LETTER XVI
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. TUESDAY, APR. 13.
Why, Jack, thou needest not make such a wonderment, as the girls say, ifI should have taken large strides already towards reformation: for dostthou not see, that while I have been so assiduously, night and day,pursuing this single charmer, I have infinitely less to answer for,than otherwise I should have had? Let me see, how many days andnights?--Forty, I believe, after open trenches, spent in the sap only,and never a mine sprung yet!
By a moderate computation, a dozen kites might have fallen, while I havebeen only trying to ensnare this single lark. Nor yet do I see whenI shall be able to bring her to my lure: more innocent days yet,therefore!--But reformation for my stalking-horse, I hope, will be asure, though a slow method to effect all my purposes.
Then, Jack, thou wilt have a merit too in engaging my pen, since thytime would be otherwise worse employed: and, after all, who knows but bycreating new habits, at the expense of the old, a real reformation maybe brought about? I have promised it; and I believe there is a pleasureto be found in being good, reversing that of Nat. Lee's madman,
--Which none but good men know.
By all this, seest thou not how greatly preferable it is, on twentyaccounts, to pursue a difficult rather than an easy chace? I have adesire to inculcate this pleasure upon thee, and to teach thee to fly atnobler game than daws, crows, and widgeons: I have a mind to shew theefrom time to time, in the course of the correspondence thou hast soearnestly wished me to begin on this illustrious occasion, that theseexalted ladies may be abased, and to obviate one of the objections thatthou madest to me, when we were last together, that the pleasure whichattends these nobler aims, remunerates not the pains they bring withthem; since, like a paltry fellow as thou wert, thou assertedst that allwomen are alike.
Thou knowest nothing, Jack, of the delicacies of intrigue: nothing ofthe glory of outwitting the witty and the watchful: of the joys thatfill the mind of the inventive or contriving genius, ruminating whichto use of the different webs that offer to him for the entanglement of ahaughty charmer, who in her day has given him unnumbered torments. Thou,Jack, who, like a dog at his ease, contentest thyself to growl overa bone thrown out to thee, dost not know the joys of a chace, and inpursuing a winding game: these I will endeavour to rouse thee to,and then thou wilt have reason doubly and trebly to thank me, as wellbecause of thy present delight, as with regard to thy prospect beyondthe moon.
To this place I had written, purely to amuse myself, before I wasadmitted to my charmer. But now I have to tell thee, that I was quiteright in my conjecture, that she would set up for herself, and dismissme: for she has declared in so many words that such was her resolution:And why? Because, to be plain with me, the more she saw of me, and of myways, the less she liked of either.
This cut me to the heart! I did not cry, indeed! Had I been a woman,I should though, and that most plentifully: but I pulled out a whitecambrick handkerchief: that I could command, but not my tears.
She finds fault with my protestations, with my professions, with myvows: I cannot curse a servant, the only privilege a master is known by,but I am supposed to be a trooper*--I must not say, By my soul! nor,As I hope to be saved! Why, Jack, how particular this is! Would she nothave me think I have a precious soul, as well as she? If she thinks mysalvation hopeless, what a devil [another exceptionable word!] does shepropose to reform me for? So I have not an ardent expression left me.
* See Letter VI. of this volume.
*****