The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel Defoe Volume 6 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ... and we joined in pressing him the more earnestly to deliver his real and sincere opinion concerning the accidents upon which the future fortunes of her life were to turn and depend. He showed many mighty reluctances in the doing it; and I have often since considered him in the same anguish as the late great Dr. RatclifF, who was endeavouring by study to save a certain fair one, whom he loved with a vehemence of temper, and who was, as his reason told him, got far away beyond the reach of the art of physic to recover. At last he wrote in plain terms that his backwardness and unwillingness to tell it, arose from his wishes that her fortune would be better than his certain foreknowledge of it told him it would be, and begged that we would rest satisfied with that general answer, since it was in so particular a case, where he himself was a well-wisher in vain, to the lady about whom he was consulted. The young lady herself thinking that if she knew any disasters that were to befall her she might, by knowing the nature of them beforehand, and the time when they were likely to happen, be able, by timely prudence and forecast, to avert those evils, with many beseechings urged him to reveal the fatal secret. After many struggles to avoid it, and as many instances made to him both by mother and daughter for the discovery of his prescience in that point, he complied with very great difficulty; and blotting the paper with tears that trickled fast from his eyes, he gave her the lamentable scroll, containing the words that follow; viz., I wish it had not fallen to my lot to tell this lady, whom everybody that but once looks at her must admire, though they must not have leave to love, that she is not much longer to be possessor of that lovely face, ..