Chapter 2

***

I have been just now to look at the place, and find it will answer. So
your faithful Robert may, without coming near the house, and as only
passing through the Green Lame which leads to two or three farm-houses
[out of livery if you please] very easily take from thence my letters
and deposit yours.

This place is the more convenient, because it is seldom resorted to
but by myself or Hannah, on the above-mentioned account; for it is the
general store-house for firing; the wood for constant use being nearer
the house.

One corner of this being separated off for the roosting-place of my
little poultry, either she or I shall never want a pretence to go
thither.

Try, my dear, the success of a letter this way; and give me your opinion
and advice what to do in this disgraceful situation, as I cannot but
call it; and what you think of my prospects; and what you would do in my
case.

But before-hand I will tell you, that your advice must not run in favour
of this Solmes: and yet it is very likely they will endeavour to engage
your mother, in order to induce you, who have such an influence over me,
to favour him.

Yet, on second thoughts, if you incline to that side of the question,
I would have you write your whole mind. Determined as I think I am, and
cannot help it, I would at least give a patient hearing to what may be
said on the other side. For my regards are not so much engaged [upon my
word they are not; I know not myself if they be] to another person as
some of my friends suppose; and as you, giving way to your lively vein,
upon his last visits, affected to suppose. What preferable favour I
may have for him to any other person, is owing more to the usage he has
received, and for my sake borne, than to any personal consideration.

I write a few lines of grateful acknowledgement to your good mother for
her favours to me in the late happy period. I fear I shall never know
such another. I hope she will forgive me, that I did not write sooner.

The bearer, if suspected and examined, is to produce that as the only
one he carries.

How do needless watchfulness and undue restraint produce artifice and
contrivance! I should abhor these clandestine correspondences, were they
not forced upon me. They have so mean, so low an appearance to myself,
that I think I ought not to expect that you should take part in them.

But why (as I have also expostulated with my aunt) must I be pushed
into a state, which I have no wish to enter into, although I reverence
it?--Why should not my brother, so many years older, and so earnest to
see me engaged, be first engaged?--And why should not my sister be first
provided for?

But here I conclude these unavailing expostulations, with the assurance,
that I am, and ever will be,

Your affectionate, CLARISSA HARLOWE.

LETTER X

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE FEB. 27

What odd heads some people have!--Miss Clarissa Harlowe to be sacrificed
in marriage to Mr. Roger Solmes!--Astonishing!

I must not, you say, give my advice in favour of this man!--You now
convince me, my dear, that you are nearer of kin than I thought you,
to the family that could think of so preposterous a match, or you would
never have had the least notion of my advising in his favour.

Ask for his picture. You know I have a good hand at drawing an ugly
likeness. But I'll see a little further first: for who knows what may
happen, since matters are in such a train; and since you have not the
courage to oppose so overwhelming a torrent?

You ask me to help you to a little of my spirit. Are you in earnest?
But it will not now, I doubt, do you service.--It will not sit naturally
upon you. You are your mother's girl, think what you will; and have
violent spirits to contend with. Alas! my dear, you should have borrowed
some of mine a little sooner;--that is to say, before you had given the
management of your estate into the hands of those who think they have a
prior claim to it. What though a father's!--Has not the father two elder
children?--And do they not both bear more of his stamp and image than
you do?--Pray, my dear, call me not to account for this free question;
lest your application of my meaning, on examination, prove to be as
severe as that.

Now I have launched out a little, indulge me one word more in the same
strain--I will be decent, I promise you. I think you might have know,
that Avarice and Envy are two passions that are not to be satisfied, the
one by giving, the other by the envied person's continuing to deserve
and excel.--Fuel, fuel both, all the world over, to flames insatiate and
devouring.

But since you ask for my opinion, you must tell me all you know or
surmise of their inducements. And if you will not forbid me to make
extracts from your letters for the entertainment of my aunt and cousin
in the little island, who long to hear more of your affairs, it will be
very obliging.

But you are so tender of some people who have no tenderness for any body
but themselves, that I must conjure you to speak out. Remember, that
a friendship like ours admits of no reserves. You may trust my
impartiality. It would be an affront to your own judgment, if you did
not: For do you not ask my advice? And have you not taught me that
friendship should never give a bias against justice?--Justify them,
therefore, if you can. Let us see if there be any sense, whether
sufficient reason or not in their choice. At present I cannot (and yet
I know a good deal of your family) have any conception how all of them,
your mother and your aunt Hervey in particular, can join with the rest
against judgments given. As to some of the others, I cannot wonder at
any thing they do, or attempt to do, where self is concerned.

You ask, Why may not your brother be first engaged in wedlock? I'll tell
you why: His temper and his arrogance are too well known to induce women
he would aspire to, to receive his addresses, notwithstanding his great
independent acquisitions, and still greater prospects. Let me tell you,
my dear, those acquisitions have given him more pride than reputation.
To me he is the most intolerable creature that I ever conversed with.
The treatment you blame, he merited from one whom he addressed with the
air of a person who presumes that he is about to confer a favour, rather
than to receive one. I ever loved to mortify proud and insolent spirits.
What, think you, makes me bear Hickman near me, but that the man is
humble, and knows and keeps his distance?

As to your question, Why your elder sister may not be first provided
for? I answer, Because she must have no man, but one who has a great and
clear estate; that's one thing. Another is, Because she has a younger
sister. Pray, my dear, be so good as to tell me, What man of a great and
clear estate would think of that eldest sister, while the younger were
single?

You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you, by
the constitutions of your family, marry to be still richer? People who
know in what their main excellence consists, are not to be blamed (are
they) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable?--Is
true happiness any part of your family view?--So far from it, that none
of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let
them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what
ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the
cause is want of more; and so go on heaping up, till Death, as greedy an
accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner.

Well then once more I say, do you, my dear, tell me what you know of
their avowed and general motives; and I will tell you more than you will
tell me of their failings! Your aunt Hervey, you say,* has told you: Why
must I ask you to let me know them, when you condescend to ask my advice
on the occasion?

* See Letter VIII.

That they prohibit your corresponding with me, is a wisdom I neither
wonder at, nor blame them for: since it is an evidence to me, that they
know their own folly: And if they do, is it strange that they should be
afraid to trust one another's judgment upon it?

I am glad you have found out a way to correspond with me. I approve
it much. I shall more, if this first trial of it prove successful. But
should it not, and should it fall into their hands, it would not concern
me but for your sake.

We have heard before you wrote, that all was not right between your
relations and you at your coming home: that Mr. Solmes visited you, and
that with a prospect of success. But I concluded the mistake lay in the
person; and that his address was to Miss Arabella. And indeed had she
been as good-natured as your plump ones generally are, I should have
thought her too good for him by half. This must certainly be the thing,
thought I; and my beloved friend is sent for to advise and assist in her
nuptial preparations. Who knows, said I to my mother, but that when
the man has thrown aside his yellow full-buckled peruke, and his
broad-brimmed beaver (both of which I suppose were Sir Oliver's best
of long standing) he may cut a tolerable figure dangling to church
with Miss Bell!--The woman, as she observes, should excel the man in
features: and where can she match so well for a foil?

I indulged this surmise against rumour, because I could not believe that
the absurdest people in England could be so very absurd as to think of
this man for you.

We heard, moreover, that you received no visiters. I could assign no
reason for this, except that the preparations for your sister were to be
private, and the ceremony sudden, for fear this man should, as another
man did, change his mind. Miss Lloyd and Miss Biddulph were with me to
inquire what I knew of this; and of your not being in church, either
morning or afternoon, the Sunday after your return from us; to the
disappointment of a little hundred of your admirers, to use their words.
It was easy for me to guess the reason to be what you confirm--their
apprehensions that Lovelace would be there, and attempt to wait on you
home.

My mother takes very kindly your compliments in your letter to her. Her
words upon reading it were, 'Miss Clarissa Harlowe is an admirable young
lady: wherever she goes, she confers a favour: whomever she leaves, she
fills with regret.'--And then a little comparative reflection--'O my
Nancy, that you had a little of her sweet obligingness!'

No matter. The praise was yours. You are me; and I enjoyed it. The more
enjoyed it, because--Shall I tell you the truth?--Because I think myself
as well as I am--were it but for this reason, that had I twenty brother
James's, and twenty sister Bell's, not one of them, nor all of them
joined together, would dare to treat me as yours presume to treat you.
The person who will bear much shall have much to bear all the world
through; it is your own sentiment,* grounded upon the strongest instance
that can be given in your own family; though you have so little improved
by it.

* Letter V.

The result is this, that I am fitter for this world than you; you for
the next than me:--that is the difference.--But long, long, for my sake,
and for hundreds of sakes, may it be before you quit us for company more
congenial to you and more worthy of you!

I communicated to my mother the account you give of your strange
reception; also what a horrid wretch they have found out for you; and
the compulsory treatment they give you. It only set her on magnifying
her lenity to me, on my tyrannical behaviour, as she will call it
[mothers must have their way, you know, my dear] to the man whom she so
warmly recommends, against whom it seems there can be no just exception;
and expatiating upon the complaisance I owe her for her indulgence. So I
believe I must communicate to her nothing farther--especially as I know
she would condemn the correspondence between us, and that between you
and Lovelace, as clandestine and undutiful proceedings, and divulge our
secret besides; for duty implicit is her cry. And moreover she lends
a pretty open ear to the preachments of that starch old bachelor your
uncle Antony; and for an example to her daughter would be more careful
how she takes your part, be the cause ever so just.

Yet is this not the right policy neither. For people who allow nothing
will be granted nothing: in other words, those who aim at carrying too
many points will not be able to carry any.

But can you divine, my dear, what the old preachment-making,
plump-hearted soul, your uncle Antony, means by his frequent amblings
hither?--There is such smirking and smiling between my mother and him!
Such mutual praises of economy; and 'that is my way!'--and 'this I
do!'--and 'I am glad it has your approbation, Sir!'--and 'you look into
every thing, Madam!'--'Nothing would be done, if I did not!'--

Such exclamations against servants! Such exaltings of self! And
dear heart, and good lack!--and 'las a-day!--And now-and-then their
conversation sinking into a whispering accent, if I come across
them!--I'll tell you, my dear, I don't above half like it.

Only that these old bachelors usually take as many years to resolve upon
matrimony as they can reasonably expect to live, or I should be ready
to fire upon his visits; and to recommend Mr. Hickman to my mother's
acceptance, as a much more eligible man: for what he wants in years,
he makes up in gravity; and if you will not chide me, I will say, that
there is a primness in both (especially when the man has presumed too
much with me upon my mother's favour for him, and is under discipline on
that account) as make them seem near of kin: and then in contemplation
of my sauciness, and what they both fear from it, they sigh away! and
seem so mightily to compassionate each other, that if pity be but one
remove from love, I am in no danger, while they are both in a great
deal, and don't know it.

Now, my dear, I know you will be upon me with your grave airs: so in for
the lamb, as the saying is, in for the sheep; and do you yourself look
about you; for I'll have a pull with you by way of being aforehand.
Hannibal, we read, always advised to attack the Romans upon their own
territories.

You are pleased to say, and upon your word too! that your regards (a
mighty quaint word for affections) are not so much engaged, as some
of your friends suppose, to another person. What need you give one to
imagine, my dear, that the last month or two has been a period extremely
favourable to that other person, whom it has made an obliger of the
niece for his patience with the uncles.

But, to pass that by--so much engaged!--How much, my dear?--Shall I
infer? Some of your friends suppose a great deal. You seem to own a
little.

Don't be angry. It is all fair: because you have not acknowledged to
me that little. People I have heard you say, who affect secrets, always
excite curiosity.

But you proceed with a kind of drawback upon your averment, as if
recollection had given you a doubt--you know not yourself, if they be
[so much engaged]. Was it necessary to say this to me?--and to say
it upon your word too?--But you know best.--Yet you don't neither,
I believe. For a beginning love is acted by a subtle spirit; and
oftentimes discovers itself to a by-stander, when the person possessed
(why should I not call it possessed?) knows not it has such a demon.

But further you say, what preferable favour you may have for him to any
other person, is owing more to the usage he has received, and for your
sake borne, than to any personal consideration.

This is generously said. It is in character. But, O my friend, depend
upon it, you are in danger. Depend upon it, whether you know it or not,
you are a little in for't. Your native generosity and greatness of mind
endanger you: all your friends, by fighting against him with
impolitic violence, fight for him. And Lovelace, my life for yours,
notwithstanding all his veneration and assiduities, has seen further
than that veneration and those assiduities (so well calculated to your
meridian) will let him own he has seen--has seen, in short, that his
work is doing for him more effectually than he could do it for himself.
And have you not before now said, that nothing is so penetrating as the
eye of a lover who has vanity? And who says Lovelace wants vanity?

In short, my dear, it is my opinion, and that from the easiness of his
heart and behaviour, that he has seen more than I have seen; more than
you think could be seen--more than I believe you yourself know, or else
you would let me know it.

Already, in order to restrain him from resenting the indignities he has
received, and which are daily offered him, he has prevailed upon you to
correspond with him privately. I know he has nothing to boast of from
what you have written: but is not his inducing you to receive his
letters, and to answer them, a great point gained? By your insisting
that he should keep the correspondence private, it appears there is one
secret which you do not wish the world should know: and he is master of
that secret. He is indeed himself, as I may say, that secret! What an
intimacy does this beget for the lover! How is it distancing the parent!

Yet who, as things are situated, can blame you?--Your condescension has
no doubt hitherto prevented great mischiefs. It must be continued,
for the same reasons, while the cause remains. You are drawn in by
a perverse fate against inclination: but custom, with such
laudable purposes, will reconcile the inconveniency, and make an
inclination.--And I would advise you (as you would wish to manage on an
occasion so critical with that prudence which governs all your actions)
not to be afraid of entering upon a close examination into the true
springs and grounds of this your generosity to that happy man.

It is my humble opinion, I tell you frankly, that on inquiry it will
come out to be LOVE--don't start, my dear!--Has not your man himself had
natural philosophy enough to observe already to your aunt Hervey, that
love takes the deepest root in the steadiest minds? The deuce take his
sly penetration, I was going to say; for this was six or seven weeks
ago.

I have been tinctured, you know. Nor on the coolest reflection, could
I account how and when the jaundice began: but had been over head and
ears, as the saying is, but for some of that advice from you, which I
now return you. Yet my man was not half so--so what, my dear--to be sure
Lovelace is a charming fellow. And were he only--but I will not make
you glow, as you read--upon my word I will not.--Yet, my dear, don't you
find at your heart somewhat unusual make it go throb, throb, throb, as
you read just here?--If you do, don't be ashamed to own it--it is your
generosity, my love, that's all.--But as the Roman augur said, Caesar,
beware of the Ides of March!

Adieu, my dearest friend.--Forgive, and very speedily, by the new found
expedient, tell me that you forgive,

Your ever-affectionate, ANNA HOWE.

LETTER XI

MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE, TO MISS HOWE WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1.

You both nettled and alarmed me, my dearest Miss Howe, by the concluding
part of your last. At first reading it, I did not think it necessary,
said I to myself, to guard against a critic, when I was writing to so
dear a friend. But then recollecting myself, is there not more in it,
said I, than the result of a vein so naturally lively? Surely I must
have been guilty of an inadvertence. Let me enter into the close
examination of myself which my beloved friend advises.

I do so; and cannot own any of the glow, any of the throbs you
mention.--Upon my word I will repeat, I cannot. And yet the passages in
my letter, upon which you are so humourously severe, lay me fairly open
to your agreeable raillery. I own they do. And I cannot tell what turn
my mind had taken to dictate so oddly to my pen.

But, pray now--is it saying so much, when one, who has no very
particular regard to any man, says, there are some who are preferable to
others? And is it blamable to say, they are the preferable, who are not
well used by one's relations; yet dispense with that usage out of regard
to one's self which they would otherwise resent? Mr. Lovelace, for
instance, I may be allowed to say, is a man to be preferred to Mr.
Solmes; and that I do prefer him to that man: but, surely, this may be
said without its being a necessary consequence that I must be in love
with him.

Indeed I would not be in love with him, as it is called, for the world:
First, because I have no opinion of his morals; and think it a fault in
which our whole family (my brother excepted) has had a share, that he
was permitted to visit us with a hope, which, however, being distant,
did not, as I have observed heretofore,* entitle any of us to call
him to account for such of his immoralities as came to our ears. Next,
because I think him to be a vain man, capable of triumphing (secretly at
least) over a person whose heart he thinks he has engaged. And, thirdly,
because the assiduities and veneration which you impute to him, seem to
carry an haughtiness in them, as if he thought his address had a merit
in it, that would be more than an equivalent to a woman's love. In
short, his very politeness, notwithstanding the advantages he must have
had from his birth and education, appear to be constrained; and, with
the most remarkable easy and genteel person, something, at times,
seems to be behind in his manner that is too studiously kept in. Then,
good-humoured as he is thought to be in the main to other people's
servants, and this even to familiarity (although, as you have observed,
a familiarity that has dignity in it not unbecoming to a man of quality)
he is apt sometimes to break out into a passion with his own: An oath
or a curse follows, and such looks from those servants as plainly shew
terror, and that they should have fared worse had they not been in my
hearing: with a confirmation in the master's looks of a surmise too well
justified.

* Letter III.

Indeed, my dear, THIS man is not THE man. I have great objections to
him. My heart throbs not after him. I glow not, but with indignation
against myself for having given room for such an imputation. But you
must not, my dearest friend, construe common gratitude into love. I
cannot bear that you should. But if ever I should have the misfortune to
think it love, I promise you upon my word, which is the same as upon my
honour, that I will acquaint you with it.

You bid me to tell you very speedily, and by the new-found expedient,
that I am not displeased with you for your agreeable raillery: I
dispatch this therefore immediately, postponing to my next the account
of the inducements which my friends have to promote with so much
earnestness the address of Mr. Solmes.

Be satisfied, my dear, mean time, that I am not displeased with you:
indeed I am not. On the contrary, I give you my hearty thanks for your
friendly premonitions; and I charge you (as I have often done) that if
you observe any thing in me so very faulty as would require from you
to others in my behalf the palliation of friendly and partial love, you
acquaint me with it: for methinks I would so conduct myself as not to
give reason even for an adversary to censure me; and how shall so weak
and so young a creature avoid the censure of such, if my friend will not
hold a looking-glass before me to let me see my imperfections?

Judge me, then, my dear, as any indifferent person (knowing what you
know of me) would do. I may be at first be a little pained; may glow a
little perhaps to be found less worthy of your friendship than I wish
to be; but assure yourself, that your kind correction will give me
reflection that shall amend me. If it do not, you will have a fault to
accuse me of, that will be utterly inexcusable: a fault, let me add,
that should you not accuse me of it (if in your opinion I am guilty) you
will not be so much, so warmly, my friend as I am yours; since I have
never spared you on the like occasions.

Here I break off to begin another letter to you, with the assurance,
mean time, that I am, and ever will be,

Your equally affectionate and grateful, CL. HARLOWE.

LETTER XII

MISS HOWE, TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE THURSDAY MORNING, MARCH 2.

Indeed you would not be in love with him for the world!--Your servant,
my dear. Nor would I have you. For, I think, with all the advantages of
person, fortune, and family, he is not by any means worthy of you. And
this opinion I give as well from the reasons you mention (which I cannot
but confirm) as from what I have heard of him but a few hours ago
from Mrs. Fortescue, a favourite of Lady Betty Lawrance, who knows him
well--but let me congratulate you, however, on your being the first of
our sex that ever I heard of, who has been able to turn that lion, Love,
at her own pleasure, into a lap-dog.

Well but, if you have not the throbs and the glows, you have not: and
are not in love; good reason why--because you would not be in love; and
there's no more to be said.--Only, my dear, I shall keep a good look-out
upon you; and so I hope you will be upon yourself; for it is no manner
of argument that because you would not be in love, you therefore are
not.--But before I part entirely with this subject, a word in your ear,
my charming friend--'tis only by way of caution, and in pursuance of the
general observation, that a stander-by is often a better judge of the
game than those that play.--May it not be, that you have had, and
have, such cross creatures and such odd heads to deal with, as have not
allowed you to attend to the throbs?--Or, if you had them a little now
and then, whether, having had two accounts to place them to, you have
not by mistake put them to the wrong one?

But whether you have a value for Lovelace or not, I know you will be
impatient to hear what Mrs. Fortescue has said of him. Nor will I keep
you longer in suspense.

An hundred wild stories she tells of him from childhood to manhood:
for, as she observed, having never been subject to contradiction, he
was always as mischievous as a monkey. But I shall pass over these whole
hundred of his puerile rogueries (although indicative ones, as I may
say) to take notice as well of some things you are not quite ignorant
of, as of others you know not, and to make a few observations upon him
and his ways.

Mrs. Fortescue owns, what every body knows, 'that he is notoriously,
nay, avowedly, a man of pleasure; yet says, that in any thing he sets
his heart upon or undertakes, he is the most industrious and persevering
mortal under the sun. He rests it seems not above six hours in the
twenty-four--any more than you. He delights in writing. Whether at Lord
M.'s, or at Lady Betty's, or Lady Sarah's, he has always a pen in his
fingers when he retires. One of his companions (confirming his love of
writing) has told her, that his thoughts flow rapidly to his pen:' And
you and I, my dear, have observed, on more occasions than one, that
though he writes even a fine hand, he is one of the readiest and
quickest of writers. He must indeed have had early a very docile genius;
since a person of his pleasurable turn and active spirit, could
never have submitted to take long or great pains in attaining the
qualifications he is master of; qualifications so seldom attained by
youth of quality and fortune; by such especially of those of either,
who, like him, have never known what it was to be controuled.

'He had once it seems the vanity, upon being complimented on these
talents (and on his surprising diligence, for a man of pleasure) to
compare himself to Julius Caesar; who performed great actions by day,
and wrote them down at night; and valued himself, that he only wanted
Caesar's out-setting, to make a figure among his contemporaries.

'He spoke of this indeed, she says, with an air of pleasantry: for
she observed, and so have we, that he has the art of acknowledging his
vanity with so much humour, that it sets him above the contempt which
is due to vanity and self-opinion; and at the same time half persuades
those who hear him, that he really deserves the exultation he gives
himself.'

But supposing it to be true that all his vacant nightly hours are
employed in writing, what can be his subjects? If, like Caesar, his own
actions, he must undoubtedly be a very enterprising and very wicked man;
since nobody suspects him to have a serious turn; and, decent as he is
in his conversation with us, his writings are not probably such as would
redound either to his own honour, or to the benefit of others, were they
to be read. He must be conscious of this, since Mrs. Fortescue says,
'that in the great correspondence by letters which he holds, he is
as secret and as careful as if it were of a treasonable nature;--yet
troubles not his head with politics, though nobody knows the interests
of princes and courts better than he is said to do.'

That you and I, my dear, should love to write, is no wonder. We have
always, from the time each could hold a pen, delighted in epistolary
correspondencies. Our employments are domestic and sedentary; and we can
scribble upon twenty innocent subjects, and take delight in them because
they are innocent; though were they to be seen, they might not much
profit or please others. But that such a gay, lively young fellow as
this, who rides, hunts, travels, frequents the public entertainments,
and has means to pursue his pleasures, should be able to set himself
down to write for hours together, as you and I have heard him say he
frequently does, that is the strange thing.

Mrs. Fortescue says, 'that he is a complete master of short-hand
writing.' By the way, what inducements could a swift writer as he have
to learn short-hand!

She says (and we know it as well as she) 'that he has a surprising
memory, and a very lively imagination.'

Whatever his other vices are, all the world, as well as Mrs. Fortescue,
says, 'he is a sober man. And among all his bad qualities, gaming, that
great waster of time as well as fortune, is not his vice:' So that he
must have his head as cool, and his reason as clear, as the prime of
youth and his natural gaiety will permit; and by his early morning
hours, a great portion of time upon his hands to employ in writing, or
worse.

Mrs. Fortescue says, 'he has one gentleman who is more his intimate and
correspondent than any of the rest.' You remember what his dismissed
bailiff said of him and of his associates.* I don't find but that Mrs.
Fortescue confirms this part of it, 'that all his relations are afraid
of him; and that his pride sets him above owing obligations to them.
She believes he is clear of the world; and that he will continue so;'
No doubt from the same motive that makes him avoid being obliged to his
relations.

* Letter IV.

A person willing to think favourably of him would hope, that a brave, a
learned, and a diligent, man, cannot be naturally a bad man.--But if he
be better than his enemies say he is (and if worse he is bad indeed) he
is guilty of an inexcusable fault in being so careless as he is of his
reputation. I think a man can be so but from one of these two reasons:
either that he is conscious he deserves the ill spoken of him; or, that
he takes a pride in being thought worse than he is. Both very bad and
threatening indications; since the first must shew him to be utterly
abandoned; and it is but natural to conclude from the other, that what
a man is not ashamed to have imputed to him, he will not scruple to be
guilty of whenever he has an opportunity.

Upon the whole, and upon all I could gather from Mrs. Fortescue, Mr.
Lovelace is a very faulty man. You and I have thought him too gay, too
inconsiderate, too rash, too little an hypocrite, to be deep. You see
he never would disguise his natural temper (haughty as it certainly
is) with respect to your brother's behaviour to him. Where he thinks
a contempt due, he pays it to the uttermost. Nor has he complaisance
enough to spare your uncles.

But were he deep, and ever so deep, you would soon penetrate him, if
they would leave you to yourself. His vanity would be your clue. Never
man had more: Yet, as Mrs. Fortescue observed, 'never did man carry
it off so happily.' There is a strange mixture in it of humourous
vivacity:--Since but for one half of what he says of himself, when he is
in the vein, any other man would be insufferable.