Ἑκτορα διον αεικεα μηδετο εργα are his words, when he introduces the narration of that event. No doubt Homer’s writings have been, and may be abused, and so may the best and most useful of all human inventions; religion itself has not escaped, and its abuse has been ever attended with the most pernicious and destructive consequences. But surely they are not so liable to be abused as your compositions; Homer, indeed, describes vicious characters, but all their viciousness consists in the natural passions being carried to a blameable excess, he paints no improvement, no refinement, no elaborate contrivance in villany, this is what you excell in, above all the authors antient or modern, I remember to have read. The anger of Achilles was raised by a most provoking insult which he received from Agamemnon. He thus expresses himself: _My maid, my black-ey’d maid he forc’d away,_ _Due to the toils of many a dreadful Day,_ _From me he forc’d her, me, the bold and brave,_ _Disgrac’d, dishonour’d, like the vilest slave._ What could be more natural than a resentment on such an occasion? And what could be more natural, than for a man of Achilles’s temper to carry that resentment too far? Both he and Agamemnon suffer severely for the errors they commit; and what renders the fable still more beautiful, and the moral still more instructive, is this consideration, that their sufferings appear to be the unavoidable and necessary consequences of their errors; of course, nothing can more effectually deter others in similar circumstances from being guilty of the like faults for the future. But the oeconomy of your plot, and the disposition of your characters, are entirely different. Lovelace determines on the ruin of Clarissa, from motives and passions altogether unnatural, which could subsist no where, but in a heart debauched of itself, initiated in all the mysteries of villany, and regularly educated in an academy of wickedness; his motives and passions are an aversion to marriage, a resentment against Clarissa’s family, an infamous resolution to wreak his revenge on the only person in it, who loved him; a ridiculous doubt of her virtue, and a vain-glorious pride, in having a reputation for intrigue, and adding an honourable name to a list, which it seems he kept, of the credulous fools he had already ruined, and the tricks which he put in practice, to bring about that diabolical end, are all uniformly of a piece with the motives and passions which inspired them; nor is the matter in the least mended by the catastrophe which ensues; for it is not the necessary and unavoidable consequence of his committed crimes, you are at the greatest pains to let us know so much out of his own mouth: _Who could have thought it_, says he to his friend Belford, _I have said it a thousand times, surely there never can be such another woman_; thus, you must be sensible you have entirely destroyed the moral, and any good effect