Clarissa, Volume 7 | Page 8

boxer,
the rising-blow, all would be over with him. And here [pox of his
fondness for me! it happens at a very bad time] he makes me sit hours
together entertaining him with my rogueries: (a pretty amusement for a

sick man!) and yet, whenever he has the gout, he prays night and
morning with his chaplain. But what must his notions of religion be,
who after he has nosed and mumbled over his responses, can give a
sigh or groan of satisfaction, as if he thought he had made up with
Heaven; and return with a new appetite to my stories? --encouraging
them, by shaking his sides with laughing at them, and calling me a sad
fellow, in such an accent as shows he takes no small delight in his
kinsman.
The old peer has been a sinner in his day, and suffers for it now: a
sneaking sinner, sliding, rather than rushing into vices, for fear of his
reputation.--Paying for what he never had, and never daring to rise to
the joy of an enterprise at first hand, which could bring him within
view of a tilting, or of the honour of being considered as a principal
man in a court of justice.
To see such an old Trojan as this, just dropping into the grave, which I
hoped ere this would have been dug, and filled up with him; crying out
with pain, and grunting with weakness; yet in the same moment crack
his leathern face into an horrible laugh, and call a young sinner
charming varlet, encoreing him, as formerly he used to do to the Italian
eunuchs; what a preposterous, what an unnatural adherence to old
habits!
My two cousins are generally present when I entertain, as the old peer
calls it. Those stories must drag horribly, that have not more hearers
and applauders than relaters.
Applauders!
Ay, Belford, applauders, repeat I; for although these girls pretend to
blame me sometimes for the facts, they praise my manner, my
invention, my intrepidity.--Besides, what other people call blame, that
call I praise: I ever did; and so I very early discharged shame, that
cold-water damper to an enterprising spirit.
These are smart girls; they have life and wit; and yesterday, upon
Charlotte's raving against me upon a related enterprise, I told her, that I
had had in debate several times, whether she were or were not too near
of kin to me: and that it was once a moot point with me, whether I
could not love her dearly for a month or so: and perhaps it was well for
her, that another pretty little puss started up, and diverted me, just as I
was entering upon the course.

They all three held up their hands and eyes at once. But I observed that,
though the girls exclaimed against me, they were not so angry at this
plain speaking as I have found my beloved upon hints so dark that I
have wondered at her quick apprehension.
I told Charlotte, that, grave as she pretended to be in her smiling
resentments on this declaration, I was sure I should not have been put
to the expense of above two or three stratagems, (for nobody admired a
good invention more than she,) could I but have disentangled her
conscience from the embarrasses of consanguinity.
She pretended to be highly displeased: so did her sister for her. I told
her, she seemed as much in earnest as if she had thought me so; and
dared the trial. Plain words, I said, in these cases, were more shocking
to their sex than gradatim actions. And I bid Patty not be displeased at
my distinguishing her sister; since I had a great respect for her likewise.
An Italian air, in my usual careless way, a half-struggled-for kiss from
me, and a shrug of the shoulder, by way of admiration, from each pretty
cousin, and sad, sad fellow, from the old peer, attended with a
side-shaking laugh, made us all friends.
There, Jack!--Wilt thou, or wilt thou not, take this for a letter? there's
quantity, I am sure.--How have I filled a sheet (not a short-hand one
indeed) without a subject! My fellow shall take this; for he is going to
town. And if thou canst think tolerably of such execrable stuff, I will
send thee another.

LETTER IV
MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. SIX, SATURDAY
MORNING, JULY 8.
Have I nothing new, nothing diverting, in my whimsical way, thou
askest, in one of thy three letters before me, to entertain thee
with?--And thou tallest me, that, when I have least to narrate, to speak,
in the Scottish phrase, I am most diverting. A pretty compliment, either
to thyself, or to me. To both indeed!--a sign that thou hast as frothy