What I write to you for is,

1.  To forbid you intermeddling with any thing relating to her.  To forbid Morden intermeddling also.  If I remember right, he has threatened me, and cursed me, and used me ill—­and let him be gone from her, if he would avoid my resentment.

2.  To send me a lock of her hair instantly by the bearer.

3.  To engage Tomkins to have every thing ready for the opening and embalming.  I shall bring Anderson with me.

4.  To get her will and every thing ready for my perusal and consideration.

I will have possession of her dear heart this very night; and let Tomkins provide a proper receptacle and spirits, till I can get a golden one made for it.

I will take her papers.  And, as no one can do her memory justice equal to myself, and I will not spare myself, who can better show the world what she was, and what a villain he that could use her ill?  And the world shall also see what implacable and unworthy parents she had.

All shall be set forth in words at length.  No mincing of the matter.  Names undisguised as well as facts.  For, as I shall make the worst figure in it myself, and have a right to treat myself as nobody else shall, who shall controul me? who dare call me to account?

Let me know, if the d——­d mother be yet the subject of the devil’s own vengeance—­if the old wretch be dead or alive?  Some exemplary mischief I must yet do.  My revenge shall sweep away that devil, and all my opposers of the cruel Harlowe family, from the face of the earth.  Whole hecatombs ought to be offered up to the manes of my Clarissa Lovelace.

Although her will may in some respects cross mine, yet I expect to be observed.  I will be the interpreter of her’s.

Next to mine, her’s shall be observed:  for she is my wife, and shall be to all eternity.—­I will never have another.

Adieu, Jack, I am preparing to be with you.  I charge you, as you value my life or your own, do not oppose me in any thing relating to my Clarissa Lovelace.

My temper is entirely altered.  I know not what it is to laugh, or smile, or be pleasant.  I am grown choleric and impatient, and will not be controuled.

I write this in characters as I used to do, that nobody but you should know what I write.  For never was any man plagued with impertinents as I am.

R. Lovelace.

IN A SEPARATE PAPER ENCLOSED IN THE ABOVE.

Let me tell thee, in characters still, that I am in a dreadful way just now.  My brain is all boiling like a cauldron over a fiery furnace.  What a devil is the matter with me, I wonder!  I never was so strange in my life.

In truth, Jack, I have been a most execrable villain.  And when I consider all my actions to the angel of a woman, and in her the piety, the charity, the wit, the beauty, I have helped to destroy, and the good to the world I have thereby been a mean of frustrating, I can pronounce d——­n——­n upon myself.  How then can I expect mercy any where else?