in my life. For many years before his death, I saw this excellent man by intervals excruciated with a tormenting and incurable disease, which laid too deep and undiscoverable in his vitals to admit of any other relief than laudanum in large doses could at times administer : nothing but a soul serene and piously resigned as his was, could have borne itself up against a visitation at once so agonizing and so hopeless; á spirit however fortified by faith, and a conscience clear of reproach can effect great things, and my heroic friend through all his trials smiled in the midst of sufferings, and submit→ ted unrepining to his fate. One of the last letters he lived to write I received in Spain: I saw it was the effort of an exhausted frame, a generous zeal to send one parting testimony of his affection to me, and being at that time myself extremely ill, I was hardly in a capacity to dictate a reply. I was also at this time in habits of the most intimate friendship with two young men of my own age, sons of a worthy clergyman in our neighbourhood, the Reverend Mr. Ekins. Jeffery the elder, now deceased, was Dean of Carlisle, and Rector of Morpeth; John the younger is yet living and Dean of Salisbury.Few men have been more fortunate in life than these brothers, fewer still have probably so well deserved their good success. With the elder of these my intimacy was the greatest; the same passion for poetry possessed us both; the same attachment to the drama: our respective families indulged us in our propensities, and were mutually amused with our domestic exhibitions. My friend Jeffery was in my family, as I was in his, an inmate ever welcome; his genius was quick and brilliant, his temper sweet, and his nature mild and gentle in the extreme I loved him as a brother; we never had the slightest jar, nor can I recollect the moment in our lives, that ever gave occasion of offence to either. rated us in the more advanced period of our time; his duties drew him to a distance from the scenes I was engaged in; his lot was prosperous and placid, and well for him it was, for he was not made to combat with the storms of life. In early youth, long before he took orders, he composed a drama of an allegorical cast, which he entitled Florio, or The Pursuit of Happiness. There was a great deal of Our destinations sepa fancy in it, and I wrote a comment upon it almost as long as the drama itself, which I sent to him as a mark of my admiration of his genius, and my affection for his person. He also wrote a poem upon Dreams, which had great merit, but as I wished my friend to employ his talents upon subjects of a more elevated nature, I addressed some lines to him in the style of remonstrance, of which I shall transcribe no more than the concluding stanza 66 But thou, whose powers can wield a weightier theme, "Why waste one thought upon an empty dream? "Why all this genius, all this art display'd "To paint a vapour and arrest a shade? "Can fear-drawn shapes and visions of the night "Where the sylphs flutter and the fairies sport. "Thy Muse shall seize her harp and strike a loftier strain." During the time I lived in this pleasing intercourse with the family of these worthy brothers, there was an ingenious friend and school fellow of their's pretty constantly resident with them, of the name of Arden, a young man very much to be loved for the amenity of his temper and the vivacity of his parts. He was the life and soul of our dramatic amusements, and had an energy of character, as well as a fund of humour, that enabled him to give its true force and expression to every part he assumed in our private exhibitions. And here let me, not omit to mention a near relation, and once my most dear friend, Richard, son of the Reverend Doctor George Reynolds, and grandson of Bishop Reynolds, who married the daughter of Bishop Cumberland.This mild and amiable young man had in early life so far attached himself to the Earl of Sandwich, as to accompany him to the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle, but being perfectly independent in his fortune and of an unambitious placid nature, he declined pursuing any further the unquiet track of public life, and sate down with his family at their house of Paxton in Huntingdonshire, to the possession of which he succeeded, and where he still resides. I am here speaking of the days of my intimacy with this gentleman, and I look back to them with none but grateful recollection; in the course of these memoirs I shall have to speak of other days, that will recall sensations of another sort. If ever this once-valued friend shall be my reader, let me appeal to his candour for a fair interpretation of my feelings, when I cannot pass this period over without recalling to his memory and my own the name of his departed sister, who merited and possessed my best affections in their purest sense. The hospitable welcome I always received from the parents of this amiable lady, and their encouraging politeness to me might have tempted one less respectful of her comforts, and less sensible of her superior pretensions, to have presumed upon their favor and made tender of his addresses; but my precarious dependency and unsettled state of life, forbade such hopes, and I was silent. I now return to my narrative, in which I am prepared to speak both of others and myself no more than I know, or verily believe, to be truth. It was about this time I employed myself in collecting materials from the History of India for the plan of a poem in heroic verse, many fragments of which I find amongst my old papers, which prove I had bestowed considerable labour on the work, and made some progress. Whether I found the plan could not be made |