all off; if it does not, more the pity say I, and so will all say, I am confident, that know you; but surely ten thousand times more pity is it that you are not like one of Gulliver's Struldbrugs, immortal; but alas! that cannot be, such is the condition of miserable man; which puts me often in mind of the following lines I have somewhere or other met with, which I apply now and then to myself, by way of cordial.
What's past, we know, and what's to come, must be,
Or good or bad, is much the same to me;
Since death must end my joy or misery,
Fix'd be my thoughts on immortality.
But hold! I believe I begin to preach; and it is well if you do not think by this time that I imagine myself in Rathenny[1] pulpit instead of writing a letter to the dean, and therefore I forbear.
I know writing in your present circumstances must be so very troublesome and uneasy to you, that I am not quite so unreasonable as to expect it from you; but whenever your health permits you, it will be an infinite pleasure and satisfaction to me to hear from you; and the safest way of sending a letter to me will be under cover to lord Orrery, at Marston, near Froome in Somersetshire. I shall trouble you, sir, with my compliments to my very good friends and neighbours lady Acheson and her mother, for whom I have a very real esteem and value, and also to Dr. Helsham and his lady, and with my very affectionate
