Volume IX Part 20 (1/2)

Whenever you shall be inclined to consult the sacred oracles from whence the above threatenings are extracted, you will find doctrines and texts which a truly penitent and contrite heart may lay hold of for its consolation.

May your's, Mr. Lovelace, become such! and may you be enabled to escape the fate denounced against the abandoned man, and be ent.i.tled to the mercies of a long suffering and gracious G.o.d, is the sincere prayer of

CLARISSA HARLOWE

LETTER x.x.xVII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.

M. HALL, THURSDAY, SEPT. 14.

Ever since the fatal seventh of this month, I have been lost to myself, and to all the joys of life. I might have gone farther back than that fatal seventh; which, for the future, I will never see anniversarily revolve but in sables; only till that cursed day I had some gleams of hope now-and-then darting in upon me.

They tell me of an odd letter I wrote to you.* I remember I did write.

But very little of the contents of what I wrote do I remember.

* See his delirious Letter, No. XXIII.

I have been in a cursed way. Methinks something has been working strangely retributive. I never was such a fool as to disbelieve a Providence; yet am I not for resolving into judgments every thing that seems to wear an avenging face. Yet if we must be punished either here or hereafter for our misdeeds, better here, say I, than hereafter. Have I not then an interest to think my punishment already not only begun but completed since what I have suffered, and do suffer, pa.s.ses all description?

To give but one instance of the retributive--here I, who was the barbarous cause of the loss of senses for a week together to the most inimitable of women, have been punished with the loss of my own-- preparative to--who knows what?--When, Oh! when, shall I know a joyful hour?

I am kept excessively low; and excessively low I am. This sweet creature's posthumous letter sticks close to me. All her excellencies rise up hourly to my remembrance.

Yet dare I not indulge in these melancholy reflections. I find my head strangely working again--Pen, begone!

FRIDAY, SEPT. 15.

I resume, in a sprightly vein, I hope--Mowbray and Tourville have just now--

But what of Mowbray and Tourville?--What's the world?--What's any body in it?--

Yet they are highly exasperated against thee, for the last letter thou wrotest to them*--such an unfriendly, such a merciless--

* This Letter appears not.

But it won't do!--I must again lay down my pen.--O Belford! Belford!

I am still, I am still most miserably absent from myself!--Shall never, never more be what I was!

Sat.u.r.day--Sunday--Nothing done. Incapable of any thing.