She as nobly forgives, and prays for, and endeavours to give posthumous
Comfort to, her persecuting Relations; wounding all of them deeper by
the Generosity of her Forgiveness, than if they were to suffer the most
cruel Deaths.

While it is one of the latent Morals of this Work, that Women, in
chusing Companions for Life, should chuse companiable Men; should chuse
for Men whose Hearts would probably be all their own, rather than to
share with Scores perhaps the volatile mischievous one of a Libertine:
In short, that they should chuse for _Mind_ and not for _Person_; and
not make a Jest of a good Man, in favour of a bad, who would make a Jest
of them, and of their whole Sex. / /

[2]

"May my Story," says our Heroine, Vol. ____ p. ____ "be a Warning to all
my Sex, how they perfer a Libertine to a Man of true Honour; and how
they permit themselves, where they mean the best) [sic] to be misled by
the specious, but foolish Hope of subduing _rivetted Habits_, and, as I
may say, of _altering Natures_. The more foolish, as Experience might
convince us, that there is hardly one in ten, of even tolerably happy
Marriages, in which the Wife keeps the Hold in the Husband's Affections,
which she had in the Lover's. What Influence then can she hope to have
upon the Morals of an avowed Libertine, who marries perhaps for
Conveniency; who despises the Tie; and whom it is too probable that
nothing but Age or Sickness, or Disease (the Consequence of ruinous
Riot), can reclaim." There cannot be a more pernicious Notion, than that
which is so commonly received, That a reformed Rake makes the best
Husband. This Notion it was the Intent of the Author of Clarissa to
explode.

The Authors of Novels and Romances, who always make their Heroes and
Heroines contend with great Distresses (the more romantic, with them,
the better) seem to think they have done every-thing, when they have
joined the Lovers Hands; and this is called a _happy Ending_ of the
Story. But, alas! it is then, too generally, that the Lovers have the
greatest Difficulties to encounter with, as they then see each other in
nearer and truer Lights.

And I have moreover always thought, that these sudden Conversions have
neither Art, nor Nature, nor Probability in them; and that they are,
besides, of very bad Example. To have a Libertine, for a Series of
Years, glory in his Wickedness, and to think he had nothing to do, but,
as an Act of Grace and Favour, to hold out his Hand t