d my mother, and of you
my uncle, and my elder uncle, and my cousin Morden, as he is one of the
trustees for my grandfather's bounty to me?--As to my brother indeed, I
cannot say, that his treatment of me has been of late so brotherly,
as to entitle him to more than civility from me: and for this, give me
leave to add, he would be very much my debtor.

If I have not been explicit enough in declaring my dislike to Mr. Solmes
(that the prepossession which is charged upon me may not be supposed to
influence me against him) I do absolutely declare, That were there no
such man as Mr. Lovelace in the world, I would not have Mr. Solmes.
It is necessary, in some one of my letters to my dear friends, that I
should write so clearly as to put this matter out of all doubt: and to
whom can I better address myself with an explicitness that can admit
of no mistake, than to that uncle who professes the highest regard for
plain-dealing and sincerity?

Let me, for these reasons, be still more particular in some of my
exceptions to him.

Mr. Solmes appears to me (to all the world, indeed) to have a very
narrow mind, and no great capacity: he is coarse and indelicate; as
rough in his manners as in his person: he is not only narrow, but
covetous: being possessed of great wealth, he enjoys it not; nor has the
spirit to communicate to a distress of any kind. Does not his own sister
live unhappily, for want of a little of his superfluities? And suffers
not he his aged uncle, the brother of his own mother, to owe to
the generosity of strangers the poor subsistence he picks up from
half-a-dozen families?--You know, Sir, my open, free, communicative
temper: how unhappy must I be, circumscribed in his narrow, selfish
circle! out of which being with-held by this diabolical parsimony, he
dare no more stir, than a conjurer out of his; nor would let me.

Such a man, as this, love!--Yes, perhaps he may, my grandfather's
estate; which he has told several persons (and could not resist hinting
the same thing tome, with that sort of pleasure which a low mind takes,
when it intimates its own interest as a sufficient motive for it to
expect another's favour) lies so extremely convenient for him, that it
would double the value of a considerable part of his own. That estate,
and an alliance which would do credit to his obscurity and narrowness,
they make him think he can love, and induce him to believe he does: but
at most, he is but a second-place love. R