industry, but the divinæ particula auræ, which blows in so sharp a climate, that many, in all ages, have been starved by it. I believe one may take a voyage with a Dutch skipper a whale-fishing into Greenland with less danger and more profit, and yet come back improved enough for the conversation of a Chaplain in Ordinary. Adieu, best of Friends! and confidently believe me to be your most affectionate and most devoted brother and servant, W. WARBURTON. LETTER XVII. For the Rev. Dr. STUKELEY, at Mr. Sisson's. DEAREST SIR, February 19, 1732-3. Your kind letter of the 13th gave me extreine great pleasure, to find that you had proceeded so extremely right in 's affair. I knew you would get great credit by refusing him a testimonial; and the fear of your having given him one made me in pain for the consequences. You rightly observe, the giving him a title was nothing; for that is a matter that relates only to his support, not at all to his morals. I might, indeed, easily have imagined you would have set me right when I saw you, and so might have well spared my reflections on it; but you will be so good as to pardon my wrong apprehensions. But I will tell you another thing: this testimonial, which, had it been of your siguing, would have made much clamour, you will find the world will entirely overlook in the inconsiderableness of the three subscribers to it. And this is the way of the world. You say, poor bas almost lost an eye one would imagine the Bishop was in that condition when he laid his hand on him, and so (like the fellow's wife who had but one eye) saw but half his faults. But Providence will turn every thing to the best; and, if the Gentleman reforms, I shall be exceeding glad. I am impatient to see Sir Isaac's book *. If you have it of your own in town, and have read it, I should be obliged to you if you would take this way of conveying into the country where it must come; namely, by sending it by Newbal's waggon, directed for me at Newark; and, when I have read it over, I will take care to send it safe to Stamford. To be sure, it will not be news to you, to tell you that your Cousin Munn is dead; perhaps you may not know the particulars of his will-to this effect: He bequeaths to his wife (in case she be molested in her jointure) 1000l.; otherwise 200l. to be paid at his mother's decease; and 200l. to be paid Mr. How at the same time.—I see honest Edmund Weaver† now and then; he has not done our Dials yet, for he exhausts all the science of old Ptolemy and Albumazar upon them. Providence protect you, and send you well down from a sickly, wicked town to the healthful and virtuous embraces of your excellent spouse; and believe me ever to be, dearest Sir, Your most faithful and most affectionate Friend, W. WARBURTON.' LETTER XVII. For the Rev. Dr. STUKELEY, at Stamford. March 4, 1732-3. DEAREST SIR, I HOPE this will find you safe at home from your last London journey, and free from the gout; though, if that be a vindictive enemy, you can expect no quarter of it for the future, who have so unsparingly discovered all its secrets, its fort, and its foibles and given such exact directions for the safe attacking, and the entire mastering of its virulence, for I have seen your fine Discourse on the Sir Isaac Newton's "Observation on the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John. 1732." At that time a well-known Almanack-maker. use use of Oils, &c. * Dr. Taylor and I read it together with infinite pleasure. He is full of its praises, and swears you write as good a style as Dr. Freind. It afforded him the greater pleasure, I believe, on his just before having been reading a ridiculous pamphlet of Hartley's, which he sent from Bury, addressed to the old women in that place, in favour of inoculation. There was no part pleased us more than that beautiful and ingenious conjecture, towards the conclusion of it, about the benefit the old Romans received by anointing themselves with oil. It is certainly very ingenious. I am only in some doubt about the fact; namely, that the old Romans, after the overflow of intemperance, were but little subject to the Gout. This you will clear up to me when I see you; for it seems to appear, from the Epistles of the younger Pliny, that the distemper was at least as common, and as violent, as with us. He speaks of it as an hereditary distemper, as caused by intemperance, as being so violent as to seize all the limbs at once with the most exquisite torments; speaks of men who killed themselves, when no longer able to endure the frequent returns of it. These are all marks of a very prevailing distemper; and his Uncle, in his Natural History, book xxvi. c. 10. hints at as much; though what he says in his first book has a different cast, when examined, it will appear to confirm his Nephew's account. These, you know, are his words: "Podagra morbus rarior solebat esse, non modò patrum avorumque memorid, verùm etiam nostrá.” * Dr. Stukeley, soon after his settling at Stamford, found considerable relief from the Gout by the Oleum Arthriticum, invented by Dr. Rogers, a Physician in that town; and in 1733 published an account of the success of the application of these Oils in innumerable instances, in a Letter to Sir Hans Sloane. He published also "A Treatise on the Cause and Cure of the Gout, from a new Rationale;" which, with an abstract thereof, has passed through several editions. † Dr. David Hartley practised physic, first at Newark, afterwards at Bury, and finally at Bath, where he died Aug. 5, 1757. Against the objections of Dr. Warren, of Bury. In the first place, unless the distemper was very common at the time of writing, the term rarior, when applied to the preceding times, is very improper. But the most remarkable part is, his extending the word rarior to the times so low as within the memory of the oldest man then living; for, that is the true sense of nostrá memorid. Now, to account for this, it is to be observed, that though an age or two backwards they had introduced the Grecian luxury; yet by that was only understood the extravagance of building, furniture, equipage, and rarities : not of intemperance, that is, excess in eating and drinking. This is plainly seen by the times of the first Cæsar: the Grecian luxury was then at its height; and though all rarities for the room, the bed, and the table, were sought for all the world over, they were abstenious enough in the quantity, as appears from the Letters of Tully; and they were only the very abandoned profligates that transgressed in this particular. Under Augustus, we may perceive by Horace, intemperance and excess were coming in but his manner of satirising the vice shews that but few were infected with it. But in the times of Juvenal and the Plinys it poured in like a torrent; and then it was, I presume, the disease spread proportionably: so that, if this be true, Pliny might well say it was rarior nostrá memoriá; and yet might it be very prevailing at the time he wrote; and the turn of the period, as I said before, seems to imply so much. But you will clear up : this matter to me. -- Dear Sir, I am in hopes to see you at the Visitation, to have your company home. I intend to be at Grantham on Sunday night, because I know you -come over-night, that I may have as much of your company as I can. My most humble service to good Mrs. Stukeley and Miss, conclades me, most dear Sir, Your most affectionate, W. WARBURTON. LETTER LETTER XVIII. For the Rev. Dr. STUKELEY, Rector of All Saints, in Stanford. DEAR SIR, July 29, 1734. I intended long before now to have waited on you, had not the account you gave me, when I last saw you, of the manner you intended to dispose of yourself for six or eight weeks from that time, made me (by agreement with you) alter my design, till I heard from you, or saw you at Broughton; one or both of which you promised I might expect from you. From that day to this, you have persevered in a long and obstinate silence; so long, that perhaps by this time you may have forgot you promised either to write or come. I do not know how to reconcile this to the state of our friendship; which on the one hand, as it is past all forms, punctilios, and ceremonies, so on the other will not dispense with any thing that looks like forgetfulness. I had once resolved to see how long you would persevere in it; but my fondness for you made me impatient till I had expostulated with you. From a man I love, I can bear any thing; and therefore think I may be allowed to say any thing my friendship dictates; and I hope this will be the last time I shall have occasion to write on this subject.-About five weeks ago Mr. Smith came to pay me a visit on Sunday evening; by whom I learned that good Mrs. Stukeley was then at Newark. I did not press him to stay Monday night, because I had a mind to go thither to pay my respects to her. Accordingly, the moment he left me, I went to Newark that evening, and found she had left the town in the morning. And this accident was the only intelligence I had of your family till last week, that I went to pay a visit I had long owed to Mr. Richard Welby; when, being so near Mr. |