be very faft.-May the life that is added to you be paffed in good fortune and tranquillity, rather of your own giving to yourself, than from any expectations or trust in others! May you and I live together, without wishing more felicity or acquifitions than Friendship can give and receive without obligations to Greatness! God keep you, and three or four more of those I have known as long, that I may have fomething worth the furviving my Mother! Adieu, dear Gay, and believe me (while you live and while I live) Your, etc. As I told you in my last letter, I repeat it in this; Do not think of writing to me. The Doctor, Mrs. Howard, and Mrs. Blount, give me daily accounts of you. LETTER XI. Sunday Night. I TRULY rejoice to fee your hand-writing, though I feared the trouble it might give you. I wish I had not known that you are ftill fo exceffively weak. Every day for a week paft I had hopes of being able in a day or two more to fee you. But my Mother advances not at all, gains no strength, and feems but upon the whole to wait for the next cold day to throw her into a Diarrhoea, that must, if it return, carry her off. This being daily to be feared, makes me not dare to go a day from her, left that should prove to be her laft. God fend you a speedy recovery, and such a total one as, at your time of life, may be expected. You need not call the few words I write to you, either kind or good; that was, and is, nothing. But whatever I have in my nature of kindness, I really have for you, and whatever good I could do, I would, among the very first, be glad to do to you. In your circumstance the old Roman farewel is proper, Vive memor noftri. Your, etc. I fend you a very kind letter of Mr. Digby, between whom and me two letters have paffed concerning you. Νο LETTER XII. words can tell you the great concern I feel for you; I affure you it was not, and is not leffened, by the immediate apprehenfion I have now every day lain under of lofing my Mother. Be affured, no duty less than that should have kept me one day from attending your condition: I would come and take a room by you at Hampstead, to be with you daily, were she not ftill in danger of death. I have constantly had particular accounts of you from the Doctor, which have not ceased to alarm me yet. God preserve your life, and reftore your health! I really beg it for my own fake, for I feel I love you more than I thought in health, though I always loved you a great deal. If I am fo unfortunate as to bury my poor Mother, and yet have the good fortune to have my prayers heard for you, I hope we may live moft of our remaining days together. If, as I believe, the air of a better clime, as the fouthern part of France, may be thought useful for your recovery, thither I would go with you infallibly; and it is very probable we might get the Dean with us, who is in that abandoned state already in which I fhall fhortly be, as to other cares and duties. Dear Gay, be as chearful as your fufferings will permit: God is a better friend than a court: even any honest man is a better. I promise you my entire friendship in all events, heartily praying for your recovery. Your, etc. Do not write, if you are ever so able: the Doctor tells me all. LETTER XIII. I AM glad to hear of the progrefs of your recovery, and the oftener I hear it, the better, when it becomes easy to you to give it me. I fo well remember the confolation you were to me in my Mother's former illness, that it doubles my concern at this time not to be able to be with you, or you able to be with me. Had I loft her, I would have been no where elfe but with you during your confinement. I have now paffed five weeks without once going from home, and without any company but for three or four of the days. Friends rarely ftretch their kindness fo far as ten miles. My Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Bethel have not forgotten to vifit me: the reft (except Mrs. Blount once) were contented to fend meffages. I never passed fo melancholy a time, and now Mr. Congreve's death* touches me nearly. It was twenty years Our Author's great regard for Congreve appears from his having dedicated to him, in preference to any great Patron, his translation of the Iliad. One of the most fingular circumstances in the life of Congreve is, his having been able to write fuch a comedy as the Old Bachelor, at the age of nineteen. Dr. Johnson accounts for this extraordinary phænomenon in the history of Literature, by faying it might be done by a mind vigorous and acute, and furnished with comic characters by the perufal of other poets, without much actual commerce with mankind. And then he afterwards adds, in direct and palpable contradiction of this affertion," that he is an original writer, who borrowed neither the models of his plots, nor the years and more that I have known him: Every year carries away fomething dear with it, till we outlive all tendernesses, and become wretched individuals again as we begun. Adieu! This is my birth-day, and this my reflection upon it: is With added days if life give nothing new, Your, etc. the manner of his dialogue." The inexhausted and improper fuperabundance of his wit, on all fubjects and occafions, and in all characters, (for Jeremy is as witty as his Master, Valentine,) has been too often obferved to be here mentioned. The Mourning Bride has been magnified, beyond its merits, by Lord Kaims; and Dr. Johnson has ftrained an encomium on a speech of Almeria, in this tragedy, fo high, as to say, that a more poetical paragraph cannot be felected from the whole mafs of English Poetry. One paffage in this speech must be noticed for its affectation: She says, "The Temple in which the fcene lies, is fo folemn and awful, that it looks tranquillity." How different in style and manner, are the brilliant fallies in Congreve's comedies, from the purity, juftness, and truth of Terence, and the Drummer! WARTON. *Thefe Lines were originally added to the Lines on the Birthday of M. Blount : "Oh, be thou blest !" These appear in the MS. in his own hand-writing, fent to her; but are properly left out in his Works. |