Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 4.djvu/346

336 In compliance with the importunate requeſt of the honourable Mrs. Thynne, ſhe paſſed ſome months with her at London, after the death of her daughter the lady Brooke, and upon the deceaſe of Mrs. Thynne herſelf, ſhe could not diſpute the commands of the counteſs of Hertford, who earneſtly deſired her company, to ſoften the ſevere affliction of the loſs of ſo excellent a mother, and once or twice more, the power which this lady had over Mrs. Rowe, drew her, with an obliging kind of violence, to ſpend a few months with her in the country. Yet, even on theſe occaſions ſhe never quitted her retreat without ſincere regret, and always returned to it, as ſoon as ſhe could with decency diſengage herſelf from the importunity of her noble friends. It was in this receſs that ſhe compoſed the moſt celebrated of her works, in twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living; the deſign of which is to impreſs the notion of the ſoul’s immortality, without which all virtue and religion, with their temporal and eternal good conſequences muſt fall to the ground.

Some who pretend to have no ſcruples about the being of a God, have yet doubts about their own eternal exiſtence, though many authors have eſtabliſhed it, both by chriſtian and moral proofs, beyond reaſonable contradiction. But ſince no means ſhould be left untried, in a point of ſuch awful importance, a virtuous endeavour to make the mind familiar with the thoughts of immortality, and contract as it were unawares, an habitual perſuaſion of it, by writings built on that foundation, and addreſſed to the affections, and imagination, cannot be thought improper, either as a doctrine or amuſement: Amuſement, for which the world makes ſo large a demand, and which generally ſpeaking is nothing but an art of forgetting that immortality, the form, belief,