knoweth not God.'

Whenever you shall be inclined to consult the sacred oracles from whence
the above threatenings are extracted, you will find doctrines and texts
which a truly penitent and contrite heart may lay hold of for its
consolation.

May your's, Mr. Lovelace, become such! and may you be enabled to escape
the fate denounced against the abandoned man, and be entitled to the
mercies of a long suffering and gracious God, is the sincere prayer of

CLARISSA HARLOWE

*************************

LETTER XXXVII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
M. HALL, THURSDAY, SEPT. 14.

Ever since the fatal seventh of this month, I have been lost to myself,
and to all the joys of life. I might have gone farther back than that
fatal seventh; which, for the future, I will never see anniversarily
revolve but in sables; only till that cursed day I had some gleams of
hope now-and-then darting in upon me.

They tell me of an odd letter I wrote to you.* I remember I did write.
But very little of the contents of what I wrote do I remember.

* See his delirious Letter, No. XXIII.

I have been in a cursed way. Methinks something has been working
strangely retributive. I never was such a fool as to disbelieve a
Providence; yet am I not for resolving into judgments every thing that
seems to wear an avenging face. Yet if we must be punished either here
or hereafter for our misdeeds, better here, say I, than hereafter. Have
I not then an interest to think my punishment already not only begun but
completed since what I have suffered, and do suffer, passes all
description?

To give but one instance of the retributive--here I, who was the
barbarous cause of the loss of senses for a week together to the most
inimitable of women, have been punished with the loss of my own--
preparative to--who knows what?--When, Oh! when, shall I know a joyful
hour?

I am kept excessively low; and excessively low I am. This sweet
creature's posthumous letter sticks close to me. All her excellencies
rise up hourly to my remembrance.

Yet dare I not indulge in these melancholy reflections. I find my head
strangely working again--Pen, begone!

FRIDAY, SEPT. 15.

I resume, in a sprightly vein, I hope--Mowbray and Tourville have just
now--

But what of Mowbray and Tourville?--What's the world?--What's any body
in it?--

Yet they are highly exasperated against thee, for the last letter thou
wrotest to them*--such an unfriendly