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LETTER CCLVI.

To Mrs. THRAL E

DEAR MADAM,

London, August 25, 1780.

YESTERDAY I could write but about one thing. I am forry to find from my dear Queeney's letter to-day, that Mr. Thrale's fleep was too much fhortened. He begins however now, fhe fays, to recover it. Sound fleep will be the fureft token of returning health. The fwelling of his legs has nothing in it dangerous; it is the natural confequence of lax muscles, and when the laxity is known to be artificial, need not give any uneasiness. I told you fo formerly. Every thing that I have told you about my dear master has been true. Let him take purgatives, and let him fleep. Bleeding feems to have been neceffary now; but it was become neceffary only by the omiffion of purges. Bleeding is only for exigences.

I wish you or Queeney would write to me every post while the danger lafts. I will come if I can do any good, or prevent any evil.

For

For any other purpose, I fuppofe, now poor Sam: may be spared; you are regaled with Greek and Latin, and you are Thralia Caftalio femper amata choro; and you have a daughter equal to yourself. I fhall have enough to do with one and the other. Your admirer has more Greek than poetry; he was however worth the conqueft, though you had conquered me. Whether you can hold him

as fast, there may be fome dram of a scruple, for he thinks you have full tongue enough, as appears by fome of his verses; he will leave you for fomebody that will let him take his turn, and then I may come in again: for, I tell you, nobody loves you fo well, and therefore never think of changing like the moon, and being conftant only in your inconftancy.

I have not dined out for fome time but with Renny or Sir Joshua; and next week Sir Joshua goes to Devonshire, and Renny to Richmond, and I am left by myself. I wish I could fay nunquam minus, &c. but I am not diligent.

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I am afraid that I fhall not fee Lichfield this year, yet it would please me to fhew friends how much better I am grown: but I am not grown, I am afraid, less idle; and of idleness I am now paying the fine by having no leisure.

Does

Does the expedition to Sir John Shelly's go on? The first week of September is now at no great distance; nor the eighteenth day, which concludes another of my wretched years. It

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OF your injunctions, to pray

for

you and write to you, I hope to leave neither unobferved; and I hope to find you willing in a fhort time to alleviate your trouble by fome other exercise of the mind.

I am not withNo death fince that of my wife has ever oppreffed me like this. But let us remember, that we are in the hands of Him who knows when to give and when to take away; who will look upon us with mercy through all our variations of exiftence, and who invites us to call on him in the day of trouble. Call upon him in this

out my part of the calamity.

great

great revolution of life, and call with confidence. You will then find comfort for the paft, and fupport for the future. He that has given you happiness in marriage, to a degree of which, without perfonal knowledge, I fhould have thought the defcription fabulous, can give you another mode of happiness as a mother; and at laft, the happiness of lofing all temporal cares in the thoughts of an eternity in heaven.

I do not exhort you to reason yourself into tranquillity. We must first pray, and then labour; first implore the bleffing of God, and those means which he puts into our hands. Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret.

We read the will to-day; but I will not fill my first letter with any other account than that, with all my zeal for your advantage, I am fatisfied; and that the other executors, more used to confider property than I, commended it for wifdom and equity. Yet why should I not tell you that you have five hundred pounds for your immediate expences, and two thousand pounds a-year, with both the houses and all the goods?

Let us pray for one another, that the time, whether long or fhort, that fhall yet be granted us, may be well spent; and that when this life, which at the longest is very fhort, fhall come to an end, a better may begin which shall never end.

I am, deareft Madam,
Your, &c.

LETTER CCLVIII.

To Mrs. THRAL E.

I

DEAR MADAM,

April 7, 1781.

your.

mind grow

HOPE you begin to find clearer. My part of the lofs hangs upon me. I have loft a friend of boundlefs kindness at an age when it is very unlikely that I fhould find another.

If you think change of place likely to relieve you, there is no reason why you fhould not go to Bath; the diftances are unequal, but with regard to practice and business they VOL. II. O

are

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