href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@35890@[email protected]#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[2]. Miss Carter accepts the homage of Miss Mulso; and seems, throughout her deportment, to view it as due to herself. Such friends as they were, for their friendship was not mutual in kind, so they lasted for more than fifty years. Letters were the chief cement of their long friendship.

Nearly at the same time that Miss Mulso commenced acquaintance with Miss Carter, it was her lot to meet with Mr. Chapone, to whom she was at last married. This gentleman, who was practising the law, was introduced to Richardson's friends, at North-End, near Hammersmith, and fully admitted among them in the year 1750. 'Most heartily do I thank good Mrs. Dewes,' writes Richardson, August 20, 1750, 'for her recommendation of Mr. Chapone to my acquaintance and friendship. I am greatly taken with him. A sensible, and ingenious, a modest young gentleman.' Miss Mulso's friends own, that, from 'their first introduction, she entertained a distinguished esteem for Mr. Chapone. It was, with her, love at first sight; but, according to her relations, as their intimacy improved, and her attachment became rooted, she had the gratification to perceive that it was mutual.' She was certainly in love. 'Your opinion of the lordly sex,' she says, writing to Miss Carter, in 1754, 'I know is not a very high one, but yet I will one day or other make you confess that a man may be capable of all the delicacy, purity, and tenderness, which distinguish our sex, joined with all the best qualities that dignify his own.' Whatever were her father's original objections to her marriage, these were for some time found to be insuperable; for, having been made acquainted with her passion, he, instead of immediately countenancing her wishes, made her promise that she would not contract any matrimonial engagement without his previous permission. Prudence forbad him to approve, we are told, what kindness would not suffer him to prohibit.

Visiting the coterie of Richardson, during the summer of 1753, Miss Mulso was gratified by an interview with Dr. Johnson, with whom she before had no personal acquaintance. Her whole account of this interview may be fitly told here. 'Mr. Johnson' (Miss Mulso is writing to Miss Carter) 'was very communicative and entertaining, and did me the honour to address most of his discourse to me. I had the assurance to dispute with him on the subject of human malignity[3]; and wondered to hear a man, who by his actions shows so much benevolence, maintain that the human heart is naturally malevolent, and that all the benevolence we see, in the few who are good, is acquired by reason and religion. You may believe I entirely disagreed with him, being, as you know, fully persuaded that benevolence, or the love of our fellow-creatures, is as much a part of our nature as self-love; and that it cannot be suppressed, or extinguished, without great violence from the force of other passions. I told him I suspected him of these bad notions from some of his Ramblers, and had accused him to you; but that you persuaded me I had mistaken his sense. To which he answered, that if he had betrayed such sentiments in his Ramblers, it was not with design; for that he believed the doctrine of human malevolence, though a true one, is not an useful one, and ought not to be published to the world. Is there any truth,' subjoins Miss Mulso, 'that would not be useful, or that should not be known?'

The misfortune is, that, on such topics as this, which must implicate the character of man, generally as well as personally, each one writes as each sees things, and not as things might or ought to be seen. Establishing our individual experience as the criterion of universal opinion, we are too apt to speak of the world as we find it; and to conclude, that what happens to us must of necessity happen to others, and that uniformity of experience will terminate in similarity of decision. Perhaps truth is still clear of extremes. Man is not so bad as some state him to be; nor is man so good as some think him to be.

Miss Mulso is now to be known as Mrs. Chapone. Perceiving that her inclination to matrimony was decisive, Mr. Mulso, though he still objected to the match, consented to such arrangements, towards the close of 1760, as to admit of the union, in one day, of his eldest son, Thomas, with Miss Prescott, and of his only daughter, Hester, with Mr. Chapone. Living with her father, who was indulgently attached to her, Miss Mulso had previously been permitted to enjoy, fairly and fully, the society of Mr. Chapone.[4]

'Give me your congratulations,' writes the now Mrs. Chapone, to Miss Carter, from town, December the 9th, 1760, 'my dear friend; but, as much for my brother and friend (Mr. Thomas Mulso and Miss Prescott) as for myself; for, in truth, I could not have enjoyed my own happiness in an union with the man of my choice, had I been forced to leave them in the same uncomfortable state of tedious and almost hopeless expectation in which they have suffered so long. I shall rejoice to hear that you are coming to town, and shall hope for many a comfortable tête-à-tête with you in my lodgings in Carey Street; for there I must reside till Mr. Chapone can get a house that suits him, which is no easy matter, as he is so confined in point of situation,' &c. &c. Pleasing as might be the prospect of her marriage pleasures, it will soon be seen that, as Mrs. Barbauld wrote, 'her married life was short, and,' short as it was, 'not very happy!'

Scarcely is Mrs. Chapone first settled, when she seems to complain of being in lodgings; and, when her husband has taken a house, still she regrets living in Arundel Street, as this is 'very wide from Clarges Street, where' she supposes that her friend Miss Carter's 'residence is fixed.' Even now, dissatisfied with 'a life of hurry and engagement,' she puts 'the drudgery of answering all the congratulatory letters,' heaped on them as newly married, 'upon Mr. Chapone; who, poor man,' says his wife, 'was forced to humour me a little at first.' Here is not the worst. 'I have more hours to myself,' she adds, 'than I wish for; for business usually allows me very little of my husband's company, except at meals.' Instead of 'many a comfortable tête-à-tête with' Miss Carter, whom she assures of her 'most perfect dissent' from the maxim of Johnson's school, 'that a married woman can have no friendship but with her husband,' Chapone himself, pleased with Miss Carter's old friendship, is represented as wondering why she never visits his wife. 'Surely, my dear,' he would say to her, 'if Miss Carter loved you, she would sometimes have spent a day with you; and then I should have known her better. If ever she loved you, I fancy she left it off on your being married.' Mrs. Chapone's letters may explain the absence of Miss Carter. What friend would be in haste to run to her, who tells that she 'lived in dirt,' and in 'puddling lodgings;' and who adds, 'at last,' that she reckons herself to be but 'tolerably settled?'

Lengthened courtships too seldom conclude with happy marriages. Six years