Coke Clifton to Guy Fairfax

London, Dover-Street

It is not to be endured! They drive me mad! I will not have life thus palmed upon me! There is neither kindness nor justice in it. I will hear no more of duty, and philanthropy, and general good! I am all fiend!—Hell-born!—The boon companion of the foulest miscreants the womb of sin ever vomited on earth!—The arm in arm familiar of them!—In the face of the world!—This it is to be honourable!—I am a man of honour, a despiser of peasants, an assertor of rank!—

Day after day, hour after hour, here I lie, rolling, ruminating on ideas which none but demons could suggest; haunted by visions which devils only could conjure up! And wish me to live? Where is the charity of that? Angels though they be, they have made me miserable! I know I have injured them; I don't deny it. Say what they will, they cannot forgive me—Shall I ask it?—No!—Hell should not make me! I will have no more favours; I am loaded too much already.

For it cannot be true!—Their hearts can feel no kindness for me!—Oh!—

I have lost her!—For ever lost her!—Yet even this deep damnation I could bear, I think I could, had I not made myself so very foul and detestable a villain!—It is intolerable!—The rage of cannibals to mine is patience! I could feed on human hearts; my own the first and sweetest morsel!

Well, well!—Her I have lost; him I have injured!—Injured?—Arrogance, outrage, contempt, blows, imprisonment, and murder!—These are the damning injuries I have done him!—took greatness upon me; I mimicked tyranny, and pretended to inflict large vengeance for petty affronts!—I trusted in wiles, and imagined mind might be caught in a net!

Lo how the adder egg of vanity can brood in its own dunghill, and hatch itself to persecution, rape, and murder!—Lo how Guilt and Folly couple, and engender darkness to hide their own deformity!—The picture is mine!—Black, midnight rape, and blood red murder! A horrid but indubitable likeness.

There are but two ways, either to live and pursue revenge, or to die and forget it—Of the pursuit I am weary. I have had a full meal of villany, and am glutted: its foulness is insufferable, and I turn from it loathing. Then welcome death! Again it would have sought me, but for their eternal officiousness. It is in vain. There are swords, pistols, and poison still. Life has a thousand outlets: and to live, knowing what I know and never can forget, would be rank and hateful cowardice! I am determined. I will listen to their glosses no more. Persuasion is vain, and soothing mockery.

Yet one act of justice I will perform before I die. Send me my letters, Fairfax. They shall see me in my native colours!—Send them directly!—There is consolation in the thought—They have dared to shew letters that exposed them to persecution and malice—I will shew what shall expose me to contempt and hatred!—Let them equal me if they can—I am Clifton!—Inimitable in absurdity, in vice damnable!—

Take copies if you will. Proclaim me to the world! Read them in coffee-houses, nail them up at the market cross! Let boys hoot at me, and trulls and drabs pluck me by the beard!—What can they?—It is I, myself, who hold the scorpion whip!—'Tis memory!—What! Envy, rage, revenge, hatred, rape and murder, all possessing one man?—Poor creature! Poor creature!—Pity him, Fairfax!—Pity?—Ask pity?—Despise him! Trample on him! Spit in his face!

C. CLIFTON