LETTER XLVI.
Mr. Lovelace, To John Belford, Esq; [In Answer to his of Aug. 17. See Letter xliv.
Sunday, Aug. 20.
What an unmerciful fellow art thou! A man has no need of a conscience, who has such an impertinent monitor. But if Nic. Rowe wrote a Play that answers not his title, am I to be reflected upon for that?---I have sinned; I repent; I would repair---She forgives my sin: She accepts my repentance: But she won't let me repair---What wouldst have me do?
But get thee gone to Belton, as soon as thou canst. Yet whether thou goest or not, up I must go, and see what I can do with the sweet oddity myself. The moment these prescribing varlets will let me, depend upon it, I go. Nay, Lord M. thinks she ought to permit me one interview. His opinion has great authority with me---when it squares with my own: And I have assured him, and my two Cousins, that I will behave with all the decency and respect that man can behave with to the person whom he most respects. And so I will. Of this, if thou chusest not to go to Belton mean time, thou shalt be witness.
Colonel Morden, thou hast heard me say, is a man of honour and bravery:---But Colonel Morden has had his girls, as well as you and I. And indeed, either openly or secretly, who has not? The devil
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always baits with a pretty wench, when he angles for a man, be his age, rank, or degree, what it will.
I have often heard my Beloved speak of the Colonel with great distinction and esteem. I wish he could make matters a little easier, for her mind's sake, between the rest of the Implacables and herself.
Methinks I am sorry for honest Belton. But a man cannot be ill, or vapourish, but thou liftest up thy shriek-owl note, and killest him immediately. None but a fellow, who is fit for a drummer in death's forlorn hope, could take so much delight, as thou dost, in beating a dead-march with thy goose-quills.
·Whereas, didst thou but know thine own talents, thou art formed to give mirth by thy very appearance; and wouldst make a better figure by half, leading up thy brother-bears at Hockley in the Hole, to the music of a Scots bagpipe. Methinks I see thy clumsy sides shaking (and shaking the sides of all beholders) in these attitudes; thy fat head archly beating time on thy porterly shoulders, right and left by turns, as I once beheld thee practising to the hornpipe at Preston. Thou remembrest the frolick, as I have done an hundred times; for I never before saw thee appear so much in character.
·But I know what I shall get by this---Only that notable observation repeated, That thy outside is the worst of thee, and mine the best of me. And so let it be. Nothing thou writest of thissort can I take amiss.·
But I shall call thee seriously to account, when I see thee, for the Extracts thou hast given the Lady from my Letters, notwithstanding what I said in my last; especially if she continue to refuse me. An hundred times have I myself known a woman deny, yet comply at last: But, by these Extracts, thou hast, I doubt, made her bar up the door of her heart, as she used to do her chamber-door, against me.---This
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therefore is a disloyalty that friendship cannot bear, nor honour allow me to forgive.