LETTER I. Lovelace to Belford.--
An agreeable airing with the lady. Delightfully easy she. Obsequiously
respectful he. Miss Howe's plot now no longer his terror. Gives the
particulars of their agreeable conversation while abroad.
LETTER II. From the same.--
An account of his ipecacuanha plot. Instructs Dorcas how to act surprise
and terror. Monosyllables and trisyllables to what likened. Politeness
lives not in a storm. Proclamation criers. The lady now sees she loves
him. Her generous tenderness for him. He has now credit for a new
score. Defies Mrs. Townsend.
LETTER III. Clarissa to Miss Howe.--
Acknowledged tenderness for Lovelace. Love for a man of errors
punishable.
LETTER IV. Lovelace to Belford.--
Suspicious inquiry after him and the lady by a servant in livery from one
Captain Tomlinson. Her terrors on the occasion. His alarming
management. She resolves not to stir abroad. He exults upon her not
being willing to leave him.
LETTER V. VI. From the same.--
Arrival of Captain Tomlinson, with a pretended commission from Mr. John
Harlowe to set on foot a general reconciliation, provided he can be
convinced that they are actually married. Different conversations on this
occasion.--The lady insists that the truth be told to Tomlinson. She
carries her point through to the disappointment of one of his private
views. He forms great hopes of success from the effects of his
ipecacuanha contrivance.
LETTER VII. Lovelace to Belford.--
He makes such a fair representation to Tomlinson of the situation between
him and the lady, behaves so plausibly, and makes an overture so
generous, that she is all kindness and unreserved to him. Her affecting
exultation on her amended prospects. His unusual sensibility upon it.
Reflection on the good effects of education. Pride an excellent
substitute to virtue.
LETTER VIII. From the same.--
Who Tomlinson is. Again makes Belford object, in order to explain his
designs by answering the objections. John Harlowe a sly sinner. Hard-
hearted reasons for giving the lady a gleam of joy. Illustrated by a
story of two sovereigns at war.
Extracts from Clarissa's letter to Miss Howe. She rejoices in her
present agreeable prospects. Attributes much to Mr. Hickman. Describes
Captain Tomlinson. Gives a character of Lovelace, [which is necessary to
be attended to: especially by those who have thought favourably of him
for some of his liberal actions, and hardly of her for the distance she
at first kept him at.]
LETTER IX. Lovelace to Belford.--
Letter from Lord M. His further arts and precautions. His happy day
promised to be soon. His opinion of the clergy, and of going to church.
She pities every body who wants pity. Loves every body. He owns he
should be the happiest of men, could he get over his prejudices against
matrimony. Draughts of settlements. Ludicrously accounts for the reason
why she refuses to hear them read to her. Law and gospel two different
things. Sally flings her handkerchief in his face.
LETTER X. From the same.--
Has made the lady more than once look about her. She owns that he is
more than indifferent to her. Checks him with sweetness of temper for
his encroaching freedoms. Her proof of true love. He ridicules marriage
purity. Severely reflects upon public freedoms between men and their
wives. Advantage he once made upon such an occasion. Has been after a
license. Difficulty in procuring one. Great faults and great virtues
often in the same person. He is willing to believe that women have no
souls. His whimsical reasons.
LETTER XI. Lovelace to Belford.--
Almost despairs of succeeding (as he had hoped) by love and gentleness.
Praises her modesty. His encroaching freedoms resented by her. The
woman, he observes, who resents not initiatory freedoms, must be lost.
He reasons, in his free way, upon her delicacy. Art of the Eastern
monarchs.
LETTER XII. From the same.--
A letter from Captain Tomlinson makes all up. Her uncle Harlowe's
pretended proposal big with art and plausible delusion. She acquiesces
in it. He writes to the pretended Tomlinson, on an affecting hint of
her's, requesting that her uncle Harlowe would, in person, give his niece
to him; or permit Tomlinson to be his proxy on the occasion.--And now for
a little of mine, he says, which he has ready to spring.
LETTER XIII. Belford to Lovelace.--
Again earnestly expostulates with him in the lady's favour. Remembers
and applauds the part she bore in the conversation at his collation. The
frothy wit of libertines how despicable. Censures the folly, the
weakness, the grossness, the unpermanency of sensual love. Calls some of
his contrivances trite, stale, and poor. Beseeches him to remove her
from the vile house. How many dreadful stories could the horrid Sinclair
tell the sex! Serious reflections on the dying state of his uncle.
LETTER XIV. Lovelace to Belford.--
Cannot yet procure a license. Has secured a retreat, if not victory.
Defends in anger the simplicity of his inventive contrivances. Enters
upon his general defence, compared with the principles and practices of
other libertines. Heroes and warlike kings worse men than he. Epitome
of his and the lady's story after ten years' cohabitation. Caution to
those who would censure him. Had the sex made virtue a recommendation to
their favour, he says, he should have had a greater regard to his morals
than he has had.
LETTER XV. From the same.--
Preparative to his little mine, as he calls it. Loves to write to the
moment. Alarm begins. Affectedly terrified.
LETTER XVI. From the same.--
The lady frighted out of her bed by dreadful cries of fire. She awes him
into decency. On an extorted promise of forgiveness, he leaves her.
Repenting, he returns; but finds her door fastened. What a triumph has
her sex obtained by her virtue! But how will she see him next morning,
as he has given her.
LETTER XVII. Lovelace to Belford.--
Dialogue with Clarissa, the door between them. Her letter to him. She
will not see him for a week.
LETTER XVIII. From the same.--
Copies of letters that pass between them. Goes to the commons to try to
get the license. She shall see him, he declares, on his return. Love
and compassion hard to be separated. Her fluctuating reasons on their
present situation. Is jealous of her superior qualities. Does justice
to her immovable virtue.
LETTER XIX. From the same.--
The lady escaped. His rage. Makes a solemn vow of revenge, if once more
he gets her into his power. His man Will. is gone in search of her. His
hopes; on what grounded. He will advertise her. Describes her dress.
Letter left behind her. Accuses her (that is to say, LOVELACE accuses
her,) of niceness, prudery, affectation.
LETTER XX. From the same.--
A letter from Miss Howe to Clarissa falls into his hands; which, had it
come to her's, would have laid open and detected all his designs. In it
she acquits Clarissa of prudery, coquetry, and undue reserve. Admires,
applauds, blesses her for the example she has set for her sex, and for
the credit she has done it, by her conduct in the most difficult
situations.
[This letter may be considered as a kind of summary of Clarissa's trials,
her persecutions, and exemplary conduct hitherto; and of Mr. Lovelace's
intrigues, plots, and views, so far as Miss Howe could be supposed to
know them, or to guess at them.]
A letter from Lovelace, which farther shows the fertility of his
contriving genius.
LETTER XXI. Clarissa to Miss Howe.--
Informs her of Lovelace's villany, and of her escape. Her only concern,
what. The course she intends to pursue.
LETTER XXII. Lovelace to Belford.--
Exults on hearing, from his man Will., that the lady has refuged herself
at Hampstead. Observations in a style of levity on some passages in the
letter she left behind her. Intimates that Tomlinson is arrived to aid
his purposes. The chariot is come; and now, dressed like a bridegroom,
attended by a footman she never saw, he is already, he says, at
Hampstead.
LETTER XXIII. XXIV. Lovelace to Belford.--
Exults on his contrivances.--By what means he gets into the lady's
presence at Mrs. Moore's. Her terrors, fits, exclamations. His
plausible tales to Mrs. Moore and Miss Rawlins. His intrepid behaviour
to the lady. Copies of letters from Tomlinson, and of pretended ones
from his own relations, calculated to pacify and delude her.
LETTER XXV. XXVI. From the same.--
His farther arts, inventions, and intrepidity. She puts home questions
to him. 'Ungenerous and ungrateful she calls him. He knows not the
value of the heart he had insulted. He had a plain path before him,
after he had tricked her out of her father's house! But that now her
mind was raised above fortune, and above him.' His precautionary
contrivances.
LETTER XXVII. XXVIII. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. From the same.--
Character of widow Bevis. Prepossesses the women against Miss Howe.
Leads them to think she is in love with him. Apt himself to think so;
and why. Women like not novices; and why. Their vulgar aphorism
animadverted on. Tomlinson arrives. Artful conversation between them.
Miss Rawlins's prudery. His forged letter in imitation of Miss Howe's,
No. IV. Other contrivances to delude the lady, and attach the women to
his party.
LETTER XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. From the same.--
Particulars of several interesting conversations between himself,
Tomlinson, and the lady. Artful management of the two former. Her noble
spirit. He tells Tomlinson before her that he never had any proof of
affection from her. She frankly owns the regard she once had for him.
'He had brought her,' she tells Tomlinson and him, 'more than once to own
it to him. Nor did his own vanity, she was sure, permit him to doubt of
it. He had kept her soul in suspense an hundred times.' Both men
affected in turn by her noble behaviour, and great sentiments. Their
pleas, prayers, prostrations, to move her to relent. Her distress.