redominant to that thou has pretended
for me!'

But to one of your mild and gentle temper, it would be all one, were
you married, whether the man were a Lovelace or a Hickman in his
spirit.--You are so obediently principled, that perhaps you would have
told a mild man, that he must not entreat, but command; and that it
was beneath him not to exact from you the obedience you had so solemnly
vowed to him at the altar.--I know of old, my dear, your meek regard
to that little piddling part of the marriage-vow which some
prerogative-monger foisted into the office, to make that a duty, which
he knew was not a right.

Our way of training-up, you say, makes us need the protection of the
brave. Very true: And how extremely brave and gallant is it, that this
brave man will free us from all insults but those which will go nearest
to our hearts; that is to say, his own!

How artfully has Lovelace, in the abstract you give me of one of
his letters, calculated to your meridian! Generous spirits hate
compulsion!--He is certainly a deeper creature by much than once we
thought him. He knows, as you intimate, that his own wild pranks cannot
be concealed: and so owns just enough to palliate (because it teaches
you not to be surprised at) any new one, that may come to your ears; and
then, truly, he is, however faulty, a mighty ingenuous man; and by no
means an hypocrite: a character the most odious of all others, to our
sex, in a lover, and the least to be forgiven, were it only because,
when detected, it makes us doubt the justice of those praises which we
are willing to believe he thought to be our due.

By means of this supposed ingenuity, Lovelace obtains a praise, instead
of a merited dispraise; and, like an absolved confessionaire, wipes off
as he goes along one score, to begin another: for an eye favourable
to him will not see his faults through a magnifying glass; nor will a
woman, willing to hope the best, forbear to impute it to ill-will and
prejudice all that charity can make so imputable. And if she even give
credit to such of the unfavourable imputations as may be too flagrant
to be doubted, she will be very apt to take in the future hope, which
he inculcates, and which to question would be to question her own power,
and perhaps merit: and thus may a woman be inclined to make a slight,
even a fancied merit atone for the most glaring vice.

I have a reason, a new one, for this preachment upon a text you have
given me. But