llanous man! what have you not to answer for!

***

A little interval seems to be lent me. I had begun to look over what I
have written. It is not fit for any one to see, so far as I have been
able to re-peruse it: but my head will not hold, I doubt, to go through
it all. If therefore I have not already mentioned my earnest desire, let
me tell you it is this: that I be sent out of this abominable house
without delay, and locked up in some private mad-house about this town;
for such, it seems, there are; never more to be seen, or to be produced
to any body, except in your own vindication, if you should be charged
with the murder of my person; a much lighter crime than that of
honour, which the greatest villain on earth has robbed me of. And deny
me not this my last request, I beseech you; and one other, and that is,
never to let me see you more! This surely may be granted to

The miserably abused
CLARISSA HARLOWE.

***

I will not bear thy heavy preachments, Belford, upon this affecting
letter. So, not a word of that sort! The paper, thou'lt see, is
blistered with the tears even of the hardened transcriber; which has
made her ink run here and there.

Mrs. Sinclair is a true heroine, and, I think, shames us all. And she is
a woman too! Thou'lt say, the beset things corrupted become the worst.
But this is certain, that whatever the sex set their hearts upon, they
make thorough work of it. And hence it is, that a mischief which would
end in simple robbery among men rogues, becomes murder, if a woman be in
it.

I know thou wilt blame me for having had recourse to art. But do not
physicians prescribe opiates in acute cases, where the violence of the
disorder would be apt to throw the patient into a fever or delirium? I
aver, that my motive for this expedient was mercy; nor could it be any
thing else. For a rape, thou knowest, to us rakes, is far from being an
undesirable thing. Nothing but the law stands in our way, upon that
account; and the opinion of what a modest woman will suffer rather than
become a viva voce accuser, lessens much an honest fellow's apprehensions
on that score. Then, if these somnivolencies [I hate the word opiates on
this occasion,] have turned her head, that is an effect they frequently
have upon some constitutions; and in this case was rather the fault of
the dose than the design of the giver.

But is not wine itself an opiate in degree?--How many women have been
take