I say; and yet, for such a trial of you to yourself, rather than as an
impertinent overflow of raillery in your friend, as money-takers try a
suspected guinea by the sound, let me on such a supposition, sound you,
by repeating, poor Mr. Lovelace!

And now, my dear, how is it with you? How do you now, as my mother says
to Mr. Hickman, when her pert daughter has made him look sorrowful?

LETTER XXII

MR. HICKMAN, TO MRS. HOWE WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29.

MADAM,

It is with infinite regret that I think myself obliged, by pen and ink,
to repeat my apprehension, that it is impossible for me ever to obtain a
share in the affections of your beloved daughter. O that it were not too
evident to every one, as well as to myself, even to our very servants,
that my love for her, and my assiduities, expose me rather to her scorn
[forgive me, Madam, the hard word!] than to the treatment due to a man
whose proposals have met with your approbation, and who loves her above
all the women in the world!

Well might the merit of my passion be doubted, if, like Mr. Solmes to
the truly-admirably Miss Clarissa Harlowe, I could continue my addresses
to Miss Howe's distaste. Yet what will not the discontinuance cost me!

Give me leave, nevertheless, dearest, worthiest Lady, to repeat, what I
told you, on Monday night, at Mrs. Larkin's, with a heart even bursting
with grief, That I wanted not the treatment of that day to convince
me, that I am not, nor ever can be, the object of Miss Howe's voluntary
favour. What hopes can there be, that a lady will ever esteem, as a
husband, the man, whom, as a lover, she despises? Will not every act
of obligingness from such a one, be construed as an unmanly tameness
of spirit, and entitle him the more to her disdain?--My heart is full:
Forgive me, if I say, that Miss Howe's treatment of me does no credit
either to her education, or fine sense.

Since, then, it is too evident, that she cannot esteem me; and since, as
I have heard it justly observed by the excellent Miss Clarissa Harlowe,
that love is not a voluntary passion; would it not be ungenerous to
subject the dear daughter to the displeasure of a mother so justly fond
of her; and you, Madam, while you are so good as to interest yourself in
my favour, to uneasiness? And why, were I even to be sure, at last, of
succeeding by means of your kind partiality to me, should I wish to make
the best-beloved of my soul unhappy; since mutual must be our happ