marble be begun: for if you were not satisfied, I would have another sculptor make a model in clay after the pictures, for a further chance of likeness: if the artist were a worse carver than this man, yet it might be a help to improve his statue in this respect (since all the rest he cannot fail to perform excellently). I am really in pain to have you pleased, in a point that I am sure is a tender one, since it is all you can do for the best of brothers, and I for the best of friends!

What can I write to you about? Of him, we think alike, and (I dare say) we shall think always. His very memory more engages my mind, than the present enjoyment of almost all that remains in the world to strike my senses. These things appear but as a dream, and that as a reality. A friend gone, is like youth gone, never to be recalled, and leaves all that follows insipid and spiritless.

us.

I'll add no more upon this subject, though I know we shall never meet, or perhaps never write, without repetition of this kind. I heartily wish well to all that he would have wished well to, had he been yet among The wound is eternal, but it is some ease to us to give it air, by shewing it to one another, and pitying one another. I hope to hear from you at your leisure, and be assured, as the only reasonable motive you can have for your favour to me, that you cannot correspond with one more his admirer, his lover, and deplorer, than,

Madam, etc.

My humble services to Mr. Newsham. My mother begs your acceptance of hers.

LETTER IV.

TO THE SAME.

Twitenham, Aug. 8.

MADAM, I SHOULD not tell you I have been so disagreeably employed as in taking care of my own health, (which too much sickness makes me value more than otherwise I would,) if I did not really believe you intend to have some concern about me, and that therefore I owe you some apology for writing no sooner, to one who wishes me so well. I have no answer to make to one part of yours, but that your manner of doing things does not (nor did in the instance I mentioned) displease me, it is so like your own brother's manners, and nothing like him can ever displease me. But, you will yet more oblige me, if you will let me use you as I did him, and transfer a part of the favours you designed me, to the benefit of some objects Imay recommend to you: whom one sort of favours may make happier; though the other, of friendliness and good-will, I covet from you, and would not give a grain of as much as you allow me from myself. I have met with an object of extreme charity, to whom I will venture to give some of the money you have left in my hands whose story I will take another time to tell you, and only now say, that if your brother had lived, she would not have wanted relief. I have paid but as far yet as 60l. to the statuary: the model I begin to be satisfied with, and he is to proceed upon the statue forthwith. You are very just to me in your thoughts of that affection that will prompt me in every thing relating to him. But I must also think you kind in them in this age, justice is kindness. Yet I doubt not your mind is of a better sort, as his was, and forward to judge favourably of such, as on

are very

any account deserve regard or belief. I shall use no ceremonial with you, on no occasion, but take you for what you are pleased to profess yourself toward me : and only assure you I shall think, (if ever I found myself tempted to be too complaisant, or in the least degree insincere to you,) that I am offending the remains of the sincerest man I ever knew in the world, and growing ungrateful to him after his death.

Believe me, therefore, Madam, sensible of the obligation of being thought well of, and yet more sensible of that which occasioned your good opinion, your tenderness for him, and your acquiescence in his judgment, which was so favourable (indeed so partial) to me. In a word, I esteem you more for loving him, than for liking me; nay, I not only esteem, but love you the more for that very reason and I will be always, dear Madam,

Yours, etc.

Pray desire Mr. Newsham to accept my services. I hope the young gentleman is well.

LETTER V.

DEAR SIR,

TO JOHN KNIGHT, ESQ.

с

I HAVE this day received your second letter with the note of 55 1. at Twitnam, and will next week go to town, where, as soon as the figure is set up, will pay the statuary. Your excess of punctua

e Of Bellowes or Belhouse, or Gosfield-hall, who married, as his second wife, Mrs. Newsham, to whom the preceding letters are addressed.

lity has cost you and me this alarm and trouble; for I might as well else have done it myself, and stayed till you came to town for the money.

I must now express to you, with great truth, my concern for Mrs. Knight's danger; which I first heard of the day after I had sent you my first letter. I hope in God her recovery is more and more confirmed: and I must tax you with a second piece of forgetfulness, in not saying one word of it when you writ last those three lines, with the note. Let me trouble you for one letter more, at your next leisure, about her. If I get more health than indeed I yet have, and if she recovers fast enough to bear one additional infirmity, that of a philosophical companion, half sour and half sick, I intend, in less than a fortnight, to make you and her a short visit. In which case I will first go to Lees (the Duchess of Buckingham's), and send you an information when I am there, that you either may take notice of, or not, as it shall be most convenient to you at that time.

I went to Burlington-house two days ago, where the statue is boxed up, ready for carriage, by Guelfi : he had sent me two letters in one day about Bird f again; that he would not make the box for it, etc. Whereupon I bid him, if Mr. B. did not come for it soon, to take the care upon himself of erecting it. But I since understand Guelfi is fallen sick: SO Mr. Bird's care will be the more necessary. I wish to God it were once well set up: it will make the finest figure, I think, in the place; and it is the least part of honour due to the memory of a man who made the best in his station; and would, questionless, have made yet a better, had God allowed, what all mortals who rightly knew his virtues, earnestly desired,— his longer stay among us.

f Francis Bird, a statuary.

I have nothing to add, but my sincerest wishes for the welfare of two of the nearest parts of him, his friend and his sister. I am truly, dear Sir,

Your affectionate, faithful servant.

Twitnam, Oct. 30, 1727.

My mother is Mrs. Knight's humble servant: so is Mrs. Patty Blount.

LETTER VI.

TO THE SAME.

DEAR SIR, Nov. 8, 1729. I HAVE several times had cursory informations, at your door in Dover-street, of your health, and your several motions. I hoped you had intended to have moved this way before the year was so far advanced; but I find you are yet in Warwickshire. I am desirous (in the epidemical distemper that now afflicts us all, and, I am told, all over the nation) to know how Mrs. Knight and yourself have escaped it, or have you escaped it? I have lain-in these three weeks, and narrowly missed a fever. Mrs. Blount, hitherto, has been free from it, but is going next week to London, with open arms to receive that and all other town blessings. She very often commemorates Gosfield, and you and Mrs. Knight. Her love for the place she banished herself from in so few days, resembles Eve's passion for Paradise, in Milton, when she had got herself turned out of it. However, like Eve, who raves upon tying up the rose-trees, and cultivating the arbours in the midst of her grief, this lady too talks much of seeing the lawn enlarged, and the flocks feeding in fight of the parterre, and of administering grass to the lambs, and crowning them