te her thoughts to her as soon as she was
able.

I then attempted more particularly to clear you of having any hand in the
vile Sinclair's officious arrest; a point she had the generosity to wish
you cleared of: and, having mentioned the outrageous letter you had
written to me on this occasion, she asked, If I had that letter about me?

I owned I had.

She wished to see it.

This puzzled me horribly: for you must needs think that most of the free
things, which, among us rakes, pass for wit and spirit, must be shocking
stuff to the ears or eyes of persons of delicacy of that sex: and then
such an air of levity runs through thy most serious letters; such a false
bravery, endeavouring to carry off ludicrously the subjects that most
affect thee; that those letters are generally the least fit to be seen,
which ought to be most to thy credit.

Something like this I observed to her; and would fain have excused myself
from showing it: but she was so earnest, that I undertook to read some
parts of it, resolving to omit the most exceptionable.

I know thou'lt curse me for that; but I thought it better to oblige her
than to be suspected myself; and so not have it in my power to serve thee
with her, when so good a foundation was laid for it; and when she knows
as bad of thee as I can tell her.

Thou rememberest the contents, I suppose, of thy furious letter.* Her
remarks upon the different parts of it, which I read to her, were to the
following effect:

* See Letter XII. of this volume.

Upon the last two lines, All undone! undone, by Jupiter! Zounds, Jack,
what shall I do now? a curse upon all my plots and contrivances! thus she
expressed herself:

'O how light, how unaffected with the sense of its own crimes, is the
heart that could dictate to the pen this libertine froth?'

The paragraph which mentions the vile arrest affected her a good deal.

In the next I omitted thy curse upon thy relations, whom thou wert
gallanting: and read on the seven subsequent paragraphs down to thy
execrable wish; which was too shocking to read to her. What I read
produced the following reflections from her:

'The plots and contrivances which he curses, and the exultings of the
wicked wretches on finding me out, show me that all his guilt was
premeditated: nor doubt I that his dreadful perjuries, and inhuman arts,
as he went along, were to pass for fine stratagems; for witty sport; and
to demonstrate a superiority of inventive