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cern for the melancholy occafion of this, and I believe, many other letters, if I had not been fearful of increafing your trouble, and thought it greater refpect to forbear while it was new. Yet though I have had much affliction of my own, by my father's having been dangerously ill above three weeks, and continuing yet very weak, I have not been without a juft fenfe of your ladyfhip's, who, by your exceeding goodness to others, are entitled to all the returns of fympathy they can exprefs; and I am fure, I fhall always think myself concerned for whatever befalls a family for which I have a very great honour, though a ftranger to that part of it in which it has pieafed God to make so fad a breach. It would be a very great fatisfaction to me, if I thought that any thing I could offer,

grand children, ladies Jane, Frances, and Henrietta Chichester, by a fire at Belfast in Ireland. She conftantly kept two anniversary fafts; the one on the day when this calamity happened; the other on the day when her first husband was killed at the fiege of Barcelona. Her ladyship died in 1743.

joined with the better affiftance of those who are more capable, could afford your, ladyship any confolation in your forrow; which, though it has a very great cause, might have been much more aggravated, if Providence had not in mercy spared more than half the family to be remaining comforts. And though I am very fenfible of how little force reafon is against the fentiments of nature, yet your ladyship is fo good a chriftian as to be capable of a better aid from that excellent religion, whofe peculiar privilege it is to afford a fovereign remedy for the worst of evils by the principle it teaches, that all events are ordered by a wife and good Being, who always knows and intends what is beft for us, and will make every thing promote it, if we are not wanting to ourselves. And fince we are not left to chance, and know that the author of our lives has made them equally liable to outward accidents as to inward diseases and decays, and that he has a right

The earl had two fons and two daughters left.

to take back what he gave, in fuch a manner as he thinks fit, I fubmit it to your ladyship's confideration, whether any fort of death, how extraordinary foever, can be properly called unnatural, or any life faid to be cut fhort which has measured its appointed length; and infinite wifdom only knows whether the continuance, of our friends lives would always prove for their or our happiness, even when we most pasfionately defire it.

This I could not but mention, and if your ladyship is not partial to your grief, you will attend to thefe arguments of refignation, with which your own mind can better furnish you than what I can write. I pray GoD comfort your ladyship, and that honourable person who is the more immediate fufferer.

I am, with the greatest respect and fincerest wishes for your lady fhip's health and that of your whole family, madam,

Your ladyfhip's, &c.

JOHN HUGHES.

LETTER

LETTER IX.

JEFFREY GILBERT, Efq; to Mr.HUGHES.

SIR,

I HAVE confidered your Polyxena, and

I think it as fine a fubject to move terror

Barrister at law, and afterwards lord chief baron of the exchequer, firft in Ireland, and then in England. This gentleman (among other things) was author of "an abridgment of Mr. Locke's Effay on "human understanding," published in 1750, by Mr. (now Dr.) Dodd, and of an excellent tranflation of the 12th ode of the iid book of Horace, printed, (without a name) in " the wits Horace," p. 67.

+ There is a manuscript tragedy on this subject, entitled "The Captive Princefs," written by Dr. Smith, (afterwards one of the chief phyficians to the. Czarina) in which are fome fine fcenes. Of this writer and his work, Dr. Johnfon, in his "Life of "Savage," gives the following account : "Mr. "Smith, a gentleman educated at Dublin, being “hindered by an impediment in his pronunciation "from engaging in orders, for which his friends de

"figned

and compaffion in an audience as any I have read; and to make her more fo, I

"figned him, left his own country, and came to "London in queft of employment, but found his "folicitations fruitless, and his neceffities every day

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more preffing. In this distress he wrote a tragedy,' "and offered it to the players, by whom it was re"jected. Thus were his last hopes defeated, and he "had no other profpect than that of the moft deplo"rable poverty. But Mr. Wilks thought his per"formance, though not perfect, at least worthy of "fome reward, and therefore offered him a benefit. "This favour he improved with fo much diligence," "that the house afforded him a considerable fum,

with which he went to Leyden, applied himself to "the study of phyfic, and profecuted his defign with "fo much diligence and fuccefs, that when Dr. "Boerhaave was defired by the Czarina to recommend 66 proper perfons to introduce into Ruffia the practice " and study of phyfic, Dr. Smith was one of those "whom he selected. He had a confiderable pension "fettled on him on his arrival, and was afterwards "one of the chief phyficians at the Ruffian court." P. 16, note.

A grateful letter from Dr. Smith to Mr. Wilks, on this occafion, with fome account of his manner of living in Ruffia, may be feen in Chetwood's "Hif"tory of the Stage."

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