Thus have I just hinted at the Heads of the Characters, the Difference of the chief Scenes, and the Variety of the several Deaths, all the natural Consequences of the several Lives, and productive of the designed noble Moral in _Clarissa_; and I think it may be fairly and impartially said, The Web is wove so strongly, every Part so much depending on and assisting each other, that to divide any of them, would be to destroy the whole.
[D]_That many Things having full References To one Consent, may work contrariously: As many Arrows, loosed several Ways, Come to one Mark, as many Ways meet in one Town, As many fresh Streams meet in one salt Sea, As many Lines close in the Dial's Center, So may a thousand Actions once afoot End in one Purpose, and be all well born Without Defeat._
If what I have here said can be any Amusement to you, as it concerns your favourite _Clarissa_, my End will be answered. I am,
Your Good-nature in sending me your Thoughts on _Clarissa_, with a Design to give me Pleasure, I assure you is not thrown away; may you have equal Success in every generous Purpose that fills your Heart, and greater Happiness in this World, I am sure I cannot wish you.
Most truly, Sir, do you remark, that a Story told in this Manner can move but slowly, that the Characters can be seen only by such as attend strictly to the Whole; yet this Advantage the Author gains by writing in the present Tense, as he himself calls it, and in the first Person, that his Strokes penetrate immediately to the Heart, and we feel all the Distresses he paints; we not only weep for, but with _Clarissa_, and accompany her, step by step, through all her Distresses.
I see her from the Beginning, in her happy State, beloved by all around her, studying to deserve that Love; obedient to her Parents, dependant on their Will by her own voluntary Act, when her Grandfather had put it in her Power to be otherwise; respectful and tender to her Brother and Sister; firm in her Friendship to Miss _Howe_; grateful to good Mrs. _Norton_, who had carefully watched over her Infant Years, and delighted to form and instruct her Mind; kind to her Inferiors; beneficent to all the Poor, Miserable, and Indigent; and above all, cultivating and cherishing in her Heart the true Spirit of Christianity, Meekness, and Resignation; watchful over her own Conduct, and charitable to the Failings of others; unwilling to condemn, and rejoicing in every Opportunity to praise. But as the Laws of God and Man have placed a Woman totally in the Power of her Husband, I believe it is utterly impossible for any young Woman, who has any Reflection, not to form in her Mind some kind of Picture of the Sort of Man in whose Power she would chuse to place herself. That _Clarissa_ did so, I think, plainly appears, from her steady Resolution to refuse any Man she could not obey with the utmost Chearfulness; and to whose Will she could not submit without Reluctance. She would have had her Husband a Man on whose Principles she could entirely depend; one in whom she might have placed such a Confidence, that she might have spoke her very Thoughts aloud; one from whom she might have gained Instruction, and from whose Superiority of Understanding she would have been pleased to have taken the Rules of her own Actions. She desired no Reserves, no separate Interest from her Husband; had no Plots, no Machinations to succeed in, and therefore wanted not a Man who by artful Flattery she could have cajoled madly to have worship'd her; a kind Indulgence, in what was reasonable, was all her Desire, and that Indulgence to arise from her own Endeavour to deserve it, and not from any Blindness cast before her Husband's Eyes by dazzling Beauty, or cunning Dissimulation; but, from her Infancy, having the Example daily before her of her Mother's being tyrannized over, notwithstanding her great Humility and Meekness, perhaps tyrannized over for that very Humility and Meekness. She thought a single Life, in all Probability, would be for her the happiest; cherishing in her Heart that Characteristic of a noble Mind, especially in a Woman, of wishing, as Miss _Howe_ says she did, to pass through Life unnoted.