Feet to marry him, whilst, in the
same Instant, he tried to confuse her by a Behaviour that put it out of
her Power to comply with him; there was nothing that she would not have
done to oblige him. Then indeed she plainly saw that her Principles and
his Profligacy, her Simplicity and his Cunning, were not made to be
joined; and when she found such was the Man she liked best, no Wonder
her Desire of a single Life should return. She saw, indeed, her own
Superiority over _Lovelace_, but it was his Baseness that made her
behold it. And here I must observe, that in the very same Breath in
which she tells him, _Her Soul's above him_, she bids him _leave her_,
that Thought more than any other makes her resolve, at all Events, to
abandon him. Was this like exulting in her own Understanding, and
proudly (as I have heard it said) wanting to dictate to the Man she
intended for a Husband? Such a Woman, if I am not greatly mistaken,
would not desire the Man to leave her because she saw her Soul was above
him; but on the contrary, concealing from him, and disguising her
Thoughts, would have set Art against Art, and been the more delighted to
have drawn him in to have married her, that she might have deceived him,
and enjoyed the Thoughts of her own Superiority for Life. As I remember,
he never asks her fairly to marry him but once, and then she consents:
But how different in every Action is she from the sly and artful Woman,
who would have snatched at this Opportunity, and not have trusted him
with a Moment's Delay, whilst _Clarissa_, being then ill, consents, with
a Confidence that nothing but her Goodness and Simplicity could have had
in such a Man.

Tho' _Clarissa_ unfortunately met with _Lovelace_, yet I can imagine her
with a Lover whose honest Heart, assimulating with hers, would have
given her leave, as she herself wishes, to have shewn the Frankness of
her Disposition, and to have openly avowed her Love. But _Lovelace_, by
his own intriguing Spirit, made her Reserves, and then complained of
them; and as she was engaged with such a Man, I think the Catastrophe's
being what is called _Unhappy_, is but the natural Consequence of such
an Engagement; tho', I confess, I was not displeased that the Report of
this Catastrophe met with so many Objections, as it proved what an
Impression the Author's favourite Character had made on those Minds
which could not bear she should fall a Sacrifice to the Barbarity of her
Persecutors. And I