I will only add, that, if he really wishes for a speedy
solemnization, he never could have had a luckier time
to press for my consent to it. But he let it
go off; and indignation has taken place of it.
And now it shall be a point with me, to get him at
a distance from me.
I am, my dearest friend,
Your ever faithful and obliged
CL. H.
Mr. Lovelace, to John Belford,
ESQ.
Tuesday, Apr. 13.
Why, Jack, thou needest not make such a wonderment,
as the girls say, if I should have taken large strides
already towards reformation: for dost thou not
see, that while I have been so assiduously, night and
day, pursuing this single charmer, I have infinitely
less to answer for, than otherwise I should have had?
Let me see, how many days and nights?—
Forty, I believe, after open trenches, spent in the
sap only, and never a mine sprung yet!
By a moderate computation, a dozen kites might have
fallen, while I have been only trying to ensnare this
single lark. Nor yet do I see when I shall be
able to bring her to my lure: more innocent days
yet, therefore! —But reformation for
my stalking-horse, I hope, will be a sure, though a
slow method to effect all my purposes.
Then, Jack, thou wilt have a merit too in engaging
my pen, since thy time would be otherwise worse employed:
and, after all, who knows but by creating new habits,
at the expense of the old, a real reformation may be
brought about? I have promised it; and I believe
there is a pleasure to be found in being good, reversing
that of Nat. Lee’s madman,
—Which
none but good men know.
By all this, seest thou not how greatly preferable
it is, on twenty accounts, to pursue a difficult rather
than an easy chace? I have a desire to inculcate
this pleasure upon thee, and to teach thee to fly at
nobler game than daws, crows, and widgeons: I
have a mind to shew thee from time to time, in the
course of the correspondence thou hast so earnestly
wished me to begin on this illustrious occasion, that
these exalted ladies may be abased, and to obviate
one of the objections that thou madest to me, when
we were last together, that the pleasure which attends
these nobler aims, remunerates not the pains they bring
with them; since, like a paltry fellow as thou wert,
thou assertedst that all women are alike.
Thou knowest nothing, Jack, of the delicacies of intrigue:
nothing of the glory of outwitting the witty and the
watchful: of the joys that fill the mind of the
inventive or contriving genius, ruminating which to
use of the different webs that offer to him for the
entanglement of a haughty charmer, who in her day
has given him unnumbered torments. Thou, Jack,
who, like a dog at his ease, contentest thyself to
growl over a bone thrown out to thee, dost not know
the joys of a chace, and in pursuing a winding game:
these I will endeavour to rouse thee to, and then thou
wilt have reason doubly and trebly to thank me, as
well because of thy present delight, as with regard
to thy prospect beyond the moon.
