DETAILED CONTENTS

LETTER I. Lovelace to Belford.—

an Agreeable airing with the lady. Delightfully easy she. Obsequiously

respectful he. Miss Howe's plot now no longer his terror. Gives the

particulars of their agreeable conversation while abroad.

LETTER II. From the same.—

an Account of his ipecacuanha plot. Instructs Dorcas how to act surprise

and terror. Monosyllables and trisyllables to what likened. Politeness

lives not in a storm. Proclamation criers. The lady now sees she loves

him. Her generous tenderness for him. He has now credit for a new

score. Defies Mrs. Townsend.

LETTER III. Clarissa to Miss Howe.—

Acknowledged tenderness for Lovelace. Love for a man of errors

punishable.

LETTER IV. Lovelace to Belford.—

Suspicious inquiry after him and the lady by a servant in livery from one

Captain Tomlinson. Her terrors on the occasion. His alarming

management. She resolves not to stir abroad. He exults upon her not

being willing to leave him.

LETTER V. VI. From the same.—

Arrival of Captain Tomlinson, with a pretended commission from Mr. John

Harlowe to set on foot a general reconciliation, provided he can be

convinced that they are actually married. Different conversations on this

occasion.—The lady insists that the truth be told to Tomlinson. She

carries her point through to the disappointment of one of his private

views. He forms great hopes of success from the effects of his

ipecacuanha contrivance.

LETTER VII. Lovelace to Belford.—

He makes such a fair representation to Tomlinson of the situation between

him and the lady, behaves so plausibly, and makes an overture so

generous, that she is all kindness and unreserved to him. Her affecting

exultation on her amended prospects. His unusual sensibility upon it.

Reflection on the good effects of education. Pride an excellent

substitute to virtue.

LETTER VIII. From the same.—

Who Tomlinson is. Again makes Belford object, in order to explain his

designs by answering the objections. John Harlowe a sly sinner. Hard-

hearted reasons for giving the lady a gleam of joy. Illustrated by a

story of two sovereigns at war.

Extracts from Clarissa's letter to Miss Howe. She rejoices in her

present agreeable prospects. Attributes much to Mr. Hickman. Describes

Captain Tomlinson. Gives a character of Lovelace, [which is necessary to

be attended to: especially by those who have thought favourably of him

for some of his liberal actions, and hardly of her for the distance she

at first kept him at.]

LETTER IX. Lovelace to Belford.—

Letter from Lord M. His further arts and precautions. His happy day

promised to be soon. His opinion of the clergy, and of going to church.

She pities every body who wants pity. Loves every body. He owns he

should be the happiest of men, could he get over his prejudices against

matrimony. Draughts of settlements. Ludicrously accounts for the reason

why she refuses to hear them read to her. Law and gospel two different

things. Sally flings her handkerchief in his face.

LETTER X. From the same.—

Has made the lady more than once look about her. She owns that he is

more than indifferent to her. Checks him with sweetness of temper for

his encroaching freedoms. Her proof of true love. He ridicules marriage

purity. Severely reflects upon public freedoms between men and their

wives. Advantage he once made upon such an occasion. Has been after a

license. Difficulty in procuring one. Great faults and great virtues

often in the same person. He is willing to believe that women have no

souls. His whimsical reasons.

LETTER XI. Lovelace to Belford.—

Almost despairs of succeeding (as he had hoped) by love and gentleness.

Praises her modesty. His encroaching freedoms resented by her. The

woman, he observes, who resents not initiatory freedoms, must be lost.

He reasons, in his free way, upon her delicacy. Art of the Eastern

monarchs.

LETTER XII. From the same.—

A letter from Captain Tomlinson makes all up. Her uncle Harlowe's

pretended proposal big with art and plausible delusion. She acquiesces

in it. He writes to the pretended Tomlinson, on an Affecting hint of

her's, requesting that her uncle Harlowe would, in person, give his niece

to him; or permit Tomlinson to be his proxy on the occasion.—And now for

a little of mine, he says, which he has ready to spring.

LETTER XIII. Belford to Lovelace.—

Again earnestly expostulates with him in the lady's favour. Remembers

and applauds the part she bore in the conversation at his collation. The

frothy wit of libertines how despicable. Censures the folly, the

weakness, the grossness, the unpermanency of sensual love. Calls some of

his contrivances trite, stale, and poor. Beseeches him to remove her

from the vile house. How many dreadful stories could the horrid Sinclair

tell the sex! Serious reflections on the dying state of his uncle.

LETTER XIV. Lovelace to Belford.—

Cannot yet procure a license. Has secured a retreat, if not victory.

Defends in anger the simplicity of his inventive contrivances. Enters

upon his general defence, compared with the principles and practices of

other libertines. Her oes and warlike kings worse men than he. Epitome

of his and the lady's story after ten years'cohabitation. Caution to

those who would censure him. Had the sex made virtue a recommendation to

their favour, he says, he should have had a greater regard to his morals

than he has had.

LETTER XV. From the same.—

Preparative to his little mine, as he calls it. Loves to write to the

moment. Alarm begins. Affectedly terrified.

LETTER XVI. From the same.—

The lady frighted out of her bed by dreadful cries of fire. She awes him

into decency. On an extorted promise of forgiveness, he leaves her.

Repenting, he returns; but finds her door fastened. What a triumph has

her sex obtained by her virtue! But how will she see him next morning,

as he has given her.

LETTER XVII. Lovelace to Belford.—

Dialogue with Clarissa, the door between them. Her letter to him. She

will not see him for a week.

LETTER XVIII. From the same.—

Copies of letters that pass between them. Goes to the commons to try to

get the license. She shall see him, he declares, on his return. Love

and compassion hard to be separated. Her fluctuating reasons on their

present situation. Is jealous of her superior qualities. Does justice

to her immovable virtue.

LETTER XIX. From the same.—

The lady escaped. His rage. Makes a solemn vow of revenge, if once more

he gets her into his power. His man Will. is gone in search of her. His

hopes; on what grounded. He will advertise her. Describes her dress.

Letter left behind her. Accuses her (that is to say, LOVELACE accuses

her,) of niceness, prudery, affectation.

LETTER XX. From the same.—

A letter from Miss Howe to Clarissa falls into his hands; which, had it

come to her's, would have laid open and detected all his designs. In it

she acquits Clarissa of prudery, coquetry, and undue reserve. Admires,

applauds, blesses her for the example she has set for her sex, and for

the credit she has done it, by her conduct in the most difficult

situations.

[This letter may be considered as a kind of summary of Clarissa's trials,

her persecutions, and exemplary conduct hitherto; and of Mr. Lovelace's

intrigues, plots, and views, so far as Miss Howe could be supposed to

know them, or to guess at them.]

A letter from Lovelace, which farther shows the fertility of his

contriving genius.

LETTER XXI. Clarissa to Miss Howe.—

Informs her of Lovelace's villany, and of her escape. Her only concern,

what. The course she intends to pursue.

LETTER XXII. Lovelace to Belford.—

Exults on hearing, from his man Will., that the lady has refuged herself

at Hampstead. Observations in a style of levity on some passages in the

letter she left behind her. Intimates that Tomlinson is arrived to aid

his purposes. The chariot is come; and now, dressed like a bridegroom,

attended by a footman she never saw, he is already, he says, at

Hampstead.

LETTER XXIII. XXIV. Lovelace to Belford.—

Exults on his contrivances.—By what means he gets into the lady's

presence at Mrs. Moore's. Her terrors, fits, exclamations. His

plausible tales to Mrs. Moore and Miss Rawlins. His intrepid behaviour

to the lady. Copies of letters from Tomlinson, and of pretended ones

from his own relations, calculated to pacify and delude her.

LETTER XXV. XXVI. From the same.—

His farther arts, inventions, and intrepidity. She puts home questions

to him.'Ungenerous and ungrateful she calls him. He knows not the

value of the heart he had insulted. He had a plain path before him,

after he had tricked her out of her father's house! But that now her

mind was raised above fortune, and above him.'His precautionary

contrivances.

LETTER XXVII. XXVIII. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. From the same.—

Character of widow Bevis. Prepossesses the women against Miss Howe.

Leads them to think she is in love with him. Apt himself to think so;

and why. Women like not novices; and why. The ir vulgar aphorism

animadverted on. Tomlinson arrives. Artful conversation between them.

Miss Rawlins's prudery. His forged letter in imitation of Miss Howe's,

No. IV. Other contrivances to delude the lady, and attach the women to

his party.

LETTER XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. From the same.—

Particulars of several interesting conversations between himself,

Tomlinson, and the lady. Artful management of the two former. Her noble

spirit. He tells Tomlinson before her that he never had any proof of

affection from her. She frankly owns the regard she once had for him.

'He had brought her,'she tells Tomlinson and him,'more than once to own

it to him. Nor did his own vanity, she was sure, permit him to doubt of

it. He had kept her soul in suspense an hundred times.'Both men

affected in turn by her noble behaviour, and great sentiments. The ir

pleas, prayers, prostrations, to move her to relent. Her distress.