tue can afford such pleasures,
on reflection, as will be for ever blooming, for ever new!

I was agreeably surprised. I looked at him, I believe, as if I doubted
my ears and my eyes. His aspect however became his words.

I expressed my satisfaction in terms so agreeable to him, that he said,
he found a delight in this early dawning of a better day to him, and in
my approbation, which he had never received from the success of the most
favoured of his pursuits.

Surely, my dear, the man must be in earnest. He could not have said
this; he could not have thought it, had he not. What followed made me
still readier to believe him.

In the midst of my wild vagaries, said he, I have ever preserved a
reverence for religion, and for religious men. I always called another
cause, when any of my libertine companions, in pursuance of Lord
Shaftesbury's test (which is a part of the rake's creed, and what I
may call the whetstone of infidelity,) endeavoured to turn the sacred
subject into ridicule. On this very account I have been called by good
men of the clergy, who nevertheless would have it that I was a practical
rake, the decent rake: and indeed I had too much pride in my shame, to
disown the name of rake.

This, Madam, I am the readier to confess, as it may give you hope, that
the generous task of my reformation, which I flatter myself you will
have the goodness to undertake, will not be so difficult a one as you
may have imagined; for it has afforded me some pleasure in my retired
hours, when a temporary remorse has struck me for any thing I have done
amiss, that I should one day delight in another course of life: for,
unless we can, I dare say, no durable good is to be expected from the
endeavour. Your example, Madam, must do all, must confirm all.*

* That he proposes one day to reform, and that he has sometimes good
motions, see Vol.I. Letter XXXIV.

The divine grace, or favour, Mr. Lovelace, must do all, and confirm
all. You know not how much you please me, that I can talk to you in this
dialect.

And I then thought of his generosity to his pretty rustic; and of his
kindness to his tenants.

Yet, Madam, be pleased to remember one thing; reformation cannot be a
sudden work. I have infinite vivacity: it is that which runs away with
me. Judge, dearest Madam, by what I am going to confess, that I have
a prodigious way to journey on, before a good person will think me
tolerable; since though I have read in som