master of the field.

Tell me not of politeness; tell me not of generosity; tell me not of
compassion--Is she not a match for me? More than a match? Does she not
outdo me at every fair weapon? Has she not made me doubt her love? Has
she not taken officious pains to declare that she was not averse to
Solmes for any respect she had to me? and her sorrow for putting herself
out of his reach, that is to say, for meeting me?

Then, what a triumph would it be to the Harlowe pride, were I now to
marry this lady? A family beneath my own! No one in it worthy of an
alliance with but her! My own estate not contemptible! Living within the
bounds of it, to avoid dependence upon their betters, and obliged to no
man living! My expectations still so much more considerable! My person,
my talents--not to be despised, surely--yet rejected by them with scorn.
Obliged to carry on an underhand address to their daughter, when two of
the most considerable families in the kingdom have made overtures, which
I have declined, partly for her sake, and partly because I never will
marry; if she be not the person. To be forced to steal her away, not
only from them, but from herself! And must I be brought to implore
forgiveness and reconciliation from the Harlowes?--Beg to be
acknowledged as the son of a gloomy tyrant, whose only boast is his
riches? As a brother to a wretch, who has conceived immortal hatred to
me; and to a sister who was beneath my attempts, or I would have had her
in my own way, and that with a tenth part of the trouble and pains that
her sister has cost me; and, finally, as a nephew to uncles, who value
themselves upon their acquired fortunes, would insult me as creeping
to them on that account?--Forbid it in the blood of the Lovelaces, that
your last, and, let me say, not the meanest of your stock, should thus
creep, thus fawn, thus lick the dust, for a WIFE--!

Proceed anon.

LETTER XVIII

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ. [IN CONTINUATION.]

But is it not the divine CLARISSA [Harlowe let me not say; my soul
spurns them all but her] whom I am thus by application threatening?--If
virtue be the true nobility, how is she ennobled, and how shall an
alliance with her ennoble, were not contempt due to the family from whom
she sprang and prefers to me!

But again, let me stop.--Is there not something wrong, has there
not been something wrong, in this divine creature? And will not the
reflections upon that wrong (what t