T LETTER X. Nov. 27, 1717. HE queftion you propofed to me is what. at present I am the most unfit man in the world to answer, by my lofs of one of the beft of Fathers. He had lived in fuch a courfe of Temperance as was enough to make the longest life agreeable to him, and in fuch a course of Piety as fufficed to make the most fudden death fo alfo. Sudden indeed it was: however, I heartily beg of God: to give me fuch a one, provided I can lead such a life. I leave him to the mercy of God, and to the piety of a religion that extends beyond the grave: Si qua eft ea cura, &c. He has left me to the ticklish management of fo narrow a fortune, that any one falfe ftep would be fatal. My mother is in that difpirited' ftate of refignation, which is the effect of long life, and the lofs of what is dear to us. We are really each of us in want of a friend, of. fuch an humane turn as yourself, to make almost any thing defirable to us. I feel your abfence more than ever, at the fame time I can less express my regards to you than ever; and fhall make this, which is the most fincere letter I ever writ to you, the shortest and faintest per haps haps of any you have received. "Tis enough if you reflect, that barely to remember any perfon 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 wish it may be very long before any of yours shall feel for you what I now feel for my father. Adieu. LETTER XI. Rentcomb in Gloucestershire, Oct. 3,1721. You for I have been in and about this country ever fince your departure. I am well pleas'd 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 Christopher Guise, who, being in his shirt, 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 valleys and rifing woods; with a veneration mix'd with a pleasure, that represented her to me in those puerile amusements, which engaged her her so 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 early times; "remem"ber'd her Creator in the days of her youth." You defcribe fo well your hermitical state of life, that none of the ancient anchorites could go beyond you, for a cavé in a rock, with á fine spring, or any of the accommodations that befit a folitary. Only I don't remember to have read, that of thofe venerable and holy perany fonages took with them a lady, and begat fons and daughters. You must modeftly be content to be accounted a patriarch. But were you à little younger, I should rather rank you with Sir Amadis, and his fellows. If Piety be fo romantic, I shall turn hermit in good earnest; for, I fee, one may go fo far as to be poetical, and hope to fave one's foul at the same time. I really with myself fomething more, that is, á prophet; for I wish I were, as Habakkuk, to be taken by the hair of his head, and vifit Daniel in his den. You are very obliging in saying, 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 made me yours, and confequently them mine. I ftill see them walking on my green at Twick enham, enham, and gratefully remember, not only their green-gowns, but the inftructions they gave me how to flide down and trip up the steepest 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. You OUR very kind and obliging manner of enquiring after me, among the first con→ cerns of life, at your refufcitation, fhould have been fooner answer'd and acknowledged. I fincerely rejoice at your recovery from an illnefs which gave me lefs pain than it did you, only from my ignorance of it. I fhould have elfe been seriously 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 Montaigne's published 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 " 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 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 indi"vidual; no creature to with, or to fear, for ec 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 << 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 stir from us again. Do away your dirty acres, caft them to dirty people, fuch as in the Scripture-phrafe poffefs the land. Shake off your earth like the noble animal in Milton. The tawny lyon, pawing to get free His binder parts, he fprings as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded main: the ounce, The |