Poor Ghost! thou shalt be satisfied or something like it. However that be, take care you do not fail in your appointment, that the company of the living may make me some amends for my attendance on the dead. I know you will be glad to hear that I am well: I should always, could I always be here Sed me Imperiosa trahit Proserpina: vive, valeque. You are the first man I sent to this morning, and the last man I desire to converse with this evening, though at twenty miles distance from you. Te, veniente die, Te, decedente, requiro. LETTER XXI. FROM THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. DEAR SIR, are of all men most miserable." Hoadly also powerfully attacked him on the doctrine of Passive Obedience; a doctrine so singularly absurd, as scarce indeed to merit a serious refutation. In allusion to Hoadly's lameness, who so frequently attacked Atterbury, it was said, Raro antecedentem Scelestum Deseruit pede Pœna claudo. No two men were ever of more diametrically opposite tempers, as well as principles, than Hoadly and Atterbury; the former all calmness and tranquillity, the latter all vehemence and fire. ever. will complete them, and separate you and me for But in what part of the world soever I am, I will live mindful of your sincere kindness to me; and will please myself with the thought, that I still live in your esteem and affection, as much as ever I did; and that no accident of life, no distance of time, or place, will alter you in that respect. It never can me; who have loved and valued you, ever since I knew you, and shall not fail to do it when I am not allowed to tell you so; as the case will soon be. Give my faithful services to Dr. Arbuthnot, and thanks for what he sent me, which was much to the purpose, if any thing can be said to be to the purpose, in a case that is already determined. Let him know my Defence will be such, that neither my friends need blush for me, nor will my enemies have great occasion of Triumph, though sure of the Victory. I shall want his advice before I go abroad, in many things. But I question whether I shall be permitted to see him, or any body, but such as are absolutely necessary towards the dispatch of my private affairs. If so, God bless you both! and may no part of the ill-fortune that attends me, ever pursue either of you! I know not but I may call upon you at my hearing, to say somewhat about my way of spending my time at the Deanery, which did not seem calculated towards managing plots and conspiracies. But of that I shall consider-You and I have spent many hours together upon much pleasanter subjects; and, that I may preserve the old custom, I shall not part with you now till I have closed this letter, with three lines of Milton, which you will, I know, readily and not without some degree of concern, apply to your ever affectionate, etc. Some nat❜ral tears he dropt', but wip'd them soon; LETTER XXII. THE ANSWER. April 20, 1723. It is not possible to express what I think, and what I feel; only this, that I have thought and felt for nothing but you, for some time past: and shall think of nothing so long for the time to come. The greatest * He repeated these lines to some of the upper Scholars of Westminster School, who went to visit him in the Tower. * Whatever our Author's opinion might be, it is now but too manifest, from the curious collection of the Bishop's Letters, published by Mr. J. Nichols, 1783, in three volumes 8vo. particularly in pages 148 and 167 of vol. i. that he was engaged in a treasonable correspondence with the Pretender. In these volumes are many entertaining Letters to M. Thiriot, the intimate friend of Voltaire, in the last edition of whose works, are above a hundred Letters to this M. Thiriot, who was allowed to dine with Voltaire every day, during his imprisonment in the Bastile, for six months, 1725: just before Voltaire came to England, where he was so well received, and got a very large and liberal subscription to his Henriade, and lived much with Lord Peterborough and Lord Bolingbroke. I will take occasion to add, that Thiriot was in correspondence for thirty years with the great King of Prussia, but never received from that Monarch any thing but compliments. In one of these Letters, Atterbury observes to Thiriot, that the Abbé du Bos, in his Reflections on Poetry and Painting, furnished Voltaire with the hint of his Poem on the Ligue. Vol. i. p. 179. comfort I had was an intention (which I would have made practicable) to have attended you in your journey, to which I had brought that person to consent, who only could have hindered me, by a tie which, though it may be more tender, I do not think more strong, than that of friendship. But I fear there will be no way left me to tell you this great truth, that I remember you, that I love you: that I am grateful to you, that I entirely esteem and value you: no way but that one, which needs no open warrant to authorize it, or secret conveyance to secure it; which no bills can preclude, and no Kings prevent; a way that can reach to any part of the world where you may be, where the very whisper or even the wish of a friend must not be heard, or even suspected. By this way I dare tell my esteem and affection of you, to your enemies in the gates, and you, and they, and their sons, may hear of it. You prove yourself, my Lord, to know me for the friend I am; in judging that the manner of your Defence, and your Reputation by it, is a point of the highest concern to me: and assuring me it shall be such, that none of your friends shall blush for you. Let me further prompt you to do yourself the best and most lasting justice; the instruments of your Fame to posterity will be in your own hands. May it not be, that Providence has appointed you to some great and useful work, and calls you to it this severe way? You may more eminently and more effectually serve the public even now, than in the stations you have so honourably filled. Think of Tully, Bacon, and Clarendon: Is it not the latter, the disgraced part of their lives, which you most envy, and which you would choose to have lived? I am tenderly sensible of the wish you express, that no part of your misfortune may pursue me. But God knows, I am every day less and less fond of my native country (so torn as it is by Party-rage), and begin to consider a friend in Exile as a friend in death; one gone before, where I am not unwilling nor unprepared to follow after; and where (however various or uncertain the roads and voyages of another world may be) I cannot but entertain a pleasing hope that we may meet again. I faithfully assure you, that in the mean time there is no one, living or dead, of whom I shall think oftener or better than of you. I shall look upon you as in a state between both, in which you will have from me all the passions and warm wishes that can attend the living, and all the respect and tender sense of loss, that we feel for the dead. And I shall ever depend upon your constant friendship, kind memory, and good offices, though I were never to see or hear the effects of them: like the trust we have in benevolent spirits, who, though we never see or hear them, we think, are constantly serving us, and praying for us. Whenever I am wishing to write to you, I shall conclude you are intentionally doing so to me. And 6 Clarendon indeed wrote his best works in his banishment: but the best of Bacon's were written before his disgrace; and the best of Cicero's after his return from exile. W. |