vates my heart. The last time I saw him (which I little thought would have been the last), after some of the most engaging discourse in his easy way, he promised himself, he said, to come much oftener to me than he used to do, since I had assured him how agreeable an interruption it would always be to me. He was ever contriving how to get his friends about him in the most agreeable manner: and when they were so, they were sure .of being easy and happy. I say what I think literally true, when I say that no one could be uneasy with him. Nor do I believe that ever any one was. And though his numerous relations (some not in affluence) will get a great deal by his death, I believe there is hardly one of them who would not gladly purchase his presence again with all that they can get by losing him. As to myself, I do not say that he was to me, in that rank of friendship in which one other person is. No one ever was: no one, I think, ever can be. But if I had been asked, whom of all my friends, next to that one, I would have chosen to have stayed longest with me in this miserable planet,I believe, from the knowledge I had of him from his childhood, I should have said, Sir William Willys. But he is suddenly gone, and in a most painful manner. Forgive this from your faithful, &c.

LETTER LX.

BISHOP HOADLY TO LADY SUNDON.

Grosvenor-street, July 18, 1732.

-Do not wonder that I interrupt you so soon, to beg you to let me know how you do. I cannot yet arrive at the perfection of weighing things which demand no such exactness, by grains and scruples; nor of being happy in an easy, philosophical indifference—or in the temper at all like it But when I am convinced that it is more agreeable to my friend that I should be so, I know, and I am sure, I can by degrees thoroughly effect it. In the mean while, let me act, and speak, agree. ably to my present notions of friendship. I never had a thought but that you were the truest and heartiest friend in the world. I no more doubt of your zeal to do substantial good offices to your friends, and to those who may outlive them, than I doubt of my own being alive. I think and know it to be great and uncommon; and I should be a most absurd creature, if I did not think these the very essence of true friendship. But, I think, there are circumstances, which, though of no importance without the other substantial part, yet make that itself, and the thought of it, more agreeable; vastly more agreeable than it would otherwise be. And where virtue and honour in the highest degree, and these all unite; here, I think, the agreeableness of friendship is in perfection, and above all other agreeablenesses in this world.

VOL. IV.

I

LETTER LXI.

BISHOP HOADLY TO LADY SUNDON.

The Bishop having with humour described his hearing Dr. Delany preach, at the King's Chapel, goes on thus

-I HEARTILY wish that both he, and his bro ther Berkley (who is truly the title of his own book), would keep their minute philosophy to themselves; or at least, would let religion alone, and not blend them into one inconsistent lump. They both seem to me to be well qualified to dress out a romance. Dean B., particularly, has beautiful imagery, and fine expression, and fruitful invention. But as to the native simplicity of religion, they are made to hurt it; and if they cannot be said to corrupt it, it is only because it is corrupted already to their hands. They do all they can to keep on the corruption; and I own, I think Alcephron the most plain attempt to bring obscurity and darkness into all science, as well as to make nonsense essential to religion, that this last age has produced. And I know very well that it was from such books, formed upon such principles exactly, that Dr. Clarke used to dread and foretel the total sabversion of all knowledge as well as of all relion;-of all that sir Isaac Newton, Mr. Locke, he himself, and many others, had been endeavouring to bring into some reputation. I cannot, indeed, say that the veil is well made, or well spread. I think it may very

easily be taken off, and the absurdities placed in a glaring light: as I have heard acknowledged in many instances by the greatest admirers of those dialogues. I would not have you think

that I put the two upon an equal foot. But when I see even the best of the two flattered and caressed for those very wounds he has given to all that is most worthy of the study or regard of reasonable creatures, I cannot help making an ejaculation-To what purpose are all endeavours to make knowledge and religion plain and amiable-when a few pretty words, either without a meaning, or with a very bad one, shall, like a charm, dissolve and tear to pieces all the labours of the Great!

LETTER LXII.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.

-NOISE, crowds, ringing of bells, great din ners, strange lodgings, company without conversation, and the like, have not made me either more in love with myself, or my situation in the world, than I was before. But they have still more recommended to me the private part of my life; the sweets of quietness, and the enjoyment of true friendship. I think, often, and most agreeably, of the happiness, the great happiness, of having a friend in whose good heart one may confide with the utmost security; and in whose good understanding one may be sure of the best advice, as

:

well as entertainment. That there is such a person in the world, I am certain from my own knowledge. And I would now ask no greater favour of Providence, than to make me as certain of the friendship of this person. I should esteem it a peculiar happiness in the decline of life; a support under the evils that generally attend it; and all the compensation for living on, which a reasonable mind could well wish for, after the concerns of our nearest relations are tolerably taken care of. You know best whether Providence has been so indulgent to me as to grant me this good and you know what my notion of friendship is. Without the strictest virtue and honour, there is no foundation for it; nor can it, without them, be friendship; or any thing higher than company-keeping, for low or ignominious purposes. If a beneficent temper and a readiness for good offices be added, these also are qualifications without which it cannot subsist. But what I understand by it is still something more; a sort of peculiar sympathy, which it is hard to define so as to be understood, if it be not felt; and if it be, it needs no definition. This latter, added to the former, is what completes the notion of what I mean by the word friendship, and what I wish for in the thing, &c.