***

I take up my pen; but not to apologize for my execration.--Once more I
pray to God to avenge me of him!--Me, I say--for mine is the loss--her's
the gain.

O Sir! you did not--you could not know her, as I knew her! Never was
such an excellence!--So warm, yet so cool a friend!--So much what I wish
to be, but never shall be!--For, alas! my stay, my adviser, my monitress,
my directress, is gone!--for ever gone!--She honoured me with the title
of The Sister of her Heart; but I was only so in the love I bore her, (a
love beyond a sister's--infinitely beyond her sister's!) in the hatred I
have to every mean and sordid action; and in my love of virtue; for,
otherwise, I am of a high and haughty temper, as I have acknowledged
heretofore, and very violent in my passions.

In short, she was the nearest perfection of any creature I ever knew.
She never preached to me lessons which she practised not herself. She
lived the life she taught. All humility, meekness, self-accusing, others
acquitting, though the shadow of the fault was hardly hers, the substance
their's, whose only honour was their relation to her.

To lose such a friend--such a guide.--If ever my violence was
justifiable, it is upon this recollection! For she lived only to make me
sensible of my failings, but not long enough to enable me to conquer
them; as I was resolved to endeavour to do.

Once more then let me execrate--but now violence and passion again
predominate!--And how can it be otherwise?

But I force myself from the subject, having lost the purpose for which I
resumed my pen.

A. HOWE.

LETTER LVI

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
PARIS, OCT. 14.

---- ---- Timor & minae
Scandunt eodum quo dominus; neque
Decedit aerata triremi; &
Post equitem sedet atra cura.

In a language so expressive as the English, I hate the pedantry of
tagging or prefacing what I write with Latin scraps; and ever was a
censurer of the motto-mongers among our weekly and daily scribblers.
But these verses of Horace are so applicable to my case, that, whether
on ship-board, whether in my post-chaise, or in my inn at night, I am
not able to put them out of my head. Dryden once I thought said very
well in these bouncing lines:

Man makes his fate according to his mind.
The weak, low spirit, Fortune makes her slave:
But she's a drudge, when hector'd by the brave.
If Fate weave common thre