cousin, and sad, sad fellow, from the old peer, attended with a
side-shaking laugh, made us all friends.

There, Jack!--Wilt thou, or wilt thou not, take this for a letter?
there's quantity, I am sure.--How have I filled a sheet (not a short-hand
one indeed) without a subject! My fellow shall take this; for he is
going to town. And if thou canst think tolerably of such execrable
stuff, I will send thee another.



LETTER IV

MR. LOVELACE, TO JOHN BELFORD, ESQ.
SIX, SATURDAY MORNING, JULY 8.


Have I nothing new, nothing diverting, in my whimsical way, thou askest,
in one of thy three letters before me, to entertain thee with?--And thou
tallest me, that, when I have least to narrate, to speak, in the Scottish
phrase, I am most diverting. A pretty compliment, either to thyself, or
to me. To both indeed!--a sign that thou hast as frothy a heart as I a
head. But canst thou suppose that this admirable woman is not all, is
not every thing with me? Yet I dread to think of her too; for detection
of all my contrivances, I doubt, must come next.

The old peer is also full of Miss Harlowe: and so are my cousins. He
hopes I will not be such a dog [there's a specimen of his peer-like
dialect] as to think of doing dishonourably by a woman of so much merit,
beauty, and fortune; and he says of so good a family. But I tell him,