ht, may have
produced!

I must after my messenger. I have told the varlet I will meet him,
perhaps at Knightsbridge, perhaps in Piccadilly; and I trust not myself
with pistols, not only on his account, but my own--for pistols are too
ready a mischief.

I hope thou hast a letter ready for him. He goes to thy lodgings first--
for surely thou wilt not presume to take thy rest in an apartment near
her's. If he miss thee there, he flies to Smith's, and brings me word
whether in being, or not.

I shall look for him through the air as I ride, as well as on horseback;
for if the prince of it serve me, as well as I have served him, he will
bring the dog by his ears, like another Habakkuk, to my saddle-bow, with
the tidings that my heart pants after.

Nothing but the excruciating pangs the condemned soul fells, at its
entrance into the eternity of the torments we are taught to fear, can
exceed what I now feel, and have felt for almost this week past; and
mayest thou have a spice of those, if thou hast not a letter ready
written for thy

LOVELACE.

LETTER LXIV

MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.
TUEDAY, SEPT. 5, SIX O'CLOCK.

The lady remains exceedingly weak and ill. Her intellects, nevertheless,
continue clear and strong, and her piety and patience are without
example. Every one thinks this night will be her last. What a shocking
thing is that to say of such an excellence! She will not, however, send
away her letter to her Norton, as yet. She endeavoured in vain to
superscribe it: so desired me to do it. Her fingers will not hold the
pen with the requisite steadiness.--She has, I fear, written and read her
last!

EIGHT O'CLOCK.

She is somewhat better than she was. The doctor had been here, and
thinks she will hold out yet a day or two. He has ordered her, as for
some time past, only some little cordials to take when ready to faint.
She seemed disappointed, when he told her she might yet live two or three
days; and said, she longed for dismission!--Life was not so easily
extinguished, she saw, as some imagined.--Death from grief, was, she
believed, the slowest of deaths. But God's will must be done!--Her only
prayer was now for submission to it: for she doubted not but by the
Divine goodness she should be an happy creature, as soon as she could be
divested of these rags of mortality.

Of her own accord she mentioned you; which, till then, she had avoided to
do. She asked, with great sereni