* Mr. Belford's objections, That virtue ought not to suffer in a tragedy,
is not well considered: Monimia in the Orphean, Belvidera in Venice
Preserved, Athenais in Theodosius, Cordelia in Shakespeare's King Lear,
Desdemona in Othello, Hamlet, (to name no more,) are instances that a
tragedy could hardly be justly called a tragedy, if virtue did not
temporarily suffer, and vice for a while triumph. But he recovers
himself in the same paragraph; and leads us to look up to the FUTURE for
the reward of virtue, and for the punishment of guilt: and observes not
amiss, when he says, He knows not but that the virtue of such a woman as
Clarissa is rewarded in missing such a man as Lovelace.


I have frequently thought, in my attendance on this lady, that if
Belton's admired author, Nic. Rowe, had had such a character before him,
he would have drawn another sort of penitent than he has done, or given
his play, which he calls The Fair Penitent, a fitter title. Miss Harlowe
is a penitent indeed! I think, if I am not guilty of a contradiction in
terms; a penitent without a fault; her parents' conduct towards her from
the first considered.

The whole story of the other is a pack of d----d stuff. Lothario, 'tis
true, seems such another wicked ungenerous varlet as thou knowest who:
the author knew how to draw a rake; but not to paint a penitent. Calista
is a desiring luscious wench, and her penitence is nothing else but rage,
insolence, and scorn. Her passions are all storm and tumult; nothing of
the finer passions of the sex, which, if naturally drawn, will
distinguish themselves from the masculine passions, by a softness that
will even shine through rage and despair. Her character is made up of