MR. BELFORD, TO ROBERT LOVELACE, ESQ.
LONDON, OCT. 25.
I write to show you that I am incapable of slighting even the minutest
requests of an absent and distant friend. Yet you may believe that there
cannot be any great alterations in the little time that you have been out
of England, with respect to the subjects of your inquiry. Nevertheless I
will answer to each, for the reason above given; and for the reason you
mention, that even trifles, and chit-chat, are agreeable from friend to
friend, and of friends, and even of those to whom we give the importance
of deeming them our foes, when we are abroad.
First, then, as to my reformation-scheme, as you call it, I hope I go on
very well. I wish you had entered upon the like, and could say so too.
You would then find infinitely more peace of mind, than you are likely
ever otherwise to be acquainted with. When I look back upon the sweep
that has been made among us in the two or three past years, and forward
upon what may still happen, I hardly think myself secure; though of late
I have been guided by other lights than those of sense and appetite,
which have hurried so many of our confraternity into worldly ruin, if not
into eternal perdition.
I am very earnest in my wishes to be admitted into the nuptial state.
But I think I ought to pass some time as a probationary, till, by
steadiness in my good resolutions, I can convince some woman, whom I
could love and honour, and whose worthy example might confirm my morals,
that there is one libertine who had the grace to reform, before age or
disease put it out of his power to sin on.
The Harlowes continue inconsolable; and I dare say will to the end of
their lives.
Miss Howe is not yet married; but I have reason to think will soon. I
have the honour of corresponding with her; and the more I know of her,
the more I admire the nobleness of her mind. She must be conscious, that
she is superior to half our sex, and to most of her own; which may make
her give way to a temper naturally hasty and impatient; but, if she meet
with condescension in her man, [and who would not veil to a superiority
so visible, if it be not exacted with arrogance?] I dare say she will
make an excellent wife.
As to Doleman, the poor man goes on trying and hoping with his empiric.
I cannot but say that as the latter is a sensible and judicious man, and
not rash, opinionative, or over-sanguine, I have great hopes (little as I
think of quacks and nostrum-mongers in general) that he will do him good,
if his case will admit of it. My reasons are--That the man pays a
regular and constant attendance upon him; watches, with his own eye,
every change and new symptom of his patient's malady; varies his
applications as the indications vary; fetters not himself to rules laid
down by the fathers of the art, who lived many hundred years ago, when
diseases, and the causes of them, were different, as the modes of living
were different from what they are now, as well as climates and accidents;
that he is to have his reward, not in daily fees; but (after the first
five guineas for medicines) in proportion as the patient himself shall
find amendment.
As to Mowbray and Tourville; what novelties can be expected, in so short
a time, from men, who have not sense enough to strike out or pursue new
lights, either good or bad; now, especially, that you are gone, who were
the soul of all enterprise, and in particular their soul. Besides, I see
them but seldom. I suppose they'll be at Paris before you can return
from Germany; for they cannot live without you; and you gave them such a
specimen of your recovered volatility, in the last evening's
conversation, as delighted them, and concerned me.
I wish, with all my heart, that thou wouldst bend thy course toward the
Pyraneans. I should then (if thou writest to thy cousin Montague an
account of what is most observable in thy tour) put in for a copy of thy
letters. I wonder thou wilt not; since then thy subjects would be as new
to thyself, as to
Thy
BELFORD.