Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/32

 12 poor, soldiers and bishops meet together often in my library."

The bishop, one April, described his health as like the season, one hour sunshine, the next clouds. Lord Orrery wrote to old Tom Southerne (January 1735-6) that doctor Rundle's condition "mends apace, at which wine-bibbers are offended and water-bibbers rejoice." He was in England in the spring of 1737 and active in the interests of his friends. He was eager for the wedding of John Talbot to Miss Decker and on 21 May he officiated at the marriage of "Leonidas" Glover to "the handsomest woman in England, worth all the nine muses." In January 1738-9 the winter had its influence on his "crazy constitution" but the "noble cordial ipecacuanha, frequently taken, undoes all the mischiefs of the weather." At Dublin the winters were the finest and the summers the dreariest that could be imagined. It was his design in Sept. 1740 to spend the winter and spring in London at John Talbot's in Red Lion Square and when summer came and he had visited some other friends to return to Ireland "for ever." He had grown too old and inactive for any further expeditions but the health and spirits which he had recovered led him to anticipate further happiness "talking in an elbow chair."

Slowly it came home to the valetudinarian that the remaining days of his life were few in number. In March 1742-3 he wrote to Archdeacon S., "Adieu, for ever . . . believe me, my friend, there is no comfort in this world, but a life of virtue and piety ... I have lived to be conviva Satur, passed through good report and evil report, have not been injured more than outwardly by the last and solidly benefitted by the former." He died at his house in William Street, Dublin on 15 April 1743 and was buried in St Peter's churchyard, where a handsome monument was erected to his memory. The bulk of his fortune, £20,000 was left to John