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LETTER XII.

Oct. 21, 1721.

OUR very kind and obliging manner of enquiring after me, among the firft concerns of life, at your refufcitation, fhould have been fooner anfwer'd and aknowledged. I fincerely rejoice at your recovery from an illness which gave me lefs pain than it did you, only from my ignorance of it. I fhould have else 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 I grieve for that you are to feel, which is to last 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 individual; no creature to wifh, or to fear, for „tny life or death: 'Tis the only reason I have to re,,pent being a single man; now 1 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 inter

val 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 tiger, as the mole

Rifing, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks!

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

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

Your, &c.

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LETTER XIII.

June 27, 1723.

OU may truly đọ me the juftice to think no man

You

is more your fincere well-wifher than myself, or more the fincere well-wifher 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 shades the darkness can exclude,
And from a defart banifh folitude.

:

Torbay is a paradise, and a storm is but an amusement
to fuch people. If you drink Tea upon a promontory
that over.
-hangs the fea, it is preferable to an Affem-
bly and the whistling of the wind better mufic to
contented and loving minds, than the Opera to the
fpleenful, ambitious, diseas'd, distasted, and distracted
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 banish the world from them!

Alas! I live at Twickenham!

I take that period to be very fublime, and to include more than a hundred sentences 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

Odyssey as nothing. But whenever I think feriously (and of late I have met with fo many occafions of thinking ferioufly, that I begin never to think otherwife) I cannot but think these things very idle; as idle` as if a beast of burden fhould go on gingling his bells, without bearing any thing valuable about him, or ever ferving his after.

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 his example, taught me to think as becomes a reáfonable creature but he is gone!

I remember I promis'd to write to you, as soon 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 hence-forward 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.

You

LETTER XIV..

Twick'nam, June 2, 1725.

OU fhew yourself a juft man and a friend in thofe gueffes and fuppofitions you make at the poffible reasons of my filence; every one of which is a true one. As to forgetfulness of you, or yours, I

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affure you, the promifcuous conversations of the town ferve only to put me in mind of better, and more quier, to be had in a corner of the world (undisturb'd, innocent, ferene, and sensible) with fuch as you. Let no access of any distrust make you think of me diffe rently in a cloudy day from what you do in the most funfhiny weather. Let the young ladies be affured I make nothing new in my gardens without wishing to fee the print of their fairy fteps 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 fee 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 pafling fuddenly and vanifhing, as thro' a perspective glass. When you fhut the doors of this grotto, it becomes on the inftant, from a luminous room, a Camera obfcura; on the walls of which all the objects of the river, hills, woods, and boats, are forming a moving picture in their vifible radiations and when you have a mind to light it up, it affords you a very different scene; it is finifhed with fhells interfperfed with pieces of looking-glass in an, gular forms; and in the cieling is a star of the fame material, at which when a lamp (of an orbicular figure of thin alabaster) is hung in the middle, a thousand pointed rays glitter, and are reflected over the place. There are connected to this grotto by a narrower paf

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