What pleasure can the miser's fondled hoard, Thine had a value in the scales of Heaven, To Him, whose works bespeak his nature, love. TO A YOUNG FRIEND, TO THE MEMORY OF DR. LLOYD. OUR good old friend is gone, gone to his rest, How once ye loved, and eyed him with respect, Light lie the turf, good Senior! on thy breast, And tranquil as thy mind was, be thy rest! Though, living, thou hadst more desert than fame, And not a stone now chronicles thy name. ON FOP, A DOG BELONGING TO LADY THROCKMORTON. AUGUST, 1792. THOUGH Once a puppy, and though Fop by name, Here moulders One whose bones some honour claim. No sycophant, although of spaniel race, ON HIS ARRIVING at Cambridge WET, WHEN NO Ye squirrels, rabbits, leverets, rejoice, RAIN HAD FALLEN THERE,-1793. Your haunts no longer echo to his voice; IF Gideon's fleece, which drench'd with dew he This record of his fate exulting view, While moisture none refresh'd the herbs around, He died worn out with vain pursuit of you. 'Yes,' the indignant shade of Fop replies'And worn with vain pursuit man also dies.' ⚫ He was usher and under-master of Westminster near fifty years, and retired from his occupation when he was near seventy, with a handsome pension from the king. P 2 TO LADY HESKETH. MY DEAR COUSIN, HAVING promised to write to you, I make haste to be as good as my word. I have a pleasure in writing to you at any time, but especially at the present, when my days are spent in reading the Journals, and my nights in dreaming of them;* an employment not very agreeable to a head that has long been habituated to the luxury of choosing its subject, and has been as little employed upon business as if it had grown upon the shoulders of a much wealthier gentleman. But the numskull pays for it now, and will not presently forget the discipline it has undergone lately. If I succeed in this doubtful piece of promotion, I shall have at least this satisfaction to reflect upon, that the volumes I write will be treasured up with the utmost care for ages, and will last as long as the English constitution: a duration which ought to satisfy the vanity of any author who has a spark of love for his country. O! my good cousin! if I was to open my heart to you, I could show you strange sights; nothing, I flatter myself, that would shock you, but a great deal that would make you wonder. I am of a very singular temper, and very unlike all the men that I have ever conversed with. Certainly I am not an absolute fool; but I have more weaknesses than the greatest of all the fools 1 can recollect at present. In short, if I was as fit for the next world as I am unfit for this, and God forbid I should speak it in vanity, I would not change conditions with any saint in Christendom. what do you think will ensue, cousin? I know what you expect, but ever since I was born I have been good at disappointing the most natural expectations. Many years ago, cousin, there was a possibility I might prove a very different thing from what I am at present. My character is now fixed, and riveted fast upon me; and, between friends, is not a very splendid one, or likely to be guilty of much fascination. Adieu, my dear cousin! So much as I love you, I wonder how the deuce it has happened I was never in love with you. Thank heaven that I never was, for at this time I have had a pleasure in writing to you which in that case I should have forfeited. Let me hear from you, or I shall reap but half the reward that is due to my noble indif ference. Yours ever, and evermore, TO JOSEPH HILL, Esq. W. C. DEAR JOE, Huntingdon, June 24, 1765. THE only recompense I can make you for your kind attention to my affairs during my illness, is to tell you, that by the mercy of God I am restored to perfect health both of mind and body. This I believe will give you pleasure, and I would gladly do any thing from which you could receive it. I left St. Alban's on the seventeenth, and arrived that day at Cambridge, spent some time there with my brother, and came hither on the twentysecond. I have a lodging that puts me continually in mind of our summer excursions; we have had many worse, and except the size of it (which how My destination is settled at last, and I have ob-ever is sufficient for a single man) but few better. tained a furlough. Margate is the word, and I am not quite alone, having brought a servant with me from St. Alban's, who is the very mirror of fidelity and affection for his master. And whereas the Turkish Spy says, he kept no ser vant, because he would not have an enemy in his house, I hired mine, because I would have a friend. Men do not usually bestow these encomiums on their lackeys, nor do they usually deserve them; but I have had experience of mine, both in sickness and in health, and never saw his fellow. The river Ouse, I forget how they spell it, is the most agreeable circumstance in this part of the world; at this town it is I believe as wide as the Thames at Windsor; nor does the silver Thames better deserve that epithet, nor has it more flowers upon its banks, these being attributes which in strict truth belong to neither. Fluellin would say, they are as like as my fingers to my fingers, and there is salmon in both. It is a noble stream to bathe in, and I shall make that use of it three times a week, having introduced myself to it for the first time this morning. I beg you will remember me to all my friends, which is a task will cost you no great pains to execute-particularly remember me to those of your own house, and believe me more than sufficient to compensate for the loss of every otner blessing. You may now inform all those whom you think really interested in my welfare, that they have no need to be apprehensive on the score of my happiness at present. And you yourself will believe that my happiness is no dream, because I have told you the foundation on which it is built. What I have written would appear like enthusiasm to many, for we are apt to give that name to every warm affection of the mind in others which we have not experienced in ourselves; but to you, who have so much to be thankful for, and a temper inclined to gratitude, it will not appear so. I beg you will give my love to Sir Thomas, and believe that I am obliged to you both for inquiring after me at St. Alban's. Yours ever, TO LADY HESKETH. W. C. Huntingdon, July 4, 1765. BEING just emerged from the Ouse, I sit down to thank you, my dear cousin, for your friendly and comfortable letter. What could you think of my unaccountable behaviour to you in that visit I mentioned in my last? I remember I neither spoke to you, nor looked at you. The solution of the mystery indeed followed soon after, but at the time it must have been inexplicable. The uproar within was even then begun, and my silence was opens. I am glad, however, that the only instance in which I knew not how to value your company was, when I was not in my senses. It was the first of the kind, and I trust in God it will be the last. MY DEAR LADY HESKETH, SINCE the visit you were so kind as to pay me in the Temple (the only time I ever saw you without pleasure,) what have I not suffered! And since it has pleased God to restore me to the use only the sulkiness of a thunderstorm before it of my reason, what have I not enjoyed! You know, by experience, how pleasant it is to feel the first approaches of health after a fever; but, Oh the fever of the brain! To feel the quenching of that fire is indeed a blessing which I think it impossible to receive without the most consummate gratitude. Terrible as this chastisement is, I acknowledge in it the hand of an infinite justice; nor is it at all more difficult for me to perceive in it the hand of an infinite mercy likewise: when I consider the effect it has had upon me, I am exceedingly thankful for it, and, without hypocrisy, esteem it the greatest blessing, next to life itself, I ever received from the divine bounty. I pray God that I may ever retain this sense of it, and then I am sure I shall continue to be, as I am at present, really happy. How naturally does affliction make us Christians! and how impossible is it when all human help is vain and the whole earth too poor and trifling to furnish us with one moment's peace, how impossible is it then to avoid looking at the gospel! It gives me some concern, though at the same time it increases my gratitude, to reflect that a convert made in Bedlam is more likely to be a stumbling block to others, than to advance their faith. But if it has that effect upon any, it is owing to their reasoning amiss, and drawing their conclusions from false premises. He who can ascribe an amendI write thus to you that you may not think me ment of life and manners, and a reformation of the a forlorn and wretched creature; which you might heart itself, to madness, is guilty of an absurdity be apt to do considering my very distant removal that in any other case would fasten the imputation from every friend I have in the world-a circum- of madness upon himself; for by so doing he asstance which, before this event befel me, would un-cribes a reasonable effect to an unreasonable cause, doubtedly have made me so; but my affliction has and a positive effect to a negative. But when taught me a road to happiness which without it I Christianity only is to be sacrificed, he that stabs should never have found; and I know, and have deepest is always the wisest man. Yor, my dear experience of it every day, that the mercy of God, cousin, yourself will be apt to think arry the to him who believes himself the object of it, is matter too far, and that in the present warmth of years, which will account in some measure for my pestering you in this manner; besides, my last was no answer to yours, and therefore I consider myself as still in your debt. To say truth, I have this long time promised myself a correspondence with you as one of my principal pleasures. my heart I make too ample a concession in saying we have not met even by letter almost these two that I am only now a convert. You think I always believed, and I thought so too; but you were deceived, and so was I. I called myself indeed a Christian, but He who knows my heart knows that I never did a right thing, nor abstained from a wrong one, because I was so. But if I did either, it was under the influence of some other mo- I should have written to you from St. Alban's tive. And it is such seeming Christians, such long since, but was willing to perform quarantine pretending believers, that do most mischief to the first, both for my own sake and because I thought cause, and furnish the strongest arguments to sup-my letters would be more satisfactory to you from port the infidelity of their enemies: unless profes- any other quarter. You will perceive I allowed sion and conduct go together, the man's life is a myself a very sufficient time for the purpose, for I lie, and the validity of what he professes itself is date my recovery from the twenty-fifth of last July, called in question. The difference between a having been ill seven months, and well twelve Christian and an Unbeliever would be so striking, months. It was on that day my brother came to if the treacherous allies of the church would go see me. I was far from well when he came in; over at once to the other side, that I am satisfied religion would be no loser by the bargain. yet though he only staid one day with me, his company served to put to flight a thousand deliriums and delusions which I sill laboured under, and the next morning I found myself a new creature. But to the present purpose. As far as I am acquainted with this place, I like it extremely. Mr. Hodgson, the minister of the parish, made me a visit the day before yesterday. He is very sensible, a good preacher, and conscientious in the discharge of his duty. He is very well known to Doctor Newton, Bishop of Bristol, the author of the treatise on the Prophecies, one of our best bishops, and who has written the most demonstrative proof of the truth of Christianity, in my mind, that ever was published. I reckon it one instance of the providence that has attended me throughout this whole event, that instead of being delivered into the hands of one of the London physicians, who were so much nearer that I wonder I was not, I was carried to Doctor Cotton. I was not only treated by him with the greatest tenderness while I was ill, and attended with the utmost diligence, but when my reason was restored to me, and I had so much need of a religious friend to converse with, to whom I could open my mind upon the subject without reserve, I could hardly have found a fitter person for the purpose. My eagerness and anxiety to settle my opinions upon that long neglected point made it There is a village called Hertford, about a mile necessary that, while my mind was yet weak, and and a half from hence. The church there is very my spirits uncertain, I should have some assist- prettily situated upon a rising ground, so close to ance. The doctor was as ready to administer the river that it washes the wall of the churchyard. relief to me in this article likewise, and as well I found an epitaph there, the other morning, the qualified to do it, as in that which was more imme- two first lines of which being better than any thing diately his province. How many physicians would else I saw there I made shift to remember. It have thought this an irregular appetite, and a is by a widow on her husband. symptom of remaining madness! But if it were "Thou wast too good to live on earth with me, The distance of this place from Cambridge is the worst circumstance belonging to it. My brother and I are fifteen miles asunder, which, considering that I came hither for the sake of being near him, is rather too much. I wish that young man was better known in the family. He has as many good qualities as his nearest kindred could wish to find in him. As Mr. Quin very roundly expressed himself upon some such occasion, 'here is very plentiful accommodation, and great happiness of provision.' So that if I starve, it must be through forgetfulness, rather than scarcity. Fare thee well, my good and dear cousin. TO LADY HESKETH. MY DEAR COUSIN, and you are so fond of that which is so, that I am sure you will like it. July 12, 1776. My dear cousin, how happy am I in having a You are very good to me, and if you will only friend to whom I can open my heart upon these continue to write at such intervals as you find con- subjects! I have many intimates in the world, venient, I shall receive all that pleasure which I and have had many more than I shall have hereproposed to myself from our correspondence. I after, to whom a long letter on these most impordesire no more than that you would never drop tant articles would appear tiresome, at least, if not me for any great length of time together, for I shall impertinent. But I am not afraid of meeting with then think you only write because something hap- that reception from you, who have never yet made pened to put you in mind of me, or for some other it your interest that there should be no truth in the reason equally mortifying. I am not however so word of God. May this everlasting truth be your unreasonable as to expect you should perform this comfort while you live, and attend you with peace act of friendship so frequently as myself, for you and joy in your last moments! I love you too live in a world swarming with engagements, and well not to make this a part of my prayers, and my hours are almost all my own. You must every when I remember my friends on these occasions, day be employed in doing what is expected from there is no likelihood that you can be forgotten. you by a thousand others, and I have nothing to Yours ever, W. C. do but what is most agreeable to myself. Our mentioning Newton's treatise on the Prophecies brings to my mind an anecdote of Dr. Young, who, you know, died lately at Welwyn. Dr. Cotton, who was intimate with him, paid him a visit about a fortnight before he was seized with P. S. Cambridge.-I add this postscript at my brother's rooms. He desires to be affectionately remembered to you, and if you are in town about a fortnight hence, when he proposes to be there himself, will take a breakfast with you. TO LADY HESKETH. MY DEAR COUSIN, his last illness. The old man was then in perfect health; the antiquity of his person, the gravity of utterance, and the earnestness with which he discoursed about religion, gave him, in the doctor's eye, the appearance of a prophet. They had been delivering their sentiments upon this book of NewIf I was to measure your obligation to write by ton, when Young closed the conference thus:- my own desire to hear from you, I should call you 'My friend, there are two considerations upon an idle correspondent if a post went by without which my faith in Christ is built upon a rock: the bringing me a letter, but I am not so unreasonafall of man, the redemption of man, and the resur-ble; on the contrary, I think myself very happy in rection of man, the three cardinal articles of our hearing from you upon your own terms, as you find religion, are such as human ingenuity could never most convenient. Your short history of my family have invented, therefore they must be divine.- is a very acceptable part of your letter; if they The other argument is this-If the Prophecies really interest themselves in my welfare, it is a have been fulfilled (of which there is abundant demonstration) the scripture must be the word of God; and if the scripture is the word of God, christianity must be true.' mark of their great charity for one who has been a disappointment and a vexation to them ever since he has been of consequence to be either. My friend, the major's behaviour to me, after all he This treatise on the prophecies serves a double suffered by my abandoning his interest and my purpose; it not only proves the truth of religion, own in so miserable a manner, is a noble instance in a manner that never has been nor ever can be of generosity, and true greatness of mind; and incontroverted, but it proves likewise, that the Ro- deed I know no man in whom those qualities are man catholic is the apostate and antichristian more conspicuous; one need only furnish him with church, so frequently foretold both in the old and an opportunity to display them, and they are alnew testaments. Indeed, so fatally connected is ways ready to show themselves in his words and the refutation of popery with the truth of christi- actions, and even in his countenance at a moment's anity, when the latter is evinced by the completion warning. I have great reason to be thankful-I of the prophecies, that in proportion as light is have lost none of my acquaintance but those whom thrown upon the one, the deformities and errors I determined not to keep. I am sorry this class is of the other are more plainly exhibited. But I so numerous. What would I not give, that every leave you to the book itself; there are parts of it friend I have in the world were not almost but which may possibly afford you less entertainment altogether christians! My dear cousin, I am half than the rest, because you have never been a afraid to talk in this style, lest I should seem to school-boy; but in the main it is so interesting, indulge a censorious humour, instead of hoping; as |