Chapter 4
Letter 4. To Robert Lovelace, Esquire. His Honor, Sunday morning, April 9th. Honored Sir, i must confess i am infinitely obliged to your honour's bounty but this last command it seems so intricate oh be merciful to me how i have been led from little steps to great steps
and if i should be found out what your honour says you will take me into your honour's service and protect me if as i should at any time be found out and raise my wages besides or set me up in a good inn which is my ambition and you will be honourable and kind to my dearest young lady god-lover but who can be unkind to she i will do my best i am able since your honour will be apt to lose her as your honour says if i do not and a man so stingy will be apt to gain her but mayhap me dearest young lady will not make all this trouble needful if she has promised she will stand to it i dare say i love your honour for contriving to save mischief so well i thought till i knowed your honour that you was very mischievous and please your honour but find it to be clean contrary your honour it is plain means mighty well by everybody as far as i see as i am sure i do meself for i am a very plain man in all that a very honest one i thank my god and have good principles and have kept my young lady's precepts always in mind for she goes nowhere but saves a soul or two more or less
so commending myself to your honour's further favour not forgetting the inn when your honour shall so please and good one offers for places are no inheritances nowadays and i hope your honour will not think me a dishonest man for sarving your honour against my duty as it may look but only as my conscience clears me be pleased howsomever if it like your honour not to call me honest joseph so often for altoff i think myself very honest and all that yet i am touched a little for fear i should not do the quite right thing and too besides your honour has such a facetious way with you as that i hardly know whether you are in jest or earnest when your honour calls me honest so often i am a very plain man and seldom have writ to such honourable gentleman so you will be good enough to pass by everything as i have often said and need not now say over again
as to mrs betty i thought indeed she looked above me but she comes on very well natheless i would like her better if she was better to my young lady but she has too much wit for so plain a man natheless if she was to anger me ought of it is a shame to beat a woman yet i could make shift to throw my hat at her or so your honour but that same receipt if your honour so please to cure a shrewish wife it would more encourage to wed if so be one knowed beforehand as one may say so likewise if one knowed one could honestly as your honour says and as of the handiwork of god in one twelvemonth but i shall grow impertinent to such a great man and hereafter may do for that as she turns out for one mought be loath to be part with her mayhap so very soon too especially if she was to make the notable landlady your honour put into my head
but once more begging your honour's pardon and promising all diligence and exactness i rest your honour's dutiful sarvint to command joseph theven letter
