firable to us. I feel your abfence more than ever, at the fame time I can lefs exprefs my regards to you than ever: and shall make this, which is the moft fincere letter I ever writ to you, the fhorteft and fainteft perhaps of any you have ever received. 'Tis enough if you reflect, that barely to remember any person when one's mind is taken up with a fenfible forrow, is a great degree of friendship. I can fay no more but that I love you, and all that are yours; and that I with it may be very long before any of yours fhall feel for you what I now feel for my father.

Adieu.

LETTER XI.

Rentcomb in Gloucefterfhire, O&. 3, 1721.

YOUR kind letter has overtaken me here, for I have been in and about this country ever fince your departure. I am well pleased to date this from a place fo well known to Mrs. Blount, where I write as if I were dictated to by her ancestors, whofe faces are all upon me. I fear none fo much as Sir Chriftopher Guife, who being in his fhirt, feems as ready to combat me, as her own Sir John was to demolish Duke Lancastere. I dare fay your lady will recollect his figure. I look'd upon the manfion, walls, and terraces: the plantations, and flopes, which nature has made to command a variety of vallies and rifing woods; with a veneration mix'd with a pleasure, that represented her to me in those puerile amufements, which engaged her fo many years ago in this place, I fancied I faw her fober over a fampler, or gay over a jointed baby. I dare fay fhe did one thing more, even in thofe carly times; "remember'd her creator in the days of her youth."

You describe fo well your hermitical ftate of life, that none of the ancient anchorites could go beyond you, for a cave in a rock, with a fine fpring, or any of the accommodations that befit a folitary. Only I don't remember to have read, that any of thofe venerable and holy perfonages took with them a lady, and begat fons and

daugh

daughters. You must modeftly be content to be accounted a patriarch. But were you a little younger, I fhould rather rank you with Sir Amadis, and his fellows. If piety be fo romantic, I fhall turn hermit in good earneft; for I fee, one may go fo far as to be poetical, and hope to fave one's foul at the fame time. I really with myself fomething more, that is, a prophet; for I wish I were, as Habakkuk, to be taken by the hair of his head, and visit Daniel in his den. You are very obliging in faying, I have now a whole family upon my hands to whom to discharge the part of a friend; I affure you, I like them all fo well, that I will never quit my hereditary right to them; you have inade me yours, and confequently them mine. I ftill fee, them walking on my green at Twickenham, and gratefully remember, not only their green gowns, but the instructions they gave me how to flide down and trip up the fteepest flopes of my mount.

Pray think of me fometimes, as I fhall often of you: and know me for what I am, that is,

Your, &c.

LETTER XII.

Oct. 21, 1721.

YOUR very kind and obliging manner of enquiring after me among the first concerns of life, at your refufcitation, fhould have been fooner anfwer'd and acknowledged. I fincerely rejoice at your recovery from an illness which gave me less pain than it did you, only from my ignorance of it. I fhould have elfe been ferioufly and deeply afflicted, in the thought of your danger by a fever. I think it a fine and a natural thought, which I lately read in a letter of Montaign's publifh'd by P. Cofte, giving an account of the laft words of an intimate friend of his "Adieu my friend! the pain I feel will "foon be over; but I grieve for that you are to feel, "which is to laft you for life."

I join with your family in giving God thanks for lending us a worthy man fomewhat longer. The comforts

you

you receive from their attendance, put me in mind of what old Fletcher of Saltoune faid one day to me: "Alas I have nothing to do but to die; I am a poor in<dividual; no creature to wifh or to fear, for my life or

death: 'Tis the only reason I have to repent being a ❝fingle man; now I grow old I am like a tree without a "prop, and without young trees to grow round me, for 66 company and defence."

I hope the gout will foon go after the fever, and all evil things remove far from you. But pray tell me, when will you move towards us? If you had an interval to get hither, I care not what fixes you afterwards, except the gout. Pray come, and never ftir from us again. Do away your dirty acres,, caft them to dirty people, fuch as in the fcripture-phrafe poffefs the land. Shake off your earth like the noble animal in Milton,

The tawny lyon, pawing to get free

His hinder parts, he springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded main: the ounce,
The lizard, and the tyger, as the mole

Rifing, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks!

But, I believe, Milton never thought these fine verses of his should be apply'd to a man felling a parcel of dirty acres; tho' in the main, I think, it may have some refemblance. For, God knows! this little space of ground nourishes, buries, and confines us, as that of Eden did those creatures, till we can fhake it loofe, at least in our affections and defires.

Believe, dear Sir, I truly love and value you: let Mrs. Blount know that she is in the lift of my Memento Domine, famulorum famularumque's, &c. My poor mother is far from well, declining; and I am watching over her, as we watch an expiring taper, that even when it looks brightest, wastes fafteft. I am (as you will fee from the whole air of this letter) not in the gayeft nor easiest humour, but always with fincerity,

Your, &c.

LETTER XIII.

June 27, 1723.

You may truly do me the juftice to think no man is more your fincere well-wisher than myfelf, or more the fincere well wisher of your whole family; with all which, I cannot deny but I have a mixture of envy to you all, 'for loving one another fo well; and for enjoying the fweets of that life, which can only be tafted by people of good-will.

They from all fhades the darkness can exclude,

And from a defert banish folitude.

Torbay is a paradife, and a ftorm is but an amufement to fuch people. If you drink tea upon a promontory that over-hangs the fea, it is preferable to an affembly: and the whistling of the wind better music to contented and loving minds, than the opera to the spleenful, ambitious, difeas'd, diftafted, and diftracted fouls which this world affords; nay, this world affords no other. Happy they, who are banish'd from us! but happier they, who can banish themselves; or more properly banifh the world from them! Alas! I live at Twickenham!

I take that period to be very fublime, and to include more than a hundred fentences that might be writ to express distraction, hurry, multiplication of nothings, and all the fatiguing perpetual business of having no business to do. You'll wonder I reckon tranflating the Odyffey as nothing. But whenever I think seriously (and of late I have met with fo many occafions of thinking seriously, that I begin never to think otherwise) I cannot but think these things very idle; as idle, as if a beast of burden fhould go on jingling his bells, without bearing any thing valuable about him, or ever ferving his mafter.

Life's vain Amusements, amidst which we dwell; Not weigh'd, or understood, by the grim God of Hell! faid a heathen poet; as he is tranflated by a christian Bishop, who has, firft by his exhortations, and fince by VOL. IV.

his

his example, taught me to think as becomes a reasonable creature-but he is gone

I remember I promis'd to write to you, as foon as I fhould hear you were got home. You must look on this as the first day I've been myself, and pass over the mad interval un-imputed to me. How punctual a correfpondent I fhall henceforward be able, or not able to be, God knows: but he knows, I fhall ever be a punctual and grateful friend, and all the good wishes of fuch an one will ever attend you.

LETTER XIV.

Twick'nam, June 2, 1725. YOU fhew yourself a juft man and a friend in those gueffes and fuppofitions you make at the poffible reafons of my filence; every one of which is a true one. As to forgetfulness of you, or yours, I affure you, the promifcuous converfations of the town ferve only to put me in mind of better, and more quiet, to be had in a corner of the world (undifturb'd, innocent, ferene, and fenfible) with fuch as you. Let no accefs of any diftruft make you think of me differently in a cloudy day from what you do in the most fun-fhiny weather. Let the young ladies be affured I make nothing new in my gardens, without wishing to see the print of their fairy steps in every part of them. I have put the laft hand to my works of this kind, in happily finishing the fubterraneous way and grotto: I there found a spring of the cleareft water, which falls in a perpetual rill, that echoes thro' the cavern day and night. From the river Thames, you see thro' my arch up a walk of the wilderness, to a kind of open temple, wholly compos'd of fhells in the ruftic manner; and from that diftance under the temple you look down thro' a floping arcade of trees, and fee the fails on the river paffing suddenly and vanishing, as thro' a perspective glafs. When you fhut the doors of this grotto, it becomes on the inftant, from a luminous room, a Camera abfcura;

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