Darcy's 'Implacable Resentment': Literary Background?

John Home (1722–1808)

By Sir Henry Raeburn

Painted c. 1795-1800

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm still in the initial stages of my research on Darcy's "implacable resentment" but have found the expression used by the character Lady Randolph in the 1756 tragedy Douglas, by John Home:

Oh! rake not up the ashes of my fathers:
Implacable resentment was their crime,
And grievous has the expiation been.

These lines occur early in the play, suggesting that "implacable resentment" plays a significant role in this drama, but I will need to take a closer look.

I also found some intriguing lines in a play by Nicholas Rowe, whose image follows:

Nicholas Rowe

(1674-1718)

(Image from Wikipedia)

The play is Rowe's 1703 drama, The Fair Penitent, which has these intriguing words of Horatio:

I am not apt to take a light offence.
But patient of the failings of my friends,
And willing to forgive; but when an injury
Stabs to the heart, and rouses my resentment,
(Perhaps it is the fault of my rude nature)
I own, I cannot easily forgive it.

Horatio refers to his "rude nature" -- by which he means his unrefined character -- and attributes to this nature his difficulty in forgiving a resentment that stabs to the heart. This isn't precisely the same case as Darcy, for the latter has a refined character, but both appeal to their basic nature as explanation for their 'implacable' resentment. This play, incidentally, has the character Lothario -- who surely has some influence on Austen's shaping of her dissolute character Wickham.

I also want to note what appears to be a rich resource for my investigation of "resentment," an article by Niel Hargraves, "Resentment and History in the Scottish Enlightenment" (Cromohs, 14 (2009): 1-21), for this article "explores the ways in which Scottish Enlightenment writers such as Lord Kames, Adam Smith, David Hume and William Robertson used the concept of 'resentment'" to analyze "the role of the passions in human relations."

That sounds promising.