1814.] New Plan of Tontines for Old Age. of 30%. at sixty; 401. at seventy; and 501. at eighty years of age. And the same result would hold, in regard to any number of children; for one hundred, or one hundred thousand; for a parish, a county, or a nation. The increase would also be in proportion to the number of pounds paid; that is, 5l. at birth, would produce 150l. at sixty; 2001. at seventy; and 250l. at eighty. Ought there then to be poor old men or women after a lapse of sixty years, when the operation of the plan proposed will begin to be effective? If there should be, what must they feel in regard to their parents, or the legislature of the time being, who knowing that the payment of a SINGLE POUND at their birth, would have rescued them from indigence, yet omitted to establish societies and pay such pound? Let me hope then that such societies will forthwith be established every where, and that Acts of Parlia ment, general and particular, will be passed to protect and foster them. Nor is it ever too late to take advantage of the plan, because 27. within the first year; 31. under five years; or 5l. under twenty years, would operate in an equal proportion to 1. at birth. Such funds might be made still more productive if they were employed in planting trees, and the produce accumulated. A system of planting would also be of great collateral benefit to the country, and enable the fund to begin to pay the annuitants at 50 years; and at 60, 70, and 80 years, to increase them respectively to 40, 50, and 601.; but as the details of planting might be liable to mismanagement, the accumula tion from interest would perhaps be more simple. In conclusion it may be observed, that as it is the legitimate object and end of all social arrangements to render justice to the members of the social compact; and as each preceding active generation yields possession of the world to each succeeding active generation, the superannuated survivors of the former have a natural right to indemnity and subsistence from the latter, as long as any of its mem *An Act of Parliament is requisite to guard against the purchase, sale, or alienation of the annuity or its reversion; to authorize checks against impositions; and to render trustees and others responsible; and when obtained, societies on any seale might be established, either public or private, for districts or sects, or friendly asociations on any scale, 197 hers survive, in return for improvements It is however more eligible that the By these simple arrangements, combi ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY ORIGINAL LETTERS between DR. EDWARD YOUNG, Author of Night Thoughts, and MR. SAMUEL RICHARDSON, Author of Clarissa, Grandison, &c. I (Continued from Page 423 of the last Volume.) LETTER XIX. HAVE lately received a very melancholy account of our friend Mrs. Grace Cole; you would rejoice me greatly you could send me better news of so valuable a person./ if Miss Lee is now in town, ill of the small-pox by inoculation, but, I hear, in a very fair way of recovery. Dr. Webster was here this week, who told me you was in perfect health, of which I give you joy. I hope all your fireside is in the same happy way, to whom my best wishes and services. I take for granted, Clarissa is putting on her last attire, and that we shall soon see her in public. That success may second all your undertakings is the sincere wish of, Dear Sir, Your very affectionate and obliged, LETTER XX. Wellwyn, July 17, 1746. My dear Sir, After long absence, long I mean to my feeling, I yesterday returned home, as to a pillow, which gives me that joy in rest of which you will not be able to entertain any idea these twenty years, I received the True Estimate, and shall, at my leisure, look it over, and return it. You gave me great pleasure in what you read to me at N. End, I mean that part that was new to me; and I wish you would lessen your apprehensions of length. If all fixes, and satisfies attention, the longer the better.. On his travels a very old man dines with me this day, the Rev. Mr. Watly, whose character may be briefly given by comparing him to a frosty night. There are many thoughts in him that glitter through the dominion of darkness. Tho' it is night, it is a star-light night, and if you (as you have promised) should succeed him in our little hemisphere, I should welcome a Itichardson as returning day. In a word, I love you, and delight in your conversation, which permits me to think of something more than what I see; a favour which the conversation of very few others will indulge to, Dear Sir, Your affectionate and obliged E. YOUNG. Pray my love and best wishes to your amiable fireside. LETTER XXI. Wellwyn, Aug. 17, 1746. I was a little struck at my first reading your list of evils in your last letter. Evils they are, but surmountable ones, and not only so, but actually by you surmounted, not more to the admiration than the comfort of all that know you. But granting them worse than they are, there is great difference between middle and old age. Hope is quartered on the middle of life, and fear on the latter end of it; and hope is ever inspiring pleasant dreams, and fear hideous ones. any good arises beyond our hope, we have such a diffidence of its stay, that apprehension of losing destroys the pleasure of possessing it. It adds to our fears 1814.] Original Letters between Dr. Young & Mr. Richardson. 139 fears rather than encreases our joys. What shall we do in this case? Help me to an expedient; there is but one that I know of: which is,-that since the things of this life, from their mixture, repetition, defectiveness, and, in age, short duration, are unable to satisfy, we must aid their natural by a morul pleasure, we must season them with a spice of religion to make them more palateable; we must consider that 'tis God's will that we should be content and pleased with them: and thus the thinness of the natural plea sure, by our sense of joining an obedience to heaven to it, will become much more substantial and satisfactory. We shall find great account in considering content, not only as a prudence, but as a duty too. Religion is all, and (happy for us!) it is all-sufficient too in our last extremities: a full proof of which I will steal from yourself. So all-sufficient is religion, that you could not draw in Clarissa the strongest object of pity without giving us in it (thanks to her religion) an object of envy too. Pray my love and service to all, and to Mr. Grover among the rest, who has lately much obliged, Dear Sir, Your truly affectionate humble servant, and Clarissa's admirer, E. YOUNG. LETTER XXII. I thank you for enabling me, at my time of day, to think with great pleasure of living another year. A summer bearing such fruit as you kindly give me cause to expect, may excuse me for wish ing to see longer days than we at present enjoy. I consider Clarissa as my last amour; I am as tender of her welfare as I am sensible of her charms. This amour differs from all other in one respect, I should rejoice to have all the world my rivals in it. The waters here are not new things, they were in great vogue fifty years ago; but an eminent physician of this place dying, by degrees they were forgot. We have a physician now near us who drinks them himself all this winter. And a lady comes seven miles every morning for the same purpose. They are the same as Tunbridge, and I myself have found from them just the same effect. As to the melancholy part of your letter, our Chelsea friend, poor soul! But God is good. And we know not what we pity. She is dead to us; she is in another state of existence; we are in the world of reason; she is in the kingdom of imagination; nor can we more judge of her happiness or misery, than we can judge of the joy or sorrow of a person that is asleep. The persons that sleep are (for the time) in the kingdom of imagination too; and she, as they, suffers, or enjoys, according to the nature of the dreams that prevail. I heartily rejoice, that at length you find benefit from your tar-water: tar by winter, and steel by summer, are the two champions sent forth by Providence to encounter and subdue the spleen. Miss Lee joins me in the kindest regard and humble service to Mrs. Richardson and her amiable fireside. She gratefully acknowledges the receipt of your many favours, and hopes you'll put it in her power to shew her sensibility of them by her care of you at Wellwyn. Aud, she says, you'll still oblige her more if you bring a female Richardson along with you. I bless God I am well; and I am composing, but it is in wood and stone, for I am building a steeple to my church; and as a wise man is every thing, I expect from you, as an architect, a critic upon it. When you see Mr. Speaker, I beg my best respects and grateful acknowledgements for his enquiring after me. I had almost forgot to tell you, that an Irishman has run away with one of my neighbours, and that with such circumstances of intrigue and distress, that its truth alone hinders it from being an excellent romance: just as fiction alone hinders your's from being an excellent history. If you see good Miss Parsons, tell her she has the best wishes of my heart. I humbly thank you for the kind offer of something you have printed. I hope soon to be in town, and to prevent your designed trouble. I am, with true regard, and sincere affection, dear Sir, Your most humble servant, E. YOUNG. Pray my service to Mr. Lintot. I thought of making some additions to that piece; but, on second thoughts, I let it alone; so that it may go to the press as it is. Pray my humble service to Mr. Grover; and tell him the poverty I men tioned in one of my letters to him, is now fallen on me. You say, my dear friend, that I can't but think true; but to live as one ought requires requires constant, if not intense, thinking. The shortness and uncertainty of life is so evident, that all take it for granted; it wants no proof. And what follows? Why this, because we can't deny it, therefore we forget it; because it wants no proof, therefore we give it no attention. That is, we think not of it at all, for a very odd reason, viz. because we should think of nothing else. This is too strictly expressed, but very near the truth. Ask Cibber if he's of my opinion. On your telling me you drank tar-water, I borrowed Mr. Prior's Narrative, where I find such an account of it, that I design to drink it myself, and to give it to any neighbour that will pledge me. But that author cautions us about frauds in tar, which will defeat our expectations from it. He says it must be Norway tar, of a deep brown, and pretty thin, (page 170.) Since you drink it, 'tis your interest to know where the best is to be had, and if you do know, and are at leisure to procure me six gallons of it, 'twill much oblige, Dear Sir, Your truly affectionate and obliged humble servant, E. YOUNG. There's a Wellwyn carrier at the Windmill in St. John street, Smithfield, who comes out of town, Mondays and Thursdays, every week. I have now but an inch of life left, and am for setting it up on a save-all of your providing. Miss L. joins me in hearty good wishes and service to your fireside. Pray how fares Clarissa? LETTER XXIV. I thank you for my tar; I will be out of your debt for that, as soon as I get to town, but never out of your debt for ma. ny more material favours. I shall brew it soon, and then I'll drink your health in it to give myself a better title to my own. You said in your last that you was somewhat better for tar-water. In long chro nical cases perseverance is the point. And so it is in the greatest point of all. No man is so profligate but he is good for moments; perseverance only is wanting to make him a saint. As you persevere in the great point, persevere in this; to a good heart add a good constitution, and then you are only not an angel, as happy as mortality can admit. That you may be so is the prayer of, dear sir, Your affectionate and obliged humble servant, E. YOUNG. LETTER XXV. Rév. Sir, Dec. 24, 1746. I am in great and unusual arrear with you; but I beg of you to believe, that it is not owing to the want of a true and sincere respect for you, and of a due regard for your favours. But you gave me hope of seeing you in town, when I thought to thank you, and to desire you to thank good Miss Lee, for both your kind invi tations: I am sorry your stay in town was so short, as not to permit you to give me this hoped-for pleasure. You tell me, Sir, in one of your fa. vours, that you are composing; but that it is in wood and stone. A worthy work! But, Sir, I expect, the world will still expect more durable works from Dr. Young than wood and stone can furnish. Then, having given your orders, the workmen acquit you of any further cares than those that require your purse and your weekly inspection. But they cannot employ your nightly meditations; your writing studies; a whole creation ever opened and opening before you, with new and improving beauties. And can Dr. Young say, that he has sung the God of that creation enough, while he affords him faculties undecayed, and a judgment still improving? The important, the solemn subject you mention, may be best, (I humbly sup pose) cultivated by meditations intended for the public eye. Can you better prepare to meet the last solemn hour, than by preparing others to meet it too? The good man is in a daily course; which, like a taper once lighted, pursues its way to a bright extinction, illuminating, till that awful pericd, all around it. Every hour makes the next happier and easier, till the fear of death is subdued; and then chearful thoughts must intervene, and the soul will be at leisure to expand itself. Think not then, good Sir, to let the solemn so very much engross you, as to excuse you from the serene and the chearful; but let us see, that what you have conquered, humanly speaking, conquered, the less considerate must not still think terrible. But I know, Sir, you must, you cannot help thinking in such a way, as will instruct the world to think; and will here rest the point, in the hope at least, that it cannot be otherwise. I hope, 1814.] Original Letters between Dr. Young & Mr. Richardson. 141 I hope, sir, you find benefit by your tar-water. I exceeded your quantity, for the sake of filling the cask, for the better carriage. I promised myself some benefit from it; but am afraid my nerves are too much unbraced ever to be greatly bettered by human medicines. I have, however, been much worse, and so must sit down, and pray for patience and resignation; thanking God it is no worse. A happy season to you, and many happy seasons; with my wife's and little girl's likewise, to you, and to Miss Lee, are the wishes of, Rev. Sir, Your most obliged and S. RICHARDSON. LETTER XXVI. I always suspected the world to be a little foolish, but on further thought I find it not only foolish, but folly itself, folly in the extreme. sistency, so much we take from their very being. Despair not, ny dear friend, but proceed and prosper; and let us, when we meet in the summer, jointly praise and adore that indulgent Provi dence which has sent so very noble a remedy in our days; and, I am sorry to say, in our necessities. Non vitiosus homo es, Zoile, sed vitium. A full and strong conviction of the vanity of the present, and of the importance of the future, is, I think, the most complete notion of human wisdom. Now the very reverse of this seems to be the almost universal maxim of mankind. But it is something, you'll say, to be wise for the present. But in that too they as noto. riously fail. For what is being wise for the present, but taking care of one's self? And what is one's self but body and soul? But they neglect the first as much as the last; or rather they neglect the first by neglecting the last; for a wise Providence has so ordered it, (to make our happiness, though divided by different states and periods, yet still, as it were, of a-piece) that virtue is the best physician. And what is virtue, but obedience to reason? And reason, I think, strict reason, as virtue's apothecary, provides for us, at this time, tar water. I have found from it surprising good effects; and I am verily persuaded, that if you can but be obstinate in your persever ance, you will do the same. Despair often imposes itself upon us under the specious, but false character, of modesty and resignation. But those soft and amiable virtues must be quite consistent with the full prerogatives of courage and resolution, or they are cheats; they are not what they pretend to be. It is with the human virtues, as with the divine attributes, they are allies, not rivals. As much as we take from their con MONTHLY MAG, No. 252, You make an apology for not writing: I write, because I'm at leisure; you for bear, because you are not; and both these are equally right: so that your apo logy wants an apology. If I'm apprehensive that lay a tax on your time (which I know is so precious with you) by my writing, I shall be forced to for bear. Clarissa is my rival, and such a rival I can bear: she'll pay me what you ove me, tho' you shou'd owe the correspondence of an age. To the children, not of your pen, and to Mrs. Richardson, Caroline joins in the best wishes and re spects. I am, dear Sir, Your affectionate and obliged humble servant, E. YOUNG. They who have experienced the wonderful effects of tar-water, (of which I am one) reveal its excellencies to others; I say reveal, because they are beyond what any can conceive by reason, or na tural light. But others disbelieve them, tho' the revelation is attested past all scruple, because to them such strange excellencies are incomprehensible. Now give me leave to say, that this infidelity may possibly be as fatal to morbid bodies, as other infidelity to morbid souls. I say this in honest zeal for your welfare. I am confident, if you persist, you'll be greatly benefited by it. In old obstinate, chronical complaints, it probably will not show its virtue under three months; tho' secretly, it is doing good all the time. I will pay my tar bill in Hilary term. Adieu. The delightful weather we have had brings forward our season for the steelwater, and consequently of my enjoying you at this place, for your health, and my great pleasure. I do assure you, from the authority of the best physicians, and from experience, which is a better physician than the college can afford, that this spring has every virtue of Tunbridge in it. I have corrected the Eighth Night, you will let me know when you have occasion for it. I forgot to tell you that U this |