Clarissa Harlowe by Samuel Richardson

[Enclosed in the Preceding]

Worthy Sir, My Very Good Friend and Patron, / I arrived in town yesterday, after a tolerably pleasant journey (considering the hot weather and dusty roads). I put up at the Bull and Gate in Holborn, and hastened to Covent-garden. I soon found the house where the unhappy lady lodgeth. And, in the back shop, had a good deal of discourse358 with Mrs. Smith, (her landlady), whom I found to be so highly prepossessed in her favour, that I saw it would not answer your desires to take my informations altogether from her: and being obliged to attend my patron, (who to my sorrow, / Miserum et aliena vivere quadra, / I find wanteth much waiting upon, and is another sort of man than he was at college: for, Sir, inter nos, honours change manners. For the aforesaid causes, I thought it would best answer all the ends of the commission with which you honoured me, to engage, in the desired scrutiny, the wife of a particular friend, who liveth almost over-against the house where she lodgeth, and who is a gentlewoman of character, and sobriety, a mother of children, and one who knoweth the world well.