have refused to him; since, as he infers, were it not with such an
expectation, why should my friends press it?'

*****

I have written; and to this effect: 'That I had never intended to write
another line to a man, who could take upon himself to reflect upon my
sex and myself, for having thought fit to make use of my own judgment.

'I tell him, that I have submitted to the interview with Mr. Solmes,
purely as an act of duty, to shew my friends, that I will comply with
their commands as far as I can; and that I hope, when Mr. Solmes himself
shall see how determined I am, he will cease to prosecute a suit, in
which it is impossible he should succeed with my consent.

'I assure him, that my aversion to Mr. Solmes is too sincere to permit
me to doubt myself on this occasion. But, nevertheless, he must not
imagine, that my rejecting of Mr. Solmes is in favour to him. That I
value my freedom and independency too much, if my friends will but leave
me to my own judgment, to give them up to a man so uncontroulable, and
who shews me beforehand what I have to expect from him, were I in his
power.

'I express my high disapprobation of the methods he takes to come
at what passes in a private family. The pretence of corrupting other
people's servants, by way of reprisal for the spies they have set upon
him, I tell him, is a very poor excuse; and no more than an attempt to
justify one meanness by another.

'There is, I observe to him, a right and a wrong in every thing, let
people put what glosses they please upon their action. To condemn a
deviation, and to follow it by as great a one, what, I ask him, is this,
but propagating a general corruption?--A stand must be made somebody,
turn round the evil as many as may, or virtue will be lost: And shall it
not be I, a worthy mind would ask, that shall make this stand?

'I leave him to judge, whether his be a worthy one, tried by this rule:
And whether, knowing the impetuosity of his own disposition, and the
improbability there is that my father and family will ever be reconciled
to him, I ought to encourage his hopes?

'These spots and blemishes, I further tell him, give me not earnestness
enough for any sake but his own, to wish him in a juster and nobler
train of thinking and acting; for that I truly despised many of the ways
he allows himself in: our minds are therefore infinitely different:
and as to his professions of reformation, I must tell him, that
profuse acknowle