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The poor man is highly concerned to vindicate Jeffery's veracity as an hiftorian; and told me he was perfectly aftonished, we of the Roman communion could doubt of the legends of his Giants, while we believe those of our Saints. I am forced to make a fair compofition with him; and, by crediting fome of the wonders of Corinæus and Gogmagog, have brought him fo far already, that he speaks refpectfully of St. Chriftopher's carrying Chrift, and the refufcitation of St. Nicholas Tolentine's chicken. Thus we proceed apace in converting each other from all manner of infidelity.

Ajax and Hector are no more to be compared to Corinæus and Arthur, than the Guelphs and Gibellines are to the Mohocks of ever dreadful memory. This amazing writer has made me lay aside Homer for a week, and when I take him up again, I fhall be very well prepared to tranflate, with belief and reverence, the fpeech of Achilles's Horfe.

You'll excufe all this trifling, or any thing else which prevents a sheet full of compliment: and believe there is nothing more true (even more true than any thing in Jeffery is falfe) than that I have a conftant affection for you, and am, &c.

P. S. I know you will take part in rejoicing for the victory of Prince Eugene over the Turks, in the zeal you bear to the Chriftian intereft, tho' your Coufin of Oxford (with whom I dined yesterday) fays, there is no other difference in the Chriftians beating the Turks, or the Turks beating the Chriftians, than whether the Emperor fhall firft declare war against Spain, or Spain declare it against the Emperor.

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LETTER X.

Nov. 27, 1717.

HE queftion you proposed to me is what at prefent I am the moft unfit man in the world to anfwer, 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 longeft life agreeable to him, and in fuch a courfe of Piety as fufficed to make the most sudden death fo also. Sudden indeed it was however, I heartily beg of God to give me fuch an one, provided I can lead fuch 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 state 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 yourfelf, to make almoft any thing defirable to us. I feel your abfence more than ever, at the same time I can lefs exprefs my regards to you than ever; and hall make this, which is the moft fincere letter I ever writ to you, the fhorteft and fainteft perhaps 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 fhall feel for you what I now feel for my father. Adieu.

LETTER

LETTER XI.

Rentcomb in Gloucestershire, Oc. 3, 1721.

OUR kind letter has overtaken me here, for

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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, whose 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 Lancaftare. 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 reprefented her to me in those puerile amusements, 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 those early times; "remembered 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 cave in a rock, with a fine spring, 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 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 earnest; 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;

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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 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 made 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 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.

YOUR very kind and obliging manner of en

YOUR quiring 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 lefs pain than it did you, only from my ignorance of it. I should 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 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

in mind of what old Fletcher of Saltoune said one day to me. "Alas, I have nothing to do but to "die; I am a poor individual; no creature to wish, 66 or to fear, for my life or death: 'Tis the only " reason I have to repent being a fingle man; now grow old, I am like a tree without a prop, and "without young trees to grow round me, for company and defence."

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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 Scripture-phrase poffefs the land. Shake off your earth like the noble animal in Milton,

The tawny lyon, pawing to get free

His kinder parts, he fprings as broke from bonds,
Aud rampant fakes his brinded main: the ounce,
The lizard, and the tiger, as the mole
Rifing, the crumbled earth above them throw
In hillocks!

But, I believe, Milton never thought these fine verses of his fhould be apply'd to a man felling a parcel of dirty acres; tho' in the main, I think, it may have fome resemblance. For, God knows! this little fpace of ground nourishes, buries, and confines us, as that of Eden did those creatures, till we can shake it loose, 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 fast

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