Chapter 9 No.9

A letter from the country made it necessary for me, again, to address Mr Harley, to make some enquiries which respected business of his mother's. It may be, that I felt a mixture of other motives;-it is certain, that when I wrote, I spoke of more than business.

'I had hoped,' I told him, 'ere this, to have received the promised letter-Yet, I do not take up my pen,' said I, 'either to complain of, or to importune, you. If I have already expressed myself with bitterness, let the harrassed state of my mind be my excuse. My own conduct has been too erroneous, too eccentric, to enable me to judge impartially of your's. Forgive me, if by placing you in an embarrassing situation, I have exposed you to consequent mistake or uneasiness. I feel, that whatever errors we may either of us have committed, originated only with myself, and I am content to suffer all the consequences. It is true, had you reposed in me an early, generous, confidence, much misery would have been avoided-I had not been wounded

"There, where the human heart most exquisitely feels!"

'You had been still my friend, and I had been comparatively happy. Every passion is, in a great measure, the growth of indulgence: all our desires are, in their commencement, easily suppressed, when there appears no probability of attaining their object; but when strengthened, by time and reflection, into habit, in endeavouring to eradicate them, we tear away part of the mind. In my attachments there is a kind of savage tenacity-they are of an elastic nature, and, being forced back, return with additional violence.

'My affection for you has not been, altogether, irrational or selfish. While I felt that I loved you, as no other woman, I was convinced, would love you-I conceived, could I once engage your heart, I could satisfy, and even, purify it. While I loved your virtues, I thought I saw, and I lamented, the foibles which sullied them. I suspected you, perhaps erroneously, of pride, ambition, the love of distinction; yet your ambition could not, I thought, be of an ignoble nature-I feared that the gratifications you sought, if, indeed, attainable, were factitious-I even fancied I perceived you, against your better judgment, labouring to seduce yourself!' "He is under a delusion," said I, to myself;-"reason may be stunned, or blinded, for awhile; but it will revive in the heart, and do its office, when sophistry will be of no avail." I saw you struggling with vexations, that I was assured might be meliorated by tender confidence-I longed to pour its balms into your bosom. My sensibility disquieted you, and myself, only because it was constrained. I thought I perceived a conflict in your mind-I watched its progress with attention and solicitude. A thousand times has my fluttering heart yearned to break the cruel chains that fettered it, and to chase the cloud, which stole over your brow, by the tender, yet chaste, caresses and endearments of ineffable affection! My feelings became too highly wrought, and altogether insupportable. Sympathy for your situation, zeal for your virtues, love for your mind, tenderness for your person-a complication of generous, affecting, exquisite, emotions, impelled me to make one great effort.-"13 The world might call my plans absurd, my views romantic, my pretensions extravagant-Was I, or was I not, guilty of any crime, when, in the very acme of the passions, I so totally disregarded the customs of the world?" Ah! what were my sensations-what did I not suffer, in the interval?-and you prolonged that cruel interval-and still you suffer me to doubt, whether, at the moment in my life when I was actuated by the highest, the most fervent, the most magnanimous, principles-whether, at that moment, when I most deserved your respect, I did not for ever forfeit it.

'I seek not to extenuate any part of my conduct-I confess that it has been wild, extravagant, romantic-I confess, that, even for your errors, I am justly blameable-and yet I am unable to bear, because I feel they would be unjust, your hatred and contempt. I cherish no resentment-my spirit is subdued and broken-your unkindness sinks into my soul.

'Emma.'

Another fortnight wore away in fruitless expectation-the morning rose, the evening closed, upon me, in sadness. I could not, yet, think the mystery developed: on a concentrated view of the circumstances, they appeared to me contradictory, and irreconcileable. A solitary enthusiast, a child in the drama of the world, I had yet to learn, that those who have courage to act upon advanced principles, must be content to suffer moral martyrdom.14 In subduing our own prejudices, we have done little, while assailed on every side by the prejudices of others. My own heart acquitted me; but I dreaded that distortion of mind, that should wrest guilt out of the most sublime of its emanations.

I ruminated in gloomy silence, on my forlorn, and hopeless, situation. 'If there be not a future state of being,' said I to myself, 'what is this!-Tortured in every stage of it, "Man cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down-he fleeth, as a shadow, and continueth not!"-I looked backward on my past life, and my heart sickened-its confidence in humanity was shaken-I looked forward, and all was cheerless. I had certainly committed many errors!-Who has not-who, with a fancy as lively, feelings as acute, and a character as sanguine, as mine? "What, in fact," says a philosophic writer,15 "is character?-the production of a lively and constant affection, and consequently, of a strong passion:"-eradicate that passion, that ferment, that leaven, that exuberance, which raises and makes the mind what it is, and what remains? Yet, let us beware how we wantonly expend this divine, this invigorating, power. Every grand error, in a mind of energy, in its operations and consequences, carries us years forward-precious years, never to be recalled!' I could find no substitute for the sentiments I regretted-for that sentiment formed my character; and, but for the obstacles which gave it force, though I might have suffered less misery, I should, I suspect, have gained less improvement; still adversity is a real evil; and I foreboded that this improvement had been purchased too dear.

13: Holcroft's Anna St Ives.

14: This sentiment may be just in some particular cases, but it is by no means of general application, and must be understood with great limitations.

15: Helvetius.

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