DEAR SIR, LETTER V. TO JOHN KNIGHT, ESQ.* I HAVE this day received your second letter with the note of 551., at Twitnam, and will next week go to town, where, as soon as the figure is set up, I will pay the statuary. Your excess of punctuality 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 philoso * Of Bellowes or Belhouse, or Gosfield-hall, was born at Weymouth, educated at Wadham College, Oxford, and Gray's Inn; elected M. P. for St. Germains, in Cornwall, in 1710, 1713, and 1714, and for Sudbury in 1727. He was Justice of the Peace, and Deputy Lieutenant for the county of Essex. He married, as his second wife, Mrs. Newsham, to whom the preceding letters are addressed. His only son, John Knight, Esq., dying in June, 1727, he bequeathed by will all his estates to his wife, who became possessed of them upon his decease, Oct. 2, 1733. Her third marriage will be noticed hereafter. C. phical 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 again; that he would not make the box for it, &c. 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. 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. * Francis Bird, a statuary, whose principal work is the monument of Busby. C. DEAR SIR, LETTER VI. TO JOHN KNIGHT, ESQ. 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 sight of the parterre, and of administering grass to the lambs, and crowning them with flowers, &c. In order whereto, she had got two beauties in their kind ready to send thither at your first order. The season, I have several times admonished her, would be too cold for such tender creatures to travel, unless she made her friend give them her forthwith. So, in short, whenever you will direct your servant in town, or her (who will be your servant in town in a few days), they shall be delivered, and sent in what manner you appoint. My mother still remembers Mrs. Knight, though it is not to be told how much she is decayed since you saw her. I thank God she lives, and lives not in pain, though languid, and void of pleasure. I wish for you both, and all my friends, a life extended no longer than the enjoyment of it, and the possession of that understanding which will make us contented to part with the one, when we cannot preserve the other. I am, with sincerity, and all good wishes to each of you, dear Sir and dear Madam, Your, &c. SIR, LETTER VII. TO JOHN KNIGHT, ESQ. July 30, 1730. I HAVE long intended to tell you and Mrs. Knight, that I live, and live very faithfully, a servant to you both. Accidents prevented my seeing you before you left London; and I had (after many inquiries, which would have seemed impertinent, had I not thought Mrs. Knight in extreme danger) the satisfaction of hearing she was recovered enough to go a journey, almost the same day that she went for the very next I got to town, and found you had left it. Since that, your servant there told me she continued well: I hope it, but should be better satisfied to be ascertained by yourself. I hope you both enjoy whatever is to be enjoyed in the country, and where two, wellgathered together, make a thousand: for Mrs. Knight's sake, indeed, I wish a little quadrille in the midst of you. I am stuck at Twitnam, as fast as my own plants, scarce removeable at this season. So is Mrs. Patty Blount; but not stuck with me, but removable to all other gardens hereabouts. Women seldom are planted in the soil that would best agree with them: you see carnations fading and dirty in Cheapside, which would blush and shine in the country. Mrs. Cornish is just now going to some such soft retreat, at Hampstead, or Richmond, or Islington, having read the following epigram: When other fair-ones to the shades go down, Mrs. Blount bids me assure you she is faithfully your servant; and I have only to add, that my mother is much better this summer than she ought to be, not having seen Mrs. Knight; and that I am sick every other day as usual, and this day for one; but truly and always, dear Sir, your most affectionate and most humble servant. |