d (so few of them are there in it) are ready to find
them out, and extol them. If a fool can be made sensible that there is
a man who has more understanding than himself, he is ready enough to
conclude, that such a man must be a very extraordinary creature.

And what, at this rate, is the general conclusion to be drawn from the
premises?--Is it not, That no man ought to be vain? But what if a man
can't help it!--This, perhaps, may be my case. But there is nothing upon
which I value myself so much as upon my inventions. And for the soul of
me, I cannot help letting it be seen, that I do. Yet this vanity may be
a mean, perhaps, to overthrow me with this sagacious lady.

She is very apprehensive of me I see. I have studied before her and Miss
Howe, as often as I have been with them, to pass for a giddy thoughtless
creature. What a folly then to be so expatiatingly sincere, in my answer
to her home put, upon the noises within the garden?--But such success
having attended that contrivance [success, Jack, has blown many a man
up!] my cursed vanity got uppermost, and kept down my caution. The
menace to have secreted Solmes, and that other, that I had thoughts to
run away with her foolish brother, and of my project to revenge her upon
the two servants, so much terrified the dear creature, that I was forced
to sit down to muse after means to put myself right in her opinion.

Some favourable incidents, at the time, tumbled in from my agent in
her family; at least such as I was determined to make favourable: and
therefore I desired admittance; and this before she could resolve any
thing against me; that is to say, while her admiration of my intrepidity
kept resolution in suspense.

Accordingly, I prepared myself to be all gentleness, all obligingness,
all serenity; and as I have now and then, and always had, more or less,
good motions pop up in my mind, I encouraged and collected every thing
of this sort that I had ever had from novicehood to maturity, [not long
in recollecting, Jack,] in order to bring the dear creature into
good humour with me:* And who knows, thought I, if I can hold it, and
proceed, but I may be able to lay a foundation fit to build my grand
scheme upon!--LOVE, thought I, is not naturally a doubter: FEAR is,
I will try to banish the latter: nothing then but love will remain.
CREDULITY is the God of Love's prime minister, and they never are
asunder.

* He had said, Letter XVIII. that he would make re