LETTER XXXVI.
Miss Clarissa Harlowe, To Miss Howe.
Friday, Aug. 11.
I will send you a large packet, as you desire and expect; since I can do it by so safe a conveyance: But not all that is come to my hand---For I must own that my friends are very severe; too severe for any-body who loves them not, to see their Letters. You, my dear, would not call them my Friends,
[Page 103]
you said, long ago; but my Relations: Indeed I cannot call them my Relations, I think!---But I am ill; and therefore perhaps more peevish than I should be. It is difficult to go out of ourselves to give a judgment against ourselves; and yet, oftentimes, to pass a just judgment, we ought.
I thought I should alarm you in the choice of my Executor. But the sad necessity I am reduced to must excuse me.
I shall not repeat any-thing I have said before on that subject: But if your objections will not be answered to your satisfaction by the Papers and Letters I shall inclose, marked 1, 2, 3, 4, to 9, I must think myself in another instance unhappy; since I am engaged too far (and with my own judgment too) to recede.
As Mr. Belford has transcribed for me, in confidence, from his friend's Letters, the passages which accompany this, I must insist, that you suffer no soul but yourself to peruse them; and that you return them by the very first opportunity; that so no use may be made of them that may do hurt either to the original writer, or to the communicator. You'll observe I am bound by promise to this care. If thro' my means any mischief should arise, between this humane and that inhuman Libertine, I should think myself utterly inexcuseable.
I subjoin a list of the Papers or Letters I shall inclose. You must return them all when perused (a) [Footnote a: 2Kb].
[Page 104]
I am very much tired and fatigued---with---I don't know what---with writing, I think---But most with myself, and with a situation I cannot help aspiring to get out of, and above!
O, my dear, the world we live in is a sad, a very sad world!---While under our parents protecting wings, we know nothing at all of it. Book-learned and a scribbler, and looking at people as I saw them as visitors or visiting, I thought I knew a great deal of it. Pitiable ignorance!---Alas! I knew nothing at all!
With zealous wishes for your happiness, and the happiness of every one dear to you, I am, and will ever be,
Your gratefully-affectionate
Cl. Harlowe.