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. 'Tis certain the 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?

I am, etc.

LETTER XI.

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 Sherburne, 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 comprise 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 birth-days, and that all the Clergy in the country come to pay respects; both the Clergy and their Bells expecting from her, and the young Lady, farther business and farther 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 Cider3, and to tell Mr. W* that I am dead and buried.

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, etc.

LETTER XII.

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 Sherburne. I'm told, you are all upon removal very speedily, and that Mrs. Mary Digby talks in a letter to Lady Scu

He frequently expressed his total dislike of this poem; though its author was patronised by Bolingbroke, who also induced Philips to write the poem on Blenheim. Cider was elegantly tran

slated 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.

damore, of seeing my Lord Bathurst's wood in her way. How much I wish to be her guide through that enchanted forest, is not to be expressed: I look upon myself as the magician appropriated to the place, without whom no mortal can penetrate into the recesses of those sacred shades. I could pass whole days, in only describing to her the future, and as yet visionary beauties that are to rise in those scenes: The palace that is to be built, the pavilions that are to glitter, the colonades that are to adorn them Nay more, the meeting of the Thames and the Severn, which (when the noble Owner has finer dreams than ordinary) are to be led into each other's embraces through secret caverns of not above twelve or fifteen miles, till they rise and celebrate their marriage in the midst of an immense amphitheatre, which is to be the admiration of posterity a hundred years hence. But till the destined time shall arrive that is to manifest these wonders, Mrs. Digby must content herself with seeing what is at present no more than the finest wood in England.

The objects that attract this part of the world, are of a quite different nature. Women of quality are all turned followers of the camp in Hyde-park this year, whither all the town resort to magnificent entertainments given by the officers, etc. The Scythian Ladies that dwelt in the wagons of war, were not more closely attached to the luggage. The matrons, like those of Sparta, attend their sons to the field, to be the witnesses of their glorious deeds; and the maidens, with all their charms displayed, provoke the spirit of the Soldiers: Tea and Coffee

supply the place of Lacedemonian black broth. This camp seems crowned with perpetual victory, for every sun that rises in the thunder of cannon, sets in the music of violins. Nothing is yet wanting but the constant presence of the Princess, to represent the Mater Exercitus.

At Twickenham the world goes otherwise. There are certain old people who take up all my time, and will hardly allow me to keep any other company. They were introduced here by a man of their own sort, who has made me perfectly rude to all contemporaries, and won't so much as suffer me to look upon them. The person I complain of is the Bishop of Rochester. Yet he allows me (from something he has heard of your character and that of your family, as if you were of the old sect of moralists) to write three or four sides of paper to you, and to tell you (what these sort of people never tell but with truth and religious sincerity) that I am, and ever will be,

Your, etc..

LETTER XIII.

THE same reason that hinder'd your writing, hinder'd mine, the pleasing expectation to see you in town. Indeed, since the willing confinement I have lain under here with my mother (whom it is natural and reasonable I should rejoice with, as well as grieve), I could the better bear your absence from