Clarissa, Volume 5 | Page 7

fault?
How lately did I think I hated him!--But hatred and anger, I see, are but
temporary passions with me. One cannot, my dear, hate people in

danger of death, or who are in distress or affliction. My heart, I find, is
not proof against kindness, and acknowledgements of errors
committed.
He took great care to have his illness concealed from me as long as he
could. So tender in the violence of his disorder!--So desirous to make
the best of it!--I wish he had not been ill in my sight. I was too much
affected--every body alarming me with his danger. The poor man, from
such high health, so suddenly taken!--and so unprepared!--
He is gone out in a chair. I advised him to do so. I fear that my advice
was wrong; since quiet in such a disorder must needs be best. We are
apt to be so ready, in cases of emergency, to give our advice, without
judgment, or waiting for it!--I proposed a physician indeed; but he
would not hear of one. I have great honour for the faculty; and the
greater, as I have always observed that those who treat the professors of
the art of healing contemptuously, too generally treat higher institutions
in the same manner.
I am really very uneasy. For I have, I doubt, exposed myself to him,
and to the women below. They indeed will excuse me, as they think us
married. But if he be not generous, I shall have cause to regret this
surprise; which (as I had reason to think myself unaccountably treated
by him) has taught me more than I knew of myself.
'Tis true, I have owned more than once, that I could have liked Mr.
Lovelace above all men. I remember the debates you and I used to have
on this subject, when I was your happy guest. You used to say, and
once you wrote,* that men of his cast are the men that our sex do not
naturally dislike: While I held, that such were not (however that might
be) the men we ought to like. But what with my relations precipitating
of me, on one hand, and what with his unhappy character, and
embarrassing ways, on the other, I had no more leisure than inclination
to examine my own heart in this particular. And this reminds me of a
transcribe, though it was written in raillery. 'May it not be,' say you,**
'that you have had such persons to deal with, as have not allowed you
to attend to the throbs; or if you had them a little now-and-then,
whether, having had two accounts to place them to, you have not by
mistake put them to the wrong one?' A passage, which, although it
came into my mind when Mr. Lovelace was least exceptionable, yet
that I have denied any efficacy to, when he has teased and vexed me,

and given me cause of suspicion. For, after all, my dear, Mr. Lovelace
is not wise in all his ways. And should we not endeavour, as much as is
possible, (where we are not attached by natural ties,) to like and dislike
as reason bids us, and according to the merit or demerit of the object? If
love, as it is called, is allowed to be an excuse for our most
unreasonable follies, and to lay level all the fences that a careful
education has surrounded us by, what is meant by the doctrine of
subduing our passions?--But, O my dearest friend, am I not guilty of a
punishable fault, were I to love this man of errors? And has not my
own heart deceived me, when I thought I did not? And what must be
that love, that has not some degree of purity for its object? I am afraid
of recollecting some passages in my cousin Morden's letter.***--And
yet why fly I from subjects that, duly considered, might tend to correct
and purify my heart? I have carried, I doubt, my notions on this head
too high, not for practice, but for my practice. Yet think me not guilty
of prudery neither; for had I found out as much of myself before; or,
rather, had he given me heart's ease enough before to find it out, you
should have had my confession sooner.
* See Vol. IV. Letter XXXIV. ** See Vol. I. Letter XII. *** See Vol.
IV. Letter XIX, & seq.
Nevertheless, let me tell you (what I hope I may justly tell you,) that if
again he give me cause to resume distance and reserve, I hope my
reason will gather strength enough from his imperfections to enable me
to keep my passions under.--What can we do more than govern
ourselves by the temporary lights lent us?
You will not