou wilt gather, that I am not likely to come up in haste; since I must endeavour first to obtain some a.s.surance from the beloved of my soul, that I shall not be sacrificed to such a wretch as Solmes! Woe be to the fair one, if ever she be driven into my power (for I despair of a voluntary impulse in my favour) and I find a difficulty in obtaining this security.

That her indifference to me is not owing to the superior liking she has for any other, is what rivets my chains. But take care, fair one; take care, O thou most exalted of female minds, and loveliest of persons, how thou debasest thyself by encouraging such a compet.i.tion as thy sordid relations have set on foot in mere malice to me!--Thou wilt say I rave.

And so I do:

Perdition catch my soul, but I do love her.

Else, could I hear the perpetual revilings of her implacable family?--Else, could I basely creep about--not her proud father's house--but his paddock and garden walls?--Yet (a quarter of a mile distance between us) not hoping to behold the least glimpse of her shadow?--Else, should I think myself repaid, amply repaid, if the fourth, fifth, or sixth midnight stroll, through unfrequented paths, and over briery enclosures, affords me a few cold lines; the even expected purport only to let me know, that she values the most worthless person of her very worthless family, more than she values me; and that she would not write at all, but to induce me to bear insults, which unman me to bear?--My lodging in the intermediate way at a wretched alehouse; disguised like an inmate of it: accommodations equally vile, as those I met with in my Westphalian journey. 'Tis well, that the necessity for all this arise not from scorn and tyranny! but is first imposed upon herself!

But was ever hero in romance (fighting with giants and dragons excepted) called upon to harder trials?--Fortune and family, and reversionary grandeur on my side! Such a wretched fellow my compet.i.tor!--Must I not be deplorably in love, that can go through these difficulties, encounter these contempts?--By my soul, I am half ashamed of myself: I, who am perjured too, by priority of obligation, if I am faithful to any woman in the world?

And yet, why say I, I am half ashamed?--Is it not a glory to love her whom every one who sees her either loves, or reveres, or both? Dryden says,

The cause of love can never be a.s.sign'd: 'Tis in no face;--but in the lover's mind.

--And Cowley thus addresses beauty as a mere imaginary:

Beauty! thou wild fantastic ape, Who dost in ev'ry country change thy shape: Here black; there brown; here tawny; and there white!

Thou flatt'rer, who comply'st with ev'ry sight!

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