you will
allow, are severe constructions; but every thing his enemies say of him
cannot be false.

I will proceed by-and-by.

***

Sometimes we have both thought him one of the most undesigning merely
witty men we ever knew; at other times one of the deepest creatures
we ever conversed with. So that when in one visit we have imagined
we fathomed him, in the next he has made us ready to give him up as
impenetrable. This impenetrableness, my dear, is to be put among the
shades in his character. Yet, upon the whole, you have been so far
of his party, that you have contested that his principal fault is
over-frankness, and too much regardlessness of appearances, and that he
is too giddy to be very artful: you would have it, that at the time he
says any thing good, he means what he speaks; that his variableness and
levity are constitutional, owing to sound health, and to a soul and body
[that was your observation] fitted for and pleased with each other. And
hence you concluded, that could this consentaneousness [as you call it]
of corporal and animal faculties be pointed by discretion; that is
to say, could his vivacity be confined within the pale of but moral
obligations, he would be far from being rejectable as a companion for
life.

But I used then to say, and I still am of opinion, that he wants
a heart: and if he does, he wants every thing. A wrong head may be
convinced, may have a right turn given it: but who is able to give a
heart, if a heart be wanting? Divine Grace, working a miracle, or next
to a miracle, can only change a bad heart. Should not one fly the man
who is but suspected of such a one? What, O what, do parents do, when
they endeavour to force a child's inclination, but make her think better
than otherwise she would think of a man obnoxious to themselves, and
perhaps whose character will not stand examination?

I have said, that I think Mr. Lovelace a vindictive man: upon my word, I
have sometimes doubted, whether his perseverance in his addresses to
me has not been the more obstinate, since he has found himself so
disagreeable to my friends. From that time I verily think he has
been the more fervent in them; yet courts them not, but sets them at
defiance. For this indeed he pleads disinterestedness [I am sure he
cannot politeness]; and the more plausibly, as he is apprized of the
ability they have to make it worth his while to court them. 'Tis true
he has declared, and with too much reason, (or