[Death only can be dreadful to the bad;*
To innocence ’tis like a bugbear dress’d
To frighten children.  Pull but off the mask,
And he’ll appear a friend.]

* Transcriber’s note:  Portions set off in square brackets [ ] are written at angles to the majority of the text, as if squeezed into margins.

——­Oh! you have done an act
That blots the face and blush of modesty;
       Takes off the rose
 From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
And makes a blister there!

       Then down I laid my head,
Down on cold earth, and for a while was dead;
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled! 
       Ah! sottish soul! said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
       Fool! to resume her broken chain,
And row the galley here again! 
       Fool! to that body to return,
Where it condemn’d and destin’d is to mourn!

[I could a tale unfold——­
       Would harrow up thy soul——­]

O my Miss Howe! if thou hast friendship, help me,
And speak the words of peace to my divided soul,
       That wars within me,
And raises ev’ry sense to my confusion. 
       I’m tott’ring on the brink
Of peace; an thou art all the hold I’ve left! 
Assist me——­in the pangs of my affliction!

When honour’s lost, ’tis a relief to die: 
Death’s but a sure retreat from infamy.

[By swift misfortunes
     How I am pursu’d! 
Which on each other
     Are, like waves, renew’d!]

The farewell, youth,
     And all the joys that dwell
With youth and life! 
     And life itself, farewell!

For life can never be sincerely blest. 
Heav’n punishes the bad, and proves the best.

***

After all, Belford, I have just skimmed over these transcriptions of Dorcas:  and I see there are method and good sense in some of them, wild as others of them are; and that her memory, which serves her so well for these poetical flights, is far from being impaired.  And this gives me hope, that she will soon recover her charming intellects—­though I shall be the sufferer by their restoration, I make no doubt.

But, in the letter she wrote to me, there are yet greater extravagancies; and though I said it was too affecting to give thee a copy of it, yet, after I have let thee see the loose papers enclosed, I think I may throw in a transcript of that.  Dorcas therefore shall here transcribe it.  I cannot.  The reading of it affected me ten times more than the severest reproaches of a regular mind could do.

TO MR. LOVELACE

I never intended to write another line to you.  I would not see you, if I could help it—­O that I never had!

But tell me, of a truth, is Miss Howe really and truly ill?—­Very ill?- And is not her illness poison?  And don’t you know who gave it to her?