, that you ever wrote at all to him. It was taking too
much notice of him: it was adding to his self-significance; and a call
upon him to treat you with insolence. A call which you might have been
assured he would not fail to answer.

But such a pretty master as this, to run riot against such a man as
Lovelace; who had taught him to put his sword into his scabbard, when
he had pulled it out by accident!--These in-door insolents, who, turning
themselves into bugbears, frighten women, children, and servants, are
generally cravens among men. Were he to come fairly across me, and say
to my face some of the free things which I am told he has said of me
behind my back, or that (as by your account) he has said of our sex, I
would take upon myself to ask him two or three questions; although he
were to send me a challenge likewise.

I repeat, you know that I will speak my mind, and write it too. He is
not my brother. Can you say, he is yours?--So, for your life, if you
are just, you can't be angry with me: For would you side with a false
brother against a true friend? A brother may not be a friend: but a
friend will always be a brother--mind that, as your uncle Tony says!

I cannot descend so low, as to take very particular notice of the
epistles of these poor souls, whom you call uncles. Yet I love to divert
myself with such grotesque characters too. But I know them and love you;
and so cannot make the jest of them which their absurdities call for.

You chide me, my dear,* for my freedoms with relations still nearer and
dearer to you, than either uncles or brother or sister. You had better
have permitted me (uncorrected) to have taken my own way. Do not use
those freedoms naturally arise from the subject before us? And from whom
arises that subject, I pray you? Can you for one quarter of an hour
put yourself in my place, or in the place of those who are still more
indifferent to the case than I can be?--If you can--But although I have
you not often at advantage, I will not push you.

* See Vol. I. Letter XXVIII.

Permit me, however, to subjoin, that well may your father love your
mother, as you say he does. A wife who has no will but his! But were
there not, think you, some struggles between them at first, gout out of
the question?--Your mother, when a maiden, had, as I have heard (and it
is very likely) a good share of those lively spirits which she liked
in your father. She has none of them now. How came they to