y the servants, and even my cousins,
look upon me, since yesterday, to what they did before. Neither the one
nor the other bow or courtesy half so low--nor am I a quarter so often
his honour and your honour, as I was within these few hours, with the
former: and as to the latter--it is cousin Bobby again, with the usual
familiarity, instead of Sir, and Sir, and If you please, Mr. Lovelace.
And now they have the insolence to congratulate me on the recovery of the
best of uncles; while I am forced to seem as much delighted as they,
when, would it do me good, I could sit down and cry my eyes out.

I had bespoke my mourning in imagination, after the example of a certain
foreign minister, who, before the death, or even last illness of Charles
II., as honest White Kennet tells us, had half exhausted Blackwell-hall
of its sables--an indication, as the historian would insinuate, that the
monarch was to be poisoned, and the ambassador in the secret.--And yet,
fool that I was, I could not take the hint--What the devil does a man
read history for, if he cannot profit by the examples he find in it?

But thus, Jack, is an observation of the old Peer's verified, that one
misfortune seldom comes alone: and so concludes

Thy doubly mortified
LOVELACE.

LETTER L

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE
WEDNESDAY NIGHT, JUNE 28.

O MY DEAREST MISS HOWE!

Once more have I escaped--But, alas! I, my best self, have not escaped!
--Oh! your poor Clarissa Harlowe! you also will hate me, I fear!----

Yet you won't, when you know all!

But no more of my self! my lost self. You that can rise in a morning to
be blest, and to bless; and go to rest delighted with your own
reflections, and in your unbroken, unstarting slumbers, conversing with
saints and angels, the former only more pure than yourself, as they have
shaken off the incumbrance of body; you shall be my subject, as you have
long, long, been my only pleasure. And let me, at awful distance, revere
my beloved Anna Howe, and in her reflect upon what her Clarissa Harlowe
once was!

***

Forgive, O forgive my rambling. My peace is destroyed. My intellects
are touched. And what flighty nonsense must you read, if you now will
vouchsafe to correspond with me, as formerly!

O my best, my dearest, my only friend! what a tale have I to unfold!--
But still upon self, this vile, this hated self!--I will shake it off, if
possible; and why should I not, since I think, except o