“Before I could speak in came Mrs. Smith.  ‘Oh, madam,’ said she, ’what have you done?’

“’ Lord have mercy upon me, madam,’ cried I, ‘what have you done?’ For she, stepping at the instant to the door, Mrs. Smith told me it was a coffin.  Oh, Lovelace that thou hadst been there at the moment!  Thou, the causer of all these shocking scenes!  Surely thou couldst not have been less affected than I, who have no guilt as to her to answer for.

“With an intrepidity of a piece with the preparation, having directed them to carry it into her bed-chamber, she returned to us.  ’They were not to have brought it till after dark,’ said she.  ’Pray excuse me, Mr. Belford; and don’t you be concerned, Mrs. Smith.  Why should you?  There is nothing more in it than the unusualness of the thing.  Why may we not be as reasonably shocked at going to the church where are the monuments of our ancestors, as to be moved at such a sight as this.’

“How reasonable was all this.  But yet we could not help being shocked at the thoughts of the coffin thus brought in; the lovely person before our eyes who is in all likelihood so soon to fill it.”

Belford to Lovelace: 

“September 7. I may as well try to write, since were I to go to bed I should not sleep; and you may be glad to know the particulars of her happy exit.  All is now hushed and still.  At four o’clock yesterday I was sent for.  Her cousin, Colonel Mordern, and Mrs. Smith were with her.  She was silent for a few minutes.  Her breath grew shorter.  Her sweet voice and broken periods methinks still fill my ears, and never will be out of my memory.  ‘Do you, sir,’ turning her head towards me, ’tell your friend that I forgive him, and I pray to God to forgive him.  Let him know how happily I die, and that such as my own I wish to be his last hour.’

“With a smile of charming serenity overspreading her face, she expired.

“Oh, Lovelace, but I can write no more.”

* * * * *

Sir Charles Grandison

“Sir Charles Grandison, and the Honourable Miss Byron, in a Series of Letters,” published in 1753, was the third and last of Samuel Richardson’s novels.  Like its predecessors, it is of enormous length (it first appeared in seven volumes) and is written in the form of a series of letters.  The idea of the author was to “present to the public, in Sir Charles Grandison, the example of a man acting uniformly well through a variety of trying scenes, because all his actions are regulated by one steady principle—­a man of religion and virtue, of liveliness and spirit, accomplished and agreeable, happy in himself and a blessing to others.”  Such a portrait of “a man of true honour” provoked the highest enthusiasm in the eighteenth century; but to-day we have little patience for the faultless diction and exemplary conduct of Sir Charles, and, of the two, Miss Byron, the heroine, is by far the more interesting.  The “advertisement” to the edition of 1818 proclaimed the book “the most perfect work of its kind that ever appeared in this or any other language,” and we may accept that verdict without admiring “the kind.”

I.—­Miss Lucy Selby to Her Cousin, Miss Harriet Byron