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 still see 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. You 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 answer'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 faid one day to me. "Alas, I have nothing to do but to "die; I am a poor individual; no creature to wish, "or to fear, for my life or death: 'Tis the only ❝reason I have to repent being a single man; now 66 I grow old, I am like a tree without a prop, and " without young trees to grow round me, for com66 pany and defence." 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 binder parts, he fprings as broke from bonds, Rifing, the crumbled earth above them throw 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 fhake 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 brighteft, waftes faftC 4 eft. eft. 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. You LETTER XIII. June 27, 1723. OU may truly do me the juftice to think no. man is more your fincere well-wisher than myself, 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 sweets of that life, which can only be tafted by people of good-will. They from all fhades the darkness can exclude, 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 whiftling of the wind better mufic 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 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 diftraction, hurry, multiplication of nothings, and all the fatiguing perpetual bufinefs of having no business to do. You'll wonder I reckon tran tranflating the Odyssey as nothing. But whenever I think ferioufly (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 beaft of burden fhould go on gingling 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 underflood, by the grim God of Hell! said a heathen poet; as he is tranflated by a chriftian Bishop, who has, first by his exhortations, and fince by his example, taught me to think as becomes a reasonable creature-but he is gone! You I remember I promis'd to write to you, as foon as I fhould hear you were got home. 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 wifhes 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 affure you, the promiscuous 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 (undisturb'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 funshiny 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 fpring 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 paffing suddenly and vanishing, 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 visible radiations: and when you have a mind to light it up, it affords you a very different scene; it is finished with fhells interfperfed with pieces of looking-glass in angular forms; and in the cieling is a ftar 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 paffage two porches, one towards the river of fmooth ftones full of light, and open; the other toward the Garden fhadow'd with trees, rough with shells, flints, and iron-ore. The bottom is paved with fimple pebble, as is alfo the adjoining walk up the wilderness to the temple, in the natural tafte, agreeing not ill with the little dripping murmur, and the aquatic idea of the whole |