have shewn me your mind is principled with such a sentiment, I assure you I expect from it a performance greater still than Homer. I have an extreme joy from your communicating to me this affection of your mind;

Quid voveat dulci Nutricula majus alumno?

Believe me, dear Sir, no equipage could shew you to my eye in so much splendor. I would not indulge this fit of philosophy so far as to be tedious you, else I could prosecute it with pleasure.

to

I long to see you, your mother, and your villa; till then I will say nothing of Lord Bathurst's wood, which I saw on my return hither. Soon after Christmas I design for London, where I shall miss Lady Scudamore very much, who intends to stay in the country all winter. I am angry with her, as I am like to suffer by this resolution, and would fain blame her but cannot find a The man is cursed that has a longer letter than this to write with as bad a pen, yet I can use it with pleasure to send my services to your good mother, and to write myself,

cause.

Your, &c.

LETTER X.

TO MR. DIGBY.

Sept. 1, 1722.

DOCTOR Arbuthnot is going to Bath, and will stay there a fortnight or more: perhaps you would be comforted to have a sight of him, whether you

need him or not. I think him as good a doctor as any man for one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well. He would do admirably for Mrs. Mary Digby: she needed only to follow his hints, to be in eternal business and amusement of mind, and even as active as she could desire. But indeed, I fear she would out-walk him; for (as Dean Swift observed to me the very first time I saw the doctor)" He is a man that can do every thing but walk." His brother, who is lately come into England, goes also to the Bath; and is a more extraordinary man than he, worth your going thither on purpose to know him. The spirit of philanthropy, so long dead to our world, is revived in him: he is a philosopher all of fire; so warmly, nay so wildly in the right, that he forces all others about him to be so too, and draws them into his own vortex. He is a star that looks as if it were all fire, but is all benignity, all gentle and beneficial influence. If there be other men in the world that would serve a friend, yet he is the only one, I believe, that could make even an enemy serve a friend.

As all human life is chequered and mixed with acquisitions and losses, (though the latter are more certain and irremediable, than the former lasting or satisfactory,) so at the time I have gained the acquaintance of one worthy man, I have lost another, a very easy, humane, and gentlemanly neighbour, Mr. Stonor.* It is certain the * Thomas Stonor, Esq.

Bowles.

loss of one of this character puts us naturally upon setting a greater value on the few that are left, though the degree of our esteem may be different. Nothing, says Seneca, is so melancholy a circumstance in human life, or so soon reconciles us to the thought of our own death, as the reflection and prospect of one friend after another dropping round us. Who would stand alone, the sole remaining ruin, the last tottering column of all the fabric of friendship once so large, seemingly so strong, and yet so suddenly sunk and buried?

LETTER XI.

TO MR. DIGBY.

I am, &c.

I HAVE belief enough in the goodness of your whole family, to think you will all be pleased that I am arrived in safety at Twickenham; though it is a sort of earnest that you will be troubled again with me at Sherborne or Coleshill; for however I

may like one of your places, it may be in that as in liking one of your family; when one sees the rest, one likes them all. Pray make my services acceptable to them. I wish them all the happiness they may want, and the continuance of all the happiness they have; and I take the latter to comprize a great deal more than the former. I must separate Lady Scudamore from you, as, I fear, she will do herself before this letter reaches you.

So I wish her a good journey, and I hope one day to try if she lives as well as you do; though I much question if she can live as quietly: I suspect the bells will be ringing at her arrival, and on her own and Miss Scudamore's birthdays, and that all the clergy in the country come to pay respects; both the clergy and their bells expecting from her, and from the young lady,* further business and further employment. Besides all this, there dwells on the one side of her the Lady Conningsby, and on the other Mr. W***. Yet I shall, when the days and the years come about, adventure upon all this for her sake.

I beg my Lord Digby to think me a better man, than to content myself with thanking him in the common way. I am, in as sincere a sense of the word, his servant, as you are his son, or he your father.

I must in my turn insist upon hearing how my last fellow-travellers got home from Clarendon, and desire Mr. Philips to remember me in his Cyder, and to tell Mr. W*** that I am dead and buried.

"The young lady" was married, June 28, 1729, to Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort. She bore, notwithstanding, pursuant to a settlement made by her father, the arms and name of Scudamore. She re-married, as has been said, on the death of his Grace without issue, in 1744, Charles Fitzroy Scudamore, and died in child-birth, 1749. Her daughter Frances, born at that time, was married to the present Duke of Norfolk. Bowles.

He frequently expressed his total dislike of this poem; though its author was patronised by Bolingbroke, who also in

I wish the young ladies, whom I almost robbed of their good name, a better name in return; even that very name to each of them, which they shall like best, for the sake of the man that bears it.

Your, &c.

LETTER XII.

TO MR. DIGBY.

1722.

YOUR making a sort of apology for your not writing, is a very genteel reproof to me. I know I was to blame, but I know I did not intend to be so, and (what is the happiest knowledge in the world) I know you will forgive me; for sure nothing is more satisfactory than to be certain of such a friend as will overlook one's failings, since every such instance is a conviction of his kindness.

If I am all my life to dwell in intentions, and never to rise to actions, I have but too much need of that gentle disposition which I experience in you. But I hope better things of myself, and fully purpose to make you a visit this summer at Sherborne. I am told, you are all upon removal very speedily, and that Mrs. Mary Digby talks in

duced Philips to write the poem on Blenheim. Cyder was elegantly translated into Latin verse by my amiable friend Mr. Phelps, Under-Secretary of State to Lord Sandwich, whilst he was a scholar at Winchester College, 1738. Warton.

A translation of this poem into Italian Versi Sciolti, by the celebrated Conte Lorenzo Magalotti, is preserved in the manuscript library at Holkham.