Then, as I observed in a like case, a little while ago, the distress, when this was written, was strong upon her; and she saw no end of it:  but all was darkness and apprehension before her.  Moreover, has she it not in her power to disappoint, as much as she has been disappointed?  Revenge, Jack, has induced many a woman to cherish a life, to which grief and despair would otherwise have put an end.

And, after all, death is no such eligible thing, as Job in his calamities, makes it.  And a death desired merely from worldly disappointments shows not a right mind, let me tell this lady, whatever she may think of it.* You and I Jack, although not afraid, in the height of passion or resentment, to rush into those dangers which might be followed by a sudden and violent death, whenever a point of honour calls upon us, would shudder at his cool and deliberate approach in a lingering sickness, which had debilitated the spirits.

* Mr. Lovelace could not know, that the lady was so thoroughly sensible of the solidity of this doctrine, as she really was:  for, in her letter to Mrs. Norton, (Letter XLIV. of this volume,) she says,—­’Nor let it be imagined, that my present turn of mind proceeds from gloominess or melancholy:  for although it was brought on by disappointment, (the world showing me early, even at my first rushing into it, its true and ugly face,) yet I hope, that it has obtained a better root, and will every day more and more, by its fruits, demonstrate to me, and to all my friends, that it has.’

So we read of a famous French general [I forget as well the reign of the prince as the name of the man] who, having faced with intrepidity the ghastly varlet on an hundred occasions in the field, was the most dejected of wretches, when, having forfeited his life for treason, he was led with all the cruel parade of preparation, and surrounding guards, to the scaffold.

The poet says well: 

      ’Tis not the stoic lesson, got by rote,
      The pomp of words, and pedant dissertation,
      That can support us in the hour of terror. 
      Books have taught cowards to talk nobly of it: 
      But when the trial comes, they start, and stand aghast.

Very true:  for then it is the old man in the fable, with his bundle of sticks.

The lady is well read in Shakspeare, our English pride and glory; and must sometimes reason with herself in his words, so greatly expressed, that the subject, affecting as it is, cannot produce any thing greater.

      Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
      To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
      This sensible, warm motion to become
      A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
      To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
      In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice: 
      To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,
      Or blown, with restless violence, about
      The pendant worlds;