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much less to have written you an epistle. This appointment is only temporary, and during the illness of the present incumbent; but I look forward to an early period when I shall be appointed in full form: a consummation devoutly to be wished! My political sins seem to be forgiven me.

This is the season (Newyear's-day is now my date) of wishing; and mine are most fervently offered up for you! May life to you be a positive blessing, while it lasts, for your own sake; and that it may yet be greatly prolonged, is my wish for my own sake, and for the sake of the rest of your friends! What a transient business is life! Very lately I was a boy; but t'other day I was a young man; and I already begin to feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of old age coming fast o'er my frame. With all my follies of youth, and I fear, a few vices of manhood, still I congratulate myself on having had in early days, religion strongly imprinted on my mind. I have nothing to say to any one as to which sect he belongs to, or what creed he believes; but I look on the man, who is firmly persuaded of infinite wisdom and goodness, superintending and directing every circumstance that can happen in his lot-I felicitate such a man as having a solid foundation for hiş

mental enjoyment; a firm prop and sure stay, in the hour of difficulty, trouble, and distress; and a never-failing anchor of hope, when he looks beyond the grave.

January 12th.

You will have seen our worthy and ingenious friend, the doctor, long ere this. I hope he is well, and beg to be remembered to him. I have just been reading over again, I dare say for the hundred and fiftieth time, his View of Society and Manners; and still I read it with delight. His humour is perfectly original-it is neither the humour of Addison, nor Swift, nor Sterne, nor of any body but Dr. Moore. By the bye, you have deprived me off Zeluco, remember that, when you are disposed to rake up the sins of my neglect from among the ashes of my laziness.

He has paid me a pretty compliment, by quoting me in his last publication.*

Edward.

No. 141.

TO MRS.

20th. January, 1796.

I CANNOT express my gratitude to you for allowing me a longer perusal of Anacharsis. In fact I never met with a book that bewitched me so much; and I as a member of the library must warmly feel the obligation you have laid us under. Indeed to me, the obligation is stronger than to any other individual of our society; as Anacharsis is an indispensible desideratum to a son of the muses.

The health you wished me in your morning's eard, is, I think flown from me for ever. I have not been able to leave my bed to-day till about an hour ago. These wickedly unlucky advertisements I lent (I did wrong,) to a friend, and I am ill able to go in quest of him.

The muses have not quite forsaken me. The following detatched stanzas I intend to interweave in some disastrous tale of a shepherd.

No. 142.

To MRS. DUNLOP.

31st. January, 1795

THESE many months you have been two packets in my debt-what sin of ignorance I have committed against so highly valued a friend I am utterly at a loss to guess. Alas! Madam, ill can I afford, at this time, to be deprived of any of the small remnant of my pleasures. I have lately drunk deep of the cup of affliction. The autumn robbed me of my only daughter and darling child, and that at a distance too, and so rapidly, as to put it out of my power to pay the last duties to her. I had scarcely begun to recover from that shock, when I became myself the victim of a most severe rheumatic fever, and long the die spun doubtful; until after many weeks of a sick bed, it seems to have turned up life, and I am beginning to crawl across my room, and once indeed have been before my own door in in the street.

When pleasure fascinates the mental sight,

Affliction purifies the visual ray,

Religion hails the drear the untried night,

That shuts, for ever shuts! life's doubtful day.

No. 143.

To MRS. R*****.

Who had desired him to go to the Birth-day Assembly on that day to shew his loyalty.

4th. June, 1796.

I AM in such miserable health as to be utterly incapable of shewing my loyalty in any way. Rackt as I am with rheumatisms, I meet every face with a greeting like that of Balak to Balaam-" Come curse me Jacob; and come defy me Israel!" So say I-Come curse me that east wind; and come, defy me the north! Would you have me in such circumstances copy you out a love-song?

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I may perhaps see you on Saturday, but I will not be at the ball.-Why should I?" Man delights not me, nor woman either!" Can you supply me with the song, Let us all be unhap py together-do if you can, and oblige le pauvre miserable R. B.

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