“But the ever pleasing Pamela (that well found the comedy would be marred if she did not help Mopsa to her part), was content to urge a little further of me. ‘Master Dorus,’ said the fair Pamela, ‘methinks you blame your fortune very wrongfully, since the fault is not in fortune but in you that cannot frame yourself to your fortune, and as wrongfully do require Mopsa to so great a disparagement as to her father’s servant, since she is not worthy to be loved that hath not some feeling of her own worthiness.’ I stayed a good while after her words, in hopes she would have continued her speech, so great a delight I received in hearing her, but seeing her say no further, with a quaking all over my body, I thus answered her: ‘Lady, most worthy of all duty how falls it out that you, in whom all virtues shine, will take the patronage of fortune, the only rebellious handmaid against virtue; especially, since before your eyes you have a pitiful spectacle of her wickedness, a forlorn creature, which must remain not such as I am, but such as she makes me, since she must be {131} the balance of worthiness or disparagement. Yet alas! if the condemned man, even at his death, have leave to speak, let my mortal wound purchase thus much consideration; since the perfections are such in the party I love, as the feeling of them cannot come into any unnoble heart, shall that heart, which doth not only feel them, but hath all the working of his life placed in them, shall that heart, I say, lifted up to such a height, be counted base? O let not an excellent spirit do itself such wrong as to think where it is placed, embraced and loved, there can be any unworthiness, since the weakest mist is not easier driven away by the sun than that is chased away with so high thoughts.’ ‘I will not deny,’ answered the gracious Pamela, ‘but that the love you bear to Mopsa, hath brought you to the consideration of her virtues, and that consideration may have made you the more virtuous, and so the more worthy: but even that then, you must confess, you have received of her, and so are rather gratefully to thank her, than to press any further, till you bring something of your own, whereby to claim it. And truly Dorus, I must in Mopsa’s behalf say thus much to you, that if her beauties have so overtaken you, it becomes a true lover to have your heart more set upon her good than your own, and to bear a tenderer respect to her honour than your satisfaction.’ ‘Now by my hallidame, madam,’ said Mopsa, throwing a great number of sheep’s eyes upon me, ‘you have even touched mine own mind to the quick, forsooth.’