Page:Life of Edmond Malone.djvu/209

Rh taste and mutual respect and esteem. In writing to Malone, his lordship had often desired to be remembered to his Club-mates, “more especially and affectionately to Mr. Walpole and Sir Joshua;” and when his death was announced, replied immediately to Malone (March 1st, 1792) in the following strain:—

How erroneously do we judge of our own happiness! Here have I been for many years past regretting and lamenting the situation into which Fate and my duty have plunged me, principally because I have been thereby almost totally deprived of all possible society with the greater part of my early connections. Yet experience has now demonstratively shown me that this very privation, by me so long regretted, has in its effects been fortunate. Since, however, I may be sincerely grieved at the loss of those early friends, my grief would certainly have been much more pungent, if the circumstances of my life had allowed me continually to increase and to fortify those friendships by constant and endearing intercourse.

Poor Sir Joshua! How good—how kind—how truly amiable and respectable! The best of men—whose talents, though an honour to his country, were the least of his qualifications! Indeed, I most sincerely lament him, and ought, perhaps, still more to grieve for you, my dearest Edmond, who have lost the society of a friend so justly dear, of a companion so truly valuable. Yet let us not repine. All is surely for the best; and perhaps our own dissolution would be scarcely tolerable to us, if our life were not from time to time, as it were, habituated to death in the persons of our friends.

Send me in your next cargo the octavo edition of our friend’s lectures. Compleat also, if you can, my collection of the quartos, which he sometimes forgot to send me.

What were Malone’s immediate thoughts upon this regretted event we find in his memoranda, which are here in part transcribed:—