r-nice in her
part of the above conversations: but surely this must be owing to want
of attention to the circumstances she was in, and to her character, as
well as to the character of the man she had to deal with: for, although
she could not be supposed to know so much of his designs as the reader
does by means of his letters to Belford, yet she was but too well
convinced of his faulty morals, and of the necessity there was, from the
whole of his behaviour to her, to keep such an encroacher, as she
frequently calls him, at a distance. In Letter XXXIII. of Vol. III. the
reader will see, that upon some favourable appearances she blames herself
for her readiness to suspect him. But his character, his principles,
said she, are so faulty!--He is so light, so vain, so various.----Then,
my dear, I have no guardian to depend upon. In Letter IX. of Vol. III.
Must I not with such a man, says she, be wanting to myself, were I not
jealous and vigilant?

By this time the reader will see, that she had still greater reason for
her jealousy and vigilance. And Lovelace will tell the sex, as he does
in Letter XI. of Vol. V., that the woman who resents not initiatory
freedoms, must be lost. Love is an encroacher, says he: loves never goes
backward. Nothing but the highest act of love can satisfy an indulged
love.

But the reader perhaps is too apt to form a judgment of Clarissa's
conduct in critical cases by Lovelace's complaints of her coldness; not
considering his views upon her; and that she is proposed as an example;
and therefore in her trials and distresses must not be allowed to
dispense with those rules which perhaps some others of the sex, in her
delicate situation, would not have thought themselves so strictly bound
to observe; although, if she had not observed them, a Lovelace would have
carried all his points.

[Four letters are written by Mr. Lovelace from the date of his last,
giving the state of affairs between him and the Lady, pretty much the
same as in hers in the same period, allowing for the humour in his,
and for his resentments expressed with vehemence on her resolution to
leave him, if her friends could be brought to be reconciled to her.--
A few extracts from them will be only given.]

What, says he, might have become of me, and of my projects, had not her
father, and the rest of the implacables, stood my friends?

[After violent threatenings of revenge, he says,]

'Tis plain she w