. He seems to be penitent, said she; and it
is not for me to judge beyond appearances.--If he be not, he deceives
himself more than any body else.

She was so ill that this was all that passed on the occasion.

What a fine subject for tragedy, would the injuries of this lady, and her
behaviour under them, both with regard to her implacable friends, and to
her persecutor, make! With a grand objection as to the moral,
nevertheless;* for here virtue is punished! Except indeed we look
forward to the rewards of HEREAFTER, which, morally, she must be sure of,
or who can? Yet, after all, I know not, so sad a fellow art thou, and so
vile an husband mightest thou have made, whether her virtue is not
rewarded in missing thee: for things the most grievous to human nature,
when they happen, as this charming creature once observed, are often the
happiest for us in the event.

* Mr. Belford's objections, That virtue ought not to suffer in a tragedy,
is not well considered: Monimia in the Orphean, Belvidera in Venice
Preserved, Athenais in Theodosius, Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear,
Desdemona in Othello, Hamlet, (to name no more,) are instances that a
tragedy could hardly be justly called a tragedy, if virtue did not
temporarily suffer, and vice for a while triumph. But he recovers
himself in the same paragraph; and leads us to look up to the FUTURE for
the reward of virtue, and for the punishment of guilt: and observes not
amiss, when he says, He knows not but that the virtue of such a woman as
Clarissa is rewarded in missing such a man as Lovelace.

I have frequently thought, in my attendance on this lady, that if
Belton's admired author, Nic. Rowe, had had such a character before him,
he would have drawn another sort of penitent than he has done, or given
his play, which he calls The Fair Penitent, a fitter title. Miss Harlowe
is a penitent indeed! I think, if I am not guilty of a contradiction in
terms; a penitent without a fault; her parents' conduct towards her from
the first considered.

The whole story of the other is a pack of d----d stuff. Lothario, 'tis
true, seems such another wicked ungenerous varlet as thou knowest who:
the author knew how to draw a rake; but not to paint a penitent. Calista
is a desiring luscious wench, and her penitence is nothing else but rage,
insolence, and scorn. Her passions are all storm and tumult; nothing of
the finer passions of the sex, which, if naturally drawn, will