:

sired the leg of a pullet. Indeed, Mr Bickerstaff, says public. •Pope's epistolary excellence,' says Johnson, the ladly, you must eat a wing to oblige me; and so ' had an open field; he had no English rival, living put a couple upon my plate. I was persecuted at this or dead.' The letters of Lord Bacon, Strafford, and rate during the whole meal. As often as I called for other statesmen, had been published, but they desmall beer, the master tipped the wink, and the servant scended little into the details of familiar life. Sprat brought me a brimmer of October. Some time after suppressed the correspondence of Cowley, under the dinner, I ordered my cousin's man, who came with me, impression, finely expressed by an old writer, that to get ready the horses, but it was resolved I should private letters are commonly of too tender a componot stir that night; and when I seemed pretty much sition to thrive out of the bosom in which they were bent upon going, they ordered the stable door to be first planted ; and the correspondence of Pope was locked; and the children hid my cloak and boots. the first attempt to interest the public in the sentiThe next question was, what I would have for supper? | ments and opinions of literary men, and the expresI said I never eat anything at night; but was at last, sion of private friendship. “As literature was the in my own defence, obliged to name the first thing that business of Pope's life, and composition his first and came into my head. After three hours spent chiefly favourite pursuit, he wrote always with a view to in apologies for my entertainment, insinuating to me, admiration and fame. He knew that if his letters *That this was the worst time of the year for provi- to his friends did not come before the public in a sions ; that they were at a great distance from any printed shape, they would be privately circulated, market; that they were afraid I should be starved ; and might affect his reputation with those he was and that they knew they kept me to my loss,' the ambitious of pleasing. Hence he seems always to lady went and left me to her husband (for they took have written with care. His letters are generally too special care I should never be alone). As soon as her elaborate and artificial to have been the spontaneous back was turned, the little misses ran backwards and effusions of private confidence. Many of them are forwards every moment; and constantly as they came beautiful in thought and imagery, and evince a taste in or went out, made a curtsy directly at me, which for picturesque scenery and description, that it is to in good manners I was forced to return with a bow, be regretted the poet did not oftener indulge. Others, and, your humble servant, pretty Miss. Exactly at eight the mother came up, and discovered by the red in company with Bernard Lintot, possess a fine vein

as the exquisite one describing a journey to Oxford, ness of her face that supper was not far off. It was

of comic humour and observation. Swift was infetwice as large as the dinner, and my persecution rior to Pope as a letter-writer, but he discloses more doubled in proportion. I desired at my usual hour of his real character. He loved Pope as much as he to go to my repose, and was conducted to my chamber by the gentleman, his lady, and the whole train of could any man, and the picture of their friendship, children. They importuned me to drink something disclosed in their correspondence, is honourable to before I went to bed; and upon my refusing, at last both. They had both risen to eminence by their left a bottle of stingo, as they called it, for fear I should

own talents; they had mingled with the great and wake and be thirsty in the night. I was forced in the illustrious ; had exchanged with each other in primorning to rise and dress myself in the dark, because

vate their common feelings and sentiments; had parthey would not suffer my kinsman's servant to disturb taken of the vicissitudes of public affairs ; seen their me at the hour I desired to be called. I was now re

friends decay and die off; and in their old age, solved to break through all measures to get away; decline of life. Pope's affection soothed the jealous

mourned over the evils and afflictions incident to the and after sitting down to a monstrous breakfast of cold beef, mutton, neats’-tongues, venison-pasty, and irritability and misanthropy of Swift, and survived stale beer, took leave of the family. But the gentle- the melancholy calamity which rendered his friend man would needs see me part of my way, and

one of the most pitiable and affecting objects among

carry me a short cut through his own grounds, which he mankind. told me would save half a mile's riding. This last piece of civility had like to have cost me dear, being

[On Sickness and Death.] once or twice in danger of my neck, by leaping over his ditches, and at last forced to alight in the dirt ;

To Sir RICHARD STEELE.July 15, 1712. when my horse, having slipped his bridle, ran away,

You formerly observed to me that nothing made and took us up more than an hour to recover him

a more ridiculous figure in a man's life than the dig. again. It is evident, that none of the absurdities I parity we often find in him sick and well ; thus one met with in this visit proceeded from an ill intention, of an unfortunate constitution is perpetually exhibitbut from a wrong judgment of complaisance, and a ing a miserable example of the weakness of his mind, misapplication in the rules of it.

and of his body, in their turns. I have had frequent opportunities of late to consider myself in these different views, and, I hope, have received some advan

tage by it, if what Waller says be true, that In 1737 Pope published, by subscription, a volume The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, of letters between himself and his literary friends, Lets in new light through chinks that Time has made. including Swift, Bolingbroke, Gay, and Arbuthnot. Part of the collection had been previously obtained Then surely sickness, contributing no less than old by surreptitious means, and printed by Curll, a no- age to the shaking down this scaffolding of the body, torious publisher of that day. Johnson and Warton may discover the inward structure more plainly. conceived that Pope had connived at this breach of sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a private confidence; but it has been satisfactorily diffidence in our earthly state, and inspires us with shown that the poet was ignorant of the publication, the thoughts of a future, better than a thousand and that his indignation on discovering it was ex- volumes of philosophers and divines. It gives so pressed with all the warmth of sincerity. The letters warning a concussion to those props of our vanity, our excited the curiosity of the public; and Pope com- strength and youth, that we think of fortifying ourplied with the general intreaty to give a genuine selves within, when there is so little dependence upon edition of his correspondence. Additions were after- our out-works. Youth at the very best is but a bewards made to the collection, which went through trayer of human life in a gentler and smoother manseveral editions. The experiment was new to the ner than age: it is like a stream that nourishes a

ALEXANDER POPE.

sures.

plant upon a bank, and causes it to flourish and meditations, or even inquiring of your retreat ; but blossom to the sight, but at the same time is under this I will not positively assert, because I never remining it at the root in secret. My youth has dealt ceived any such insulting epistle from you. My Lord more fairly and openly with ne; it has afforded | Oxford says you have not written to him once since you several prospects of ny danger, and given me an went; but this perhaps may be only policy in him or advantage not very common to young men, that the you ! and I, who am half a Whig, must not entirely attractions of the world have not dazzled me very credit anything he affirms. At Button's, it is reported much ; and I begin, where most people end, with a you are gone to Hanover, and that Gay goes only on an full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambi- embassy to you. Others apprehend some dangerous tion, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human plea- state treatise from your retirement; and a wit, who

When a smart fit of sickness tells me this atfects to imitate Balsac, says, that the ministry now scurvy tenement of my body will fall in a little time, are like those heathens of old, who received their I am even as unconcerned as was that honest Hiber- oracles from the woods. The gentlemen of the Roman nian, who, being in bed in the great storm some years Catholic persuasion are not unwilling to credit me, ago, and told the house would tumble over his head, when I whisper, that you are gone to meet some made answer, “What care I for the house? I am only Jesuits commissioned from the court of Rome, in a loager. I fancy it is the best time to die when one order to settle the most convenient methods to be is in the best humour; and so excessively weak as I taken for the coming of the Pretender. Dr Arbuthnow am, I may say with conscience, that I am not at not is singular in his opinion, and imagines your only all uneasy at the thought that many men, whom I design is to attend at full leisure to the life and ad. never had any esteem for, are likely to enjoy this ventures of Scriblerus. This, indeed, must be granted world after me. When I reflect what an inconsider- of greater importance than all the rest; and I wish I able little atom every single man is, with respect to could promise so well of you. The top of my own the whole creation, methinks it is a shame to be con- ambition is to contribute to that great work; and I cerned at the removal of such a trivial animal as I shall translate Homer by the by. Mr Gay has acam. The morning after my exit, the sun will rise as quainted you what progress I have made in it. I bright as ever, the flowers smell as sweet, the plants cannot name Mr Gay, without all the acknowledge spring as green, the world will proceed in its old ments which I shall ever owe you on his account. If course, people will laugh as heartily, and marry as I writ this in verse, I would tell you you are like the fast, as they were used to do. The memory of man sun, and, while men imagine you to be retired or (as it is elegantly expressed in the Book of Wisdom) absent, are hourly exerting your influence, and bring. passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that ing things to maturity for their advantage. Of all tarrieth but one day. There are reasons enough, in the world, you are the man (without flattery) who the fourth chapter of the same book, to make any serve your friends with the least ostentation ; it is young man contented with the prospect of death. almost ingratitude to thank you, considering your . For honourable age is not that which standeth in temper; and this is the period of all my letter which, length of time, or is measured by number of years. I fear, you will think the most impertinent. I am, But wisdom is the gray hair to man, and an unspotted with the truest affection, yours, &c. life is old age.

He was taken away speedily, lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul,' &c.—I am your, &c.

[Pope in Oxford.)

To Mrs MARTHA BLOUNT-1716. [Pope to Swift-On his Retirement.]

Nothing could have more of that melancholy which January 18, 1714.

once used to please me, than my last day's journey;

for, after having passed through my favourite woonis Whatever apologies it might become me to make in the forest, with a thousand reveries of past pleaat any other time for writing to you, I shall use none sures, I rid over hanging hills, whose tops were edged now, to a man who has owned himself as splenetic as with groves, and whose feet watered with winding a cat in the country. In that circunstance, I know rivers, listening to the falls of cataracts below, and by experience a letter is a very useful as well as an the murmuring of the winds above; the gloomy veramusing thing: if you are too busied in state affairs dure of Stonor succeeded to these, and then the shades to read it, yet you may find entertainment in folding of the evening overtook me. The moon rose in the it into divers figures, either doubling it into a pyra- clearest sky I ever saw, by whose solemn light I paced midical, or twisting it into a serpentine form : or if on slowly, without company, or any interruption to your disposition should not be so mathematical, in the range of my thoughts. About a mile before I taking it with you to that place where men of studious reached Oxford, all the bells tolled in different notes; minds are apt to sit longer than ordinary; where, the clocks of every college answered one another, and after an abrupt division of the paper, it may not be sounded forth (some in deeper, some a softer tone) unpleasant to try to fit and rejoin the broken lines that it was eleven at night. . All this was no ill pretogether. All these amusements I am no stranger to paration to the life I have led since among those old in the country, and doubt not (by this time) you walls, venerable galleries, stone porticos, studious begin to relish them in your present contemplative walks, and solitary scenes of the university. I wanted situation.

nothing but a black gown and a salary, to be as I remember, a man who was thought to have some mere a book-worm as any there. I conformed myself knowledge in the world used to affirm, that no people to the college hours, was rolled up in books, lay in in town ever complained they were forgotten by their one of the most ancient, dusky parts of the university, friends in the country ; but my increasing experience and was as dead to the world as any hermit of the convinces me he was mistaken, for I find a great many desert. If anything was alive or awake in me, it was here grievously complaining of you upon this score. a little vanity, such as even those good men used to I am told further, that you treat the few you corre entertain, when the monks of their own order extolled spond with in a very arrogant style, and tell them their piety and abstraction. For I found myself reyou admire at their insolence in disturbing your ceived with a sort of respect, which this idle part of

mankind, the learned, pay to their own species; who * It is important to remember that Pope, when he wrote in are as considerable here, as the busy, the gay, and this manner, was only twenty-four.

the ambitious are in your world.

(Pope to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu -on the Con- bosom of your country? I hear you are going to tinent.]

Hanover; can there be no favourable planet at this

1717. conjuncture, or do you only come back so far to die Madam-1 no more think I can have too many of twice? Is Eurydice once more snatched to the shades ! your letters, than that I could have too many writings If ever mortal had reason to hate the king, it is I; to entitle me to the greatest estate in the world; for it is my misfortune to be almost the only innowhich I think so valuable a friendship as yours is cent inan whom he has made to suffer, both by his equal to. I am angry at every scrap of paper lost, as government at home and his negotiations abroad. at something that interrupts the history of my title ; and though it is but an odd compliment to compare [Death of Two Lovers by Lightning.] a fine lady to Sibyl, your leaves, methinks, like hers, are too good to be committed to the winds; though I

To LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.-1718. have no other way of receiving them but by those un. . I have a mind to fill the rest of this paper faithful messengers. I have had but three, and I with an accident that happened just under my eyes, reckon in that short one from Dort, which was rather and has made a great impression upon me. I have a dying ejaculation than a letter. But I have so just passed part of this summer at an old romantic great an opinion of your goodness, that had I re- seat of my Lord Harcourt's, which he lent me.* It ceived none, I should not have accused you of neglect overlooks a common field, where, under the shade of a or insensibility. I am not so wrong-headed as to haycock, sat two lovers, as constant as ever were found quarrel with my friends the moment they don't write; in romance, beneath a spreading beech. The name I'd as soon quarrel at the sun the minute he did not of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet ; shine, which he is hindered from by accidental causes, of the other, Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, and is in reality all that time performing the same about five-and-twenty; Sarah, a brown woman of course, and doing the same good offices as ever. eighteen. John had for several months borne the

You have contrived to say in your last the two labour of the day in the same field with Sarah ; when most pleasing things to me in nature; the first is, she milked, it was his morning and evening charge that whatever be the fate of your letters, you will to bring the cows to her pail. Their love was the continue to write in the discharge of your conscience. talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighbourThis is generous to the last degree, and a virtue you hood; for all they aimed at was the blameless posought to enjoy. Be assured, in return, my heart shall session of each other in marriage. It was but this very be as ready to think you have done every good thing, morning that he had obtained her parents' consent, as yours can be to do it ; so that you shall never be and it was but till the next week that they were to wait able to favour your absent friend, before he has to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals thought himself obliged to you for the very favour of their work, they were talking of their weddingyou are then conferring.

clothes ; and John was now matching several kinds The other is, the justice you do me in taking what of poppies and field-flowers to her complexion, to I write to you in the serious manner it was meant; it make her a present of knots for the day. While they is the point upon which I can bear no suspicion, and were thus employed (it was on the last of July), a in which, above all, I desire to be thought serious : it terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that would be the most vexatious of all tyranny, if you drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or should pretend to take for raillery what is the hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath, mere disguise of a discontented heart, that is un- sunk on a haycock, and John (who never separated willing to make you as melancholy as itself; and for from her) sat by her side, having raked two or three wit, what is really only the natural overtlowing and heaps together to secure her. Immediately there was warmth of the same heart, as it is improved and heard so loud a crack as if heaven had burst asunder. iwakened by an esteem for you: but since you tell The labourers, all solicitous for each other's safety, me you believe me, I fancy my expressions have not called to one another: those that were nearest our at least been entirely unfaithful to those thoughts, lovers hearing no answer, stepped to the place where to which I am sure they can never be equal. May they lay : they first saw a little smoke, and after, God increase your faith in all truths that are as great this faithful pair-John with one arm about his as this ! and depend upon it, to whatever degree your Sarah's neck, and the other held over her face, as if belief may extend, you can never be a bigot.

to screen her from the lightning. They were struck If you could see the heart I talk of, you would dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender really think it a foolish good kind of thing, with posture. There was no mark or discolouring on their some qualities as well deserving to be half laughed bodies, only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little singed, at, and half esteemed, as any in the world : its grand and a small spot between her breasts. They were foible, in regard to you, is the most like reason of any buried the next day in one grave, where my Lord foible in nature. Upon my faith, this heart is not, Harcourt, at my request, has erected a monument like a great warehouse, stored only with my own over them. Of the following epitaphs which I made, goods, with vast empty spaces to be supplied as fast the critics have chosen the godly one: I like neither, as interest or ambition can fill them up; but it is but wish you had been in England to have done this every inch of it let out into lodgings for its friends, office better: I think it was what you could not have and shall never want a corner at your service; where refused me on so moving an occasion. I dare affirm, madam, your idea lies as warm and as close as any idea in Christendom.

When Eastern lovers feed the funeral fire, If this distance (as you are so kind as to say) en

On the same pile their faithful pair expire; larges your belief of my friendship, I assure you it has

Here pitying Heaven that virtue mutual found, so extended my notion of your value, that I begin to

And blasted both that it might neither wound. be impious on your account, and to wish that even

Hearts so sincere the Almighty saw well pleased, slaughter, ruin, and desolation, might interpose be

Sent his own lightning, and the victims seized. tween you and Turkey; I wish you restored to us at

* The house of Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire. Here Pope the expense of a whole people. I barely hope you translated part of the Odyssey. He particularly describes it in will forgive me for saying this, but I fear God will the subsequent letter, in a style which recalls the grave humour scarce forgive me for desiring it.

of Addison, and foreshadows the Bracebridge Hall of WashMake me less wicked, then. Is there no other ex. ington Irving. A view of the house and of the church beside pedient to return you and your infant in peace to the I which were buried the lightning-struck lovers is on next page

.

Think not, by rigorous judgment seized,
A pair so faithful could expire;

[Description of an Ancient English Country Seat.] Victims so pure Hearen saw well pleased, And snatched them in celestial fire.

To LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. Live well, and fear no sudden fate:

Dear Madam-It is not possible to express the When God calls virtue to the grave,

least part of the joy your return gives me ; time only Alike 'tis justice, soon or late,

and experience will convince you how very sincere it Mercy alike to kill or save.

'is. I excessively long to meet you, to say so inuch, Virtue unmoved can hear the call,

so rery much to you, that I believe I shall say noAnd face the flash that melts the ball.

thing. I have given orders to be sent for, the first

minute of your arrival (which I beg you will let them Upon the whole, I cannot think these people un- know at Mr Jerras's). I am fourscore miles from happy. The greatest happiness, next to living as London, a short journey compared to that I so often they would have done, was to die as they did. "The thought at least of undertaking, rather than die sithgreatest honour people of this low degree could have, out seeing you again. Though the place I am in was to be remembered on a little monument; unless is such as I would not quit for the town, if I did not you will give them another—that of being honoured value you more than any, nay, everybody else there; with a tear from the finest eyes in the world. I and you will be convinced how little the town has know you have tenderness; you must have it; it is engaged my affections in your absence from it, when the very emanation of good sense and virtue: the you know what a place this is which I prefer to it; I finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the shall therefore describe it to you at large, as the true easiest.

picture of a genuine ancient country-seat.

слол Алл ,

Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire. You must expect nothing regular in my description | balcony, which time has turned to a very convenient of a house that seems to be built before rules were in penthouse. The top is crowned with a very venerable fashion : the whole is so disjointed, and the parts so tower, so like that of the church just by, that the detached from each other, and yet so joining again, jackdaws build in it as if it were the true steeple. one cannot tell how, that (in a poetical fit) you would The great hall is high and spacious, flanked with imagine it had been a village in Amphion's time, long tables, images of ancient hospitality; ornawhere twenty cottages had taken a dance together, mented with monstrous horns, about twenty broken were all out, and stood still in amazement ever since. pikes, and a matchlock musket or two, which they A stranger would be grievously disappointed who say were used in the civil wars. Here is one rast should ever think to get into this house the right arched window, beautifully darkened with divers way. One would expect, after entering through the scutcheons of painted glass. There seems to be great porch, to be let into the hall; alas ! nothing less, propriety in this old manner of blazoning upon glass, you find yourself in a brewhouse. From the parlour ancient families being like ancient windows, in the you think to step into the drawing-room ; but, upon course of generations seldom free from cracks. One opening the iron-nailed door, you are convinced by a shining pane bears date 1286. The youthful face of flight of birds about your ears, and a cloud of dust in Dame Elinor owes more to this single piece than to all your eyes, that it is the pigeon-house. On each side the glasses she ever consulted in her life. Who can our porch are two chimneys, that wear their greens on say after this that glass is frail, when it is not half so the outside, which would do as well within, for when- perishable as human beauty or glory! For in another ever we make a fire, we let the smoke out of the pane you see the memory of a knight preserved, whose windows. Over the parlour-window hangs a sloping marble nose is mouldered from his monument in the

church adjoining. And yet, must not one sigh to re- the occasion of it. It seems the course of this noble flect that the most authentic record of so ancient a blood was a little interrupted about two centuries family should lie at the mercy of every boy that ago by a freak of the Lady Frances, who was here throws a stone? In this hall, in former days, have taken with a neighbouring prior; ever since which, dined gartered knights and courtly dames, with the room has been made up. The ghost of Lady ushers, sewers, and seneschals; and yet it was but Frances is supposed to walk here; some prying maids the other night that an owl flew in hither, and mis- of the family formerly reported that they saw a lady took it for a barn.

in a fardingale throuyh the key-hole; but this matter This ball lets you up (and down) over a very high was hushed up, and the servants forbid to talk of it. threshold, into the parlour. It is furnished with I must needs have tired you with this long letter; historical tapestry, whose marginal fringes do confess but what engaged me in the description was, a genethe moisture of the air. The other contents of this rous principle to preserve the memory of a thing that room are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crip- must itself soon fall to ruin; nay, perhaps, some part pled velvet chairs, with two or three mildewed pic of it before this reaches your hands. Indeed, I owe tures of mouloy ancestors, who look as dismally as if this old house the same gratitude that we do to an they came fresh from hell with all their brimstone old friend that harbours us in his declining condition, about them. These are carefully set at the further nay, even in his last extremities. I have found this corner; for the windows being everywhere broken, an excellent place for retirement and study, where no make it so convenient a place to dry poppies and one who passes by can dream there is an inhabitar:t, mustard-seed in, that the room is appropriated to and even anybody that would visit me dares not that use.

renture under my roof. You will not wonder I have Next this parlour lies (as I said before, the pigeon- translated a great deal of Homer in this retreat; any house, by the side of which runs an entry that leads, one that sees it will own I could not bave chosen a on one hand and the other, into a bed-chamber, a fitter or more likely place to converse with the doud. buttery, and a small hole called the chaplain's study. As soon as I return to the living, it shall be to conThen follow a brewhouse, a little green and gilt par- verse with the best of them. I hope, therefore, very lour, and the great stairs, under which is the dairy. speedily to tell you in person how sincerely and unA little further on the right, the servants' hall; and alterably I am, madam, your, &c. by the side of it, up six steps, the old lady's closet, beg Mr Wortley to believe me his most humble which has a lattice into the said hall, that, while she servant. said her prayers, she might cast an eye on the men and maids. There are upon this ground-floor in all

[Pope to Guy-On his Recovery.] twenty-four apartments, hard to be distinguished by

1722. particular names; among which I must not forget a

I faithfully assure you, in the midst of that melanchamber that has in it a large antiquity of timber, choly with which I have been so long encompassed, which seems to have been either a bedstead or a in an hourly expectation almost of my mother's cider-press.

death, there was no circumstance that rendered it Our best room abore is very long and low, of the more unsupportable to me than that I could not lcare exact proportion of a band-box: it has hangings of her to see you. Your own present escape from so the finest work in the world ; thosc, I mean, which imminent danger I pray God may prove less precaArachne spins out of her own bowels : indeed the roof rious than my poor mother's can be, whose lite at is so decayed, that after a fivourable shower of rain, best can be but a short reprieve, or a longer dying. we may (with God's blessing) expect crop of mush- But I fear even that is more than God will please to ooms between the chinks of the floors.

grant me; for these two days past, her most dangerous All this upper storey has for many years had no symptoms are returned upon ber; and unless there other inhabitants than certain rats, whose rery are be a sudden change, I must in a few days, if not in a renders them worthy of this venerable mansion, for few hours, be deprived of her. In the afflicting prothe very rats of this ancient seat are gray. Since spect before me, I know nothing that can so much these had not quitted it, we hope at least this house alleviate it as the view now given me (Heaven grant may stand during the small remainder of days these it may increase !) of your recovery. In the sincerity poor animals have to live, who are now too infirin to

of my heart, I am excessively concerned not to be remove to another : they have still a small subsistence able to pay you, dear Gay, any part of the debt, I left them in the few remaining books of the library. very gratefully remember, I owe you on a like sad

I had never seen half what I have described, but occasion, when you was here comforting me in her for an old starched gray-headed steward, who is as last great illness. May your health auginent as fast much an antiquity as any in the place, and looks as, I fear, hers must decline! I believe that would like an old family picture walked out of its frame. be very fast. May the life that is added to you be He failed not, as we passed from room to room, to passed in good fortune and tranquillity, rather of relate several memoirs of the family; but his obser- your own giving to yourself, than from any expectavations were particularly curious in the cellar: he tions or trust in others ! May you and I live toshowed where stood the triple rows of butts of sack,gether, without wishing more felicity or acquisitions and where were ranged the bottles of tent for toasts than friendship can give and receive without obligain the morning: he pointed to the stands that sup- tions to greatness! God keep you, and three or four ported the iron-hooped hogsheads of strong beer; then more of those I have known as long, that I may have stepping to a corner, he lugged out the tattered frag: something worth the surviving my mother! Adieu, ment of an unframed picture : "This,' says he, with dear Gay, and believe me (while you live and while I tears in his eyes, was poor Sir Thomas, once master live), your, &c. of the drink' I told you of: he had two sons (poor young masters !) that never arrived to the age of this

[Sketch of Autumn Scenery.] beer; they both fell ill in this very cellar, and never went out upon their own legs.' He could not pass by

To MR DIGBY.-October 10, 1723. a broken bottle without taking it up to show us the Do not talk of the decay of the year; the season is arms of the family on it. He then led me up the good when the people are so. It is the best time in tower, by dark winding stone stej which landed us the year for a painter; there is more variety of colours into several little rooms, one above another; one of in the leaves; the prospects begin to open, through these was nailed up, and my guide whispered to me the thinner woods over the valleys, and through the

a

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