duly dwelt
upon, must add force to my pleas.

I depend upon your forgiveness of all the perhaps unseasonable
flippancies of your naturally too lively, yet most sincerely
sympathizing, ANNA HOWE.

LETTER XXV

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE FRIDAY, MARCH 31.

You have very kindly accounted for your silence. People in misfortune
are always in doubt. They are too apt to turn even unavoidable accidents
into slights and neglects; especially in those whose favourable opinion
they wish to preserve.

I am sure I ought evermore to exempt my Anna Howe from the supposed
possibility of her becoming one of those who bask only in the sun-shine
of a friend: but nevertheless her friendship is too precious to me, not
to doubt my own merits on the one hand, and not to be anxious for the
preservation of it, on the other.

You so generously gave me liberty to chide you, that I am afraid of
taking it, because I could sooner mistrust my own judgment, than that of
a beloved friend, whose ingenuousness in acknowledging an imputed error
seems to set her above the commission of a wilful one. This makes
me half-afraid to ask you, if you think you are not too cruel, too
ungenerous shall I say? in your behaviour to a man who loves you so
dearly, and is so worthy and so sincere a man?

Only it is by YOU, or I should be ashamed to be outdone in that true
magnanimity, which makes one thankful for the wounds given by a true
friend. I believe I was guilty of a petulance, which nothing but my
uneasy situation can excuse; if that can. I am but almost afraid to beg
of you, and yet I repeatedly do, to give way to that charming spirit,
whenever it rises to your pen, which smiles, yet goes to the quick of my
fault. What patient shall be afraid of a probe in so delicate a hand?--I
say, I am almost afraid to pray you to give way to it, for fear you
should, for that very reason, restrain it. For the edge may be taken
off, if it does not make the subject of its raillery wince a little.
Permitted or desired satire may be apt, in a generous satirist, mending
as it rallies, to turn too soon into panegyric. Yours is intended to
instruct; and though it bites, it pleases at the same time: no fear of a
wound's wrankling or festering by so delicate a point as you carry;
not envenomed by personality, not intending to expose, or ridicule, or
exasperate. The most admired of our moderns know nothing of this art:
Why? Because it must be founded in good na