I do the same seemingly to him, and yet I don't believe he has a more sincere friend in the world than I am therefore I will think him mine. I am his, Mr. Congreve's, and Your, etc. LETTER X. I FAITHFULLY assure you, in the midst of that melancholy with which I have been so long encompassed, in an hourly expectation almost of my Mother's death; there was no circumstance that rendered it more unsupportable to me, than that I could not leave her to see you. Your own present escape from so imminent danger I pray God may prove less precarious than my poor Mother's can be; whose life at best can be but a short reprieve, or a longer dying. But I fear even that is more than God will please to grant me; for these two days past, her most dangerous symptoms are returned upon her; and, unless there be a sudden change, I must, in a few days, if not in a few hours, be deprived of her. In the afflicting prospect before me, I know nothing that can so much alleviate it as the view now given me (Heaven grant it may increase!) of your recovery. In the sincerity of my heart, I am excessively concerned, not to be able to pay you, dear Gay, any part of the debt, I very gratefully remember, I owe you on a like sad occasion, when you was here comforting me in her last great illness. May your health augment as fast as, I fear, her's must decline! I believe that would be very fast.-May the life that is added to you be passed 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 acquisitions 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 something worth the surviving 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 see your hand-writing, though I feared the trouble it might give you. I wish I had not known that you are still so excessively weak. Every day for a week past I had hopes of being able in a day or two more to see you. But my Mother advances not at all, gains no strength, and seems 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, lest that should prove to be her last. God send 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 farewell is proper, Vive memor nostri. Your, etc. I send you a very kind letter of Mr. Digby, between whom and me two letters have passed concerning you. LETTER XII. No words can tell you the great concern I feel for you; I assure you it was not, and is not lessened, by the immediate apprehension I have now every day lain under of losing my Mother. Be assured, 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 still 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 restore your health! I really beg it for my own sake, for I feel I love you more than I thought in health, though I always loved you a great deal. If I am so 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 most of our remaining days together. If, as I believe, the air of a better clime, as the southern part of France, may be thought useful for your recovery, thither I would go with you infallibly; and it it is very probable we might get the Dean with us, who is in that abandoned state already in which I shall shortly be, as to other cares and duties. Dear Gay, be as chearful as your sufferings 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 progress of your recovery, and the oftener I hear it the better, when it becomes easy to you to give it me. I so well remember the consolation 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 lost her, I would have been no where else but with you during your confinement. I have now passed five weeks without once going from home, and without any company but for three or four of the days. Friends rarely stretch their kindness so far as ten miles. My Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Bethel have not forgotten to visit me: the rest (except Mrs. Blount once) were contented to send messages. I never passed so melancholy a time, and now Mr. Congreve's death touches me nearly. It was twenty years and more that I have known him: Every year carries away something dear with it, till we outlive all tenderness, and become wretched individuals again as we begun. Adieu! This is my birth-day, and this is my reflection upon it. With added days if life give nothing new, Your, &c. 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 singular circumstances in the life of Congreve is, his having been able to write such a comedy as the Old Bachelor, at the age of nineteen. Dr. Johnson accounts for this extraordinary phenomenon in the history of Literature, by saying it might be done by a mind vigorous and acute, and furnished with comic characters by the perusal of other poets, without much actual commerce with mankind. And then he afterward adds, in direct and palpable contradiction of this assertion, "that he is an original writer, who borrowed neither the models of his plots, nor the manner of his dialogue." The inexhausted and improper superabundance of his wit, on all subjects and occasions, and in all characters (for Jeremy is as witty as his Master, Valentine), has been too often observed to be here mentioned. The Mourning Bride has been magnified, beyond its merits, by Lord Kaimes; and Dr. Johnson has strained an encomium on a speech of Almeria, in this tragedy, so high, as to say, that a more poetical paragraph cannot be selected from the whole mass of English Poetry. One passage in this speech must be noticed for |