ntrary, thus
she comforts herself, when she thinks she must be his--'This one
consolation, however, remains; he is not an infidel, an unbeliever. Had
he been an infidel, there would have been no room at all for hope of him;
but (priding himself as he does in his fertile invention) he would have
been utterly abandoned, irreclaimable, and a savage.'* And it must be
observed, that scoffers are too witty, in their own opinion, (in other
words, value themselves too much upon their profligacy,) to aim at
concealing it.

* See Vol. IV. Letter XXXIX. and Vol. V. Letter VIII.

Besides, had Lovelace added ribbald jests upon religion, to his other
liberties, the freedoms which would then have passed between him and his
friend, must have been of a nature truly infernal.

And this father hint was meant to be given, by way of inference, that the
man who allowed himself in those liberties either of speech or action,
which Lovelace thought shameful, was so far a worse man than Lovelace.
For this reason he is every where made to treat jests on sacred things
and subjects, even down to the mythology of the Pagans, among Pagans, as
undoubted marks of the ill-breeding of the jester; obscene images and
talk, as liberties too shameful for even rakes to allow themselves in;
and injustice to creditors, and in matters of Meum and Tuum, as what it
was beneath him to be guilty of.

Some have objected to the meekness, to the tameness, as they will have it
to be, of Mr. Hickman's character. And yet Lovelace owns, that he rose
upon him with great spirit in the interview between them; once, when he
thought a reflection was but implied on Miss Howe;* and another time,
when he imagined himself treated contemptuously.** Miss Howe, it must be
owned, (though not to the credit of her own character,) treats him
ludicrously on several occasions. But so she does her mother. And
perhaps a lady of her lively turn would have treated as whimsically any
man but a Lovelace. Mr. Belford speaks of him with honour and
respect.*** So does Colonel Morden.**** And so does Clarissa on every
occasion. And all that Miss Howe herself says of him, tends more to his
reputation than discredit,***** as Clarissa indeed tells her.******

* See Vol. VII. Letter XXVIII.
** Ibid.
*** Ibid. Letter XLVIII.
**** See Letter XLVI. of this volume.
***** See Vol. II. Letter II. and Vol. III. Letter XL.
****** See Vol. II. Letter XI.

And as to Lovelace's treatment