fixed to them, are not in my hand. I am absolutely obliged to employ frequently two copyists to answer the various claims of distant friends and correspondents, and leave me at some liberty to attend to my more immediate duties. One desires me to give them a directory for a morning and evening prayer; another requests copies of letters of consolation I wrote to some distinguished persons under deep affliction; a third, who has hung up his votive tablets in the Temple of Neptune, desires me to correspond with him on such duties and subjects as may enable him to depart in peace with his Maker; a fourth earnestly intreats me to continue a correspondence from which he derives so much profit and entertainment. Humbled to the dust with the conscious sense of my own manifold infirmities, and my inability to discharge the various duties and tasks imposed upon me, I have at the same time not a moment to spare as superfluous, after acquitting myself of those duties which no adventitious circumstance can excuse me from attending to. I mean not however to elude the promise you have obtained from me of some account of my own life; like other Biographers, I shall use my own pleasure as to epitomizing and dilating my adventures. As I am in the disposition to write them (and in this respect too I must claim the privilege of a Poet's fancy, not to be forced when the muse does not inspire it), you shall receive a very faithful account of the chequered scenes of my life. The conclusion that I flatter myself you will draw, after perusing the whole narrative, is, whenever you walk by my tomb, if you should happen to survive me, this concluding stanza to an epitaph, that always affects me extremely whenever I hear it sung by a feeling voice:

Beneath yon stone the youth is laid;

O greet his ashes with a tear!

May Heav'n with blessings crown his shade,

And grant that peace he wanted here.

"You will please to preserve the letters I write on this subject, as I made much the same kind of promise in one of my letters to the Earl of Dartmouth, and as I shall beg them awhile to transcribe, I shall be glad to know, while I am writing them, that I have no occasion to double my labour by copying them, as they go out of my hands to my dear and paternal friend. You see how my heart flows along with my pen to you. I know not when nor where to finish; and yet I must not finish without making you many acknowledgements for your anxiety and attention concerning my health. The galoches and shoes were brought to me a few days since; and I shall not fail to observe your injunctions. As indifferent as I really am to what relates merely to myself, I shall not suffer this disposition to degenerate into a delirium of sentiment, nor rush, like Curtius, in consequence of it, into the pit of destruction.

"Mr. Bird, jun. who desires his respects, told me a quarter's salary lay ready for me when I choose to receive it; it was not due till the 18th of next month, and I did not intend to have taken it before that time; however, as I wanted to pay some money before that time, and have had occasion for a variety of necessaries, that you may continue to have no occasion to be ashamed of my externals,' I have been obliged to do what the French very expressly call, manger le bleden herbe. After my year of probation is expired, I hope to be able to deserve the title of a better economist than to live by anticipation; before that time, I despair of arriving at any proficiency in the saving maxims that Shenstone dealt out very liberally to every one in the Muses' train, but never once put in practice himself. I am very sensible we must be just before we can be said to be liberal, and the former quality I trust no one shall find that I am defective in, whatever becomes of the latter.

"You entertain me with your resolution to make the Bishop of Bristol's franks serve as a practical commentary on this last mentioned subject. You are determined his Lordship shall lose no opportunity of doing good before he is translated; and I am willing to shew you what a good disciple I can be upon occasion, by sending this and the accompaniments in an envelope from a hand that I hope is very far from being likely, so soon as the Bishop's *, to swell the sound,

66 6 Symphonious of ten thousand harps, that tune
Angelic harmonies.'

"For such I hope will be part of Dr. Newton's reward for many noble defences of his great master's honour and religion against the scorn of the libertine and the arrows of the infidel. You know my sentiments concerning the Priestleys, the Humes, &c. and will not, therefore, wonder that I should sensibly regret the probable loss of so distinguished a champion of Christianity.

"Dr. Rogers's + Sermons were particularly recommended to me by the Earl of Kinnoul; I have been greatly edified by them, but am very glad that the gentleman who lately put you upon the office of Inquisitor-general was not present when I preached one of them two years ago. My best and sincere respects attend Mr. and Mrs. Seward. That you may very long continue to be happy, and attain to a patriarchal, rather than an episcopal, age, is the cordial wishes of, my dear Sir,

"Your most affectionate and sincere, P. CUNNINGHAM."

Bishop Newton's death, however, did not take place till seven years after this date.

† Of whom see the "Literary Anecdotes," vol J. p. 154 ; vol. II. p. 57.

4. "DEAR SIR,

Eyam, March 28, 1776.

"Diffugere nives, redeunt jam gramina campis,'-in a very few weeks I hope to add,

"Arboribusque comæ.'

"The late fine weather that has been so genial as to produce these effects, and a variety of other instant avocations, have prevented me from an earlier acknowledgment of your favour containing the order for two guineas on the overseers; and of the Chinese column of writing you favoured me with in Miss Seward's very elegant letter of the beginning of this month. I call it a Chinese column because it was almost in the oriental style of writing from the top to the bottom, with no breadth for Ciceronian or Clarendonian periods; but in whatsoever form your letters greet me, I shall be happy to find, as I was then, that they contain accounts of your welfare and prosperity.

"I may in my turn greet you on the good accounts you must doubtless have had of the mine called Lady Wash, which as far as I am able to discover, from the overseers and other persons conversant in these things, will be an accession of better than €.200 per annum to your civil and ecclesiastical revenues at Eyam. I cordially congratulate you on the same *; and I flatter myself when you hear on your next visit an account of my proceedings and the state of your parish in general, you will not think, when you take a retrospect from the beginning of our connection, that your evil genius came into the Peak of Derbyshire under my shape and character. On my part, 'I faint not, neither am weary; but it is your misfortune that I shall certainly kill myself with exertions to please. So said C. Emanuel Bach, Director of the Concerts at Hamburgh; he said it however with the clause of being among such as deserved to be pleased. Now I am exactly in that predicament which he was not at Hamburgh, for I still continue to think that the singular regard and affection of your parishioners in general deserve to be repaid with equal fervour. But while I am endeavouring to give them continual evidence of this, I have but too much reason to apply to myself the motto of a Physician that I met in France, and which I was greatly charmed with: 'Consumo in aliis serviendo.' I have but one remedy to use, and on the supposition it is your general wish I should not in a hurry become Pulvis et Umbra' at Eyam, I shall not fail to use it, agreeably to the tenor of our first correspondence and agreement. While your health and inclinations may render the parochial duty

* Ten years after this, there had been a great failing in the lead mines, "Thank you," says Miss Seward to Mr. W. Newton, Dec. 17, 1786, for your mineral intelligence, unwelcome as in itself it proves. The value of Eyam living to my father, once near £700 a year, is not now. more than £150. So sink deeper and deeper, from year to year, our golden hopes in this watery mischief." Letters, vol. 1. p. 228.

agreeable to you during your stay at Eyam, I shall beg leave to use such kind reliefs on your part as opportunities of unbending and recruiting myself among my friends. I can very safely assure you, that no danger is to be apprehended of my listening to overtures of any kind during my occasional absence; my affections are now too firmly rivetted to Eyam and its environs to give you a shadow of uneasiness on that account, but I very plainly foresee, that without a few temporary relaxations of the nature I have mentioned, my intense and continual application to my parochial duties, and other literary and friendly engagements that will be coeval with myself, will in a very few years so totally relax and destroy my health and spirits, as to render me utterly unfit for any duties at all. When you are so good as to acquaint me with the time you propose to set your face towards Eyam, I shall be the better enabled to know how to shape my intended course, and regulate the length of my little cruize. Among the various claims that my friends have upon me, there is one to which I must pay a particular attention, a Yorkshire family, with whom I have been intimately connected above thirteen years, impatiently wish to see me. I have promised to take the opportunity of your stay at Eyam, to come over to Ecclesfield, where part of them reside, and pay them the grateful and affectionate acknowledgements that have always been due to them on my part since the first hour of our acquaintance. My friends at Almondbury are equally urgent with me; but I believe I shall postpone my visit to that part of the county to another season, and employ the remainder of the time I may have to spare nearer home. The Squire of Longston, by whom I have been received and entertained with particular marks of respect and regard, expects that I should accompany his grandson thither some part of the season I have mentioned, as I have no other time to spare for such excursions; indeed both himself, the Major, Mrs. Trafford, and the family in general, have been so singularly kind and affectionate in every part of their behaviour and notice of me, that I should be laid under obligations which I should never be able adequately to acknowledge, if it was not to their grandson and nephew, whom they are pleased to say, has done me and himself great honour by his various improvements during the little time he has been with me. I have no reason at present to doubt either his grateful disposition or attention, and that gives me alacrity to proceed with the pleasing task I have undertaken of his instruction. If it should please God to spare my life, I expect to see this young gentleman a great ornament to his family and country, and to derive many future pleasing emotions and reflections from having been so instrumental in rearing his tender thoughts, in teaching his young ideas how to shoot, and in fixing each generous purpose in his glowing breast.' The Major has been at a great expense in altering and decorating my Salon a manger;'

it is now, in consequence of his compliment, the prettiest room in Eyam. Nor has this been all; I am indebted to the care Major Wright has taken to prepare a very cordial reception for me at Hassop, for all the civilities and politeness I have received there from Mr. Eyre. My entertainments in the pleasure grounds, plantations, green-houses; and within doors with many fine paintings, and the uncommonly agreeable conversation of the owner, will not be the least pleasing circumstances of the intelligence I shall continue to send of my situation to the South of England. Mr. Eyre has given me a particular and general invitation to repeat my visits to Hassop; and he has also favoured me with some books to read.

"From Captain Bourne, of Rowsley, I have experienced, if I may so call it, an exuberance of hospitality and respect; he has also lent me Burgh's Political Disquisitions. When Mr. Parr, of Stanmore, who has my Lord Dartmouth's young sons under his care, and those of several other noblemen in administration, was asked whether he had read these Disquisitions; Have I read my Bible, Sir?' was the answer Mr. Parr gave to the question *. Captain Bourne moreover has presented me with a valuable pair of sleeve buttons, they are pebbles which he gathered himself in Martinico before that island surrendered to the English last war. Captain Bourne was then upon a reconnoitering party, and on his return had the pebbles set in gold. They are at length transferred from the torrid zone to the wrists of your humble servant; but I have had the misfortune yesterday to drop one of them in the dell that is now my favourite scene of meditation, and we have not yet recovered it. I mention these little particulars as a supplement to the other testimonies I gave you of your parishioners' affection to me; and I question not they will afford you on my account a kindred satisfaction. From the whole of my situation taken together, you may judge whether, when my parochial duties, correspondencies, and other similar employments and engagements are deducted, I have one spare moment remaining; indeed I never was less alone, or had less leisure in the whole course of my life. The new circle of connections in which my residence at Eyam has necessarily engaged me, has been a kind of vortex absorbing all remoter considerations; accordingly several of my southern friends complain heavily of my silence and apparent neglect of them. They have no real cause, for I purpose day after day to write to them, and employ my amanuensis to transcribe a variety of things to send them as a compliment of remembrance; in the mean time every succeeding day brings its full portion of employment, glides away like the last without the intended letter, and at length I find myself two, three, or four months after

* “Political Disquisitions, or an Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and Abuses," by James Burgh, an eminent writer in his day, 3 vols. 8vo, 1774, have the epithet of "excellent" in the Bibliotheca Parriana.