he dear creature resolved to revoke her promise, yet
meeting her lover; a bold and intrepid man, who was more than once
before disappointed by her; and who comes, as she knows, prepared to
expect the fruits of her appointment, and resolved to carry her off.
And let us see him actually carrying her off, and having her at
his mercy--'May there not be, I repeat, other Lovelaces; other like
intrepid, persevering enterprizers; although they may not go to work in
the same way?

'And has then a CLARISSA (herself her judge) failed?--In such great
points failed?--And may she not further fail?--Fail in the greatest
point, to which all the other points, in which she has failed, have but
a natural tendency?'

Nor say thou, that virtue, in the eye of Heaven, is as much a manly as
a womanly grace. By virtue in this place I mean chastity, and to be
superior to temptation; my Clarissa out of the question. Nor ask thou,
shall the man be guilty, yet expect the woman to be guiltless, and even
unsuspectible? Urge thou not these arguments, I say, since the wife, by
a failure, may do much more injury to the husband, than the husband can
do to the wife, and not only to her husband, but to all his family, by
obtruding another man's children into his possessions, perhaps to the
exclusion of (at least to a participation with) his own; he believing
them all the time to be his. In the eye of Heaven, therefore, the sin
cannot be equal. Besides I have read in some places that the woman was
made for the man, not the man for the woman. Virtue then is less to be
dispensed with in the woman than in the man.

Thou, Lovelace, (methinks some better man than thyself will say,) to
expect such perfection in a woman!

Yes, I, may I answer. Was not the great Caesar a great rake as to
women? Was he not called, by his very soldiers, on one of his triumphant
entries into Rome, the bald-pated lecher? and warning given of him to
the wives, as well as to the daughter of his fellow-citizens? Yet did
not Caesar repudiate his wife for being only in company with Clodius, or
rather because Clodius, though by surprise upon her, was found in hers?
And what was the reason he gave for it?--It was this, (though a rake
himself, as I have said,) and only this--The wife of Caesar must not be
suspected!--

Caesar was not a prouder man than Lovelace.

Go to then, Jack; nor say, nor let any body say, in thy hearing, that
Lovelace, a man valuing himself upon his ancestry, is s