se scenes of death and the doctor so near me. The doctor
and death I should have said; for that is the natural order, and
generally speaking, the one is but the harbinger to the other.

If, therefore, you decline to oblige me, I shall think you are displeased
with my freedom. But let me tell you, at the same, that no man has a
right to be displeased at freedoms taken with him for faults he is not
ashamed to be guilty of.

J. BELFORD.

LETTER XIX

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE

I thank you and Mr. Hickman for his letter, sent me with such kind
expedition; and proceed to obey my dear menacing tyranness.

[She then gives the particulars of what passed between herself and Mr.
Lovelace on Tuesday morning, in relation to his four friends, and to
Miss Partington, pretty much to the same effect as in Mr. Lovelace's
Letter, No. XIII. And then proceeds:]

He is constantly accusing me of over-scrupulousness. He says, 'I am
always out of humour with him: that I could not have behaved more
reservedly to Mr. Solmes: and that it is contrary to all his hopes and
notions, that he should not, in so long a time, find himself able to
inspire the person, whom he hoped so soon to have the honour to call his,
with the least distinguishing tenderness for him before-hand.'

Silly and partial encroacher! not to know to what to attribute the
reserve I am forced to treat him with! But his pride has eaten up his
prudence. It is indeed a dirty low pride, that has swallowed up the true
pride which should have set him above the vanity that has overrun him.

Yet he pretends that he has no pride but in obliging me: and is always
talking of his reverence and humility, and such sort of stuff: but of
this I am sure that he has, as I observed the first time I saw him,* too
much regard to his own person, greatly to value that of his wife, marry
he whom he will: and I must be blind, if I did not see that he is
exceedingly vain of his external advantages, and of that address, which,
if it has any merit in it to an outward eye, is perhaps owing more to his
confidence that [sic] to any thing else.

* See Vol. I. Letter III.

Have you not beheld the man, when I was your happy guest, as he walked to
his chariot, looking about him, as if to observe what eyes his specious
person and air had attracted?

But indeed we had some homely coxcombs as proud as if they had persons to
be proud of; at the same time that it was app