useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation. The greatest benefit, which one friend can confer upon another, is to guide, and incite, and elevate his virtues. This your mother will still perform, if you diligently preserve the memory of her life, and of her death: a life, so far as I can learn, useful, wise, and innocent; and a death resigned, peaceful, and holy. I can not forbear to mention, that neither reason nor revelation denies you to hope that you may increase her happiness by obeying her precepts; and that she may, in her present state, look with pleasure upon every act of virtue to which her instructions or example have contributed. Whether this be more than a pleasing dream, or just opinion of separate spirits, is indeed of no great importance to us, when we consider ourselves as acting under the eye of God: yet surely there is something pleasing in the belief, that our separation from those whom we love is merely corporeal; and it may be a great incitement to virtuous friendship, if it can be made probable, that that union, which has received the divine approbation, shall continue to eternity.

There is one expedient, by which you may, in some degree, continue her presence. If you write down minutely what you remember of her from your earliest years, you will read it with great pleasure, and receive from it many hints of soothing recollection, when time shall remove her yet farther from you, and your grief shall be matured to veneration. To this, however painful for the present, I can not but advise you, as to a source of comfort and satisfaction in the time to come: for all comfort. and all satisfaction is sincerely wished you by, dear sir, your, &c. S. JOHNSON.

From Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, on the Death of
Mr. Thrale.

DEAREST MADAM,

London, April 5, 1781.

Or your injunctions to pray for you and write to you, I hope to leave neither unobserved; and I hope to find you willing in a short time to alleviate your trouble by some other exercise of the mind. I am not without my part of the calamity. No death since that of my wife has ever oppressed 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 existence, and who invites us to call on him in the day of trouble. Call upon him in this great revolution of life, and call with confidence. You will then find comfort for the past, and support for the future. He that has given you happiness in marriage, to a degree of which, without personal knowledge, I should have thought the description fabulous, can give another mode of happiness as a mother; and, at last, the happiness of losing 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 blessing of God, and then use those means which he puts into our hands. Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business has little room for useless neglect.

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 satisfied; and that the other executors, more used to consider property than I, commend it for wisdom and equity. Yet why should I not tell you, that you have five

hundred pounds for your immediate expenses, 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 short, that shall yet be granted us, may be well spent; and that when this life, which at the longest is very short, shall come to an end, a better may begin, which shall never end. I am, dearest madam, your, &c.

S. JOHNSON.

Wm. Cowper, Esq. to Mrs. Cowper.

MY DEAR COUSIN,

May 10, 1780.

I Do not write to comfort you; that office is not likely to be well perforined by one who has no comfort for himself; nor to comply with an impertinent ceremony, which in general might well be spared upon such occasions: but because I would not seem indifferent to the concerns of those I have so much reason to esteem and love. If I did not sorrow for your brother's death, I should expect that nobody would for mine; when I knew him, he was much beloved, and, I doubt not, continued to be so. To live and die together is the lot of a few happy families, who hardly know what a separation means, and one sepulchre serves them all; but the ashes of our kindred are dispersed indeed. Whether the American gulf has swallowed up any other of my relations, I know not; it has inade many

mourners.

Believe me, my dear cousin, though after a long silence, which perhaps nothing less than the present concern could have prevailed with me to interrupt, as much as ever, your affectionate kinsman, WM. COWPER.

Dr. Tillotson (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury) to Mr. Nicholas Hunt, when near the close of life.

SIR,

I AM Sorry to understand by Mr. Janeway's letter to my son, that your distemper grows upon you, and that you seem to decline so fast. I am very sensible how much easier it is to give advice, in the case of another, than to take it in our own. I have been exercised, of late, with a very severe trial, in the loss of my dear and only child; in which I do perfectly submit to God's good pleasure, firmly believing that he always does what is best. And yet, though reason is satisfied, passion is not so soon appeased; and when nature has received a wound, time must be allowed for the healing of it. Since that, God has thought fit to give me a nearer summons, and a closer warning of my mortality, in the danger of an apoplexy: which yet, I thank God, has occasioned no very melancholy reflections: but this, perhaps, is more owing to natural disposition, than to philosophy and wise consideration. Your case, I know, is very different: you are of a temper naturally melancholy, and under a distemper apt to increase it; for both which great allowances are to be made.

And yet, I think, that the following considerations, which both reason and religion offer us, are of such solidity and strength, as may very well support our spirits, under all the frailties and infirmities of the flesh. God is perfect love and goodness. We are not only his creatures, but his children; and we are as dear to him as to ourselves. He does not willingly grieve us. All the afflictions which befall us, are intended for the cure and prevention of greater evils, of sin and

punishment; therefore, we ought not only to submit to them with patience, as being deserved by us; but to receive them with thankfulness, as being designed to do us that good, and to bring us to that sense of Him and ourselves, which perhaps nothing else would have done. The sufferings of this present life are but short and slight, compared with that extreme and endless misery, which we have deserved; and with that exceeding and eternal weight of glory, which we hope for in the other world. If we are careful to make the best preparation we can for death and eternity, whatever brings us nearer to our end, brings us nearer to our happiness; and how rugged soever the way may be, our comfort is, that it leads to our Father's house, where we shall want nothing that we can wish. When we labour under a dangerous distemper that threatens our life, what would we not be content to bear, in order to a perfect recovery, could we be assured of it? And should we not be willing to endure much more, in order to obtain happiness, and that eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, has promised? Nature, I know, is fond of life, and apt to be still lingering after a longer continuance here. And yet a long life, with its usual burthens and infirmities, is seldom desirable: it is but the same thing over again or worse; so many more days and nights, summers and winters; a repetition of the same pleasures, but with less relish; a return of the same, or greater, pains and trouble, but with less strength to bear them.

These, and the like considerations, I entertain myself with, not only with contentment, but comfort; though with great inequality of temper, and with much mixture of human frailty, which will always adhere to us whilst we are in this world.