for it, if he did. Such
language looks always to me, as if the flatterer thought to find a woman
a fool, or hoped to make her one.

'He regrets my indifference to him; which puts all the hope he has in my
favour upon the shocking usage I receive from my friends.

'As to my charge upon him of unpoliteness and uncontroulableness--What
[he asks] can he say? since being unable absolutely to vindicate
himself, he has too much ingenuousness to attempt to do so: yet is
struck dumb by my harsh construction, that his acknowledging temper
is owing more to his carelessness to defend himself, than to his
inclination to amend. He had never before met with the objections
against his morals which I had raised, justly raised: and he was
resolved to obviate them. What is it, he asks, that he has promised, but
reformation by my example? And what occasion for the promise, if he
had not faults, and those very great ones, to reform? He hopes
acknowledgement of an error is no bad sign; although my severe virtue
has interpreted it into one.

'He believes I may be right (severely right, he calls it) in my judgment
against making reprisals in the case of the intelligence he receives
from my family: he cannot charge himself to be of a temper that leads
him to be inquisitive into any body's private affairs; but hopes, that
the circumstances of the case, and the strange conduct of my friends,
will excuse him; especially when so much depends upon his knowing the
movements of a family so violently bent, by measures right or wrong, to
carry their point against me, in malice to him. People, he says, who act
like angels, ought to have angels to deal with. For his part, he has not
yet learned the difficult lesson of returning good for evil: and shall
think himself the less encouraged to learn it by the treatment I have
met with from the very persons who would trample upon him, as they do
upon me, were he to lay himself under their feet.

'He excuses himself for the liberties he owns he has heretofore taken in
ridiculing the marriage-state. It is a subject, he says, that he has not
of late treated so lightly. He owns it to be so trite, so beaten a
topic with all libertines and witlings; so frothy, so empty, so nothing
meaning, so worn-out a theme, that he is heartily ashamed of himself,
ever to have made it his. He condemns it as a stupid reflection upon the
laws and good order of society, and upon a man's own ancestors: and
in himself, who has some