MR. LOVELACE TO MISS CLARISSA HARLOWE
MONDAY, AUG. 7.
Little as I have reason to expect either your patient ear, or forgiving
heart, yet cannot I forbear to write to you once more, (as a more
pardonable intrusion, perhaps, than a visit would be,) to beg of you to
put it in my power to atone, as far as it is possible to atone, for the
injuries I have done you.
Your angelic purity, and my awakened conscience, are standing records of
your exalted merit, and of my detestable baseness: but your forgiveness
will lay me under an eternal obligation to you.--Forgive me then, my
dearest life, my earthly good, the visible anchor of my future hope!--As
you, (who believe you have something to be forgiven for,) hope for pardon
yourself, forgive me, and consent to meet me, upon your own conditions,
and in whose company you please, at the holy altar, and to give yourself
a title to the most repentant and affectionate heart that ever beat in a
human bosom.
But, perhaps, a time of probation may be required. It may be impossible
for you, as well from indisposition as doubt, so soon to receive me to
absolute favour as my heart wishes to be received. In this case, I will
submit to your pleasure; and there shall be no penance which you can
impose that I will not cheerfully undergo, if you will be pleased to give
me hope that, after an expiation, suppose of months, wherein the
regularity of my future life and actions shall convince you of my
reformation, you will at last be mine.
Let me beg then the favour of a few lines, encouraging me in this
conditional hope, if it must not be a still nearer hope, and a more
generous encouragement.
If you refuse me this, you will make me desperate. But even then I must,
at all events, throw myself at your feet, that I may not charge myself
with the omission of any earnest, any humble effort, to move you in my
favour: for in YOU, Madam, in YOUR forgiveness, are centred my hopes as
to both worlds: since to be reprobated finally by you, will leave me
without expectation of mercy from above! For I am now awakened enough to
think that to be forgiven by injured innocents is necessary to the Divine
pardon; the Almighty putting into the power of such, (as is reasonable to
believe,) the wretch who causelessly and capitally offends them. And who
can be entitled to this power, if YOU are not?
Your cause, Madam, in a word, I look upon to be the cause of virtue, and,
as such, the cause of God. And may I not expect that He will assert it
in the perdition of a man, who has acted by a person of the most spotless
purity as I have done, if you, by rejecting me, show that I have offended
beyond the possibility of forgiveness.
I do most solemnly assure you that no temporal or worldly views induce me
to this earnest address. I deserve not forgiveness from you. Nor do my
Lord M. and his sisters from me. I despise them from my heart for
presuming to imagine that I will be controuled by the prospect of any
benefits in their power to confer. There is not a person breathing, but
yourself, who shall prescribe to me. Your whole conduct, Madam, has been
so nobly principled, and your resentments are so admirably just, that you
appear to me even in a divine light; and in an infinitely more amiable
one at the same time than you could have appeared in, had you not
suffered the barbarous wrongs, that now fill my mind with anguish and
horror at my own recollected villany to the most excellent of women.
I repeat, that all I beg for the present is a few lines to guide my
doubtful steps; and, if possible for you so far to condescend, to
encourage me to hope that, if I can justify my present vows by my future
conduct, I may be permitted the honour to style myself,
Eternally your's,
R. LOVELACE.