* See his delirious Letter, No.  XXIII.

I have been in a cursed way.  Methinks something has been working strangely retributive.  I never was such a fool as to disbelieve a Providence; yet am I not for resolving into judgments every thing that seems to wear an avenging face.  Yet if we must be punished either here or hereafter for our misdeeds, better here, say I, than hereafter.  Have I not then an interest to think my punishment already not only begun but completed since what I have suffered, and do suffer, passes all description?

To give but one instance of the retributive—­here I, who was the barbarous cause of the loss of senses for a week together to the most inimitable of women, have been punished with the loss of my own—­ preparative to—­who knows what?—­When, Oh! when, shall I know a joyful hour?

I am kept excessively low; and excessively low I am.  This sweet creature’s posthumous letter sticks close to me.  All her excellencies rise up hourly to my remembrance.

Yet dare I not indulge in these melancholy reflections.  I find my head strangely working again—­Pen, begone!

FRIDAY, SEPT. 15.

I resume, in a sprightly vein, I hope—­Mowbray and Tourville have just now—­

But what of Mowbray and Tourville?—­What’s the world?—­What’s any body in it?—­

Yet they are highly exasperated against thee, for the last letter thou wrotest to them*—­such an unfriendly, such a merciless—­

* This Letter appears not.

But it won’t do!—­I must again lay down my pen.—­O Belford!  Belford!  I am still, I am still most miserably absent from myself!—­Shall never, never more be what I was!

***

Saturday—­Sunday—­Nothing done.  Incapable of any thing.

MONDAY, SEPT. 18.

Heavy, d—­n—­y heavy and sick at soul, by Jupiter!  I must come into their expedient.  I must see what change of climate will do.

You tell these fellows, and you tell me, of repenting and reforming; but I can do neither.  He who can, must not have the extinction of a Clarissa Harlowe to answer for.—­Harlowe!—­Curse upon the name!—­and curse upon myself for not changing it, as I might have done!—­Yet I have no need of urging a curse upon myself—­I have it effectually.

’To say I once respected you with a preference!’*—­In what stiff language does maidenly modesty on these nice occasion express itself!—­To say I once loved you, is the English; and there is truth and ease in the expression.—­’To say I once loved you,’ then let it be, ’is what I ought to blush to own.’

* See Letter XXXVI. of this volume.

And dost thou own it, excellent creature?—­and dost thou then own it?—­ What music in these words from such an angel!—­What would I give that my Clarissa were in being, and could and would own that she loved me?