relations.

* Letter IV.

A person willing to think favourably of him would hope, that a brave, a
learned, and a diligent, man, cannot be naturally a bad man.--But if he
be better than his enemies say he is (and if worse he is bad indeed) he
is guilty of an inexcusable fault in being so careless as he is of his
reputation. I think a man can be so but from one of these two reasons:
either that he is conscious he deserves the ill spoken of him; or, that
he takes a pride in being thought worse than he is. Both very bad and
threatening indications; since the first must shew him to be utterly
abandoned; and it is but natural to conclude from the other, that what
a man is not ashamed to have imputed to him, he will not scruple to be
guilty of whenever he has an opportunity.

Upon the whole, and upon all I could gather from Mrs. Fortescue, Mr.
Lovelace is a very faulty man. You and I have thought him too gay, too
inconsiderate, too rash, too little an hypocrite, to be deep. You see
he never would disguise his natural temper (haughty as it certainly
is) with respect to your brother's behaviour to him. Where he thinks
a contempt due, he pays it to the uttermost. Nor has he complaisance
enough to spare your uncles.

But were he deep, and ever so deep, you would soon penetrate him, if
they would leave you to yourself. His vanity would be your clue. Never
man had more: Yet, as Mrs. Fortescue observed, 'never did man carry
it off so happily.' There is a strange mixture in it of humourous
vivacity:--Since but for one half of what he says of himself, when he is
in the vein, any other man would be insufferable.

***

Talk of the devil, is an old saying. The lively wretch has made me a
visit, and is but just gone away. He is all impatience and resentment
at the treatment you meet with, and full of apprehensions too, that they
will carry their point with you.

I told him my opinion, that you will never be brought to think of such a
man as Solmes; but that it will probably end in a composition, never to
have either.

No man, he said, whose fortunes and alliances are so considerable, ever
had so little favour from a woman for whose sake he had borne so much.

I told him my mind as freely as I used to do. But whoever was in fault,
self being judge? He complained of spies set upon his conduct, and to
pry into his life and morals, and this by your brother and uncles.

I told him, that this was very hard upon him; and the m