LETTER XVI.
Mr. Mowbray, To John Belford, Esq;
Uxbridge, Sunday Morn. 9 o'Clock.
Dear Jack, I send you inclosed a Letter from Mr. Lovelace; which, tho' written in the cursed Algebra, I know to be such a one as will shew what a queer way he is in; for he read it to us with the air of a Tragedian. You will see by it what the mad fellow had intended to do, if we had not all of us interposed. He was actually setting out with a Surgeon of this place, to have the Lady opened and embalmed. ---Rot me if it be not my full persuasion, that if he had, her heart would have been found to be either iron or marble.
We have got Lord M. to him. His Lordship is also much afflicted at the Lady's death. His Sisters and Nieces, he says, will be ready to break their hearts. What a rout's here about a woman! For after all she was no more
We have taken a pailful of black bull's blood from him; and this has lowered him a little. But he threatens Colonel Morden, he threatens You for your cursed reflections [Cursed reflections indeed, Jack!] and curses all the world and himself, still.
Last night his mourning (which is full as deep as for a wife) was brought home, and his fellows mourning too. And tho' 8 o'clock, he would put it on, and make them attend him in theirs.
Every-body blames him on this Lady's account. But I see not for why. She was a Vixen in her virtue. What a pretty fellow has she ruined---Hay, Jack! ---And her relations are ten times more to blame than he. I will prove this to the teeth of them all. If they could use her ill, why should they expect him to use her well? ---You, or I, or Tourville, in his shoes, would have doneas he
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has done. Are not all the girls forewarned? ---'Has he done by her as that Caitiff Miles did to the farmer's daughter, whom he tricked up to town (a pretty girl also, just such another as Bob's Rosebud!) under a notion of waiting on a Lady? ---Drill'd her on, pretending the Lady was abroad. Drank her lighthearted; then carried her to a Play; then it was too late, you know, to see the pretended Lady: Then to a Bagnio: Ruined her, as they call it, and all the same day. Kept her on (an ugly dog too!) a fortnight or three weeks; then left her to the mercy of the people of the Bagnio (never paying for any-thing); who stript her of all her cloaths, and because she would not take on, threw her into prison; where she died in want, and in despair!' ---A true story, thou knowest, Jack---This fellow deserved to be damned. But has our Bob been such a villain as this? ---And would he not have married this flinty-hearted Lady? --- So he is justified very evidently.
Why then should such cursed quawms take him? --- Who would have thought he had been such poor blood? Now [Rot the puppy!] to see him sit silent in a corner, when he has tired himself with his mock-majesty, and with his argumentation (who so fond of arguing as he?) and teaching his shadow to make mouths against the wainscot---The devil fetch me, if I have patience with him!
But he has had no rest for these ten days: That's the thing! ---You must write to him; and pr'ythee coax him, Jack, and send him what he writes for, and give him all his way: There will be no bearing him else. And get the Lady buried as fast as you can; and don't let him know where.
This Letter should have gone yesterday. We told him it did. But were in hopes he would not have enquired after it again. But he raves as he has not any answer.
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What he vouchsafed to read of other of your Letters has given my Lord such a curiosity, as makes him desire you to continue your accounts. Pray do: But not in your hellish Arabic; and we will let the poor fellow only into what we think fitting for his present way.
I live a cursed dull poking life here. With what I so lately saw of poor Belton, and what I now see of this charming fellow, I shall be as crazy as he soon, or as dull as thou, Jack; so must seek for better company in town than either of you. I have been forced to read sometimes to divert me; and you know I hate reading. It presently sets me into a fit of drowziness, and then I yawn and stretch like a devil.
Yet in Dryden's Palemon and Arcite have I just now met with a passage, that has in it much of our Bob's case. These are some of the lines.
Mr. Mowbray then recites some lines from that poem describing a distracted man, and runs the parallel; and then priding himself in his performance, says,
Let me tell you, that had I begun to write as early as you and Lovelace, I might have cut as good a figure as either of you. Why not? But Boy or Man I ever hated a book. 'Tis a folly to lye. I loved action, my Boy. I hated droning; and have led in former days more boys from their book, than ever my master made to profit by it. Kicking and cuffing, and orchard-robbing, were my early glory.
But I am tired of writing. I never wrote such a long Letter in my life. My wrists and my fingers and thumb ake damnably. The pen is an hundred weight at least. And my eyes are ready to drop out of my head upon the paper. ---The cramp but this minute in my fingers. Rot the goose and the goose-quill! I will write no more long Letters for a twelvemonth to come. Yet one word: We think the mad fellow coming to. Adieu.