Thomas Beddoes to Maria Thompson, [?1802/1803] (4)
My dear ____.
When Anna said last night that she would write to her friend, I thought to myself I should (not I shall) write to my friend, the public. But you see how I attend to what I feel to be my duty. I do not know whether you have had experience enough in the ways of wickedness; but when you have, you will know that it is common for people of bad habits to do a thing quite different from what they ought to do, if not its opposite. Thus if Mamma says ‘Charles, come hither this moment!’ supposing Charles to be a pretty naughty boy, he will fix himself on the spot, as if rivetted there: But if Charles be a very naughty boy, what ought he to do? Why, you goose, if he means to act in character, he ought to bounce out of the room. Now when I have a thing to do which will as little admit of delay as a leg of mutton will bear keeping in Jamaica, I always set about some other thing – either write a letter to a person I have not thought of this twelvemonth, (do not tell your sister that I durst not have written this to her, because she would have taken it to herself,) or I take up a book which carries me half the distance of the globe from where I ought to be. Can you tell the reason of this? Is there any other beside the pleasure of sinning? or is it from the love of liberty? as thus; ‘I say to myself, you must do so and so – upon which myself answers, must, indeed, Mr. I! on what compulsion must I? tell me that and immediately betakes himself to something else. Or is it to shew what you can do, that things are put off to the last moment? Or is it for the same reason that many people put off their will to their death-bed, or never make any will at all? And if this be the reason, what is the reason's reason? Is it that a thing becomes disagreeable by being considered as an obligation, and so you put it out of your thoughts as much as you can?
Published: Stock, pp. 286–87