em play with it a while, I claimed
their attention, and, knowing that they always loved to hear me prate,
went on.

The lady, it is plain, thought, that the reclaiming of a man from bad
habits was a much easier task than, in the nature of things, it can be.

She writes, as your Lordship has read, 'That, in endeavouring to save a
drowning wretch, she had been, not accidentally, but premeditatedly, and
of set purpose, drawn in after him.' But how is this, Ladies?--You see
by her own words, that I am still far from being out of danger myself.
Had she found me, in a quagmire suppose, and I had got out of it by her
means, and left her to perish in it; that would have been a crime indeed.
--But is not the fact quite otherwise? Has she not, if her allegory
prove what she would have it prove, got out herself, and left me
floundering still deeper and deeper in?--What she should have done, had
she been in earnest to save me, was, to join her hand with mine, that so
we might by our united strength help one another out.--I held out my hand
to her, and besought her to give me her's:--But, no truly! she was
determined to get out herself as fast as she could, let me sink or swim:
refusing her assistance (against her own principles) because she saw I
wanted it.--You see, Ladies, you see, my Lord, how pretty tinkling words
run away with ears inclined to be musical.

They were all ready to exclaim again: but I went on, proleptically, as a
rhetorician would say, before their voices would break out into words.

But my fair accuser says, that, 'I have added to the list of those I have
ruined, a name that would not have disparaged my own.' It is true, I
have been gay and enterprising. It is in my constitution to be so. I
know not how I came by such a constitution: but I was never accustomed to
check or controul; that you all know. When a man finds himself hurried
by passion into a slight offence, which, however slight, will not be
forgiven, he may be made desperate: as a thief, who only intends a
robbery, is often by resistance, and for self-preservation, drawn in to
commit murder.

I was a strange, a horrid wretch, with every one. But he must be a silly
fellow who has not something to say for himself, when every cause has its
black and its white side.--Westminster-hall, Jack, affords every day as
confident defences as mine.

But what right, proceeded I, has this lady to complain of me, when she as
good as says--Here, Lovelace,