distinguish themselves from the masculine passions, by a softness that
will even shine through rage and despair. Her character is made up of
deceit and disguise. She has no virtue; is all pride; and her devil is
as much within her, as without her.

How then can the fall of such a one create a proper distress, when all
the circumstances of it are considered? For does she not brazen out her
crime, even after detection? Knowing her own guilt, she calls for
Altamont's vengeance on his best friend, as if he had traduced her;
yields to marry Altamont, though criminal with another; and actually beds
that whining puppy, when she had given up herself, body and soul, to
Lothario; who, nevertheless, refused to marry her.

Her penitence, when begun, she justly styles the phrensy of her soul;
and, as I said, after having, as long as she could, most audaciously
brazened out her crime, and done all the mischief she could do,
(occasioning the death of Lothario, of her father, and others,) she stabs
herself.

And can this be the act of penitence?

But, indeed, our poets hardly know how to create a distress without
horror, murder, and suicide; and must shock your soul, to bring tears
from your eyes.

Altamont indeed, who is an amorous blockhead, a credulous cuckold, and,
(though painted as a brave fellow, and a soldier,) a mere Tom. Essence,
and a quarreler with his best friend, dies like a fool, (as we are led to
suppose at the conclusion of the play,) without either sword or pop-gun,
of mere grief and nonsense for one of the vilest of her sex: but the Fair
Penitent, as she is called, perishes by her own hand; and, having no
title by her past crimes to laudable pity, forfeits all claim to true
penitence, and, in all probability, to future mercy.

But here is Miss CLARISSA HARLOWE, a virtuous, noble, wise, and pious
young lady; who being ill used by her friends, and unhappily ensnared by
a vile libertine, whom she believes to be a man of honour, is in a manner
forced to throw herself upon his protection. And he, in order to obtain
her confidence, never scruples the deepest and most solemn protestations
of honour.

After a series of plots and contrivances, al baffled by her virtue and
vigilance, he basely has recourse to the vilest of arts, and, to rob her
of her honour, is forced first to rob her of her senses.

Unable to bring her, notwithstanding, to his ungenerous views of
cohabitation, she over-awes him in the very entr