y attempts to humble her. But a meek and
gentle temper was her's, though a true heroine, whenever honour or virtue
called for an exertion of spirit.

Nothing but my cursed devices stood in the way of my happiness.
Remembrest thou not how repeatedly, from the first, I poured cold water
upon her rising flame, by meanly and ungratefully turning upon her the
injunctions, which virgin delicacy, and filial duty, induced her to lay
me under before I got her into my power?*

* See Vol. III. Letter XV. See also Letters XVII. XLV. XLVI. of that
volume, and many other places.

Did she not tell me, and did I not know it, if she had not told me, that
she could not be guilty of affectation or tyranny to the man whom she
intended to marry?* I knew, as she once upbraided me, that from the time
I had got her from her father's house, I had a plain path before me.**
True did she say, and I triumphed in the discovery, that from that time
I held her soul in suspense an hundred times.*** My ipecacuanha trial
alone was enough to convince an infidel that she had a mind in which love
and tenderness would have presided, had I permitted the charming buds to
put forth and blow.****

* See Vol. V. Letter XXXIV.--It may be observed further, that all
Clarissa's occasional lectures to Miss Howe, on that young lady's
treatment of Mr. Hickman, prove that she was herself above affectation
and tyranny.--See, more particularly, the advice she gives to that
friend of her heart, Letter XXXII. of Vol. VIII.--'O my dear,' says she,
in that Letter, 'that it had been my lot (as I was not permitted to live
single) to have met with a man by whom I could have acted generously and
unreservedly!' &c. &c.
** See Vol. V. Letters XXVI. and XXXIV.
*** Ibid. Letter XXXIV.
**** See Vol. V. Letters II. III.

She would have had no reserve, as once she told me, had I given her cause
of doubt.* And did she not own to thee, that once she could have loved
me; and, could she have made me good, would have made me happy?** O,
Belford! here was love; a love of the noblest kind! A love, as she hints
in her posthumous letter,*** that extended to the soul; and which she not
only avowed in her dying hours, but contrived to let me know it after
death, in that letter filled with warnings and exhortations, which had
for their sole end my eternal welfare!

* Ibid. Letter XXXVI.
** See Vol. VIII. Letter LXIV.
*** See Letter XXXVI. of this volume.

The cursed wome