Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/165

Rh his friend Shenstone, by whom he was too much resembled.

“—Our old friend Somervile is dead! I did not imagine I could have been so sorry as I find myself on this occasion.—Sublatum quærimus. I can now excuse all his foibles; impute them to age, and to distress of circumstances: the last of these considerations wrings my very soul to think on. For a man of high spirit, conscious of having (at least in one production) generally pleased the world, to be plagued and threatened by wretches that are low in every sense; to be forced to drink himself into pains of the body, in order to get rid of the pains of the mind, is a misery.”—He died July 19, 1742, and was buried at Wotton, near Henley on Arden.

His distresses need not be much pitied; his estate is said to be fifteen hundred a-year, which by his death has devolved to lord Somervile of Scotland. His mother indeed, who lived till ninety, had a jointure of six hundred.

It is with regret that I find myself not better enabled to exhibit memorials of a writer, who at least must be allowed to have set a good Rh