Lord C. Mr. B. are cruel inftances of this. Oh for Omnipotence to call fuch favages back to life, and chain them to the hardest tasks of existence! Is not the crime of fuicide fufficient, without adding to it the murder of a heart-broken wife or child? Hence you may, perhaps, draw. an argument that every fuicide is a madman. For my part, I have no doubt of it; and if Humain had fallen into the hands of a friend lefs mad than Bordeaux, he might have lived to have fought another day.

And here ends a long, dull letter, about a fhort, entertaining converfation (on your part at leaft). Don't stay long out of town, or I shall write you madder notes than you received du ring the week I was employed on the letter about Chatterton. When I think of you, I am mad- What must I be when I have reason to think (or fancy fo) that you don't think of me? G. is gone.

LETTER

To the SAME.

LIV..

1 March, $779.

Though we meet to-morrow, I must write you two words to-night, just to say, that I have all the hopes in the world ten days, at the utmost, will complete the bufinefs. When that is done,

your

your only objection is removed along with your debts; and we may, furely, then be happy, and be fo foon. In a month, or fix weeks at furthest, from this time, I might certainly call you mine. Only remember that my character, now I have taken orders, makes expedition neceflary. By to-night's poft I fhall write into Norfolk about the alterations at our parfonage.-To-morrow.G.'s friendship is more than I can ever return.

LETTER

TO CHARLES

LV.

Efq.

20 March, 1779.

Your coming to town, my dear friend, will anfwer no end. G. has been fuch a friend to me, it is not poffible to doubt her information.——— What interest has fhe to ferve? Certainly none. Look over the letters, with which I have fo peftered you for these two years, about this business. Look at what I have written to you about G. fince I returned from Ireland. She can only mean well to me. Be not apprehenfive. Your friend will take no ftep to difgrace himself. What I fhall do I know not. Without her I do not think I can exift. Yet I will be, you fhall fee, a man, as well as a lover. Should there be a

rival,

vival, and fhould he merit chastisement, I know you'll be my friend. But I'll have ocular proof of every thing before I believe.

Your's ever.

LETTER

To the SAME.

LVI.

6 April, 1779.

It fignifies not. Your reasoning I admit. De pair goads me on. Death only can relieve me. By what I wrote yesterday, you must see my refolution was taken. Often have I made ufe of my key to let myself into the A. that I might die at her feet. She gave it me as the key of love-Little did she think it would ever prove the key of death. But the lofs of Lady H. keeps Lord S. within.

My dear Charles, is it poffible for me to doubt G.'s information? Even you were staggered by the account I gave you of what paffed between us in the Park. What then have I to do, who only lived when she loved me, but to cease to live now The ceases to love? The propriety of fuicide, its cowardice, its crime-I have nothing to do with them. All I pretend to prove or to disprove is my misery, and the poffibility of my existing un

der

der it. Enclosed are the last dying words and confeffion of poor Captain J. who deftroyed himBut these lines are not the

felf not long ago. things which have determined me. There are many defects in the reasoning of them, though none in the poetry. -His motives are not mine, nor are his principles mine. His ills I could have borne. He told me of his inducement, poor fellow! But I refufed to allow them, Little did I imagine that I should ever have inducements, as I now have, which I must allow. Thefe extraordinary lines are faid to be his. Yet, from what I knew of him, I am flow to believe it. They strike me as the production of abilities far fuperior to his; of abilities fent into the world for fome particular purpose, and which Providence would not suffer to quit the world in fuch

a manner.

Till within this month, till G.'s information, I thought of felf-murder as you think of it. Nothing now is left for me but to leap the world to come. If it be a crime, as I too much fear, and we are accountable for our paffions, I must stand the trial and the punishment. My invention can paint no punishment equal to what I fuffer here.

Think of those paffions, my friend those paffions of which you have so often, fince I knew A a Mifs.

Mifs

spoken to me and written to me. If you will not let me fly from my mifery, will you not let me fly from my paffions? They are a pack of bloodhounds which will inevitably tear me to pieces. My careleffnefs has fuffered them to overtake me, and now there is no poffibility, but this, of efcaping them.The hand of Nature heaped up every fpecies of combustible in my bofom. The torch of Love has fet the heap on fire. I muft perish in the flames. At first I might perhaps have extinguished themthey rage too fiercely. If they can be fmothered, they can never be got under. Suppose they fhould confume any other perfon befide myself. And who is he will anfwer for paffions fuch as mine? At prefent, I am innocent.

noW

Did you ever read D'Arnaud? Let me tell you a story I found in him the other day. It made me shudder at the precipice on which I stand. It determined me to shut the adamantine gates of death against poffibility.

Salvini, an Italian (no Englishman could commit his crime), in whose mind my mind discovered its relation, becomes intimate with Adelson, an Englishman of fortune, at Rome. Salvini accompanies him to England, and is introduced by him to Mrs. Rivers and her daughter, his intended wife. Adelfon introduced a rival and a but you shall hear. Love, who had never before been able to conquer Salvini, now tyrannized over him, as cruelly as he has ty

rannized